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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Necessary Waiting In A Time Of Urgency

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Time of Patient Waiting…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

The urgency of now is ever so upon us. I have encouraged for quite some time the exercise of autosuggestion to manifest desired change. But how long must one wait? The urgency of now tempts impulsive if not revolutionary action.

I posed this dilemma to the I Ching. In response I received hexagram #1, Chien, The Creative, with moving lines in the 1st and 4th places.

Chien is comprised of 6 Yang lines. This is an extraordinary feat: 6  throws of the coins, 6 solid lines. This hexagram represents Heaven, the Divine, Initiation, the Beginning; in a word, the Word.

All things on Earth issue forth from the Word and Imagination, as suggestions from the conscious to the subconscious mind are birthed in physical form. The subconscious mind is hexagram #2, Kun, The Receptive.

It is the Receptive feminine, that conceives with her divine masculine counterpart, The Creative, to give birth to, that is, to transmute, our desires into physical life.

The first charged moving line of Chien warns sternly: Hidden dragon. DO NOT ACT! In China the dragon is a symbol of an electrically charged, arousing dynamic force that presents itself in a thunderstorm.

This is the primal impulsive energy of Yang, sick of waiting, ready to break forth and impose its will. This is ego, drawn to surrender itself to Id.

The I Ching counsels utmost restraint. This creative force is still buried at the bottom, in the Earth. The Earth is Yin, carrying her pregnancy with all its dynamic forces contained. Yin, the subconscious mind will deliver physical life when it is time to deliver, not upon demand.

The guidance is to rest content in the knowing that the pregnancy is real, new life is coming. Take solace in this deep knowing. A warning is put out that if one acts precipitously, that is, tries to make something happen through the will of the ego, it will be faced with Hexagram #44, Coming To Meet.

In Coming To Meet the ego is met with a seduction. An easy, seemingly harmless opportunity to get what it wants presents. Ego, in its hungry desirousness, takes the bait and then is confronted with the true nature of what it has dallied with: a power greater than itself that robs it of its thunder, the very energy needed to manifest desired change. Heed the warning: DO NOT ACT!

Having prevailed beyond this temptation, ego rises next to the activated line in the 5th place where guidance rejoices: Dragon flying in the sky; there arises a great person to be a leader.

Here the attitude of calm knowing faith is rewarded with the manifestation of the right person to assume leadership. Here ego is in conformity with the High Self. This is not the inflation of Icarus. Ego is refined to act in alignment with the Tao.

The patience of the ruler, the 9 in the 5th place results in the birth of the physical reality that it is fully fit to lead. The dragon soars, its energy fully deployed to effect great change. The key to this maturation lies in humility, faith and alignment with what is right.

Having heeded the warning of the first activated line, the ego was humble, accepting that nature was in charge of the pregnancy, that things shouldn’t be rushed based upon ego righteousness or immaturity. What is right is calm readiness to receive when the time is right.

Faith rested upon the absolute knowing that what was rightfully one’s own to live would come to physical manifestation. The key is to hold to that truth in the quiet of the knowing mind, enjoying it always in the spirit life of the imagination,

The future of this hexagram becomes Hexagram #50, The Caldron. The Caldron is the cooking vessel used in achieving communion and nourishment with the ancestral spirits.

What has been brought to physical life is in alignment with the depth of one’s Spirit and is sure to enjoy lasting influence, that is, until the cycle of life calls for a new play!

Faith, Patience and Imagination rule,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Yesterday’s Last Stand

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Heading into the future of a bright new day…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

My Spirit informs me every morning that yesterday is a past life. Deeply appreciative of that life lived, now is the time to pay it forward by meeting new life without attachment. Attachment is actually an emotional investment in an outcome.

There is a governor’s race of significance happening in Virginia on the day this blog is published. I believe I know what winner would represent the better outcome for being in the Tao. I voted, yet intend to have no attachment to the outcome.

The challenge is to achieve equanimity. The shamans of ancient Mexico taught that to truly be open to what infinity presents we must be free of expectation and prejudice. They discovered that the best training ground for that level of receptive attitude was in one’s encounters with the petty tyrants of this world.

A petty tyrant disregards all the rules. A petty tyrant has no consideration for the needs of others. A petty tyrant uses and abuses to satisfy their own selfish needs.

When we encounter petty tyrants we may be deeply hurt and offended by their actions. Ironically, this helps us, as we are shown where our egos have become personally attached and identified with the actions of others. Our emotions flare, as we are thrown off balance, and are drained of our energetic reserves. Our egos become deeply offended, requiring palliative care.

Sidelined by deflation, negativity pours in and we become slaves to our wounded feelings. The shamans recommend that we refine our egos by releasing all attachment to expectations of fairness and the consequent reactive emotions.

Ego, freed of these attachments, becomes a highly tuned unit of navigation, capable of adjusting to anything it encounters. It needn’t spend any of its vital energy defending its self-importance. The refined ego identifies fully with the values and intents of its Spirit, and adapts itself to what is possible, in any given situation.

Thus, if ‘the other guy’ wins the election, the ego will waste no time feeling sad, frightened or angry. If ‘the right guy’ wins the election, the ego will not indulge in feeling happy or hopeful. Equanimity imposes no judgment upon what is. Equanimity says: suspend judgment, await guidance from Spirit as to the next right action.

At the soul level of being—that is, life beyond the physical dimension—it is evident that powerful influences are engaged in the current struggle upon this Earth. As evenly divided as the legislatures of this world are, so are the positive and negative energies impacting this world. We are all engaged in a multi-dimensional dance between the forces of good and evil, no matter how attached or detached we are.

The I Ching frames this as the time of Coming to Meet (Hexagram #44). We are warned of the danger of such powerful clashes. Nonetheless, if we use such encounters as opportunities for shedding the heaviness of self-importance, we advance in spiritual lightness.

Spiritual lightness is our evolutionary destiny now, as we release yesterday’s attachment to material obsession and ego importance. This lightness of being allows us to be supremely in the Tao, now, irrespective of the world’s dance. We simply go with the flow, with abandon.

The most oppressive petty tyrants we face reveal themselves in our own inner prejudices. Ironically, they are also our greatest blindspots. We tend too quickly to project them upon the many tyrants of the outside world.

Nonetheless, if we track and examine our passionate emotions we are sure to be led to inner attachments, those attitudes that resist the new life of each new day.

As we are all holograms of our subtler interconnectedness, know that all personal progress in detachment advances our greater whole along its evolutionary path.  Appreciate, as well, those who so tightly cling to yesterday. Yesterday’s last stand is but the prelude to today’s unfolding.

Going with the flow,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Coming To Meet—Copulation

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The five yang lines trembling and tumbling at the approach of one little yin... - From The I Ching, translated by Richard Wihelm
The five yang lines trembling and tumbling at the approach of one little yin…
– From The I Ching, translated by Richard Wihelm

Five yang lines stacked together revel in their ordered, controlled, clarified mastery of life, life as idea. Suddenly, a coy innocent yin line enters from below, an impulse from nature, life in its utter sweetness and rawness. The yang lines are shaken at the vibrant appearance of yin, while at the same time they are magnetically drawn, their number and order shattered by the encounter.

Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching reading of hexagram #44, Coming to Meet, cautions: the maiden is powerful, do not marry such a maiden. Deng Ming-Dao, in his interpretation of the I Ching, goes further, naming Hexagram #44 Copulation. He takes us to the depths of human nature itself.

The urge to copulate is nature’s urge that will not be denied; it’s at the heart of nature’s imperative to survive. At that level it is an amoral force. Dress up “relationship” with romance and commitment if you will, but behind the scenes nature exacts its intent; copulation will occur, there will be offspring to continue the species. Nature has no regard for relationship, commitment or childrearing arrangements, it simply wants offspring.

In a recent channeling discussion (linked Here), Saleph pointed out that the disowning of nature—the ape in man—is at the core of sexual abuse. The disowning of the sexual instinct, and lack of respect for its power, has allowed for mass incidences of coming to meet in copulation—completely unregulated and dissociated from consciousness—to erupt in the most historically sacred countries, in the most sacred institutions, as well as in the most sacred place of all: in the family home.

Our distant ancestors were far more advanced at the regulation of this primal energy in their initiation rites and rites of passage. The modern world, having disowned its animal self, revels in a technological self image, with a rational brain machine that can replace all of nature’s parts, or so it thinks. This naive assumption has left the animal in man dissociated from its archetypal roots, as well as from its ego master. The instinct, in such an abandoned, neglected, manipulated state has gone off on its own, preying particularly upon the young. This is not nature’s program but an instinct gone awry, dissociated from even its own archetypal program. Copulation with the young will not fulfill nature’s imperative; it’s not in the archetypal program.

Praying Mantises in a sacred moment of carrying out nature's imperative... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Praying Mantises in a sacred moment of carrying out nature’s imperative…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Love, commitment, and relationship are only possible in a full integration of the sexual instinct with consciousness. Lack of integration leads to splitting, affairs, and the inability to commit. Consciousness must grapple with the fullness of nature’s imperative, but it must also be a worthy conduit for nature’s energy, able to both handle it, regulate it, and join with it in a deeper merging of consciousness, nature, and an other.

Richard Wilhelm also points out that the time of coming to meet is dangerous and yet, at the same time, is the meeting that brings forth new life. With respect to furthering this aspect of nature’s imperative, the door to delivering relationship itself to a new evolutionary birth is opened in full consciousness, offering the opportunity for the union of opposites, in playful cosmic dance, all elements fully present.

Committed to full consciousness,
Chuck