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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Reconciliation Of Retrograde

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Trickster energy… - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Trickster energy…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

It’s 6:21 AM. I’m driving slowly along the windy hilly roads to work. My mind is preoccupied with the experience Jan and I had last Friday at the VA Hospital in Albany. We’d been invited to present on PTSD. We decided to give an experiential presentation for which I’d brought my EMDR light bar. There was a delay getting into the conference room, as a prior meeting was spilling over into our time. Our presentation time was compromised, as another presenter was to follow immediately after us.

Once we finally entered the room, I quickly attempted to set up the equipment. Suddenly we entered a cartoon-like dream. Everything we touched, although meticulously packed, fell apart. The tripod literally fell into pieces, impossible to reassemble.

“Okay,” I resolve, “I’ll hold the light bar without the stand.” As I go to clip the control switch into the bar I discover that the clip is broken. There is no salvaging the equipment now! That’s it, I decide, the trickster shaman’s world trumps. The Magical Breathing Pass of Recapitulation will have to be the main experiential feature. And so, about 25 people learned and experienced this ancient Magical Pass and it’s application to PTSD.

As I continue to drive to work, I recall that the time crunch of the presentation also precluded a brief group hypnosis that Jan was to give at the close of the talk. Suddenly, my awareness is abruptly drawn back to the present moment: a young deer is staring at me, frozen in the road. I slam on the brakes—a near miss!

The symbol for Mercury...
The symbol for Mercury…

What does it all mean? For the past several days, I’ve been experiencing and observing opposition and retrograde. We exist and are composed of fields of competing energies. Mercury, the trickster energy, is indeed in retrograde. At the VA we experienced the ancient shamanic energy opposing and trumping the modern mechanical/technological world. At the moment I recalled the opposition of time and trance—no time for a group hypnosis—I was awoken from my own highway hypnosis to not kill a deer. Here was the opposition of time and timelessness: being present in this moment to not kill a deer vs being lost in the timeless world of the mind’s meanderings.

We all struggle with oppositions within the self. Carlos Castaneda relates in Magical Passes how don Juan Matus explained this in a metaphorical sense: “…that we are composed of a number of single nations: the nation of the lungs, the nation of the heart, the nation of the kidneys, and so on. Each of these nations sometimes works independently of the others, but at the moment of death, all of them are unified into one single entity.” (pp. 103-4)

Our challenge in this life is to reconcile those oppositions within us, the trickster included, into an integrated whole, in a process that Jung termed individuation.

Sometimes the nation of the stomach craves that which the other nations of the body reject. Sometimes the neocortex—our rational brain—rejects the impulses and needs of our limbic system—our animal brain.

When my neocortex confronted the frozen limbic response of the deer in my headlights, it managed to direct my body to hit the brakes. My own limbic system worked in concert with my neocortex to supply the rapid response to react physically to the crises at hand. This is an optimal response—nations of the self unified, acting in concert.

In times of retrograde, Mercury, the trickster, can confound all attempts at collaboration. Mercury laughed as I fumbled with the equipment at the VA. Rather than fight, I read the signs and immediately shifted. Acquiescing, I flowed with the energy of the moment and instead taught deep bodily knowledge.

Opposition is within us all...
Opposition is within us all…

When I asked the I Ching for guidance regarding this period of retrograde, it once again, not surprisingly, produced the hexagram of Opposition, #38. The moving lines—in the third and fourth places—depicted a wagon with oxen being dragged backwards. Now there’s a retrograde image! The guidance reads: though humiliation might occur, sit tight, wait, align with a likeminded person who can be trusted. In the case of the faulty light bar, I turned to my neocortex, which acted in concert with spirit: Go with the flow, trust the Magical Pass.

In shaman’s terms, the guidance is to suspend judgment, to look beyond the impasse. Reconciliation lies in the deeper meaning of the trickster’s intent—to reveal a deeper truth: The ancient Magical Pass of Recapitulation is all you need to be freed of PTSD.

We can reconcile with all our retrograde energies if we accept their opposition with patience and perseverance, not falling for the trap of self-blame. The deeper meaning of Mercury’s retrograde lies in the wings of Mercury—our freedom to fly—achievable if we don’t get caught in the heaviness of opposition.

Flowing on the wings of Mercury,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Guidance For Shutdown

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Today, Chuck offers his blog, in alignment with the energy of the world around us. Jan’s weekly blog, A Day in a Life, will appear later in the week.

The old sage stands firm and waits... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The old sage stands firm and waits…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Over the past few weeks I have tracked the energy permeating our world in consultation with the I Ching. Two weeks ago, I was advised that restoration of order—the Tao—required acquiescing to the respective needs of the day, afternoon, and evening. Last week, I asked how this can be accomplished when one part of the self tries to infringe on the needs of the overall self. The I Ching advised that the adult self follow the guidance of the sage, leaving behind the demands of the child self. This week, the child self has rebelled with a fury, seizing control by shutting down the US Government and the world economy as it tries desperately to subvert the implementation of a law it dislikes.

Today, I pose to the I Ching the question of how to deal with such an absurd and obvious coup. The I Ching responds with hexagram #21, Biting Through, with a moving line in the second place.

Biting Through depicts an open mouth with an obstruction stuck in the middle of its teeth as it bites down. “Incorrigible people and situations must not be allowed to impede progressive development,” says the I Ching.* A firm adult stance must be taken here. Furthermore, the moving line in the second place depicts a piece of tender meat in the mouth. Here the discrimination between right and wrong is as easy as biting through tender meat. In fact, the wrongness of the behavior displayed is so obvious that it might lead one to overreact with retaliating anger. This is not advisable.

The antidote prescribed for this opposition is indeed hexagram #38, Opposition. “When people live in opposition and estrangement they cannot carry out a great undertaking in common; their points of view diverge too widely. In such circumstances one should above all not proceed brusquely, for that would only increase the existing opposition; instead, one should limit oneself to producing gradual effects in small matters. Here success can still be expected, because the situation is such that the opposition does not preclude all agreement.”

“…So the cultured man is never led into baseness or vulgarity through intercourse or community of interests with persons of another sort; regardless of all commingling, he will always preserve his individuality.” **

The guidance is clear, stay grounded, stay firm but avoid losing oneself or spending one’s energy in futile battle. What is needed is firmness of conviction with compassion for the folly. Ultimately the child self is dominated by fear of change. The root of its act of sabotage is to find safety in the familiar and unchanging. With firm perseverance the adult takes charge and calmly enacts needed change.

The value of the coup played out before us is the obviousness of its tactics. Mature adults are catering to the power demands of a child self to the detriment of all. When this condition emerges within the personality decisions are impulsive and dangerous. The outcome is generally one of stagnancy, defeat, and depression. This condition comes about when the adult self knowingly or inadvertently accedes its power to the child self.

The antidote to such an inner coup is to suspend negative judgments about the self, but with clarity energetically face the truth of what has occurred and restore order and control as soon as possible. It’s not about self-ridicule or blame, there needs to be total acceptance of self, with firmness in realigning with the guidance and truth of the sage self, always present to clarify and guide.

Assuming adult responsibility for self and outer world requires the clarity and firmness of Biting Through coupled with the steadiness of Opposition, as conditions will gradually return to order.

Let’s see what happens,
Chuck

* Excerpt from The I Ching Taoist Book of Days, 1983; p.152
** Excerpt from The I Ching or Book of Changes Richard Wilhelm translation, pp.147-8

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Chuck’s Place: Following

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Somewhere, inside us all, resides the sage... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Somewhere, inside us all, resides the sage…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The riddle of the sphinx questions: What has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening. The answer, for those who haven’t solved it, is humankind. The full life cycle is crawling on all fours in childhood, walking on two legs in the afternoon of life, and ending the day—and a cycle of life—with a cane, the third leg of old age.

Buddha realized that the only way to transcend suffering was to accept and acquiesce to the full truth of this cycle. In my blog last week, the I Ching advised that to restore ourselves to the Tao, we must acquiesce to the requirements of each stage of the day, of the cycle of life, without trying to stretch and extend one part of the cycle into and at the expense of the next.

This week, I asked the I Ching how to achieve this balance when the needs of one part of the tripartite self of day, afternoon and evening infiltrates or takes control of the whole of life. From the hexagram of Following, #17, I get the following advice: “He follows the man of age and experience and lets the little boy go. He will find what he seeks.” -From the I Ching, p. 83, edition by Sam Reifler.

The guidance is blunt: Follow the lead of the sage, the old wise self; release the personality from the control of the demands of the child. The demands of the child are most appropriate to rule the first stage of life, childhood, but beyond that they only serve to confound the developmental process of maturity, so needed to meet the needs of the unfolding life cycle. Too often the needs of the child were ignored in childhood, which creates deficits, but these needs can only be addressed successfully by the more mature self that becomes the parent to the child self in adulthood. If the child’s demands continue to rule the personality beyond childhood, the developmental milestones needed to be reached to address the comprehensive needs of the self cannot be achieved and we stay fixated in childhood throughout the life cycle.

Even in the most horrific of circumstances, where childhood has been interrupted or denied, do we have access to the third leg of the tripartite self in the dreams of the night. In dreaming, the wise sage self leads us into worlds of developmental opportunity where the deepest needs of the chid and adult selves are experienced and addressed. To be available to this natural process, we must acquiesce to the night, releasing the light of day and opening to the rejuvenation of sleep.

Upon awakening, the energy, the mood, the realignment of the night offers itself to wakening awareness. As we move through the day, this sage self continues to guide us, alerting us to the synchronicities that resonate in daily life, that point the way to right action as we flow through the challenges of the day. We will indeed be confronted by the needs, fears, and desires of the child self, but the adult self, the noonday self, however compromised, always has access to its deeper sage self throughout the day. It is never alone, never without its needed guidance.

The challenge, the I Ching suggests, is to indeed follow the man of age and experience, the sage voice that guides, in an inner voice, in nightly dreams, and in the multitude of synchronicities that resonate each day.

Following,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Project Inward

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From Deng Ming-Dao's Everyday Tao, Living With Balance and Harmony...
From Deng Ming-Dao’s Everyday Tao,
Living With Balance and Harmony…

Perhaps Jung’s favorite story was Richard Wilhelm’s “rainmaker” experience. While in China, Wilhelm—who translated the I Ching—visited a province that had suffered a long drought. Nothing that was done brought rain. Finally, an old Taoist man, known as the rainmaker, was brought in from a faraway province to break the spell. After sitting alone in a hut for three days, it began to rain. When Wilhelm inquired of the old man what he had done to make it rain, the old man said that when he’d arrived he was immediately infected by the disorder of the place and so he had to sit in seclusion until he restored himself to the Tao, to the order of nature. In so doing, the Tao of nature around him was likewise restored, and then it naturally rained.

Look what happens when a Catholic Pope sits in his own quiet meditation. This rainmaker emerges to proclaim that his church has been too “obsessed” with gays, abortion, and contraception. Let’s see how one person’s revelation contributes to realigning with the Tao.

The physicist David Bohm used the holographic metaphor to illustrate the true nature of quantum reality: every particle of the whole has within it the entire whole. Within every person is the entire universe. If we restore ourselves to the Tao, the universe restores itself to the Tao as well.

If we look outwardly, at the macrocosm, we can’t help but see a world of great imbalance. Traditionally, America has projected its shadow self elsewhere in the world and marshaled the troops to subdue the terrorist “out there.” With Syria, the world drew a line. Putin suggested that it’s time for America to get off its exceptionalist kick and face its own shadow. This week, once again, we experienced another mass shooting at home. Indeed, that “shadow” is very active in our homeland. It’s time for us, nationally, to own our shadow, just as, internationally, all are charged with facing the terrorist within themselves as well.

A Buddhist Master, Heng Ch’au,* states: “Other’s faults are just your own—Being one with everyone is called great compassion.”

The essence of true compassion without is acceptance of one’s own inner darkness. From the holographic perspective we are all the terrorist and the victim alike. From the Taoist wisdom, if but one of us can face the truth of our own shadow’s play in our lives then we are in a position to align ourselves with the Tao, with the truth, with the universe—and all is righted.

Harvest Time... in Tao everything is acceptable, life and death, beginnings and endings and all that comes in between... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Harvest Time… in Tao everything is acceptable, life and death, beginnings and endings and all that comes in between…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In the microcosm of the universe within each of us lies the disorder and imbalance that we see in our world without. What is needed is that we suspend judgment and accept the full truth of the attitudes and beliefs that dominate and control our lives.

What impulses within cry for life, yet are held in check by restrictive, fearful, judgmental attitudes? What deep needs are being disavowed, calling for a terrorist overthrow within to right the extreme imbalance of self? What regrets, resentments, bitternesses, hatreds and angers do we harbor in refusal to accept the truth of our own deepest secrets, deepest truths, and deepest disavowed selves? If we can face these mighty truths, fears and imbalances within, in full acceptance, then we arrive at the compassion to restore the Tao within, and vastly right the Tao without.

To project inward is to take responsibility for our holographic selves, to truly take responsibility for our interdependent wholeness.

Sign up for Project Inward!

From within the hologram,
Chuck

P. S.: After I had completed this blog, I posed the following question to the I Ching: How do we restore the Tao? I received the answer in Hexagram #30 Fire, with moving lines in the first, second and third places. The resulting future is Hexagram #4, Youthful Folly.

Fire attains duration by not overshooting its bounds; it burns in proportion to the wood that fuels it. Wood is yin, the darkness. The flame that illuminates is yang. Together yin and yang work in perfect harmony to produce the light of consciousness and the warmth of security. Such is the path to Tao that the I Ching proposes for now, for the individual, the nation, and the universe.

Wednesday evening's Harvest Moon rising over the neighborhood... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Wednesday evening’s Harvest Moon rising over the neighborhood…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The reading goes on to highlight the first three lines of the hexagram, offering pragmatic counsel for morning, noon, and night that together complete the full cycle of a day, of a life, of an era.

The early morning is the time before ego arises, before world is formed. It is the time for communion with spirit. We awaken with dreams and impressions from our deeper selves. When the spark of consciousness awakens, arise. Ever so gently sit with the messages that came in the night; write them, contemplate them, sing them, draw them. These are the seeds of spirit for the day. Open a meaningful book, or any book, at random. The message you need will appear. Contemplate it. Engage in breathing, candle meditation, yoga, or any spiritual practice that suits your predilection. Take full advantage of the time before the demands of the day kick in. It’s the best time for direct spirit connection.

The midday sun is the height of power. The sun achieves this brilliance because it does not deviate from its path. It does not seek to go beyond itself, and it graciously begins its descent from the zenith. We are advised to align our ego selves with the true needs of our body and spirit selves. Perhaps this means not altering our body chemistry with another cup of coffee to forego our tiredness or push beyond our exhaustion and mental capacity to achieve some ego ideal not suited to the true needs of the self. The operative words here are modesty and balance, as we carry ourselves through the day.

As evening sets in the I Ching warns that we not attempt to extend the day with ecstatic exuberance, be it with substance or entertainment that deprive us of the replenishment needed to be freshly reborn the next day. The I Ching, as well, warns not to slip into melancholy and regret for tasks not accomplished or life not lived during the day. Time instead to prepare for sleep and its journeys, the journeys that hold the seeds of the morrow.

Innocence in Tao... is Tao... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Innocence in Tao… is Tao…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The accompanying future hexagram, Youthful Folly, is the right attitude for us to take forward as we go through our full cycle days and lives. Folly, in youth, is appropriate. It is innocence that approaches new life with curiosity and excitement. Its teacher is life itself, the reactions of the Tao to a being discovering new life without judgment. This is how we should always live our lives, in alignment with life itself. There will be lessons, hard lessons, as life moves in new directions, but there will also be new life as the Tao responds to youthful folly. Let the games begin!

* Buddhist quote from C. G. Jung’s Psychology of Religion And Synchronicity, p. 197

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Transparent To The Transcendent

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Bowl made by David R. with earth from Abiquiu, New Mexico. -Photo by Jan Ketchel
Bowl made by David R. with earth from Abiquiu, New Mexico. -Photo by Jan Ketchel

We are a great interconnected whole. Collectively, at this moment in time however, we are all confronted with an antagonistic wave of energy that has us all scurrying for cover.

That wave of energy manifests as a fear and a belief that we are not enough, that we have not enough, and that the only defense to our not-enoughness is to batten down the hatches and accumulate as much of a store as we can and then guard it with vigilance.

Our storage warehouses may be filled with food, property, wares and wealth, or prayers, self-flagellant acts of deprivation, or good deeds. Underneath, however, they are all the same; nothing more than stockpiles of defenses to ward off the onslaught of not-enough.

The defenses of consumption and over-consumption have strained the world we are living in to its breaking point, and the question right now is: How do we hold it together?

In hexagram #8 of the I Ching, Pi/Holding Together, we are counseled in Six at the beginning to:

Hold to him in truth and loyalty;
This is without blame.
Truth, like a full earthen bowl:
Thus in the end
Good fortune comes from without.

Richard Wilhelm comments that sincerity is the true basis for forming relationships, both within ourselves and with each other. If we are to have sincere relationship within and without, we must be truthful with ourselves about where we grasp and guard in defense. Grasping and defending breaks the interconnected whole within ourselves as much as it breaks our connection to the greater world outside of ourselves. Wanting more and having to defend more causes a breakdown in relationship, within and without.

We must become like earthen bowls instead, filled with the strength of truth, if we are to hold ourselves and our earth together.

We must realize that although we are in a time of mass movements, necessary for massive change to happen, we are all part of the same mass. Every individual in that mass is affected by the same wave of energy. Jan wrote of being affected by such waves of energy in her blog last week as she attended a silent meditation retreat.

Every individual who tackles, with sincerity, the challenge of their own fears and consuming defenses, assumes a leadership role in creating energy that aids in unifying the whole by aligning with like energy. Every energetic advance by every individual synchronistically reverberates throughout the whole. This is the secret of holding together.

In energetic alignment, synchronicities will manifest as thoughts, feelings, and actual physical events that signal advances in holding together. On the other hand, over-consumption will manifest moods of defeat and powerlessness, as well as synchronistic physical events that violently signal annihilation.

The ruler of Pi/Holding Together, the Nine in the fifth place, speaks once again of cultivating purity and strength within the self as the basis for true fellowship vs attempting to woo favor, as currently dominates today’s mass market world. Here again, we are shown the path to not being consumed by our fear of not being enough.

Cultivating the transcendent! -Photo by Jan Ketchel
Cultivating the transcendent!
-Photo by Jan Ketchel

By cultivating purity within—what Joseph Campbell calls becoming transparent to the transcendent—we achieve the energetic influence that restores balance and attracts synchronistically what is truly needed in our individual lives, as well as what is needed collectively. Forget marketing, forget Facebook; become transparent to the transcendent instead!

From this place of transcendence, we become open to the influence of cosmic energy that exists outside the time we live in. We open to the infinite. In transcendence, we shift our assemblage points and resume our journeys along the interconnected route that holds us all together and, in so doing, we become part of the energetic mass that holds our world together.

Over-consumption is merely our world blanketed by an energy that constantly challenges us to find our union through realignment with the truth. Every time one of us realigns with the truth within the context of our personal lives, we send out energetic waves that offer all of us guidance to do the same. We cannot rescue each other, but the mass can’t help but advance by individual efforts.

We are all naguals now. The last nagual, Carlos Castaneda, showed us how to take personal responsibility for our own evolution. Many looked to Obama to be the savior. But we are beyond the time of saviors now; it’s up to each of us to save ourselves. Obama’s election simply mirrored the truth that anything is possible now, even a twice-elected black man to the presidency.

The real work now lies within each of us. We must each stare down the myth of not enough within ourselves and allow our truths and purity to become transparent to the transcendent, as we hold our world together in solid union and continue our journeys on the interconnected waves of infinity.

Riding the waves,
Chuck