Tag Archives: individuation

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Acceptance

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The seeds of who we might become... - Art by Jan Ketchel
The seeds of who we might become…
– Art by Jan Ketchel

Individuation requires the full realization of the seed of who we are. As the seed cracks open and begins its arduous journey upward, through the darkness of the earth, it encounters many obstacles on its voyage to the light of day.

Each seed will have a different journey, be it to stressfully twist around subterranean boulders or to find a quick ascent through loose sandy soil. The journey of each seed will uniquely shape its unfolding individuation. The journey of the seed cannot be separated from its flowering; every step of the journey must be accepted and included for the full realization of the individual. To reject any part of the journey is to literally cut off a limb of the truth of who we are and the truth of our complete journey.

Trauma is a crushing blow to a growing seed. Trauma will impact the journey to the light. However, trauma is a legitimate part of who we are and must be honored and welcomed into the fold of our wholeness if we are to achieve individuation and fully flower. Ultimately, acceptance means welcoming every part of our experience into our wholeness with open arms.

The challenge of acceptance is to allow all of our experiences to be fully known to ourselves physically, emotionally, and cognitively. The journey of trauma frequently requires us to shut down the knowing of our experiences so that we may continue to grow our infrastructure according to the dictates of the seed. At a certain point, however, the unfolding of the seed will require that we use our developed infrastructure, or adult self, to recapitulate the experiences of our lost self in order to gather our fuller self to take the next turn in the journey deeper into life, toward our fuller flowering.

Carlos Castaneda, of the shamanic world, suggested that we begin this part of the journey by suspending all judgments and allowing ourselves to gain pure access to our tucked-away, unfamiliar experiences as we recapitulate. Full access will require that we allow our instinctive self to come on line and reset our central nervous system. Peter Levine and Francine Shapiro, of the world of psychology, have made great modern strides in methodologies that value and access the body’s innate ability to both a) reset itself once consciousness is gained and strengthened enough to assume responsibility for lifting its old defenses and to b) fully join the deeper process of reconciliation.

Recapitulation means facing our fears and resolving them... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Recapitulation means facing our fears and resolving them…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

During recapitulation, the body will take us on a journey of physical sensation as it relives and releases from its frozen moments of trauma. The heart will release its sadness in tears and rages, in silent or violent gestures and screams. Our minds will clarify ancient frozen negative beliefs as we reset with the truth, aided by the fuller perspective afforded by the joining of the adult self with its younger frozen counterpart.

Popular concepts like “Letting go” and “Forgiveness” attempt to capture this process but actually miss the mark. Simply letting go and moving on offers no deeper compensation or healing value, as our deepest core issues, if not resolved, will lie festering, inhibiting fuller flowering and enjoyment of life.

During recapitulation nothing is rejected or reframed for more compatible digestion; all life experiences are equally valued and accepted as truths of our personal history, as valid parts of our individuation process—no regrets. Regrets alert us to issues of non-acceptance, signaling the need for deeper recapitulation.

Forgiveness presumes we hold some power over another’s journey that should be released for our own healing. All beings must reconcile with their own truths. No one can release another from the full burden and encounter with their own actions. The true mechanism of healing is to release the self of the burden of another person’s journey while fully reconciling and owning one’s own.

While fully accepting the impact of another upon the self, the energy of the other is released back to the other to reconcile for themselves. There is no obligation to that other. However, full completed release requires that there be total transparency and no emotional attachment to the events experienced with that other person; the truth simply is what it is. Full acceptance leads to emotional neutrality and the freedom to really move on.

Our full flowering potential awaits! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Our full flowering potential awaits!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Just as the shell of the seed is shed on its upward journey to the light, so are all emotional attachments to the events of our lives that have shaped and delivered us to now shed during recapitulation so that we may be fully alive and fully energetically available for the next adventure. The past—fully known, fully accepted, fully resolved, energetically and otherwise—recedes as we are freed to flower and experience the joys of new life.

On the ever-unfolding journey,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Food As Mother

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Learning to feed the self is the first step in individuation... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Learning to feed the self is the first step in individuation…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Food sustains life, satisfies the tension of hunger, and protects the body from illness and death. Food is Mother. For all, in utero, food was delivered from mother’s body and for many, post utero, this continued in the experience of nursing at mother’s breast. Finding our way in childhood to the independent obtaining of food—e.g., through opening the refrigerator door—is a giant leap toward gaining control over one’s security of survival, relief of tension and protection—the beginning of becoming our own mother.

Ruptures in security with actual mother in the early dependency years of childhood heighten the significance of gaining control over one’s own access to food. Food may become the safer and much more reliable mother when contending with a depressed, indifferent, withholding, competitive or abusive actual mother in childhood. Secretly, food becomes the real mother, while the actual mother is experienced as marginal at best.

In such rupturing circumstances food takes on the psychological role of soothing and caring for the emotional wellbeing of the child. The child may discover the excitement and reward of relationship with sugar, the soothing of anxiety with excess food, as well as the protective, dissociative numbing provided by a very full stomach. Excess weight may gather with excess food, which can protect the self from the sensations and feelings of rejection, lack of connection, and ridicule from without, as well as fear and sadness from within.

A hyper attachment to food in childhood may be the saving relationship that protects one’s autonomy and very vulnerable self through deeply turbulent formative years. In adulthood, these patterns of attachment will prove anachronistic and become impediments to more deeply satisfying emotional relationships. At the same time, they must be valued for the survival and protection they once afforded our growing selves, as well as their incubational functions at extremely vulnerable times in our lives.

Food is life... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Food is life…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The task in adulthood is to free the innocent self—still held in body utero—of its private dependence on food for excitement, calm, and protection and birth into full life and real human relationship. The challenge for the adult self is to fully take on the role of mother previously delegated and attached to food. We are charged with becoming our own living mother to our tucked-away innocent self. This is a real human relationship that asks us to be compassionate, supportive, accepting, and encouraging to our shy, innocent self who has waited for decades to truly come out and play.

The defenses that have long sheltered our innocence, with their attachment to the secure food mother, are formidable and deeply challenging of the adult self’s attempts to assume parental leadership within the personality. Those defenses see no wisdom in freeing our innocence into a world where, once again, it will be exposed to rejection and possible annihilation.

The adult self is frequently undermined in its attempts to assume control by waves of deep terror and intense cravings that seem compellingly unquenchable by anything short of the sustenance of food. Perhaps these may be interpreted as labor pains of the birthing process, the innocent self questioning the readiness of the adult self to safely deliver it into life. Sometimes the proving process of the adult self, as it proves its readiness, requires many false labor pains, ending in a return to food. But be assured, each round of labor readies the mother more fully to become the perfect mother to her innocence, which she will someday deliver to the world.

The Empress in the Thoth Tarot deck, the archetypal good mother...able to equally give and receive...
The Empress in the Thoth Tarot deck, the archetypal good mother…able to equally give and receive…

This evolving mother knows full well the limitations of the outer world archetypal maternal matrix that in childhood had it creatively adopting food as the more reliable mother. This new mother knows there is vulnerability and rejection and loss to face in this world, but she also knows that she is fully capable of protecting and helping her innocence through the unavoidable woundings of life in this world. But this mother also knows the utter joy and necessity of bringing her deepest needs and desires into life in this world as part of the fulfillment, completion, and individuation so necessary for wholeness and enjoyment of life.

Food Mother will always have her place, but the living Mother of the adult self is the True Mother to full mind, body, and spirit living.

Let that True Mother be compassionate and supportive of wherever we are, as well as firm and encouraging as she takes full responsibility for birthing innocence into life beyond the old protectorate of Food as Mother.

Appreciating the journeys we all take,
Chuck

NOTE: Obviously we all have a True Mother inside us, men and women alike, and it is our challenge and charge to bring her to life, just as all of us have a True Father inside us too, but that is another blog!

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: The Bardos & The Reality We Create

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The consensus reality we all uphold... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The consensus reality we all uphold…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

“The earth will never be destroyed,” said Chuck to me last night. “It’s a consensus reality.” What he meant was that there are millions of people upholding the idea of earth and everything in it as real. Each person now alive would have to drop their projections, lose their belief systems, free their minds, and release their attachments for the earth to suddenly fade from sight. It would be like taking a mass psychedelic trip or a giant thick fog rolling in, hiding from view all that we consider reality.

Does that idea send shockwaves of fear through you, the idea of having nothing to hold onto, nothing familiar in your life? Personally, I find the idea utterly freeing, the notion of all of this disappearing and there being nothing but the ethers: defined as a formless, infinitely elastic medium, also known as the space above the atmosphere of earth, the heavens composed of the moon, the stars and planets. Imagine the energy we’ve all projected into creating this reality, that we’ve spent our lives upholding, finally released, to be used for something far greater.

The bardos, negative emotional states, beliefs that we project within the consensus reality of this world, are always right next to us, ready to snag us and pull us back, away from such ideas as the one I postulate above. The bardos make up not only our consensus reality, the world we inhabit, but the world within as well, the world of thoughts and ideas that keep us caught in the repetition of our behaviors, habits, beliefs, stuck in the core issues that keep us from evolving, such as rejection, abandonment, entitlement, victimhood. The bardos are where worry, fear, indolence, strife, and negativity reside, popping up to defeat us in endless battles with the projections of this world. We turn to them more often than we turn to our spirits, which seek to be freed of all that is in this world so that we can enjoy “All That Is” in the ethers of infinity.

Our projections keep us bound to the bardos. I create my reality by that which I project. My needs, fears, and worries create my reality. If the consensus reality says that my symptoms indicate a certain condition, then I get sick. If I project my fears into the world, those fears come to haunt me. If I am certain that something bad will happen, then it will happen. In the bardos of my projections, in the thoughts I create, the ideas I uphold and the fears I hold onto, my world is created. If I am aware that I am doing this, however, I can change how I attach to the consensus reality. I can decide that no, I am not sick, I am not afraid, and only good things will happen to me. Suddenly, my reality shifts.

Detail of the Indolence card, the 8 of Cups from the Thoth Tarot Deck...
Detail of the Indolence card, the 8 of Cups from the Thoth Tarot Deck…

I also know that if I project my needs, fears and worries outwardly onto others then other people in my life will not advance either, even if I hold onto them with my deepest love. My sense of owning or entitlement to another human being only holds them back. We must let all beings go. Others will not move out of my sphere if I hold onto them with negative thinking either, with jealousies, hatred, or even with perceived brilliance, with adoration or worship. I must own and learn from all my projections if I am to free myself too to move on.

We have the power within us to change our reality, but do I really want to see the world obliterated? I don’t believe, as Chuck suggested last night, that it will ever happen at this worldly level, but it is what we are all charged with doing at an individual level. We must accept also that the world we have created is here for us to fully engage and learn from. We must fully live in this world—do our time so to speak—if we are to be at a point of detaching from it for the last time.

To fully live means that as we grow up and seek to make a mark in the world, we must encounter all that we project, all the challenges that belong to us in this lifetime. It’s so easy to fall back into the slumber of the bardos, but the true work of individuation is to journey through life becoming increasingly awake and aware of how things really work, and that takes work.

As we do our deep inner work, as we attempt to free ourselves of our personal projections and issues—in a process such as recapitulation, for example—we do free ourselves of this consensus reality in a step-by-step process of eliminating from our psyches all that once held us bound to the bardos. In the bardo states of this world we churn away overdoing, over indulging, over eating, over drinking, over stimulated to the point where our energy reserves are depleted and our spirits sunk to the depths, far from contact. In this depleted energy state we no longer contribute any energy either to the advancement of this world. As our own energy flags, we become nothing more than entities draining the energy that others contribute to a changing world.

Do I really want my world to disappear? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Do I really want my world to disappear?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we are to be part of a changing world we must constantly contribute new energy to that change by changing ourselves. It is not healthy to stay in the bardos, dulling our energy and the energy of the world. If we are challenged to do anything during our lives, it is to keep the flame of change burning by adding to its potential by challenging ourselves to constantly shift into states of higher awareness.

Just as the bardos are there always ready to grab us, to sabotage our progress, so too are our spirits right there too, ready to connect with us. Our true work of individuation is the work of gaining knowledge of our spirits, of learning to trust them as we allow ourselves to drop our projections and have experiences of the ethers, of our energetic selves, even while we are living in this consensus reality. It is the work of the human being who is aware of reincarnation to live up to the challenges of each lifetime and gain the momentum to move beyond continuous cycles of reincarnation.

In pulling our heads up out of the bardos long enough to grasp the possibility of the disappearance of this consensus reality as we know it, we offer ourselves new energy and new momentum. Without fear that we are missing out or losing something, as we grow into later adulthood we must learn how to let go of our attachments to all that is in this world, knowing full well that each of us, even those closest to us and whom we love the most, are on the same journey.

Each individual is challenged to move out of the bardos and advance to a higher level of consciousness. In so doing, at our death we do not leave this world a more depleted place but a brighter place, our evolving energy feeding the fires of change. I feel this kind of vibrant energy every time I communicate with Jeanne. Her evolving beyond this consensus reality has left a brightness in my own life, and I have learned more from my connection with her than had I not dared myself to trust her and take up the challenges she gave to me during my recapitulation.

We are all as separate and individual as each drop of rainwater on this leaf... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We are all as separate and individual as each drop of rainwater on this leaf…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

And I am aware now too that my true purpose extends far beyond this life and this reality. And so I am not afraid to imagine the world disappearing and all that is in this reality releasing—as it will upon my own dying—because I know that all of us are part of something greater, just as Jeanne and her soul group are.

Just trying to add to the energy flame of changing consciousness,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Encounter

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Feeling incomplete? Scattered? Scared? Can't quite see clearly yet? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Feeling incomplete? Scattered? Scared? Can’t quite see clearly yet?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

For the past few weeks I have been drawn to the topic of sub-personalities. Jung called them complexes; independent amalgams of ideas, experiences, and feeling tones that operate autonomously within the personality, each with their own motive, voice, and point of view.

These sub-personalities may be actual younger versions of ourselves, underdeveloped parts of ourselves, or frozen parts that were split off during traumatic experiences. As well, these inner voices might be from the transpersonal realm of our psyche: past life, archetypal or mythical entities that have become active beneath consciousness, influencing daily life.

Out of these many sub-personalities emerges one dominant personality that establishes a consistent identity, what we commonly call I, what Freud called the Ego Self.

The ego self is the leader that takes charge of consciousness and decides how we will navigate life. The ego is home base and must be finely tuned and safeguarded to take on the awesome challenge of reconciling all the inner needs and concerns of the sub-personalities, as well as establishing a stable foothold in the outside world.

The ego must also interact with the spirit self or higher self. Ruth White, in Using Your Chakras, writes: “The concept of the higher self…may lead us to suppose that the higher self is in charge and is the integrating force which we seek. Yet the being which we are on earth, the personality from which we function, fully exists in its own right. If we are too anxious to let the higher self take over, we may give insufficient importance to ego development. The tool which the higher self would use is then insufficiently formed and could be subject to delusions of grandeur, inability to make choices, slavishness to authority, a sense of non-being, or psychosis.“

Thus, though the ego self must not overstep its bounds, by usurping the identity of the higher self, it is fully charged to establish firm boundaries and decisively mediate actions to be taken in this world. To inhabit this state I often suggest that people draw circles with firm boundaries, representing a firm ego self. Inside the circle exists a state of calmness within which the intent to be objective is set. The ego self must make decisions, and to do this well it must be freed of negative judgments that cloud objective processing. The ego must deal only with facts to process the points of view and nuggets of truth held by the cluster of sub-personalities that reside in the greater self.

The grand work of individuation is to find out who you truly are in this lifetime... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The grand work of individuation is to find out who you truly are in this lifetime…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The ego must be able to hold its own; that is, avoid contamination or states of possession when it encounters the moods, beliefs, images and sensations of sub-personalities that strongly seek to influence the decisions that the ego must make as it navigates life. The goal is wholeness of personality, all parts cohesively integrated. This is a lifetime opus, the grand work of individuation.

Jan shared her dream of the square in her blog this week—her place of power, calm meditation and retreat—where she could be completely calm and safe from the storms of interfering energy within or outside of the self. Like my circle-drawing suggestion, her square serves a similar function, introducing mandalas as safe havens for ego consciousness to get calm, be objective, and process and decide how to reconcile its inevitable encounters with sub-personalities.

After a brief discussion of the circle and the square, Jan and I decided to jointly throw the I Ching, alternating the throwing of the coins. We received the hexagram of Breakthrough/Resoluteness, #43. This hexagram depicts the inevitable encounters we must have with swollen energies that gather in intensity and seek release, the energetics of encounters with sub-personalities. The ego is warned, “Even a single passion still lurking in the heart has the power to obscure reason.” Calm objectivity must be the ruling dominant power in the fortress.

The I Ching further states: “…resolution must be based on a union of strength and friendliness.” Thus, when we encounter sub-personalities, we are warned to stay strong, to not be bullied but to establish that we come in peace, seeking truth and reconciliation.

“…the struggle must not be carried on directly by force,” says the I Ching. Thus, if we engage in battle—which is negativity and judgment—with a sub-personality, we risk possession as we deplete our energy in an unnecessary power struggle where we lose our objective edge.

Finally, the I Ching states: “If a man were to pile up riches for himself alone, without considering others, he would certainly experience a collapse. For all gathering is followed by dispersion.” The ego is strongly warned to be fair in making decisions about what endeavors will be funded in the resolute actions of daily life. If the ego is prejudiced in its interactions and judgments of sub-personalities, it risks violent collapse through revolutionary encounters that seek a change of attitude. These can take the form of compulsions or deep depressions.

The true self that finally emerges might look a whole lot different from what you had imagined! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The true self that finally emerges might look a whole lot different from what you had imagined!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The correct position of the ego is as a firm but benevolent ruler that fairly administers the states of the personality and aligns itself with the spirit intent of the higher self.

All encounters have their dangers, but only through encounter can we fully discover and achieve the wholeness we seek. Properly armed with strength and objectivity, we are ready to advance toward union, finally reconciling our sub-personalities. In our new wholeness we are offered fulfillment now, in this lifetime, and as we journey forward and take our definitive journey in infinity.

From inside the circle,
Chuck

On a synchronistic note: In her blog Jan also noticed how everything was in such alignment. Well, she happened upon this little essay from Eric Francis at Planet Waves, right in alignment with what I had been pondering for weeks and write about in this blog, sub-personalities or what Francis calls The Hemisphere Effect. Take a look, another take on it all.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Breakthrough To Wholeness

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The magnolia buds have survived the winter and are ready now for breakthrough... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The magnolia buds have survived the winter and are ready now for breakthrough…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We are beings filled to the brim with conflicting tendencies. St. Paul said it succinctly: “That which I would I do not, that which I would not, that I do.” Confronted with the opposition of his own carnal sexuality and his deep spirituality, St. Paul went the way of many a monastic tradition and chose celibacy. The challenge of truly reconciling this polarity within the self by rejecting that which is outside of the self is daunting and often misses the mark. The failure of this resolution couldn’t be more apparent than in the modern Catholic Church,* tarnished worldwide with deep involvement in sexual abuse. Clearly, merely shunning or splitting off sexuality does not make it go away—it must be reckoned with.

Carl Jung pointed out that for a tree’s branches to reach heaven its roots have to reach hell. True reconciliation of inherent human oppositions must integrate all sides of human nature into a cohesive whole. A one-sided solution to our problems inevitably sets the stage for a backlash or a breakthrough of the forsaken other—the rejected shadow self.

Times of breakthrough are exceptional times, like the breakthrough of a swollen river over its dikes. In hexagram #43, Breakthrough, the I Ching counsels resolute action in such exceptional circumstances. First, resolution must be based on a union of strengths and friendliness. The adult self must hold its own and not be taken over by the opposing tendency. On the other hand, it needs to greet it with friendliness, lend an objective ear to its point of view.

Second, a compromise with evil is not possible. If the dissociated tendency insists on taking over the personality on its own terms, it must be openly discredited. There can be no compromise with a one-sided truth. On the other hand, the passions and one-sided motives of the ego self must equally be brought into the light and openly examined.

Third, the struggle must not be carried out directly by force. If an opposing tendency has taken on a compulsive habit in the personality, labeling it evil or denigrating the self for its presence in the personality only empowers it as it weakens the adult self charged with shifting the habitual state of affairs, such as with some kinds of addictions.

It's surprising just how much nature shows us how to break through. When the time is right...Just do it! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
It’s surprising just how much nature shows us how to break through.
When the time is right…Just do it!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Finally, the best way to advance is to make energetic progress in new behaviors that serve the true needs of the overall personality. A dysfunctional habit may actually be holding the place of a deeper need for fulfillment. Rather than brand the habit as bad, make use of it to turn in a new direction and engage in behaviors that fulfill the deeper needs of the self. For instance, challenge the self to go into the world and interact versus retreating and soothing the self with lulling talk and substance. Or rather than seeking excessive fulfillment in the outer world, retreat into the deep vibrational experience of transcendent oneness in meditation.

Breakthrough encounters are part and parcel of the individuation process. Breakthrough encounters are necessary guideposts in recapitulation as well. Through these encounters we are afforded the opportunity to integrate our opposing tendencies into a holistic being, truly capable of a new mantra: “That which I would, I do;” the ultimate conscious breakthrough, in consummate wholeness.

Breaking through,
Chuck

* It is interesting to note that an ancient papyrus has broken through the sands of time and been validated by modern scientific method to challenge this one-sided position of the Catholic Church. At least some early Christian communities documented that Christ spoke of having a wife. Here is an excerpt from the NYT regarding the words that have fanned some controversy: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’ ” Too convenient for some, it also contained the words “she will be able to be my disciple,” a clause that inflamed the debate in some churches over whether women should be allowed to be priests.

Read the entire report in The New York Times.