Tag Archives: I Ching

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Attachments Anonymous

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We are all students in Earth School! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We are all students in Earth School!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Earth is the Planet of Attachment. Earth School teaches us to securely attach our spirit selves to our physical animal selves—with its myriad of physical needs and desires—and, ultimately, to relinquish all our physical attachments as we return to our pure spirit selves enriched with the fruits of our earthly journey.

The crown jewel of achievement from that Earth School journey is attachment refined, transformed into its highest vibration: love.

Attachment and detachment are the themes of the curriculum of Earth School. Once we master those themes we graduate to new adventures, graduate schools of our liking in greater infinity, enriched and fueled by compassionate love in its eternal form, having been prepared, through our hard work in Earth School, to accompany us on our continued expansive journey in infinity.

Given these considerations, I feel justified in assigning Earth School the title of Attachments Anonymous, extending the twelve-step model to all sentient beings, as we are all on the same journey, seeking to achieve loving kindness, compassion, and detachment.

I recently consulted the I Ching around this issue and received hexagram #24: Return, the Turning Point. In this hexagram, one yang line sits beneath five yin lines. This preponderance of yin is the Earth, the dark solid planet of attachment, all things physical. Emerging from below is thunder, spirit that rumbles beneath the Earth.

The hexagram depicts the cyclical challenge of Earth School, life lived in the patterns of the seasons. We see in our own lives and behaviors the cyclical patterns of our attachments, such as to food, drink, sex, money, power, security, shopping, texting, fear, anger, sadness, carnal and dependent love, to name but a few.

All of our attachments manifest in cyclical patterns of seeking, obtaining, consuming, or lamenting. Even refusing is its own addictive adventure of control, as the “dry drunk” syndrome illustrates.

Spirit always finds a way to alert us... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Spirit always finds a way to alert us…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

There is no escaping addiction, which is really a frenzied state of attachment that we all suffer from and are dominated by at some point in our lives. Addiction provides the core course material of Earth School. Save all guilt and self-blame; if you are here you are in it! Even Christ and Buddha had to go through Earth School.

Hexagram #24 teaches us that the cyclic pattern of attachments NATURALLY gives rise to one moment in the cycle when spirit, on its own, makes an appearance and shakes us from our attachments. Here lies the opportunity to advance beyond compulsion of attachment—this is the Turning Point.

The usual course of all habits is like the seasons, as they too return to the same patterns. But the spirit side of ourselves, in consort with our consciousness, through collaboration, can actually transform an attachment into spiritual advancement. For example, a compulsion might find a new home in loving compassion.

This is why the twelve-step program suggests turning to one’s higher power for help, to enrich one’s struggle with grace and lift the compulsion to a positive level. The I Ching describes this process in the moving line in the third place in hexagram #24, as follows:

“There are people of a certain inner instability who feel a constant urge to reverse themselves. There is danger in continually deserting the good because of uncontrolled desires, then turning back to it again because of a better resolution. However, since this does not lead to habituation in evil, a general inclination to overcome the defect is not wholly excluded.”

The suggestion here is that the usual course of affairs—becoming buried in hungry desirousness—has the possibility of being transcended, if one can access one’s spirit at the turning point.

We can all rise up! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We can all rise up!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The turning point offers the opportunity of renewal through rest (compulsion lifted), tender care (compassion for all parts of the self), and flowering, as the spirit of kundalini energy naturally rises to the level of the heart. This is not hungry heart, but a heart full of loving compassion.

Spirit rising to the heart center is the spiritual refinement of the earthly self, the body self, which is granted enhanced life beyond its time in earthly form, in the formlessness of pure spirit love.

This is graduation from Earth School with the highest honors!

Studying hard,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Journey To The Light

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Are we ready to emerge from the bardos into the light? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Are we ready to emerge from the bardos into the light?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

This past weekend, as Jan and I immersed ourselves in Dr. Elmer Green’s The Ozawkie Book of the Dead, I wrote: “If we intend to live with abandon we must first fully relive with abandon.” This was in reaction to Elmer’s exposition of the depths of the subconscious that completely encloses us in the bardos* of our unrealized selves, unable to find our way to the light.

I was reminded of the many traumatized individuals I have known, through the years, who were unable to be helped by lamas in their Buddhist retreats to release attachment to the impact of their traumatic pasts through mindfulness training.

Though mindfulness can still the mind and the central nervous system, it cannot absolve one of the necessary energetic encounters with unprocessed traumatic experience dissociated in the body and the psyche.

I picked up A Path with Heart, by Jack Kornfield, off the bathroom library shelf and opened to the chapter entitled “Psychotherapy and Meditation” where Jack, the Buddhist monk, eloquently confirms my above observations.

The next morning, from the same shelf, I picked an obscure book that Jan had purchased some time ago, entitled Activation of Energy by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and opened to “The Place of Technology.” In this chapter de Chardin wrote, in 1947:

“…From the psychic point of view the earth would seem to be becoming progressively hotter, continually even more incandescent. If we consider not its harmony but its general intensity, the earth has never been through a phase to equal the present.” (p. 161)

At the crossroads, where we've been, where we're going, and what's next? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
At the crossroads,
where we’ve been, where we’re going,
and what’s next?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Contrary to the Sunshine State’s recent ban on DEP officials using the term “climate change,” the truth is, global warming has us heated to a phase unequal to the past. And we find ourselves at an evolutionary crossroads as a result; the heat is boiling over everywhere. The challenge, as de Chardin describes, is for the light of consciousness to fully take charge of evolution now. But how will we bring light to the earth?

Last week, Netanyahu delivered an unprecedented speech to Congress, breaking ranks with all diplomacy as he anxiously expressed his unwavering position: Iran can never be trusted, ever. Don’t make a deal.

Obama responded to Netanyahu’s speech, saying that he heard no new ideas or solutions with this stay-the-course approach. In fact, the rise of terrorism throughout the world appears to be fueled in large measure by the powerlessness of this stalemate.

The other day, 47 Republican Senators wrote a letter to Iran warning that regardless of Obama’s negotiations regarding a nuclear arms agreement, Congress would undo any agreement when he left office. Some view this unprecedented behavior by the Senate as treason.

The heating up of politics and international tensions is part and parcel of the growing charge to humankind to shed truthful light on its problems and find solutions based on right action. There is no great God gonna come from the sky and make everything all right.

We are charged, just as we are in recapitulation, to find our way through the hazy bardos of our largely subconscious planet. In de Chardin’s first essay in Activation of Energy, “The Moment of Choice,” written at Christmas 1939 on the eve of World War II, he states:

“This will be the second time, then, in the span of one human life that we shall have known War. The second time, did I say? Is it not, rather, worse than that? Is it not the same Great War [WWI] that is still raging, the same single process: a world being re-cast — or disintegrating? (p. 13)

Well, here we are again. It’s not a new war; it’s a continuation of the same disintegrating process, heating up evermore powerfully, begging us to recapitulate, to face all the horrors and all the truths of our choices and behaviors since we took over the wheel, since we ate the apple in the garden from the tree of knowledge. We’ve been driving ever since and look where it has gotten us!

Are we going to wait until it's too late? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Are we going to wait until it’s too late?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Unless we face ourselves and act in the light of truth and consciousness the globe will continue to heat up under the stewardship of the dark side: greed and self-interest.

Yes, there are guides, angels, bodhisattvas, masters, all dedicated to helping us find our way to union with that light, but none of those entities can lift us out of the bardos into the light. We must boil in our bardos and free ourselves before we can benefit from such guidance. Channels broadcast messages everywhere, but do we listen? Can we listen? On what are we satiated?

When I posed these issues to the I Ching yesterday, I received hexagram #27 The Corners of the Mouth (Providing Nourishment). This hexagram is a picture of an open mouth. The real crux of the issue is, what will we put into our mouths and what words will come out of our mouths?

The bottom three lines of the hexagram refer to actions that seek nourishment for oneself alone: actions of greed. The top three refer to nourishment for others: compassion.

I received the six in the fourth place. Here the I Ching states: “…this line refers to one occupying a high position and striving to let his light shine forth. To do this he needs helpers, because he cannot attain his lofty aim alone. With the greed of a hungry tiger he is on the lookout for the right people. Since he is not working for himself but for the good of all, there is no wrong in such zeal.” (p. 110 Wilhelm translation.) The guidance here: turn the hunger of greed toward the light; bite through to the truth.

I also got the nine at the top. Here the I Ching states: “This describes a sage of the highest order, from whom emanate all influences that provide nourishment for others. Such a position brings with it heavy responsibility. If he remains conscious of this fact, he has good fortune and may confidently undertake even great and difficult labors, such as crossing the great water. These undertakings bring general happiness for him and for all others.” (pp. 110-11)

The guidance here makes it pretty clear that it’s time to do the right thing, to take full responsibility and cross the waters of our personal recapitulations just as the world, as a collective unit, must face the truths of the choices of its human nature and compassionately right the course.

Eventually we come into the light... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Eventually we come into the light…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

There are no saviors. We are the saviors. We’ve been charged with using our heated up planet, to use its light to make things right, deepening its journey into the light.

Journeying into the light,
Chuck

* Bardos refers to the Tibetan after-death bardo states, but is intentionally used in a broader context to suggest that we are in the bardos all the time, in a confusing state of disorientation that we must come to terms with (e.g. in recapitulation) so we can proceed into new life and higher realms of consciousness.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Union

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Front cover of Autobiography of a Yogi.
Front cover of Autobiography of a Yogi.

Almost every morning, as Jan channels the Soulbyte for the day, I go off and open a book at random to let the divine deliver its message to me.

The other day, I opened Autobiography of a Yogi to an interaction between Yogananda and his master Sri Yukteswar. Yogananda had just experienced a great physical healing, which he thanked his master for. Sri Yukteswar craftily worded his response to suggest that the healing was actually effected by a change in Yogananda’s own thought process. Yogananda anxiously sought to disavow this power and the next day awoke completely unable to physically get out of bed, restored to the comfort of the familiarity of his old weakness. Sri Yukteswar then instructed: “The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God…whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass.”

Can we take ownership of that Divine Spark, that God within us all? Can we wisely direct our thoughts toward greater union within ourselves, within the world? Are we ready to take full ownership of our power?

On another recent morning, enveloped in a mood of despair and stagnation, as Jan channeled, I turned to the I Ching for guidance. Not surprisingly, hexagram #12, Stagnation, appeared. Here heaven and earth are flying further and further apart, deeply out of alignment with each other.

It’s hard now to not see the signs of this dissociation every day, whether it be beached whales, fish fleeing the too warm waters of Maine, children slaughtered at school, women brutally raped, and the stories go on and on. We are in a time of total disintegration as nature and spirit dissolve the world as we have known it and move toward a new position, rebalancing into a new and sustainable format.

The I Ching tells me (nine in the fourth place) that the time of stagnation is nearing the point of change into its opposite. And finally, nine at the top, that though this time of standstill does not last forever, it does not cease of its own accord either; the right leader is needed.

Here I am led back to my opening quote, stating that the spark of God resides in every person. Every person is and has the power of God within, and that power lies in the power of intent. But we must truly embrace that power and believe it to effect the change we seek. One danger, of course, is to misuse that power. This has been the mistake of our human race to date, to exploit our Godly power to our own advantage: narcissistic greed. That mistake has brought us to this edge of oblivion.

Yesterday morning, I opened Autobiography of a Yogi again, to this quote regarding how to use our power: “Don’t do what you like, then do everything you like.” The guidance is clear. Ego must first check its narcissistic impulse to act. This impulse is cut off from the needs of the interdependent whole, just as the I Ching suggests that the earth and the heavens are cut off from each other, each swirling in opposite directions away from unity and wholeness. It’s all about me, me, me. If we pause, we give ourselves the opportunity to realign, to become the interdependent whole that then is freed to act with abandon, offered the opportunity to achieve true unity based on right alignment, with ego serving the Spark of the Divine.

We are all responsible for the unity we seek... for returning the world to wholeness. - Art by Jan Ketchel
We are all responsible for the unity we seek… for returning the world to wholeness.
– Art by Jan Ketchel

Synchronistically, I turned on the news the other day to hear that two leaders have acted as real leaders, serving the interdependent needs of the whole, Cuomo and Obama. New York Governor Cuomo refused the interests of the fossil fuels industry to value Mother Earth and our true needs. NO FRACKING in New York. Bravo, Governor Cuomo! President Obama has established diplomatic ties with Cuba, ending a long divide. Bravo, President Obama!

Let us all be our own Godly leaders, exercising our own Spark of the Divine. Let us all have pure thoughts of greater union, of care of the true needs of the whole, of heaven and earth, of self and other.

Happy Holidays!
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Receptive

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Together in accordance with nature...
Together in accordance with nature…

I dream. I’m in a country setting. Three female figures stand facing each other at three cardinal points, each with a tombstone in front of them with the same inscribed message: RECEPTIVE. There is no sense of death associated with the stones; it is not a cemetery. The dream message is emphatic: BE RECEPTIVE!

The receptive is the archetype of the feminine, hexagram #2 in the I Ching. Six yin lines piled upon each other to form the image of the earth, matter, manifestation.

The receptive is the completion of hexagram #1, the masculine creative, spirit, six yang lines piled to form the image of heaven. The creative and the receptive are completely equal and complimentary. Spirit finds a home in matter, matter finds its purpose in spirit.

Intent is spirit. We set intent and must allow for its manifestation. Manifestation is the receptive. The receptive is primal energy that acts of its own volition; we cannot control it, but we can get in its way, though only partially.

How often the ego gets impatient, or doubts the receptive and engages the mind to implement intent. “Oh yes, I must exercise, follow this regimen—this will allow me to reach my goal.” Then perhaps we fail or fall off course and become embroiled in self-hate or self-discipline with promises of better behavior in the future.

Such drama provides a major distraction, taking the focus away from the energetic manifestation of intent through the magical power of the receptive. The ego, doubting the receptive—the completer—actually opposes the manifestation of intent by contradicting the process through its interference. The ego identifies with the masculine creative—spirit—and barks orders at the body for change. This is slavery. The manifested body—the creation of the receptive—shuts down and refuses to budge. Its message to the ego: “Get out of the way and allow the receptive to complete its creation.”

Nature will take over and do as it will... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Nature will take over and do as it will…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Indeed, the receptive may require the ego to accept the role of subcontractor in the project, for the receptive is the contractor, the one that directs and manifests the concrete, substantial, actual physical realization of the intent.

The receptive is an extremely active energy. How deceiving it is to conceive of the feminine as inert or passive! The power of the receptive is so intense that the world ego shudders as we are now poised for the symbolic feminine in human form, woman, to assume the position of world leadership. Perhaps that woman will be Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren, or maybe a ticket of both.

The world is prepared now for the ascension of the feminine. The raising of Mary in the Catholic Church to Godly status with the Assumption in 1950 was the first modern Western sign of the ascension of the feminine, the valuing of the feminine on equal par with the masculine trinity of heavenly status, which Jung predicted, at the time, to be inevitable. He foresaw that it was going to happen; we are there now. Even in the midst of the power of war and mass confusion, change is on the horizon; the feminine is rising.

The manifestation of the power of the feminine receptive marched 300,000+ strong through New York City this past Sunday in support of protecting the planet, Mother Earth. This is feminine energy, a flowing river of energy gathering power, manifesting a new intent. This intent will be realized completely now as the world is reshaped to continue to live. That is the intent of spirit, life, and the receptive is manifesting the changes needed to complete that intent, the feminine working hand in hand with the masculine.

The issue has little to do with man or woman per se. All beings are composed of the creative and the receptive, the masculine and the feminine energies of spirit and matter. The challenge now is to realign the ego to support the receptive’s manifestation of needed change. Only the receptive can manifest, and boy is there manifesting going on! By all accounts that means we are in for real change. Intent is spirit, and it is powerful, but the receptive is the active energy that is bringing needed change to our world and to the self.

The receptive manifests the intent of the seed... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The receptive manifests the intent of the seed…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It is time for the ego to step back and allow the receptive to manifest the needed change. We can all participate by following the dictates of the manifested body, as it guides, nourishes, and heals in accordance with the true purpose and intent of spirit: Life!

Being receptive,
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