Tag Archives: intent

Chuck’s Place: Mindfulness & Journeying in Healing

We publish Chuck’s blog today. Look for Jan’s later in the week!

Like the inevitability of the season's change so too are there things we do not control... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Like the inevitability of the season’s change so too are there things we do not control…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The deepest truth of the human psyche is that we are only partially rational beings. There are forces within and around us that act upon and through us without our conscious awareness. Reckoning and reconciling with these forces lies at the heart of achieving balance, happiness and fulfillment in this life.

Modern sensibility seeks to reduce our struggle with these outside forces to chemical imbalance and structural flaw in our brains, largely correctable through psychopharmacological input. As valuable and supporting as these interventions might be, they cannot, by any means, address the intense emotionally charged feelings and thoughts that daily barrage our conscious foothold in this world.

Psychotherapy has been charged with treating the “mental illness” we see violently acted out in mass shootings that we witness almost daily. Thankfully, the tools of psychotherapy have been greatly enhanced over the past several decades by the influx of mindfulness practices introduced to the world as a result of the Tibetan diaspora. DBT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, owes its structure and methodology directly to mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness practice empowers us to gain control over our central nervous system and to generate neuroplasticity—a remapping of neural pathways—in the brain. The contribution of mindfulness and meditation practices, to our ability to stay focused and develop detachment from the destructive impulses and moods we experience, cannot be overestimated. Through the exercise of these tools we become grounded, able to function, and able to explore the deeper reality of who we are and who we are not. Without grounding, we are woefully ill-equipped to handle that deeper journey into our unknown selves.

Much more recent than the Tibetan diaspora has been the Shamanic diaspora of the teachings of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico through the published works of Carlos Castaneda and his cohorts and the public release of Tensegrity. Pragmatic tools have been introduced from these Shamans to enable seekers to journey into the deeper layers of self and reality.

In a recent Amazon book review of J.E. Ketchel’s The Man in the Woods, Gary Siegel, LCSWR states, “We have seen in recent times the integration of many concepts and approaches from Buddhist traditions into the mainstream of clinical work and psychotherapy. It seems to me that if techniques and awareness of Buddhism are especially well suited for things like acceptance, letting go, being in the moment, compassion and forgiveness, then the techniques and awareness of Shamanism – with their concourse with altered states of awareness, and dissociation would be perfectly suited for work with those very states that are the hallmark of trauma victims.”

Sometimes the crow of recapitulation rests among the tangled web of memory... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes the crow of recapitulation rests among the tangled web of memory…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In facing trauma, specifically, a seeker is challenged to reconcile with a highly emotionally charged event, or series of events, that has been stored in an altered state within the psyche. Consciously, the seeker may have little or no awareness of the contents of that altered state and may only feel the conscious tremblings or intrusions of this material through associatively triggered encounters in the flow of everyday life. From a Shamanic perspective, for healing to take place, a journey must be taken to retrieve and reintegrate the lost parts of the self encapsulated in that altered state. In addition, the journey entails the release of extraneous energy—outside energy, perhaps in the form of ideas and beliefs—that has held one’s personal energy captive in that altered state.

The Shamanic tool of Intent empowers the conscious self to engage the supports, dreams and synchronicities that initiate and lead the journey. Although stating one’s intent initiates the journey, the path will unfold outside of the control of reason.

Recapitulation is the very conscious reliving of past events. From a Shamanic perspective, reliving a past event means entering another world, a world one was once in but has subsequently left. The Shamanic practice of recapitulation enables the seeker to consciously—in the world of now—reenter an old world and take from it whatever part of the self splintered off while caught in an experience in that prior world. That energy is then brought forward and reintroduced into the self of now, where it belongs, freed of its prior entanglements. From a Shamanic perspective, this is total healing.

Shamanic journeying requires groundedness. As don Juan Matus put it, we need “nerves of steel,” if we are to journey into the unknown. Hence, the contribution of Buddhism, with its mindfulness practices, offers the perfect complement to the contributions of Shamanism with its journeying practices in healing. In fact, groundedness is a prerequisite to successful journeying. We must be able to stay present with that which once splintered us if we are to truly retrieve the lost parts of ourselves.

Meditation hones the mind, like the light seeking the flower... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Meditation hones the mind, like the light seeking the flower…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The Shamanic journey of intent, however, is unpredictable. Sometimes it pushes us into journeys we feel ill-prepared for. At other times, it gives us long stretches of respite to shore up our groundedness. In reality, Buddhist mindfulness and Shamanic journeying are perfect complements, the yin and yang of wholeness and healing.

On the mindfulness journey of intent,
Chuck

Readers of Infinity: Life’s A Dream

Here is this week’s message from Jeanne, on the reality of creating your own life.

Today's dream... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Today’s dream…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Find a center of balance no matter where you are in your life. Even though you may be caught up in the turmoils of life, so will there be a spot within that turmoil to find rest and distance. Set your intent to not only find this place but to recognize it and utilize it, even in the worst of circumstances.

Remember: There is always calm within a storm, even if it is only in the moment before the storm hits or the moment after it strikes. Take the energy of that calmness within, fully experience it, and retain the markings of it within. Draw upon it later, for its experience will reside in you, its memory everlasting.

That is what you seek in order to find balance in daily life, memories of those moments of experience that have shifted you. In your experiences come the ability to control, to a certain degree, the content of your days. I advise allowing the self access to the ability to control the self by grabbing onto the experiences of calmness that have reigned throughout your life, the moments that remind you that nothing lasts forever, that everything changes, that life constantly shifts and adjusts itself. For growth is always life’s intent.

In your own lives, growth too is the intent. With this intent being your personal intent—even if you are unaware of it—be assured that everything that comes to you, each day, is leading and guiding you to grow, to face that which you must in order to move beyond fear and attachment.

Always find your balance within yourself. Pull up your anchor repeatedly as you shift, placing it in a new spot of calmness each day, depending on circumstances, and as you flow with life.

One day your calmness may lie in your dreams, so place your anchor there. Set your intent to learn as much as possible from your dreams. And then follow the guidance that comes to you.

On another day your calmness, your certainty, may lie in your creativity. Place your intent, your anchor there, and allow your creative self the expression it desires. This will send you into new energetic configuration, both mentally and physically, aligning your life more fully with your spirit’s intent. And remember that creativity takes many forms. Where your personal creativity lies may not be yet clear to you, but it’s there.

Seek balance each day. Take moments to sit in calmness and find your peace in where you are, fully aware that each day you are being guided to advance. Pretty soon, the anchoring calmness will become most natural, and you may even find that you are there without having to think about it. Then you will have the experience of your previous turmoil being only like a distant dream.

Remember it’s all a dream anyway. Which dream do you wish to dream today? It’s really up to you.

Chuck’s Place: Inhabit New Habit

Nature is on automatic pilot... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Nature is on automatic pilot…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Reasoning, or thinking, is a function of consciousness. The far greater share of our mental functioning operates on automatic pilot, in the vast realm of the unconscious mind.

Although we can consciously decide to breathe, to breathe deeper, to adjust the rhythm and length of a breath, the majority of breaths we will take in our lifetime will happen automatically, outside the purview of our conscious awareness.

Our unconscious is filled with billions of such preset programs that we all share and inherit from the evolutionary journey of our species. This was why Jung named the deepest level of the unconscious the “collective,” versus personal, as at the deepest level we all share in common the same preset programs to react and survive as living human beings.

The unconscious mind does not need to think through eons of experience in order to gain the precise knowledge of how to react to a given need or stimulus. I was once deeply wounded in the palm of my hand on a beach. I was alone. I passed out; that is, consciousness left. When it returned, I discovered my hand packed in sand, the bleeding completely stopped. I was good to go. The program to “dress” that wound lay dormant and ready in the unconscious. It was triggered to action upon contact with the stimulus of the wound as it pushed the ego out of the way and took care of business. This is the essence of instinct—inherited habits to address adaptive needs to ensure survival.

With the advent of consciousness, human beings have a new source of habit making. Utilizing our faculty of reasoning and learning, we introduce new patterns of behavior into our lives. When we learn to drive, for instance, we—with consciousness—repetitively practice a series of behaviors, such as learning to brake and drive with one foot, learning to turn the wheel, to park, and to stay in lanes with others going in the same direction. Once these tasks are consciously mastered, they slip into the realm of the unconscious, as habits that react on demand, as needed, when we drive. After awhile, driving starts to require minimal consciousness—in fact, we easily daydream while our unconscious reacts to all the stimuli we encounter as we safely take our journeys.

The unconscious is a habitual mind that reacts to needs and commands. This fact lies at the essence of hypnotic suggestion. Like the habit of driving that we ask the unconscious to perform when we enter our cars, the unconscious awaits orders constantly throughout the day. Hypnotists are aware of this part of the mind that responds to suggestion, and speak directly to it.

The truth is, we are all our own hypnotists. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico identified our inner hypnotist as the internal dialogue that incessantly barks orders at the unconscious mind, manifesting in how we see ourselves and construct our world. That internal dialogue may tell us that we are inadequate, unattractive, unfulfilled, undervalued, underserving, etc. Of course, it can also deliver other consistent messages that support a sense of worthiness and adequacy, but this is less common. We become so entranced by the habitual definitions of our internal dialogue that we construct a personality and sense of self according to its dictates. We become entrenched in a familiar definition of self that, however uncomfortable or unfulfilled it may be, persists because of the constant redundant messages and orders delivered by the incessant internal dialogue.

Ready to dive in and create some new waves? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ready to dive in and create some new waves?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico suggest that we interrupt this automatic flow of messages by canceling the internal dialogue and consciously delivering new suggestions, what they call intent. Intent is the mantra of a new, consciously delivered, command, bent on manifesting a new sense of self, as well as a new world.

When we coin a new intention—i.e., I am calm—and repeat it religiously, like a prayer, we are delivering new working orders, entering a new habit into our unconscious mind that will activate the programs associated with manifesting that intent. We must be religious in our practice—highly repetitive—if we are to push aside the old messages, the conflicting old messages of the reigning internal dialogue, which can only serve to confuse, that is, deliver mixed signals to the unconscious mind. And mixed messages, as we know, confound the manifestation of change.

We must be disciplined and persistent in our practice. Remember, it took a long time and a lot of practice to truly master the art of driving as a guaranteed habit. It is the same with manifesting and inhabiting a new habit. Perseverance and repetitive practice will, ultimately, manifest intent in new habit!

Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Spirit In Tent

We must all prepare for our own vision quest... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We must all prepare for our own vision quest…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

After four sweat lodges and several days on a vision quest, Jonas Elrod—the seeker who made the documentary Wake Up that Jan references in her blog earlier this week—reaches out to God, as throughout his quest his concept of God has constantly changed and now he is befuddled. He begs for clarity on the meaning of God, of religion, the correct path, etc., and is met with a vision of fingers pointing at a bigtop tent. He sees that the tent is empty, the posts fall down and the tent collapses. This vision is accompanied by the words: “All pointers point in the same direction.” He understands that what he seeks has nothing to do with religion or church, that there is no life, or only the illusion of life, inside the tent, inside the church. Inside the tent there is nothing.

Jung unmasked the same truth about modern religion: dogma and ritual are dressed in archetypal wrappings with no life inside them, no pathways to spirit. In his youth, Jung had a powerful dream where the heavens opened up and dropped excrement upon the church steeple. He was to spend the rest of his life carving a pathway to spirit for modern humanity.

Jung journeyed through the ancient religions, East and West, in search of valid pathways to the soul. He, like Joseph Campbell, discovered that religious symbolism and practice were relative to the time and place of their emergence. The gods and saviors of one era were merely local masks or pathways to spirit that fit the style and custom of those times. Evolution, however, requires that new pathways emerge, relevant to changing times. All religions that cling to the images of another time cannot support or transport the modern soul to its destiny and fulfillment.

Jung’s greatest discovery was that connection to spirit lies not in attachment to some mask of God, but in direct contact with spirit in numinous experience. Jung’s process of psychotherapy opens the door to direct encounter, direct experience, direct communication between consciousness and the greater self—Spirit—to arrive at healing and fulfillment. The challenge for all seekers and initiates, of all times, is to take the journey into the unknown—like Jonas Elrod did—to become heroes in search of their souls. Such a journey means encountering, confronting, and slaying all the energies that lie in the unknown, in the form of sensations, intense emotions, and powerful beliefs and images.

Do we need to be inside the tent? -Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Do we need to be inside the tent?
-Photo by Chuck Ketchel

In our time, the quest for wholeness with spirit has been largely projected outwardly onto materialism, romanticism, and consumption. As a consequence, spirit has lodged itself inside the empty circus tent of consumerism on a grand scale, in the empty search for romantic love, in the desire for more, and in the addiction to substance. Modern humanity is compelled to seek its wholeness in the tent of emptiness. Spirit is behind this, but as a trickster now, ravaging us with knocks of the spirit as we relentlessly grasp for our wholeness in that which shines with promise.

Spirit comes in the form of the trickster because it needs to meet us where our projections are caught. It’s the only way we can engage it, so it meets us where we are. If we are bent on romantic love that’s where spirit will meet us. It has to have us wake up to our fixation—that’s not a judgment. God comes in the form that God comes in, to wake us up. Hence, the emptiness of the tent, because that’s where we all are. It’s only through fully grasping and crushing in the emptiness, in collapsing that empty tent, that we will be forged for the next step of the journey—direct experience within.

Bill W., ultimately through a connection with Jung, had his direct experience in a vision that lifted his thirst for spirit without—from “spirits”—to spirit within, to inner union and wholeness. AA was founded on direct contact with spirit, with the mask of spirit unmasked. As spirit is freed of its empty substance container, it is brought home, inwardly to self. Thus, AA works as a valid religion when its adherents find their way to direct experience and union with spirit within. Short of that, AA leads only to control of dry spirits.

Jung warned against the seduction of adopting the garbs of exotic practices and ritual as a replacement for empty local religions. He frowned upon yoga and Buddhism replacing religion in the West. Though I think his warning is valid, he himself used yoga to withstand the energies of the collective unconscious as he went deeper into his own night sea journey. The message being: take what works, but go inward and do the work there rather than wearing it outwardly.

We're all just searching for the same thing... what really lies deeper within... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We’re all just searching for the same thing… what really lies deeper within…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The key to direct experience lies in the methodologies, not the wrappings of many ancient traditions. Witness the sweat lodge and the vision quest in Wake Up.

So do engage in the practices of yoga or the meditation techniques of Buddhism, the prayers of many traditions, and the many worlds of dreaming, or whatever works for you.

When Carlos Castaneda would discuss the Magical Passes of Tensegrity, he’d exclaim: “Suspend judgment! Just do it and see what happens!” In other words, avoid the trappings of faith, belief and deity. Just do the techniques, and see what happens: Communion, or not?

Furthermore, if your spirit lands somewhere in the circus tent just accept it. You must pursue it until you unmask its emptiness—the direct experience of emptiness. This is what Jonas Elrod finally achieved during his own spiritual quest, the emptiness that led to his own direct experience.

From the emptiness of the circus tent, you may be ready to encounter spirit directly, in direct experience at home, in the depths of the self.

From in tent,
Chuck

Readers of Infinity: Transcendence Through Fully Living

Here is a message of guidance from Jeanne, channeled most humbly.

Who guards and protects your secrets? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Who guards and protects your secrets?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Stay calmly resolute in your intent to grow, change, and inhabit your beingness in a fuller way. Seek wholeness, yet seek also balance; balance that is conducive to life in the world you live in. Seek awareness, yet seek also stability in reality. Seek enlightenment, but do not forget that you are first and foremost human. Seek the attainment of all that is good, but do not reject all that lies in your personal shadows, the underground self who seeks life as much as the above ground self does. Contain not one over the other, yet do not allow one to dominate for too long either. Allow these two sides of the self to come out to play. Like two children who have been cooped up for too long must they be allowed fun and full expression.

All of these actions of balance must be undertaken with a measure of sobriety and calmness that overrides and underrides the actions that are necessary for you to achieve full expression and wholeness as a human being, as a spiritual being, as a finite and infinite being. You are all these things already. “So what’s the problem?” you might ask.

The problem with the human condition is that life in that world is so overpowering that all other awareness goes out the window. But I know that you who read my words are seekers, that you seek deeper connection within the self. That deeper connection requires knowledge of and integration of all parts of the self. Seek that and you will be well on the way to completion of your wholeness.

Do not become fanatical. Do not become inflated. Do not allow your insights to take you too far from your real challenge, which is to be fully human in that world of abundance and deprivation, to be challenged to experience it all, and yet to be detached from all that challenges you.

There is sweetness among the thorns... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There is sweetness among the thorns…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In your wholeness will you discover detachment without need. You will find life in simplicity, life fulfilled by your attention to the process of growth. Your unattached attention to the diligence of your inner and outer endeavors, in balanced alignment, will take you far.

Be attentive to your journey. Without judgment, renew your vows to your personal process. Life challenges you to embrace it and live it, yet it challenges you equally to detach from and transcend it without need or desire, simply because that is what you are all fully capable of: transcendence through fully embracing the life you live.

You can argue with yourself all your want. You can whine and complain about your life. You can have all kinds of difficulties, illnesses, allergies, problems, faults, complaints and issues to protest and fight about. Overall, however, you can only evolve by fully acquiescing to the truth of your predicament and then taking off from there in a new direction.

Free your mind a little bit today by accepting at least one truth about the self and the life you now experience, just one. This may be a joyous truth or a sad truth, it doesn’t matter, as long as it really is a truth. Accept that truth and ask the self what you can do about it to remedy it—complain more about it, or tackle it head on?

The energy of now says: Be honest with the self, but don’t be angry with the self. You know what to do, the energy says, so face your fears and do it. Be creative in your endeavors to face the self and change, but, above all, do something new and different. Look, act, or do something that is totally new. Deviate from habit and expectation and go in an unexpected direction. This will help immensely! Be a new you. Start now!

Pick your joy! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Pick your joy!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Start with something you can really do, see, and feel. Dress differently. Change something about your appearance. Be daring and unpredictable. Be fearless. Above all, make your life’s challenges fun. Set the intent to dissipate the intensity of your challenges and make light of them. In some way you will discover or be shown how to do this; just intend it and then see what happens. No matter how dire you consider your circumstances, the universe will support you. The universe will laugh, not in ridicule but only with pure joy, with the pure joy of release and acquiescence. Let joy from the universe come through to you in some way today.

So, change the self in some tiny way today, or even in a big way if that is your penchant, remaining fully aware that you are doing so. Even if no one else detects your change or your joyousness, you will know of it and that, My Dears, is enough of a secret joy to carry you forward—smiling!

This all takes work, but it’s work that is well worth it!