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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Real Security

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Still dealing with computer issues, but here is a blog from Chuck, sans pictures again, but offered with our heartfelt wishes for good journeying through all the changes.

The human animal is acutely aware of great change on the horizon. Such impending change produces a collective fear that emanates from the deepest stratum of our instinctual selves, rising to the surface in our individual experiences as anxiety. We seek to dispel this anxiety by seeking refuge in our ego self, which responds by associating the anxiety with current events as it defensively reasons us to provisional security. This anxiety/fear, however, goes deeper than that, into the very nature of our human animal selves.

The question arises: How do we achieve real security? The truth is that although it is evident that we are in for great planetary change, life is and has always been about great change. All life ends; what greater change could there possibly be?

Real security is not to be found in a respite from change. A respite from change may temporarily be found in the ego’s bag of magical defenses, but such respite is an illusion. In reality change is constant and unrelenting. We might, nonetheless, discover a sense of real security on a warm day at the beach.

The ocean tide is the ultimate expression of unrelenting change. The heartbeat of the earth never ceases in the circulatory system of the ocean’s waves. If we lie calmly at the seashore, we might attune ourselves to the sounds of the true pulse of change. No wave is ever the same. Some waves are calm and smooth, others are crushingly powerful.

If we venture beyond our sandy bed into the ocean waves we experience more directly the energy of change. As the waves approach we might decide to learn to dance with them, timing our moves to leap at just the right moment, barely impacted by the passing waves. If our timing is slightly askew we might find ourselves mercilessly dragged down and under, into sand and swirls, frantically awaiting release that we might breathe again. Most times we are released back into life, returned to the control of our own bodies. Sometimes the ocean claims life, the catalyst to moving into new form.

Perhaps we might decide to align ourselves with the flow of the waves, with the energy of change, as we ride the cresting waves ashore. Sometimes we are fooled or miscalculate and again find ourselves pulled asunder, forced to face the crushing uncertainty of change head on.

Real security, however, is only to be found in facing the inevitability of change by allowing the ego self to learn about its energy, discovering how to ride it successfully by facing the truth of our own lives.

If we can allow ourselves to engage with consciousness in our dreams and bring them to waking life, we enter more deeply into the ocean of our deeper selves.

If we can allow ourselves to fully experience our feelings in the present, and in our deepest memories in recapitulation, we release the energy of stored inner tidal waves and learn to stay afloat through the inevitable storms of our lives.

And yes, if we can allow ourselves to fully reexperience our deepest encounters with terrors that once tore us asunder, we gain the knowledge of holding together through the greatest cataclysms of change.

Real security is to be found in the ability to flow with the changes that life presents us with. To fully become our wholeness we must allow for encounters with, and knowledge of, the parts of ourselves that rock the limited identity our ego has constructed to keep us safe. But let’s not sell the ego short; it is fully capable of the growth to fluidity that is necessary to accept life on its own terms without machinations to make it palatable.

Bring your ego to the beach of your dreams tonight. It’s fine to rest comfortably on the shore and attune to the rhythm of change. The time will come when you are ready, or not, for the deeper plunge into the ocean of pulsing life and constant unrelenting change. Real security is found in flowing with the changes, wherever they take you.

Resting comfortably on the beach, until the next wave comes along,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: There Are No Bad Dreams

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I'm so afraid! - Art by Jan Ketchel
I’m so afraid!
– Art by Jan Ketchel

The ego is quick to categorize the terrifying experience of a nightmare as a bad dream, best to be forgotten. The ego would be wise, however, to suspend that automatic protective judgment and ask the question: What was the function or purpose of the disturbing dream?

Behind the dream and the dreamer—our consciousness in dreams—lies the dream maker. The dream maker is the Self, the higher self that has made all the major survival decisions through the course of our life.

It is the Self in our tender years of youth who brings us fairytales to secretly live by as we encounter the harshness and brutality of actual reality that fails to safely usher us into secure psychological life. This compensatory secret life is the very one needed to nurture and tend to our fledgling ego’s fragile hold on life.

It is the Self as well that decides to fragment our overwhelming experiences in that harsh reality, burying for safekeeping our true spirit until a more opportune time to be born arises. This same Self chooses where we will be taken, what we will be shown and, most importantly, what we will emotionally experience in our nightly dreams, the intent being to better position our waking consciousness to take forward the quest for wholeness and individuation.

An encounter with a terrifying character in a dream might signal the Self’s urging to take up the task of integrating a traumatic experience, perhaps something long held in storage that left a delicate, vulnerable part of the spirit encrusted for decades. The Self might be suggesting to the ego self that the time is ripe to pick up a sword and not only face this ancient encounter, but cut through the encrustment to free this vital part of the self.

A series of frustrating, anxiety-producing mundane dreams might set the waking mood of frustration as the Self seeks to energize the waking self to break through its repetitive fixation on a habit that dominates life but imprisons the developmental needs of the self.

A sleepless night might be the Self’s decision to weaken the ego’s daytime hegemony over life so that it might raise to consciousness disturbing truths normally held in check. This may be the very thing needed to compel the ego to pay attention to its inner reality versus its usual focus on the events of the outer world and its position in it.

At the deepest level, what does the spider really mean? - Art by Jan Ketchel
At the deepest level, what does the spider really mean?
– Art by Jan Ketchel

There may be many varied developmental motives in the Self’s spinning of its nightly dream encounters. If the waking ego dismisses these experiences upon awakening, it not only misses the gift and deeper meaning of the Self’s intent, but it further alienates itself from the Self’s goal of individuation, likely triggering even more severe attempts by the Self to get the ego on board. This can take the form of repetitive and deepening nightmares or the breakthrough of the dream projectively into daytime life, in the form of phobias or even hallucinations.

We do well to value and appreciate the Self’s intent to lead us deeper into our wholeness, valuing all of our dreams—fairytales and nightmares alike—diligently seeking out their deeper purpose. With that fearless approach we become allies with the Self as it leads us ever deeper on our journey to wholeness.

Appreciating the dream,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Opus of OCD

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Alchemy in nature... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Alchemy in nature…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can be viewed as the psyche’s attempt to achieve its wholeness through the ego’s encounter with its projections upon the outside world. On the surface this might appear contradictory to the debilitating impact of obsessions and compulsions, but a deeper understanding of the psyche’s drive for perfection, through the challenge of sorting through this disorder, may serve to redirect the focus of these powerful debilitations toward the far greater opus of achieving wholeness.

Carl Jung spent much of his professional career rescuing the archaic texts of alchemy from obscurity and through channeling alchemical information from the Akashic Records through various alchemical characters of his active imagination. Many astute clinical scholars have been utterly perplexed at the clinical usefulness of these musings. Jung never cared much for making his discoveries easily understood; he was an avid explorer of the unconscious who left for the future the task of discerning their pragmatic utility. Hardly a scholar, I find myself nonetheless tasked with making some of his discoveries relevant. And so, with OCD I find incredible alchemical relevancy.

Alchemy was, in an outer sense, the precursor of modern chemistry. But at its inner core, alchemy was the mystical tradition of many renowned scientists—Sir Isaac Newton among them—who sought to experience and resolve the mysteries of the soul. The opus of the alchemist was to take matter and transform it through a series of processes into gold, the symbol of ultimate value. These processes involved the differentiation, purification and synthesis of opposing elements into a cohesive whole. Similarly, the goal of human life is to reconcile the great polarities of living in this world with the energetic dimension beyond this world to achieve a golden wholeness of completion.

The alchemist started with matter in all its impurities—called the nigredo—that is, matter in its completely contaminated, mixed up state. It was then subjected to a series of alchemical operations to reach the full purity of gold. These purification processes included such functions as solutio, the dissolution of matter in water, as well as calcificatio, the burning off of impurities by fire. Jung saw these steps in the process as the alchemist’s projection of their own psyches onto the matter, and their ultimate art as a process of transformation. Transformation requires a sealed container where these operations can be securely housed.

In OCD, the psyche frequently projects the impurity of its internal polarities onto the contents of the material world. This intermingling is analogous to the mixing of the contaminated material at the beginning of the alchemist’s opus. In OCD, powerful compulsions elicit behaviors to separate out this contamination through ritual practices. An individual under the influence of these powerful projections is tormented by the potential danger of contamination and frequently engages the alchemical function of solutio—excessive hand washing, for instance—to rid the self of the impurities of contamination. Eventually, these unconscious projections inundate and ultimately overwhelm and severely restrict even the simplest of functions in daily life.

Beginnings of transformation... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Beginnings of transformation…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The opus for OCD treatment becomes one of detaching from the control of, and the automatic infliction of, the projections onto the outer world. The ego cannot control the projections, but it can take a behavioral stand against the compulsions that issue forth from the unconscious. Thus, although an obsession insists that “I’m contaminated” after a handshake, I can refuse to do the cleansing behavior that the compulsion insists upon as a means of relief. The true cleansing, the true purification process rests here, in the ego’s stand for reality over the projective veils of illusion. Here the ego acts as the sealed container for the alchemical process by bearing the tension of the urges of the projective psyche through not following its commands.

In its contained retort, the ego seals in the energy of the projective psyche and bears the mounting tension of its energetic pressure. This mounting pressure, seeking release, is the fire that then burns through the veils of the projective illusions. The substance is clarified and true reality is readied for synthesis into gold. The ego, thus having passed its test, accrues a piece of its lost wholeness. The Opus of OCD meanwhile moves on to its next mysterious projective challenge.

Eventually, the energies of the psyche transform OCD itself into a fact of a former life, no longer an energetic determinant. When that happens, the clarified energetic awareness thus achieved moves forward, freed to see and be in the world as it truly is.

Everything matters,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Transforming Fear

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Is there really anything to fear? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Is there really anything to fear?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It’s surprising how the first reaction to disturbing dreams is fear. It’s the ego trying to assert itself.

When we fall asleep and dream, momentarily exiting the restless body and mind that we inhabit for most of our lives, we access our ethereal body. Absent of ego, we are freed to travel into a world of symbols, archetypes, and energetic possibilities far beyond our waking conscious lives. Though for the most part hidden from waking consciousness, we nonetheless bump into and engage these same meaningful aspects of life as we go about our daily lives. As we live out our psychological makeup and interact with others, these symbols and archetypes live out and interact along with us. In dreaming, however, like bees gathering nectar that they will take back to the hive to produce sweet honey, we too have the opportunity to take what we encounter in our dreams back into waking consciousness for deeper understanding of who we are.

During my recapitulation I dreamed a slew of dreams about snakes. Frightened of snakes, I saw them at first as evil energy until one day I was given a new insight: Snakes are healing! I was so stuck on my fear of snakes that I could only see them as scary and dangerous. How could they possibly mean anything else? How could they possibly be positive symbols?

As soon as I grasped the concept, however, I knew it was the truth: snakes are symbols of healing and transformative energy. After that insight, things began to change rapidly for me, both in my dreaming and my waking life. As snakes regularly shed their skins in a cyclical process of death and birth, so is recapitulation a similar process, a shedding an old self to gain access to a new self. Snake medicine was showing me how the symbols in my dreams were clearly part of my recapitulation and that the recapitulation that I was undertaking in conscious daily life was equally intertwined with my energetic dreaming self. I was being given meaningful symbols in my dreams that were helping me to gain greater understanding of who I was and what was in store for me as I did my deep inner work.

Recently, I dreamed a frightening dream. At least that was my first reaction. This time, however, it was not a snake that jolted me awake but a spider clinging to my nose! In the dream I was standing between two worlds. On the left was a lush forest. A light being lay like the dying Buddha on his side in the trees of this lush forest. On the right, surrounded by shadows, stood a healer, a dark haired man who was a doctor. As the dream began I was emerging from the earth. Covered in dirt, roots, worms and bugs I emerged spitting and shaking from the wet rich soil at my feet. I stood over a square white table and shook out my hair, watching the debris fall onto the white surface. I pulled bugs from my hair, asking each of the beings if they were ticks. Each time I asked the bug would fly off. Knowing that ticks do not fly I was immediately soothed. Neither of the beings answered any of my questions. They simply observed. Suddenly, a large translucent amber-colored spider was clinging to the tip of my nose, spraying venom into my mouth. Spitting and gagging I tried to remove the spider, but it clung tenaciously. I was aware that I did not want to injure or kill it, but I wanted it off! I showed the spider to both of the beings but neither of them reacted, they simply shrugged their shoulders as if to say, “Whatever.” I feared that the venom would be bitter and detrimental, but in fact it had no taste and I was not harmed by it, but still there was another part of me that just wanted the spider off my nose! As I struggled to remove the spider I woke up dripping with water, earth and bugs, totally freaked out.

As I analyzed the dream, it became clear that it was a healing dream and not the poisoning situation that I first reacted to. My ego self was both offended and frightened by the spider clinging to my nose, but I knew it had to be something pretty significant. My first reaction upon awakening was that there was something wrong with me, that I was ill, or putting the wrong foods into my mouth, but then I remembered that in the Hopi creation myths Spider Grandmother was an important figure, as she consciously wove the world. Before long I realized that, much like my snake dreams during my recapitulation, this was a dream about birthing new awareness. I was birthed in full consciousness this time, as opposed to previous lives when I was birthed into life in forgetfulness. As I studied the dream, I began to see its beauty and power, its symbolism clear, the archetypes of which it was made up clear as well. I readily let go of my frightened ego, so eager to reassert its superiority, and sided with my awakened—in more ways than one—spiritual self.

I came away from this dream more thankful for my dreaming process, knowing that our dreams, as much as they take us into other states and other realms, tie directly in with our evolutionary process here on earth. If we are to truly understand the meaning of those other states and realms, we must first figure out the meaning of our lives here and now. From my own experiences, I can only conclude that the meaning of our lives is to become fully conscious of our energetic potential and then use it to evolve.

Everything is cyclical... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Everything is cyclical…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The spider, like the snakes of my previous dreams, represented infinity and the cyclical nature of everything. She really was saying that I must watch what I put into myself, both into my physical body and into my ethereal body, both of them vitally important as I navigate this life. Only healing food and healing endeavors must enter me. There was a soberly calm part of me that knew this even while I dreamed.

In addition, when I looked more closely at who the light being and the dark being were, I knew they were representing both birth and death, past and future, but also that they were one and the same, each representing a beginning and an ending, an opportunity for shedding and birthing. It became clear that those beings were also me, and as I know myself on a deeper level and experience my energetic self, I know there is nothing to fear in those big moments of transition. Like the spider or the snakes of my dreams, those beings were representing my wholeness. They patiently waited for me to answer all my own questions, knowing full well that all the answers lie within. Indeed, everything becomes increasing clear as I study the dream. My ego is further removed now too, not as necessary as it once was; no need to protect. I am on a new journey now.

I am also certain that if we can begin to imagine ourselves as living in a dream all the time, viewing the symbolism of our experiences in life that same way we view the symbolism our dreams offer us, we can more readily gain access to the mystery and magic of our lives as a whole. Fear and the ego play a critical role in how we decide to interpret both our dreams and what happens to us in waking life, but we can decide to use all our encounters with fear and the ego to advance ourselves now. Are we really dreaming all the time? Why wait until the next life to find out?

Doing it now!
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: To The Deeper Within

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One day we must all take off and head into the great unknown... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
One day we must all take off and head into the great unknown…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We must all take the hero’s journey. At some point in our lives it becomes imperative. When we stand on the threshold, about to take the first step into the unknown, we feel totally alone. No one has ever done what we are about to do. Our journey is our own to have, to experience, and to return from.

Perhaps our first journey is to leave our parents at the age of five and go off to school, to get on the school bus and return at the end of the day having had an experience that no one else has ever had. We must all do this at some point in our lives if we are to become mature, independent beings.

“Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss,” writes Joseph Campbell. And it’s true, we all have to leave the known, the easy comforts of a provided life and experience the discomforts of life on our own.

There are many stages of the hero’s journey. There is that first stage of leaving home, of going off to college or moving far from where we grew up, to begin anew, as youth chomping at the bit for our own experiences beyond the world of our parents. Many never take another hero’s journey after that. We settle into our lives, become complacent, disillusioned, perhaps angry at the world for not meeting us in the way we expected. Our spirit, however, never gives up. It comes knocking, constantly asking us to please get up and do something to change ourselves!

Sometimes the call of the spirit is finally answered later in life. The journey is taken up again, when other duties have been met, when our maturity allows us to shed some of what has held us back in the past, when we are finally ready. Others continue the hero’s journey unabated, letting something else besides the dictates of society and family tradition guide them on their way, those free-spirited ones who never seem to settle in one place for very long. Others constantly refuse the call, even late into life; even upon their death beds they do not heed the proddings of their spirit to experience the bliss of life.

There is another journey... to the Deeper Within... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There is another journey…
to the Deeper Within…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Besides the hero’s journey in the world, there is another kind of hero’s journey, the inner journey, the call of the spirit to encounter and experience the Deeper Within, as I like to call it. The journey into the Deeper Within is as frightening as taking that first step on the young hero’s journey, when leaving home for the first time and finding out what it means to be a fully responsible adult.

The Deeper Within calls to us throughout our lives. Calling and calling, it asks us to come closer, to hear what it has to tell us of the treasures and mysteries of the deeper self, like a deep well, the bottom of which is endless. The Deeper Within is where our true bliss lies, where our real transformation awaits. Once we heed this call, we are offered the opportunity to go on a journey that never ends.

To be ready to encounter and experience this Deeper Within we must allow ourselves to take the first part of the hero’s journey in the real world. We must leave home, grow up, create a life for ourselves on our own terms, as fully independent beings. We must gather experiences, learn what it means to face our fears and test our merits, to have gains and losses, to have love and to lose love, to build our egos and strengthen our spirits in a world that is often ignorant, disharmonious, and could care less.

Once we have had experiences in the real world, we might be ready to have experiences in the Deeper Within, where everything that we have learned from being in the outer world will be utilized and tested, proven to be useful or useless in our inner world. In the Deeper Within we will finally meet our spirit face to face, all that it encompasses, our light side and our dark side. We must be prepared for such encounters.

Our ego, strengthened by our life experiences, will prove its worth, showing us what we are really made of as we dive into the Deeper Within. The shamanic process of recapitulation is taking the hero’s journey into the Deeper Within. It entails facing what has controlled us and what has guided us, what has supplied us with our energy and what has drained us of our energy. Recapitulation is the hero’s journey to reconnecting with the spirit self. During recapitulation we surrender our ego to this spirit self, so that it may guide us to full transformation.

As we return to the real world from our hero’s journey through the Deeper Within, we must ease slowly back into society, quietly and humbly take our place again, transformed yet fully present. We return to life like a newborn, full of a new kind of knowledge that others cannot totally grasp. We return from taking the journey into the Deeper Within speaking a strange new language, having had visions and mystical encounters. We return with a new way of perceiving the world, with a new kind of awareness.

Complexities of the deeper self blissfully revealed upon taking the hero's journey... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Complexities of the deeper self blissfully revealed upon taking the hero’s journey…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Everything is now so clear to us, life explained on so many levels, death faced and found to be nothing more than this life extended, experienced in another state. We return with a new kind of sober fearlessness, with a new kind of detachment, and yet we feel and experience life with far greater love and compassion than previously possible. We emerge fully aware of our universal interconnectedness and our energetic connection to all living beings. Yes, we return with blissfulness coursing through us, having experienced bliss, having fully known what bliss really is.

Our new self wants everyone else to experience the bliss of life in this manner, to take the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within and transform too! But we learn soon enough that not everyone is ready. “I can’t read all that spiritual crap!” someone said to me the other day. I was not offended, nor did I feel sorry for the person. I simply acknowledged the journey that was being taken.

There are millions of kinds of journeys being taken simultaneously. Some people are here, others there. But the thing to remember is that we all had to start somewhere. We all had to take that first step into the unknown at some point, whether in a past life or in this life. At one time we all had to, and have to, take the first step on the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within too.

Wishing you all well, wherever you are on your hero’s journey. Keep going!
Jan