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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: On Thin Ice

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Beware…thin ice!

The eyes of Capital peer hungrily at the melting Arctic caps, pondering what fossil treasures might lie beneath. I hear Jung’s cautionary note: Beware the slumbering gods of the deep. Never forget the awakening of Wotan, the ancient pagan god that broke through the cracking ice of Christendom and swept through the German psyche in the firestorm of Nazism, erasing centuries of civilization. Beware the thin ice that Reason rests upon at this moment in the progression of 2012.

We are reminded daily now of the hair-trigger balance of world order as an amateur internet film ignites the ire of the Middle East, as Newsweek throws brush on the fire with a provocative cover, as Netanyahu sees fit to overtly threaten Iran. Romney openly stokes the rage of the other seemingly emasculated 47%, pointing a finger at all the non-white male scapegoats. And thus, the slumbering energies of some wrathful, vindictive, punitive, licentious, greedy male god is gathering momentum and being openly invited to take full control of the American psyche.

The notion that REASON is enough to forestall a Romney coup is naive. We are dealing with a highly unstable collective psyche, a highly unstable collective race at war with itself. Romney’s frankness has merely laid completely bare the civil war within ourselves, within our world.

Is “survival of the fittest,” “best man wins,” “winner takes all,” to be our evolutionary path? Or are we an interdependent world that must take responsibility for all of its parts in order to survive and evolve?

Actually, both sides of this argument have truths to offer. Within the psyche, the ego must establish itself, must be fit and in control. Without a fit ego there is no survival; without a fit ego there is psychosis. However, an ego that cares only for its own needs and wants and interests evokes the rage and revolt of the rest of all that we are. We are also mind-body-spirit; that is, we are ego-animal-spirit. And if ego ignores or neglects the animal self, the body and all its instincts will revolt through disease, psychosomatic symptoms, rampant instinctual disorders like mass sexual abuse, etc. If ego ignores its spirit self, spirit self and spirit world will cast life into addictions, compulsions, and depression. Ego must take its rightful place in balancing the interdependent parts of the self.

Recapitulation is the ego’s willingness to reconcile with spirit and body self. In recapitulation we free our body selves, our instinctual selves, and open to the fullness of our energy spirit selves. Through recapitulation, ego evolves the fullest potential of the self, as an interdependent whole.

We must take responsibility for our individual lives as separate egos, fit and willing to take the journey into self, a self much greater than the sum of its parts, particularly that of its ego part. This is the formula for resolution, both on an individual and on a world level.

Our world rests on thin ice due to an alienated collective ego that has neglected both nature and spirit. Rebalance will happen one way or another, but if we take up the challenge and seek personal wholeness and balance, we strengthen the whole world.

The real truth that we must face is that we are all victims. Life in this world is a socialization of fragmentation that repeatedly victimizes the truth. In recapitulation, we take responsibility; we are not victims of our circumstances but our own liberators.

Only through assuming responsibility for the full truth—that of all our interdependent parts—can we advance ourselves, our species, our world, and skate off the thin ice and get back onto solid ground.

Beware! Thin ice!
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: An Awesome Experiment

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Some containers...

We are beings in the process of becoming. Our families, through socialization, help us to mold our first containers to hold and manage the prima materia, the innocence from which we are all created. This human mold becomes our identity, our sense of self—a being with continuity—a being we can wake up to in the morning who resembles the being we were when we went to sleep, what psychology calls an ego self.

The truth is, however, that what we are molded into says very little about who we really are, or who we will become. In truth, it’s just a working model, quite universal actually, a mold used and reused billions of times in forming the human race. That mold is the birthplace of our consciousness, our first bicycle, precious for a time but hardly a tool of navigation for an entire lifetime. In truth, consciousness must grow and become increasingly aware of its full nature to remain an effective navigational tool.

It was nature that decided to become conscious in the first place and we human beings are just that: nature that decided to become conscious. Our container, or ego self, is nature’s organ of consciousness. Our fledgling ego self, though, knows nothing of its true nature; it knows nothing of its true parents, nature itself. Our young ego self is an orphan child, separated at birth from its true parents and thrust into a mold that is supposed to know everything about navigating life, yet is so lacking in nature’s true knowledge.

Face it, consciousness enters life seriously stuck behind the eight ball, so different from its natural parents—the deep unconscious of nature—yet expected to have all the answers. The ego self, separated from its roots, has no answers and so little experience, yet is supposed to figure it all out for itself. All it has to work with are the rules, the laws, handed down through its socialized container’s book of rules. Those rules might be helpful in the beginning, but they are not the products of conscious experience and, underneath it all, we, as conscious beings, are deeply insecure beings; all of us nature’s orphans.

Nature's Opus...

And yet, at the same time, we are nature itself, nature’s most evolved experiment! Nature intended to take life in a new direction when it created the human, to not remain bound to its old, redundant patterns. Consciousness was born, conceived to herald in this change that evolved into the human being. What nature didn’t bargain for was that consciousness in the human ego container would become a renegade ship, a child overwhelmed by its power and ability to create, hoard, dominate and destroy. It’s the renegade stewardship of ego consciousness that’s brought us to where we now find ourselves: perched on the brink of destruction, with our true parents, nature, attempting to reign in this runaway ship before it’s too late.

What nature really seeks of us is that we take its prima materia, all the stuff of what we truly are, of what is, and find new expression for all of it in the living out of our lives.

In order to do this we must, of necessity, encounter, in consciousness, all the forces or essences of true nature inherent within all of us. These are the compulsions that come to grip us in fascination, in love, and in terror. These forces rock our containers, beckoning us to face them, own them, and find life for them. How will we fit them into our containers? Do they really belong in our containers, or must we simply acknowledge them and make peace with them? Are we ready to expand our containers, perhaps like the hermit crab that parts ways with its old shell and looks for a new one? Is it time to trade up to a new, expanded, conscious ego self?

The forces of nature within us are varied. Some are radiant and nurturing, others are greedy, vengeful, and deadly. All insist upon some place in our lives. It is the fundamental charge of consciousness to discover these forces of nature, acknowledge the truth of their existence, experience them fully and figure out what to do with them—how to live, balance, express, and evolve them forward.

Is it time to look for a new shell?

Consciousness is nature’s evolving organ, it is nature’s grand experiment and its decision making organ, and we are its container. To date, consciousness has largely mismanaged its nature. Collectively and individually we walk the razor’s edge of psychosis, which is nothing other than nature’s way of reasserting its control over a renegade ship and a failed experiment.

On the other hand, nature is completely supportive of its offspring, if that offspring is willing to squarely face the full truth of all that it is. This requires recapitulation—the process of learning to release ourselves from the containment of old, those limited containers of self, as we discover and integrate the fullness of our true natures. This also requires a willingness, on our parts, to take our full natures into the adventures of uncharted waters, within ourselves and in the world without. This is nature’s imperative at this moment in time—to keep evolving into new possibilities, but now responsibly, in full consciousness!

An awesome experiment indeed!

Part of the experiment,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Life Flows Without Judgment

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Life is a flow of energy. Judgment is a freeze frame of that flow of energy—an attempt to understand and value it—but clearly, judgment is not life. Life flows; judgment is static.

Life flows... and flutters...

Don Juan Matus pointed out that human beings are perceivers, perceivers of the flow of life energy. He hypothesized that human beings went on to become judgers because it was an efficient way to manage the challenging dimension of life energy. Don Juan believed that the ability to quickly interpret and categorize energy in solid form gave our ancestors an advantage in defending themselves.

We can experience this today by simply walking in the road. We might see a flutter of movement in the distance. We then quickly judge that movement to be a skunk or possibly a rabid raccoon. With this in mind we plan our approach. Funny how many treacherous leaves and fallen pieces of bark I’ve encountered as I’ve approached these flutters in the distance—the dangerous jungle of the street I live on!

Carl Jung, like don Juan, agreed that human beings are perceivers who perceive through the functions of sensation and intuition. Don Juan would likely call these functions organs of direct knowledge—knowledge obtained independently of the mind.

For Jung, the ego, or the mind, develops the discriminatory functions of thinking and feeling to decide what things are and what value they have. These are the freeze frame functions of judgment, the solid interpretations of energy that don Juan spoke about. With judgment we create exhaustive categories of what life is, how it works, and also assign all this knowledge a place in our lives.

In the modern world, the judgment functions and their host, the mind, have become so dominant that the channels to direct knowledge are lost, devalued, and even ridiculed.

How often do we ask our bodies directly what they need using our innate sensation function? More likely we must research the latest study or be told by a professional what our bodies need. How did our ancestors ever know what to eat before we had science and Science Diet!

Intuition is vision into that which can’t be seen—a direct tapping into the flow of life energy. Intuition completely bypasses the mind. The rational, judging mind has little use for intuition, as it only deals with solid facts—the freeze frames of life’s flow of energy.

What I observe is that life continues to flow regardless of how we judge it. Life is, forever and anew, approaching us with both challenge and support. Challenge may come in the form of loss and deep trauma and support may come in the synchronicities of guidance and encouragement, presented in signs all around us.

Most of the time, life energy is moving us along in the most amazing ways. Unfortunately, because we are dominated by the judging functions of the mind, we miss the magic always active in our personal lives.

I constantly notice how bogged down we become in feeling bad about ourselves. We miss how the daily events of our lives unfold in such a meaningful and helpful way. Even more amazing is how we are continuously supported in our growth and evolution, in spite of the negative judgments we daily place upon ourselves.

Life continues to both challenge and support us regardless of how brutally we judge ourselves or how low our self-esteem. The real problem is not in our flow of energy but in our judgments. Often our judgments are so fixated that they refuse to take in the reality of the life we are actually living. Our judgments generate a negative interpretation regardless of the facts.

It seems as if we fear that if we truly accept ourselves as acceptable to life, we will invite the wrath of some higher power to level us. The fact is that bad things happen to good people and bad people alike. Life happens as it will. Energy will flow regardless of our judgments.

Judgment has no control over life. Judgment does, however, have control over what we allow ourselves to see and know about the lives we are actually living. Judgment is the ultimate spin-doctor.

If you judge yourself to be bad or a failure today, life will still bring you supportive energy tomorrow. Life is deaf to judgment. The real question is whether you will be able to be aware of the wonder of the day and the amazing gifts being offered. All that judgment does is fog the screen, but beyond the fog life continues to both challenge and embrace without judgment.

Can you suspend judgment and show up for the real show? And, even if you can’t allow yourself to get too close to the real show yet, life continues to challenge and embrace you anyway. The truth is, you are wanted by life to live and explore fully. It’s why it brought you here, as the eyes and soul of ever-evolving infinity.

Without judgment,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Give Generously to Those Below

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Returning from vacation, I consult the I Ching for a picture of Now.

Collapse is imminent!

I receive the image of a house whose walls can no longer carry the weight of the roof, now on the verge of collapse.

In a dream, I’m stuck beneath the streets of New York City in a narrow crawl space. I look around at the thick wooden beams and wonder at the weight of what is above, the buildings, the restaurants, the parties taking place, all the people dancing. How long can those beams support it all?

The country is galvanized around raising the debt “ceiling.” From all sides there is fear of imminent collapse.

The I Ching counsels shoring up the walls of the house to avoid collapse by giving generously to those below. In the context of a nation, this means to take care of the real needs of the masses, the true backbone of the country.

Ironically, the Tea Party Republicans are agents of change here, bringing attention to the fragility of the economic structure. As with the “ceiling” structure of an overburdened roof, continuing to raise the debt “ceiling” will lead to inevitable collapse.

In the recent past, the Republicans had no problem raising that ceiling five times under President Bush and seventeen times under Reagan. Suddenly though, they’ve elevated it to a monumental crisis under President Obama. Despite the hypocrisy and thinly veiled overt ploy to bring down Obama at all costs, even if it means bringing down the nation itself, the bottom line is: the more you raise the ceiling, the greater you weaken the structure. That is, unless you strengthen the supporting walls.

The Republican strategy is to strengthen the walls by stripping the social supports to the masses while greedily filling the coffers of the wealthy. The slogan is: No raised taxes on the wealthy at any cost!

The I Ching clearly states that this strategy will lead to definite collapse. Synchronistically, we see this illustrated by the tumbling Murdoch empire built upon total greed and corruption. Unless the structure of the nation shifts to truly caring for the needs of the common citizen, the nation will collapse as we see reflected all around the world in the revolutions of the Arab spring.

On a personal level, we are challenged to assess the stability of our own psychic structures. Inwardly, the “roof” of our personality is the ego, built upon the supporting walls of our instinctive selves and the deep well of our spirit selves.

Is the roof of our personality, our ego self, giving generously to the needs of our instinctive self, our body, and to our spirit self, the foundational reason for our current life in this world?

Is our ego in alignment with our spiritual purpose? Is our ego properly nourishing our body as well as caring for the physical environment we inhabit in this world? Is our ego insisting on remaining in the wrong relationship out of fear of loss, abandonment, and aloneness? Does our ego control others overtly or covertly to serve its own agenda? Is the ego willing to face the truths of life lived or does it remain in illusion, inflation or deflation, or comfortably numb in addiction?

If our ego is off on its own greedy agenda, accumulating more and more for itself, overburdening the roof while neglecting the supporting walls of the house, that structure is in imminent danger of collapse; collapse of the personality into depression, or even psychosis.

Inwardly, giving generously to those below requires the ego to serve the deepest needs of the self. The ego, in this alignment with the self, is in no danger of collapse. To the contrary, it is likely to find itself in the place of abundance, generously and gratefully supported by the wellspring of life.

Doing masonry work,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Dreaming in Alignment

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On Monday I channeled a message from Jeanne about learning to flow. Using a water metaphor she instructed in how to meet the challenges in life head on rather than allowing them to overtake. That night I had the following dream:

Learning to flow...

I’m with Chuck in a large, sprawling ancient city, Rome perhaps. There is very little vegetation in the city proper; everything is manmade. There are large plazas and stone structures, huge buildings of light colored sandstone, gigantic columns, streets covered in large planks of a similar light colored sandstone. The city is beginning to flood.

We are out walking before dawn, aware of the coming flood. We can actually see it coming from a distance as we stand on an elevated plaza overlooking the city and the valleys beyond. As we walk, the water begins to rise, swirling around our ankles. We see a tidal wave beginning to form, making its way in between the buildings of the city. The tidal wave quickly takes shape and overtakes us.

We begin swimming. I see three people in the water ahead of us, the only other people in this seemingly deserted or still sleeping city. They are dressed in evening clothes; a man in a tuxedo and two women is short black evening dresses. The tidal wave hits them and they go under. I can see from my vantage point that they are not taking the situation seriously. Tired after a night out, they are still in a boisterous mood, unaware of the power and danger of the water.

I take my attention off them as I struggle to swim. For some reason I can only get my left arm out of the water, the right hanging useless beside me. I can barely lift my head out of the water and it’s a struggle to breathe. I’m aware of Chuck swimming strongly behind me and I want to keep up with him, not slow our progress. I can feel his encouraging energy and I want to show him that I can do this, that I’m a strong swimmer too. I lift my heavy left arm out of the water over and over again, trying to swim, flapping like a bird with only one wing. It’s cumbersome and frustrating and I’m not getting anywhere.

I don’t feel panic or fear. I don’t sense imminent danger or death, but I do know that we must flow with the water, that we cannot let it overtake us as the threesome in evening dress are doing. I’m aware that they are still floundering in the water up ahead of us when suddenly I flip over onto my back, without even thinking about it, and now I can swim! Both arms are functioning beautifully. I take long and swift strokes, my chest expanding and opening. I’m breathing easily, deeply, and comfortably by swimming in this manner. Effortlessly I glide along, fast and strong. I can also hear Chuck picking up speed behind me as we take off in the water. I’m amazed at how simple it is, how easily I’m flowing along now, loving it, when a moment before I was struggling to move my arm and take a breath. I am now in totally right alignment with my body and the water.

Next, in a second dream, we go to a friend’s house. Her ceiling is leaking. She has had someone come and look at it and the diagnosis is that nothing is wrong with the roof. I ask her if she trusts the guy because to me it’s very obvious that something is seriously wrong. We stand in her kitchen while the water pours down. It’s as if we’re standing outside in a heavy downpour.

I turn to Chuck and whisper: “I think she just doesn’t want to face the truth that there is a problem. Tired of having so much to deal with, she’s electing to ignore what’s so obvious. She’s almost insisting that her roof is not leaking.”

“People can ignore things for a long time. Eventually they get there. She’ll get there,” he says, as we leave her to resolve her issues in her own manner and in her own time.

My dreams ended there, but meanwhile, Chuck was dreaming right beside me, of slipping on a steep icy mountain slope. On the eve of the summer solstice and cusp of the water sign of Cancer—the night after Jeanne had guided us to learn to flow, using a water metaphor—we both dreamed of water. My dreams were of water in liquid form, feminine energy, as I see it; while Chuck dreamed of water in its solid form, ice, masculine energy. In his dream he too did not feel fear or danger, only the process of trying to figure out how best to navigate the slippery slope. We both had to figure out how to flow with what we were presented with, all in keeping with Jeanne’s message of learning to flow rather than float, taking charge rather than being overwhelmed, overtaken, or simply ignoring the truth of what is happening.

I see, in my own dream, the struggle of my ego, wanting to keep up with Chuck, and wanting to show off. For a long time I have envisioned my right side as my ego self. I’ve had many experiences of this, a true fact as I now see it. In this first dream, this right side, my human earthly self, is compromised. My left side, which I consider my spirit self is struggling. I am dreaming and in my energy body so my ego, my right side, does not function properly, yet my ego is making the decisions. Suddenly spirit, my energy body, usurps ego. It flips over and it is only then that I am in total sync, dream and energy body in alignment. This was a moment of enlightenment for me, when Jeanne’s message made even deeper sense, showing me the greater meaning of spirit in alignment with circumstances that are beyond our control.

These dreams were dreams of awareness, yet there was also another part of the deeper self in operation, offering guidance: the ancient deserted city perhaps suggesting this ancient self in my dream and the mountain in Chuck’s dream implying the same. Both Chuck and I did not struggle with the circumstances, either with worry or attachment, but we dealt only with the immediate process of how best to navigate the situation, how best to flow.

This attitude of flowing was contrasted by the second dream I had, of my friend, indicative of the tired ego self not wanting to deal with yet another catastrophe, another problem. In choosing to ignore the water pouring into her house, she offers us the same insight that the three partiers from my first dream suggest, that we can get overtaken and swept under by the force of nature taking its natural course. How long do we really want to do that? How long do we want to allow the ego, tired or inflated, to be in control? How long are we going to struggle before we shift ourselves into a more comfortable swimming stroke? For as long as we need to, as Chuck suggests, but eventually, as he also suggests, people get where they need to get.

I think it’s funny that Chuck and I lay side by side and dreamed a balanced sort of composite dream, the masculine and feminine actually in sync, attempting to get it right, both equally focused on seeking the means of flowing, in alignment with what we were presented with by Mother Nature.

Happy dreaming, happy flowing,
Jan