Tag Archives: evolution of consciousness

Chuck’s Place: In And Out Of Changing Times

Who is dreaming whom?
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Why do we gain so much benefit from a brief moment of rest? When we close our eyes to the outside world and drop into daydream we enter what Seth, whom Jane Roberts channelled, called, psychological time.

Psychological time demonstrates Einstein’s theory of relativity par excellence, as, in but a moment of measured physical time, a whole lifetime can be lived, in dream time.

At one time in my life I practiced extreme dream recall. I would awaken after a few minutes of sleep and record my dreams, which could take an hour or more to record. After a few nights I had to abandon this practice, as I’d experience little restorative sleep while I produced volumes of dreams from such brief blocks of physical sleep time.

What I did discover from this experiment was, indeed, the relativity of time. Our favored construct of living life according to outer time is actually a very slow playing field for our ego’s waking existence. When located on the fuller spectrum of our inner energetic life, waking life moves at the speed of molasses as contrasted with the rapid river-speed of the dream plane of psychological time.

Have you ever noticed upon drifting into daydream that you are casually engaged in conversation with unknown people, in unfamiliar life dramas? Who are you and who are those beings? Actually, you have opened the door to your fuller self, who lives life in many time zones or on other planes of existence.

The closest plane of existence to the solid physical plane of waking life has been called the astral plane, where souls, both still living in physical bodies, as well as what we call departed souls, commingle and interact, either consciously or in deeply entranced states.

The astral plane has many levels. Initially it serves as a greeting station for souls who have completed life in a physical body. During this initial adjustment period, souls recapitulate their just-completed lives.

Some souls remain in a state of purgatory as they reckon with desires, regrets, resentments, losses and unfulfilled needs. Some souls enter bardo states of deeply creative dreaming where they seek resolution and completion of unresolved issues from human life. Some souls remain so deeply attached to their prior life in physical form that they spend extensive time fixated upon life on Earth.

When souls are fulfilled, having evolved emotion and attachment into the purity of refined love, they may then advance to the higher rungs of the astral plane. At its most advanced levels, the astral plane is the launching pad for life beyond illusion.

Souls, like us, who have not yet left life in physical form are visitors in the astral plane during dreaming. Much of waking life is actually the physical reliving of life already lived in dreams on other planes of our existence. Often, what we recall as dreams, reflect interactions on the astral plane, though most of these encounters are lost to waking consciousness.

When we experience a deja vu moment, or a synchronicity, in waking life, it’s actually an awakening moment to an interaction already lived in dreaming that is now crossing over to be lived in waking life.

Our subconscious mind for our present life in human form has a full-time job operating the systems of the physical body while our consciousness is mentally engaged in its pursuits for waking life. In sleep, that subconscious mind, or energy body, is freed to rejuvenate itself and journey into the astral realm, which is more akin to its faster energetic speed of existence.

In these journeys in infinity, the energy body might encounter departed souls struggling to accept their changed energetic condition and living circumstance. Sometimes we are able to help them move on from their confused state into their new energetic life. Sometimes we encounter loved ones who have departed human form and are able to share intimate moments of connection and communication with them.

Sometimes we may encounter souls with whom we have travelled in prior incarnations, discovering lives and themes which lend clarity to   our circumstances and goals for our present life. Sometimes these astral encounters reveal to us unborn potentials, ready for birth in our daily lives. These might be new careers, relationships, and hidden talents seeking fulfillment.

It is my hypothesis that human evolution is moving toward greater integration with the astral realm. When I see the rapidly unfolding dramas on the Earth plane, I see collective movements, problems, and political structures from prior times in human history that gravitated into the astral realm and have now returned.

Have not the holocaust, the current status of Israel, leanings toward a dissolution of democracy in America, and in much of the world, and stirrings toward the restoration of monarchy in Russia—all issues from prior generations—reappeared and quickened at a frenetic pace on the current world playing field? Hard to not conclude that there is an infiltration of old unresolved astral issues seeking resolution in current human life.

Human life is at a monumental crossroads in terms of how it chooses to reconcile these pervasive states of polarization. We are being asked to relive and resolve ancient struggles in the light of a new day. The solution of repression is no longer available to us. We must reconcile with our wholeness, which is both rational and irrational.

And so, in these changing times, we must all bring integrity into the daytime and into the night sea journeys of our dreams. We must be receptive to guidance that resonates the truth. We must provide guidance to, and set limitation upon, that which would seek to overrun our conscience, our balance, and our health.

Human responsibility and choice are critical to celestial solution. Changing times call for greater consciousness, greater conscience and greater love for ALL.

And remember that love leads, but is not dismissive of, hate.

In and outside of time,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Innocent Ignorance

I want to take you higher…
– Artwork © 2022 by Jan Ketchel

The Garden of Eden myth imagines the birth of human consciousness.  Adam and Eve chose to break the law by eating the apple. Consciousness is the awareness of having a choice.

Nature’s laws do not require consciousness in order to be obeyed. They come in the form of archetypes, the programs that automatically determine the actions of sentient beings, and the entire cosmos, without any need for conscious deliberation in order to activate.

The archetypes are nature’s commandments, constructed through many painstaking trials of evolution, that become encoded in the genes and developmental patterns that govern a species. The introduction of the possibility of choice in the Garden, prompted by the snake offering the apple, was the birth of the ego, a center of consciousness having the power to override instinct, as it thinks and chooses for itself.

As a consequence of their disobedience, Adam and Eve were banished  from the Garden and thrown into the desert, left to fend for themselves, with their naive and inexperienced egos in charge of making decisions that would impact their survival. This predicament forced the ego to become an imposter of competence, as the responsibility for leadership fell upon an inadequate ego, which had to pretend to be competent.

Before we get too down on the ego for all its inflated pretense of ability or disability, perhaps we should have compassion for this little prince, abandoned in an unknown world. What other choice is there really but to fake it until you make it? The ego never asked to be born without knowledge; it truly is the recipient of its ancestor’s original sin of skipping over nature’s laws and acting through conscious choice instead.

Ironically, the birth of the ego, with its ability to make decisions, was actually nature’s plot to advance humanity to consciousness, an evolutionary trial to improve on nature’s decision making speed and efficiency. After all, Jung would often ask, who put the snake in the Garden?

The coldblooded snake of Eden is indeed kundalini at the root chakra of the human body, pushing itself upwards toward union with higher consciousness at the crown chakra. To be in human life is to experience the trials and tribulations of growing consciousness as it journeys back to the Garden, the crown jewel. The ego is kundalini’s plaything, companion and student on this adventuresome path called human life.

Currently, the ego has become the number one culprit in planetary mishap. The ego is currently mired in narcissism, caught in the lower chakra dramas of self-importance, possession, competition, and domination. This is mirrored in our polarized world with its charismatic leadership.

Within the individual the ego struggles with nature in the form of powerful needs and emotions, as it worries about survival. The higher spiritual chakras of refined love and interconnectedness are far from the consciousness of the needy ego at this stage, consumed as it is with the challenge of its own survival.

Nature, at this current time, is depositing new snakes in our messy garden, in the forms of viruses and climate crises, to prompt the world ego to rise to new heights, particularly to the heart center, where it can shed its narcissistic wrappings through the fire of love. The ego’s work, at the heart center, is learning to make decisions of right action that then rise to expression through word and deed at the throat chakra.

If nature’s experiment of making the conscious ego the agent of prudent decision making is to advance planetary survival, the ego must arrive at a place of humility, able to acknowledge both its innocent ignorance and its narcissistic leanings.

Fortunately, higher levels of consciousness are readily available to guide a humble seeker. Our time is replete with ethereal bodhisattvas, channelled by earth angels throughout the world, sharing their wisdom and guidance to receptive heart-centered egos.

In any moment, ego can ask spirit guides for signs and affirmations in nature, as it contemplates the right direction of a decision. This includes asking the body for guidance as well, where sensations of all kinds might suddenly respond to a thought, offering either affirmation or cause for deeper reflection.

The body also presents itself as nature, ready to evolve under enlightened leadership. An ego that has lost its self-importance, and incorporates the principles of right action, can suggest to the body new rules of functioning that both heal and lead toward deeper fulfillment.

Acknowledge not-knowing with awe versus shame. Assume full responsibility for leadership despite innocent ignorance. Humbly ask for guidance from the crown, then act in full consciousness with refined love.

Innocently ignorant,

Chuck