You are one complete interconnected unit of energy and when one area or part of you is not well the whole of you suffers. Protect your energy. Seek balance and harmony within the self at all times, questioning everything as to whether or not it is right for you, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. How are you being affected? What can you really handle? Pay attention so that your inner world is in harmony at all times. In so doing, your experiences in the outer world will be equally in harmony.
In my dream, I have rewired the lighting; it’s not fully operational. A silent, hostile female figure is rifling through my jewelry. I confront her. In Jan’s dream, she opens the passenger door of a dump truck as it’s unloading. Stan Grof is driving. He greets her with a big smile and eyes filled with gentle kindness.
Next I pull the tarot card for Lust (XI). Having tamed the beasts, this Anima Mundi is in complete alignment with the energy of the sun. Jan pulls the 6 of Disks: success that comes from deep within and manifests without.
I check an email from Cleargreen. I read in it a quote from don Juan that I am very familiar with: “I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it is a world of objects.” As I read this quote aloud all the lights in the house go out. A brief glitch, then electricity is restored.
I open to Cherokee Woman’s wisdom for February 12th: Picking herbs with her grandmother when she is a little girl, she hopes she won’t have to eat them in her salad greens. She shifts focus to other dimensions of energy: the warmth of the sun and her love of being in nature with her grandmother.
Next I open the astrological Time Passages app. Moon is in Scorpio, with emphasis on energy at the level of the personality. I check my daily horoscope aspects. I feel resonance with the directive, “don’t be overly critical of others.”
I read aloud the next letter in Last Letters From The Living Dead Man, the chapter entitled, The Watchers. We learn that most souls are only partly incarnated into physical reality. The High Self is the Silent Watcher who waits in infinity as it watches and allows the personality to learn its lessons, sending occasional messages of guidance, support, or challenge. The suggestion is made to see the Silent Watcher in everyone, regardless of the current state of their personality. The Judge, himself a Watcher who dictates the letter, points out his own influence upon the souls in this world through his concentrated thought that is picked up here telepathically.
End of vignettes.
These vignettes depict a typical morning flow. I share them to demonstrate how to track the magic, the magic of the flow of energy from and through our multidimensional selves.
This blog is written on the morning described above. A previous version had been written two days earlier, as I pushed to complete it to make room for other upcoming activities. That ego push proved disappointing; though the ideas were stirring they truly weren’t ready to be gelled by the guiding hand of Spirit.
Dreams are the royal road to communication and interaction with the subtler dimensions of life. Dreaming occurs in brain frequencies that, like trance, allow for communication and education between energetic dimensions.
My dream pointed out that the wiring I had redone was inadequate for an enlightened space. The Silent Watcher antagonist pointed to the jewelry, the persona/ego/personality dimension that emphasizes the will and emotion.
Jan’s dream pointed to the clearing of the deeper transpersonal dimension of the self via Mr. Transpersonal himself, Stan Grof. To arrive at this level, one must first tame the beasts of the personality as the Tarot card of Lust depicts. Jan’s card emphasizes that success requires a balance, as within so without.
The shaman’s world chimes in with the affirmation that yes, the self is both pure energy and solid object, but start with the knowledge that all is energy first. The Silent Watcher trickster totally enjoyed this teaching moment, cutting the power, the energy, at a synchronistic moment. Synchronicity with nature is an ever-present meeting place between dimensions of self.
The emphasis on energy first is picked up by Judge Hatch, in his missives from the afterlife, as he suggests that we try to observe the High Self in everyone. Though it may not be currently emphasized within the behavior of the personality, we are all energy first, Spirit beings. This focus helps one break the negativity of critical judgement suggested by my astrological reading, which also pointed to the need for emotional work at the subconscious personality level of Moon in Scorpio.
Astrology, Tarot and the I Ching are comprehensive meeting places for the Silent Watcher’s reflection of the overall state of the Self. Books of wisdom, or simply any books randomly opened, are also meeting places for Spirit’s messages, portrayed through written words.
Cherokee Woman also prescribes a method to step beyond the dominance of the wanting personality and into deeper energetic truth. She suggests taking advantage of awakening from mental ruminations that generate dullness in the moment to discover the luster of love and a private meeting with Self.
Finally, the Judge alerts us to the powerful impact of concentrated thought that issues from the Spirit dimension of being and is telepathically received at the solid body dimension of the human brain. Synchronous communications frequently come to me in the form of thoughts—great ideas!—that for years my ego assumed were its own!
Thought energy operates on a shared frequency between dimensions that makes possible the transmission of thought from the more subtle planes of reality to this dimension, as well as among beings currently in human form. Don’t let the solid boundary of the physical body fool you. Thoughts are energetic and permeable, completely transparent at an energetic level. Remember, as don Juan emphasizes, energy first!
Be mindful to not inflate the ego with thought ownership and instead employ its reasoning capabilities to discern the validity of thoughts from beyond. If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it!
Every one of us tracks the magic of our multidimensional selves daily. The more we awaken to the fullness of ourselves, the more fully informed and participatory we become to the magic of all that is possible.
Suspend judgment of self and other as you weather through these turbulent times, as you watch the world change, and as you change as well. For how can you not be effected by the suffering all around you, by the frustrations and needs of the many? What happens to one happens to all. For everything is interconnected in the greater interconnected universe, that which is good and that which is not, that which is kind and that which is not, that which is loving and that which is not. Find your way to the greater interconnected good that is kind and loving, and do your part to spread positive energy within the greater interconnected universe in every breath you take, in every thought and every action. A warrior, no matter the circumstances, chooses a path with heart and anticipates a positive outcome.
With no ego whatsoever we would simply be pure energy, without a cohesive identity.
Ego is the stamp of our individual personality that marks our unique journey in this life.
Because of ego’s access to awareness, it knows it is a being who must someday die as a human being. How obvious the natural reaction to this fact being ego’s rush to embrace its importance and value, while in this life. This is how ego acquires its negative connotation as ego preoccupied with Ego.
Primary narcissism, Freud’s postulate that ego’s first obsession is with its own self, is ego’s enduring challenge to transcend in this life. For ego to pass through this developmental stage and take in a world greater than itself is a formidable task. Yet, only from this greater perspective can ego grasp the true interconnected reality of the world and position itself appropriately to this broader Self.
Decision making is an ego function. We are beings who must take responsibility for our decisions. It has been my experience that only decisions which align with the truth of Spirit come to manifestation. Actually, I have been aligning with this intent my entire life. Even when the ego has reasonably convinced me of the rightness of an action, it gains no traction in the field of manifestation if it is truly not aligned with Spirit.
“Let go and let God” does not absolve us from actively tracking the design of Spirit and assuming personal responsibility for right action. Right action is ego acting without Ego; ego discerning the synchronicities, the language of Spirit, and acting in consort with the intent of these messages.
Our world is currently on a dramatic pregnant pause. Nature is truly in charge now, though ego clearly has its necessary role. Decisions must be made both by world leaders as well as by individuals. Every individual has the personal responsibility to wash their own hands and face the truth of their own potential contagion.
World leaders are challenged to rise above the local fixation of self-importance and address the true needs of the whole planet. Nature is grooming the ego to take the next developmental step beyond primary narcissism: ego without Ego.
A vast sum of human energy is being stockpiled now, like the current glut of oil, usually spent motorizing the world. This undeployed energy is the currency of our energetic potential. The world’s forced pause is asking ego to ponder its truths.
With our habitual daily behaviors greatly checked, our energetic reserves are growing. For shamans it is energy, and energy alone, that is the key to discovering our energetic potential. Attention withdrawn from a world of objects stirs kundalini, the energy of outer attachment, to awaken to its inner potential.
Take full advantage of this time of solitariness to intend greater access to your fuller energetic potential. Intend your energy body to strengthen its dreaming attention to explore infinity with awareness.
Intend, in dreaming, to travel the world in an instant, flying and discovering in the energy body. Intend the greater good in all worlds, especially the solid world we live in, currently on pregnant pause.
In the outer world of energy consumption, reliance upon fossil fuels is far more of a threat to world survival than a virus. Is our world ego ready to align itself with this truth? What more will the Spirit of Nature need to do to have us act in alignment with this truth?
Pointless to point fingers. Always return to the hologram of self. Take it as a valid hypothesis that those whom you hate the most are mirroring the subterfuge of your own ego’s struggle with Spirit’s intent.
Own your own shadow and reckon with it. It’s not about being good or bad; we all are both, and all must live both. No solace or reconciliation to be found in one-sidedness.
Perfection is incomplete wholeness. Perfection is ego with Ego. Ego in its humbleness can laugh at its own imperfections. Ego that can love can be in full acceptance of everything, yet intend to be impeccable. To be impeccable is to track the designs of Spirit as the overarching intent of a mature ego, an ego without Ego.
Embrace this amazing opportunity we are all being gifted by nature at this time, for ego, without Ego, to discover and journey with Spirit as we manifest a brave new world.
Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.
Yesterday, we sat in the waiting room, Cosi in Jan’s lap, both of us touching her, feeling her vibration, feeling our own sadness. In a few minutes the vet would see us, examine Cosi, and concur with what we already knew. Jan had faced the truth first: we were keeping her alive, she could not live without our intervention, she was in pain, it was time to let her go. Jan had previously fanned the pages of the I Ching in front of Cosi, asking her to show her what needed to happen. Her paw stopped on Hexagram #23 Po, splitting apart, the inevitable, unstoppable collapse of the house. There was no stopping Cosi’s body from splitting apart; it was time to release her energy. After that, Jan opened the book at random three times and each time it fell open on Po. There was no changing the inevitable.
Others came into the waiting room. They had no attachment to our cat. Though they occupied the same room they were in a different, disconnected world. That’s how it is with the human operating system; the archetypal substrate that governs our experience breaks us into units, a world of disconnected solid objects that we learn to differentiate. We are drawn to attach to certain objects to experience our emotional selves as we form bonds with other individuals. Our experience of connectedness beyond those we have attached to is quite limited. Haiti, for instance, is another world. Perhaps we might make a contribution on the cell phone. It is hard really to feel connected for very long beyond our immediate world and those we are emotionally attached to. That is the nature of fragmented, disconnected units. The advantage of fragmentation is the ability to obtain deeper knowledge of a part. In medicine this is called specialization. The challenge for medicine is to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again and see a person as a whole unit, holistic medicine.
This same challenge confronts our world now at a major evolutionary juncture. Our world has reached its limit in sustaining fragmentary beings with special interests. This fragmented world must allow itself to also be a holistic unit. This was don Juan’s conclusion: for this world to survive, it must be able to now be experienced as a world of interconnected energy, as well as a world of solid objects. This was Jeanne’s guidance yesterday. She gives us the image of liquid energy versus solid objects. She describes her experience as one of total detachment, that is, freedom from specialized attachments, which results in the experience of utter calm and pure love and compassion for all. This experience is our birthright, just as much as our experience of the world as one of solid objects is our birthright. For our world to survive, we must make the evolutionary leap to experience our liquid energy birthright and allow the experiences of interconnectedness, utter calm, and totally detached loving compassion for all to flow into our world of solid objects. This will transform how we act and react in a world of solid objects.
Cosi lay on the exam table, calmly awaiting her transformation; we laid our hands upon her and she received her injection. Both Jan and I then simultaneously experienced a subtle swoosh of light energy move from her body, through us, and then beyond. She is now in her pure energy state, the place we are all headed. The opportunity we are being offered now, while in our solid form, is to experience ourselves as liquid energy, all interconnected in a far greater reality. The experience of Cosi, as energy, was a reminder that ultimately we are all destined to return to our pure energetic state. However, we also have the opportunity to experience ourselves in our energetic state while we still reside in our solid human form. In fact, this is what is being required of us now, in order to allow our world of solid objects, itself on the verge of splitting apart, to continue to exist and evolve, to become an interconnected, holistic unit.
This evolutionary challenge is actually urging us to rediscover our energetic birthright because, once we enter the matrix of solid objects, we forget. As don Juan put it, “we are energy first.” As Jeanne put it yesterday, once we find our way to utterly calm and detached loving compassion we discover we are in a familiar, known place; we are home. This place is already in us, we just need to allow ourselves access to it. Can we stay in this place of familiar home, with all its truths, and reenter the world of solid objects, bridging the two and, in so doing, evolve this world into a sustainable world?
As always, should anyone wish to write or ask, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.
