Tag Archives: energy

#677 Chuck’s Place: Losing the Human Form

This past week I found myself contemplating evil. Two weeks ago I explored the role of evil in the shaman’s world as a necessary encounter that advances seekers on their evolutionary journeys. Last week I delved into evil from a strictly human perspective, exploring the role of evil in the collective psyche of the human race. I am continually drawn back to the shaman’s world where I find the tools and pragmatism of their discoveries most helpful in dealing with the affairs of this world in preparation for journeys in all worlds. I decided to be guided by synchronicity for this blog today and opened The Wheel of Time to the following quote taken from Carlos Castaneda’s The Second Ring of Power.

A warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet he makes it his business to try to change, nevertheless. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to change. That’s the only advantage a warrior has over the average man.” (p. 166)

It’s not really that a warrior knows he cannot change; it’s more that a warrior does not attach to the outcome of his actions. In psychological terms, this represents the egoless ego. A warrior’s ego is neither willful nor inflated, but focused and pragmatic. The ego is a functional unit, not an identity. A warrior intends an outcome and acts impeccably in accordance with that intent. That is all that matters. The outcomes of actions merely present the circumstances for the next decision, the next action. Disappointment is a direct function of identification of ego, with accumulated deeds, such as merit badges or detention slips. I succeeded, I’m a success; I failed, I’m a failure: Me, Me, Me. A warrior suspends judgment. Judgment casts value upon the ego. The warrior seeks freedom from an ego identity, from judgment, from the human form.

I turn now to the opposite page in the same book for the following quote:

Warriors must be impeccable in their effort to change, in order to scare the human form and shake it away. After years of impeccability, a moment will come when the human form cannot stand it any longer and leaves. That is to say, a moment will come when the energy fields contorted by a lifetime of habit are straightened out. A warrior gets deeply affected, and can even die as a result of this straightening out of energy fields, but an impeccable warrior always survives.” (p. 167)

The human form is the unique configuration that our inherent energy is funneled into by what C. G. Jung called the archetypal patterns of the collective unconscious. The human form, from a shamanic perspective, refers to a specific interpretation of energy, not to be confused with our physical bodies. Actually, shamans have discovered that the human body, or solid reality, is an interpretation of energy. This is not all that radical, as even mainstream physics can demonstrate that, at its core, everything is energy. The shamans highlight the role of socialization to create the interpretation of energy they call the human form. The repetitive behavioral patterns we are taught from infancy by older, socialized members of the human community shape our energy into a uniform set of habitual behaviors recognizable to all humans, creating a uniform consensus reality we call Our world.

Shamans have determined that the lion’s share of our inherent energy, in the human form, is spent on habitual behaviors focused on self-importance and self-pity. In our human form we can spend a lifetime in either self-doubt or self-pity over our failures to meet expectations. We can become obsessed with self-motivation, trying to conquer the world or our own inertia to prove ourselves: to make something of our lives, to produce something to leave behind or to bask in during our golden years. We can become obsessed with becoming good, becoming great, becoming selfless, etc. All of these strivings, from a shamanic perspective, are variations of self-importance. In a nutshell, the shamans see the human form as an energetic entity completely consumed in a narcissistic bubble of self-involvement, totally incapable of fighting its way out of this self-absorption. If you stay in the human form mold you live and die in it, closed to the possibility of evolution. In Buddhist terms, your destiny is reincarnation, another opportunity to awaken to energetic reality.

The human form, in this socialized and narcissistic state, cannot be sustained without a high degree of energy being dedicated to upholding this ego-self identity. Warriors strive to store the energy usually expended on upholding this ego-self identity by interrupting the habitual behavioral patterns of self-absorption, i.e., by not attaching or becoming identified with the outcomes of their actions. The human form, denied this energetic sustenance, eventually leaves, with the result that energy is now freed for other possibilities, which naturally transcend the human form.

This shift, this abandonment by the human form is shattering. Picture the scene in The Matrix where Neo is unplugged from his habitual illusory programs, i.e., his hard drive is wiped clean and he nearly goes into shock under the impact. An impeccable warrior is well prepared for this blow, having spent a lifetime interrupting the flow of habitual patterns, using petty tyrants to free awareness from a self that requires judgment to exist, using recapitulation to free energy formerly attached to interpretations feeding self-absorption.

Energy, freed from the human form? Then what! Picture Neo, as the bullets merely bounce off him and he flows, as he no longer participates in that interpretation of reality; he has lost his human form. Let’s see what happens!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

#672 The Ultimate Goal

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Here we are, it’s Monday again, and a new work week begins. As I sit and feel the energy of today I find that I don’t have any specific questions for you, but I wonder: Do you care to offer us a spring message of guidance?

My Dear One, and All My Readers, do not forget, as you feel and test the energy outside of you, to also feel the unique inner energy that describes who you are, your constant hum of self, which nestles deep inside awaiting visitation. I suggest that this week ahead of you is ideal for gaining inner clarity, inner resolution, and inner calm, and it is ideal energy for taking action based on this inner connection. Inner self must now be acknowledged more fully. Inner self must be given the respect deserved, so hard earned and eagerly awaiting recognition. Inner self speaks words of wisdom. And that is what you must now connect to.

In quiet reserve will your inner hearing and speaking become more pronounced, but it is your outer self who must make the decisions to act, to listen, and to decide that, yes, inner self, you are absolutely right! I am in alignment with you. I dare to act on what you say, for I know, wholeheartedly, that you speak words of truth.

So, set an intent this week, My Dear Ones, to meet in a quiet spot; your inner self and your outer self sitting together in order to make a decision that will propel you both forward. For you know, deep inside, that this is what you need right now. You are at a point of great decision regarding something in your life, something that you both fear and desire, and that something is CHANGE.

Change arrives in many forms. It may be large and looming or small and subtle. It may frighten you because you see it so clearly or it may not even affect you consciously because you have no inkling of it. Yet in both instances you feel restless, uncertain, and obviously desirable of SOMETHING. What is the SOMETHING that has arisen in your life, My Dear Ones? What looms or approaches? What seeks your attention? What comes quietly to ask you to help it emerge from out of you, the same way the flowers and greenery in nature burst forth from the spring ground? What inside you is asking for release? For that is the energy you are now confronted with: the energy of release.

How do you choose to walk upon that earth knowing that SOMETHING desires release? I suggest that some deep inner quiet is going to be most necessary as you move forward in your lives. I suggest that only in finding the inner voice, the deeper self, will you find the answers you seek. You may look outside of you for signs that you are making the right choices, but allow those outer signs to truly reflect your inner self and not the desires of the outer self.

And how will you know what is right? The desires of the inner self will challenge you. They will ask you to break out of your shells, away from your old habits and expectations, to truly embrace a new you. This new you will ask you to stand in solitary repose upon your quiet spot and to feel your independence, your free spirit self, your inner self yearning for freedom. This inner self will ask you to be daring, to be brave, to push aside your fears and to know that whatever decisions and choices for change that you make in your life will be right for you to make, because the inner spirit knows that you will only make the choices that you need to make. But it will leave it up to you to figure out why you are making the choices you are deciding are most right for you to make now, at this current time.

Be advised that no decision is permanent, for if you are looking for permanence then you are not ready for true change. For true change means that everything is in constant flux and evolution, even you, My Dears. Can you accept that your decisions will open new doors in the weeks ahead? Can you enter a world of change and be accepting of what is to come? Can you allow your self to be open and daring, aligned with inner spirit, even though you are afraid?

In conclusion, I suggest that you take in the energy of change in heart-centered breathing, in quiet self-reverie. And, in inner calmness, give the two selves —the inner self and the ego self— some time together so that a consensus may be achieved, so that energies may align for the ultimate goal: CHANGE.

#669 Chuck’s Place: Ecstasy

First, a Chuck-ku:

Wind blows, seeds disperse.
Earth softens, flowers emerge.
Divine Ecstasy!

We work very hard each day to stay on top of our responsibilities, to sleep well, to get up on time, perhaps to exercise, to stay abreast of world events, or keep them at safe bay so as not to infiltrate the calm, to be prepared for the day, to show up on time, or quietly sneak away. At the end of the day we want to feel good about our accomplishments, our challenges met, as we plan for tomorrow’s activities or weekend’s repose. These are all efforts of consciousness: decision making, planning, will power, efforts to create structure in our lives. But where’s the juice?!

Where is the joy, the electricity, the experiences that transport us beyond our hard earned structures to a deeper communion with life, a true experience of rapture, wholeness and union with the divine? We all crave this experience, this melding of consciousness with the divine instinctual energy that lies at the depths of our being. This experience we seek, to complete our day in wholeness, is the experience of ecstasy.

The Greek roots of the word ecstasy are ex meaning out of or to stand apart from, and stasis meaning stationary or stagnant. Thus, ecstasy is the experience outside the box of our hard earned ego structures. To get there we must loosen or dissolve the rigid static structures of our egos, stand outside our rules, our strict rationality, our thinking processes, to encounter the energetic fluidity and unpredictability of our deeper emotional divine selves. The challenge is to step outside the box and yet remain fully conscious and present, flowing with this intense ecstatic energy.

The tendency of the ego is to either repress the divine impulse due to its intensity and fear of loss of control or for the ego to volitionally check out, as for example in a drunken binge where ecstatic energy overtakes consciousness in a frenzied reverie. In either case, there is no union, and no true experience of wholeness and divine rapture.

How can we build a solid bridge capable of safely channeling such powerful energy? To construct this bridge, we must engage all the powers of ego and consciousness. Without consciousness the experience of the divine energy is a tsunami that overtakes all structures or simply passes over without notice. How do we build a solid foundation for our bridge? One stone at a time.

One stone is to recognize the stirrings of emotion within as we move through our daily lives. Perhaps we might experience an impulse, a feeling of warmth, of appreciation, of love, of excruciating tenderness in an interaction with another. Can we allow ourselves to stretch and feel the full energy of this emotion? Perhaps we feel quite vulnerable, overly sensitive, seeking to automatically shut down, cut off, and move away from feeling the energy of our experience. Beyond the self, might we stretch ourselves, allowing our egos to lay down a stone by actually expressing out loud our feeling to another? To allow the self to withstand and be reshaped by the energetic aftermath of this wave of emotion is bridge building.

In another instance, we might find ourselves moved by a divine impulse to dance, to sing, to be playful, or silly. Can we lay another welcome stone to this divine energy by stretching our rigid egos to be moved to action by this impulse?

Perhaps we partake of a sip of wine. Dionysus, the personification of divine ecstasy, is also the Greek god of wine. Even the Christian mass includes a sip of wine as a channel to divine communion with God. That sip of wine immediately invites the experience of another world. Boundaries disappear and the experience of everything as energetically interconnected emerges. However, can we stop at one sip, at one glass? Can we retain our consciousness and experience interconnectedness in a modest way? This challenge is certainly another brick in the foundation of our bridge to ecstasy. Too often the craving for more divine contact, so deeply desired, results in inviting too much energy to travel on an incomplete structure ending in oblivion or divine madness.

Ecstasy is its own crucible, its own alchemical oven, its own cross. Pushing the confines of the structure, which can ultimately increase one’s joy, is a painful and lengthy process. Take, for example, love and sex, a very challenging combination, a cornerstone of our bridge to ecstasy. In the beginning of relationship, when nature provides us with an unearned “in love” experience, we are afforded the divine rapture of ecstasy as the boundaries of our individual egos are stretched to merge with our “soul mate.” In this time, love and sexual energy flow freely. If this divine spark acquires duration and becomes a true relationship we are ultimately expelled from the garden. The gift of ecstasy must now be earned through the building of a bridge of conscious relationship. The more we get to know our partner, the more familiar they become, often, the more difficult sex becomes.

Love is a product of consciousness. Love takes work, hard work. Encountering and accepting the truth of our “human” soul mate, as well as revealing our own most vulnerable selves, is an extremely challenging process. Meanwhile, familiarity often drives sexual energy underground. Love and familiarity bring a lot of bright light to a relationship. The spontaneous, unpredictable flow of primal sexual energy seeks the darkness, where play, connection, and abandon are spared watchful, judgmental eyes and a thinking mind. To be conscious and present in abandon, without thought, is the crucible of love and sex. To merge the familiar and the spontaneous, the divine and the earthy, the spirit and the flesh, is a powerful, ecstatic moment. This is definitely possible if there is commitment, but it is often a painful, vulnerable, and frustrating process where the energies seek to escape the containment required for ultimate transformation and ecstatic union.

Stretching and softening the boundaries of the ego to accommodate and join with the divine spontaneous impulse is the essence of ecstasy. Yes, to be able to stand, which is to hold onto consciousness, outside the static structure of the ego, is to open to the flow of divine energy, true ex-stasis. In this piece, I selected the metaphor of a sturdy bridge built stone by stone to represent the place of standing amidst divine energy. The opportunities to lay these stones offer themselves daily in a myriad of ordinary life circumstances where the spark of divine impulse is felt subtly or profoundly within the heart.

Jung chose a different metaphor, that of a cork floating on the ocean. The cork being the place of standing, or consciousness floating upon the boundless, infinite flux. Despite the disparity in size of cork to ocean, Jung would argue that without consciousness there is no wholeness, there is no divine ecstasy. Rumor has it that Jung’s final words, spoken to Marie-Louise von Franz, were: “Let’s have a really good red wine tonight!” Wine or no wine, I suggest that you make your experience di-vine!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

#664 A Biosphere of Self

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today we start our new channeling schedule, as I wrote about last week in A New Intent. Spring is soon upon us in the Northeast, a time for all of us to embrace new beginnings, changes, and practices. With today’s channeling, I ask that you address your readers with a message for the week ahead. What is the most important and meaningful guidance you can offer us at this time?

I suggest again, as I have in the past, that you look upon nature and take your guidance from the reality before your eyes as much as you take guidance from my words, for nature itself is doing what I suggest all of you do each day. And that is: to awaken with conscious awareness that you too are driven by energy, the same energy that drives nature and the animals, that conducts nature’s research and experimentation, each day, as the sun rises, as the darkness recedes, and life awakens to proceed on its merry way, unfolding in a process of growth and evolution.

Each one of you, in order to become part of the greater evolving energy must find your connection to it in some fashion that resonates. Find connection not only to your own inner spirit self as a most vital step in growth, but do not forget to live fully in that world as one of the creatures of nature, guided by the energy of that which lives connected, driven, and enhanced by the pure energy of life in motion. Today, as you begin a new week in your lives, stay connected to the fact that you are energy in motion too, that you are nature itself, that the world belongs to you, you to it, and that, in symbiosis, all is possible.

You live in an environment that is perfectly set up for your habitation. Everything you could possibly need exists in nature. You are provided with the air you need for breath of life, the water you need to survive, the sun and the moon to regulate your sleeping and waking states. You are provided with food; the raw ingredients for sustenance and healing are available in that which is provided by nature. You live in the perfect biosphere, the perfect balanced environment. Accept that fact. Treat the earth with respect and it too will return the favor. Find out who you are supposed to be as a natural member of that biosphere. What is your true role? What are you supposed to be contributing to its health and nurturance?

Even as you seek without what you are supposed to find for your own health and nurturance, look to the earth around you for the answers to your inner issues too. In pollution, exploitation, defilement and waste of the earth will you discover your personal issues replicated before your eyes. For all who look upon the earth and see destruction and decay, overuse and greed, and the destruction of the fine balance that is so necessary for healthy and sustained living, and wish for healing, must turn inward to the natural inner environment and seek equal purity, respect, and balance there too.

With each new spring upon that earth nature stirs in each of you. You cannot deny it. And what is it that stirs, but your ancient selves, your ancient wisdom and knowledge, and the deepest truths of the human race that are revealing that, as big and powerful as you have gotten, as large and synthetic, as wasteful and greedy, so are you nothing more than that which you feel stirring in you on a beautiful spring day after a long, cold, dark winter. And what is stirring? It is energy itself; it is life; it is nature at its rawest, the essence of life.

Return now to thinking about the self as energy.
In energetic form you are compatible with man,
with nature, with the heavens and the earth,
with the pull of the planets and the flowing of the rivers.
In energetic form you are whole, you are complete.

The challenge comes in holding onto this basic truth that you are,
first and foremost,
one with nature.
Within this truth hides many other truths.
Within this truth lies darkness and light,
the known and the unknown,
good and evil,
the highest of ideals and the lowest of instincts,
the loftiest thoughts and the thinnest of veneers of self.

For you are all that you see,
all that you perceive,
all that you love,
all that you despise,
all that you fear,
and all that you cannot yet see.
You are behind the veils and you provide the veils.
You are goodness itself,
yet are you the darkness that lurks in the shadows of life.

You are not only a natural biosphere,
but you are also an energetic biosphere,
a spiritual biosphere,
a mental biosphere,
a physical biosphere.
You are wholeness,
oneness,
complete.

This is your life challenge, you know, My Dear Readers; to find this out, to discover what it means to be complete, to discover the truths of the self, on all levels. Who are you now, this moment, as you read these words? Who will you be five minutes from now? Who will you be five hours and five days from now? You may notice that you have the ability to shift and change from moment to moment, depending on the situation you are in, that you are multi-personalities, that you act and react and determine your journey based on so many factors, all existing within as well as without. You have choice, opportunity, the option to change, at your fingertips, each day. These are the things that must be utilized. They must become your tools of nature, your tools for use in your biosphere of self.

I do stress, quite often, that it is important to remember that you are energy, that you are responsible for every action and decision in your life, that you are whole, that you are in charge of your life. Now, as change comes to you in many forms, I ask that you reconsider all of these thoughts and reapply them to your life, to your journey through that life, to both your spiritual journey and to your journey upon that earth. Look to nature for guidance. Study it in its raw state, driven by the energy to live, to evolve, to change. This is the message I leave you with today: Seek to find your true place as one, as nature.

#642 Chuck’s Place: Liquid Energy is Our Primary Birthright

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

Yesterday, we sat in the waiting room, Cosi in Jan’s lap, both of us touching her, feeling her vibration, feeling our own sadness. In a few minutes the vet would see us, examine Cosi, and concur with what we already knew. Jan had faced the truth first: we were keeping her alive, she could not live without our intervention, she was in pain, it was time to let her go. Jan had previously fanned the pages of the I Ching in front of Cosi, asking her to show her what needed to happen. Her paw stopped on Hexagram #23 Po, splitting apart, the inevitable, unstoppable collapse of the house. There was no stopping Cosi’s body from splitting apart; it was time to release her energy. After that, Jan opened the book at random three times and each time it fell open on Po. There was no changing the inevitable.

Others came into the waiting room. They had no attachment to our cat. Though they occupied the same room they were in a different, disconnected world. That’s how it is with the human operating system; the archetypal substrate that governs our experience breaks us into units, a world of disconnected solid objects that we learn to differentiate. We are drawn to attach to certain objects to experience our emotional selves as we form bonds with other individuals. Our experience of connectedness beyond those we have attached to is quite limited. Haiti, for instance, is another world. Perhaps we might make a contribution on the cell phone. It is hard really to feel connected for very long beyond our immediate world and those we are emotionally attached to. That is the nature of fragmented, disconnected units. The advantage of fragmentation is the ability to obtain deeper knowledge of a part. In medicine this is called specialization. The challenge for medicine is to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again and see a person as a whole unit, holistic medicine.

This same challenge confronts our world now at a major evolutionary juncture. Our world has reached its limit in sustaining fragmentary beings with special interests. This fragmented world must allow itself to also be a holistic unit. This was don Juan’s conclusion: for this world to survive, it must be able to now be experienced as a world of interconnected energy, as well as a world of solid objects. This was Jeanne’s guidance yesterday. She gives us the image of liquid energy versus solid objects. She describes her experience as one of total detachment, that is, freedom from specialized attachments, which results in the experience of utter calm and pure love and compassion for all. This experience is our birthright, just as much as our experience of the world as one of solid objects is our birthright. For our world to survive, we must make the evolutionary leap to experience our liquid energy birthright and allow the experiences of interconnectedness, utter calm, and totally detached loving compassion for all to flow into our world of solid objects. This will transform how we act and react in a world of solid objects.

Cosi lay on the exam table, calmly awaiting her transformation; we laid our hands upon her and she received her injection. Both Jan and I then simultaneously experienced a subtle swoosh of light energy move from her body, through us, and then beyond. She is now in her pure energy state, the place we are all headed. The opportunity we are being offered now, while in our solid form, is to experience ourselves as liquid energy, all interconnected in a far greater reality. The experience of Cosi, as energy, was a reminder that ultimately we are all destined to return to our pure energetic state. However, we also have the opportunity to experience ourselves in our energetic state while we still reside in our solid human form. In fact, this is what is being required of us now, in order to allow our world of solid objects, itself on the verge of splitting apart, to continue to exist and evolve, to become an interconnected, holistic unit.

This evolutionary challenge is actually urging us to rediscover our energetic birthright because, once we enter the matrix of solid objects, we forget. As don Juan put it, “we are energy first.” As Jeanne put it yesterday, once we find our way to utterly calm and detached loving compassion we discover we are in a familiar, known place; we are home. This place is already in us, we just need to allow ourselves access to it. Can we stay in this place of familiar home, with all its truths, and reenter the world of solid objects, bridging the two and, in so doing, evolve this world into a sustainable world?

As always, should anyone wish to write or ask, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck