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Chuck’s Place: The Predator Teacher

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We live in a predatory universe… beware!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Is it diabolical that a mosquito, tick, bacteria, or virus  feeds upon the matter and substance of our physical bodies? A nuisance, and in some cases a lethal nuisance indeed, yet, we begrudgingly accept this negative symbiotic reality as a feature of our physical world.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico concur that our universe is a predatory universe. They describe this dynamic as operational at an even more subtle energetic level as well, that of an inorganic yet living entity that feeds upon the human energy produced by human emotion. Although negative in its draining of human energy, it also serves as a teacher that helps humans evolutionarily advance, if they can learn how to master its parasitic onslaught.

This opportunity, and the need for mastery over it, is ever so obvious in the conditions of our current world predicament. Outwardly, we are bombarded daily with the most outrageous of words and behaviors, incessantly taxing our emotional reserves, resulting in extreme volatility and emotional exhaustion.

These onslaughts fill the airwaves and social media, captivating modern life. Closer to home, beyond the politics of now, are our own personal longings for attention and validation, our own deepest needs compulsively seeking to bind us to screens.

Inwardly, we too are prey to the promptings of self-importance and self-pity, seeking outlet in an upward spiral of ecstatic inflation, or in a downward vortex, sending us into a bottomless pit of tortured longing and sadness. These volatile tendencies within ourselves often manifest in cycles of addictive attachments.

Shamans maintain that these various pathways of emotional activation are generated by an inorganic entity, which they have dubbed the flyer, through the judgments of offense that our internal dialogue incessantly broadcasts. Those judgements are directed toward self and other. They, in turn, generate a wave of emotional energy, the food for the flyer.

To free the self of this depleting symbiotic trap, shamans recommend a furtive effort of detachment, which they call the warrior’s way. The goal of the warrior’s way is to gain freedom from the bindings of attachment, first and foremost to being offended. If one can remain sober and detached in the face of offensive words and behaviors, none of one’s energy is lost in the encounter.

To accomplish this, one must lose one’s attachment to self-importance. Self-importance is generally garnered through validation by others, a highly dependent and vulnerable position, which leads to endless emotional strife. Rather than turn over one’s power to another’s validation, the guidance is to face the truth of one’s self within. Acceptance of, and the ability to laugh at, one’s self, goes a long way in cancelling out the impact of the judgments of others.

Self-esteem becomes acceptance of the whole truth of one’s actual self, good and bad. Inappropriate behavior by others is properly placed as their problem to face and resolve, and not as offense to one’s own self. This does not mean that we don’t strategically decide how to manage inappropriate behavior, however, we do so with truthful sobriety rather than with offense.

Freed of the emotional activation generated by judgments within and without, we advance in maturity. We accrue the energy that grants us the power to act decisively, with precision. No energy is wasted in feeding the predator. The predator is defeated when we deny it the energy of our emotional disgust and defeat.

In this time of flagrant predatory human behavior, we are all offered the opportunity to advance beyond the narcissistic emotional web of the predator, who constantly stirs up and then feeds upon our emotional turmoil. We don’t have to keep playing that game.

I prefer to punctuate the positive opportunity of this seemingly depressed and depressing time. I envision the predator as our ultimate teacher.

The predator, as teacher, shines the spotlight upon our attachment to self-importance, showing us the emotional trap where the greatest work needs to be done, and where the largest storehouse of our energy lies, waiting to be retrieved. Once we close this emotional trap drain, we open ourselves to a whole new world of freedom. Freedom to be.

Being,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Always Return to the Heart

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Find the heart everywhere…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Sadly, but truthfully, human beings are a truly cancerous species, malignantly acting upon the planet. Actually, to be more precise, it’s the current state of the human ego, not the full human being, that carries the disease.

Oddly, the human ego is capable of a quality of consciousness that affords it freedom to choose action beyond the binding instructions of instinct and archetype, a remarkable freedom. The downside of having this ability is the obvious abuse of its power, which has led to the diseased condition the planet is now plagued with.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico trace this ego malady to the predatory reality of the universe, where all life is sustained by feeding upon other life. From their cosmology, or seeing, what preys upon the human species is an inorganic species that actually feeds upon the energy released by human emotion.

In the case of us humans, this predatory species fixates our human awareness upon worries about survival and self-importance, thus generating waves of frenzied human emotion that serve as food for this inorganic entity. Thus, our human awareness is fixated at a narcissistic level that constantly seeks attention and validation, that constantly gets offended, and is predominantly motivated to act for essentially self-serving purposes. Human behavior, especially at this time, seems to fit this description perfectly.

The shamans suggest that this predatory entity succeeds in securing our obsessive worry by actually giving us its mind, a mental overlay that is obsessed with its next meal and threats to its survival. Thus, the impact of this entity’s mind on human awareness is to generate the obsessive internal dialogue that plagues human consciousness.

The plus side of this condition is what the shamans call our cubic centimeter of a chance to wake up and free ourselves from this parasitic relationship. Although we are prone to obsess, our ego does have the freedom to choose another option. This is our evolutionary birthright, the freedom to choose. Ironically, it is the encounter with the predator that sharpens consciousness and awakens it to this opportunity to evolve. The dark side of the force has its necessary role.

The key to freedom is to choose the option to turn to the heart over the obsessive mind. The heart is connected to the High SOUL, and hence the deepest truth. If one finds oneself in a condition of worry or strife and one shifts one’s attention to the heart center, one’s ego exits the energetic valence of narcissistic influence and opens to the purity of the heart.

The heart holds compassion for all beings, thus strife is cleansed of its preoccupation with self-interest and offense. Even if the other person clings to their narcissistic preoccupation, one is not personally offended. The heart might determine that strong boundaries are necessary, but it assigns no emotional energy to being offended.

The heart will tell us, and asks us to face, the truth. The heart refuses shame and blame. The heart insists we never put ourselves down nor judge ourselves harshly. The heart’s love is expressed in its full acceptance of all that we are and all that we’ve done. The heart guides us to right action, with love.

The heart also holds the awareness that the universe is a bundle of interconnected energy, that everything is part of the same whole. One sees, in the behavior of the other, a reflection of a part of one’s self, with which one needs to reckon with and accept.

Arriving at the heart center frees one of the narcissistic worldview and allows one to see clearly the true needs of the planet, and act accordingly. Thus, the path to the heart is the path to freedom from our current world crisis. All citizens who walk a path of heart are forging a sustainable solution for the planet.

We are currently challenged with a world leadership that incessantly draws us into a depressed mood, as it mirrors and amplifies the collective ego’s struggle with its narcissistic fixation. The resultant negative emotional wave weakens the ego and feeds the predator.

Seek refuge in the broadened perspective of the heart space. Have compassion for leadership’s struggle, but maintain ruthless insistence upon the truth of the heart.

Walk the path of love upon this Earth. Love is the one  powerful emotion that can’t be touched by the predator. Love indeed conquers all.

Breathing into the heart,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Injured Maybe, Offended Never

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Never get offended…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

When it really matters, when we are really threatened, something in us seizes control and acts. Awareness of the acts we perform in this heightened state of awareness may instantly be lost to memory as we shift back to our ordinary state of awareness, like when an intense dream is immediately forgotten upon awakening.

Immediately upon shifting out of these non-ordinary states of reality our internal dialogue takes charge, filling our minds to the brim with the affairs of everyday life, as our just moments ago extraordinary adventures fade into oblivion. In psychoanalytic language, our internal dialogue delivers us to a full blown neurosis. A caricature of how it operates would be a Woody Allen/Doubting Thomas character whose mind incessantly ruminates, doubts, and judges both self and others.

The salient feature of this obsessive thinking is its fixation upon feeling offended by the actions of others or blaming the self for the way things are; in effect, feeling offended by one’s own actions and limitations.

That we all have an internal dialogue is a necessary fact of life. In fact, as the Shamans of Ancient Mexico point out, its incessant defining and judging functions allow us to interpret and navigate the solid world we live in. However, the debilitating side of this nonstop chatter in our minds is that it distracts us from our capacity to live a richer life in a state of heightened awareness.

Indeed, we can be injured by the intentional actions of others, but to attach to the constant  promptings of the internal dialogue, to be offended by the behavior of other or self, is to relegate the lion’s share of one’s energy to inconsequential, emotional self-defeat. Put bluntly, it’s a major waste of energy.

We needn’t obsess to address real occasions of injury, for as previously stated, when needed, something within us will spring forth and act without the necessity of lengthy deliberation. Even the action of freezing, or leaving one’s body under the impact of violent attack, reflects instinctive knowing of how best to survive. The internal dialogue is of no value when it really counts.

Shamans recommend freeing oneself from spending one’s energy on feeling offended. The energetic savings accrued by this allows one to gain greater access to living in a richer state of heightened awareness, where one enjoys, and is fully present to, all that is possible in life.

Don Juan Matus calls this state the mood of the warrior, where one is fully energetically alive in each moment in a state of inner silence. Pragmatically, this entails refusing the promptings of the internal dialogue to attach to any interpretations of being offended, and responding instead to the actual presenting needs of each moment.

The thinking mind might have a role in deliberating a decision, but silence allows the truth of the heart to spark spontaneous right action. This is living in the Tao of heightened awareness.

The best guidance for freeing oneself from the energy drain and limiting perspective of the internal dialogue is to allow it to just be, to not engage it, to not argue with or fight against it. Rather than be offended by life, particularly in this time of great offensive talk, respond like a warrior who acts from the place of what is truly needed to survive and prevail, in the best interest of all.

Yes, acknowledge that the acts of others can injure you, and do take decisive action to protect the self whenever necessary, but don’t waste any energy on being offended by the acts of others, as the internal dialogue would have you do.

Finally, place no attachment on the outcome of your decisive actions; fulfillment is already achieved in the purity of the warrior’s decisive act.

Without offense,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: To Not Be Offended

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Don’t let obstructions get in your way, just let it flow…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The ruling intent of this time is to offend. Energetically, it’s a brilliant system to galvanize and employ human energy to achieve its goals. Indeed, it’s as Machiavellian as the human battery pods of The Matrix. How do we not give away our energy by becoming offended?

There is a distinction between being impacted and being offended. Offensive words generate deeds that definitely impact. The reality of impact should be acknowledged to the self and trusted others.

However, to be offended by a malicious act is a one-way ticket to the black hole of defeatism. In defeatism we lose our vital energy to the oppressor. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico observed that the greatest tyrant of them all had taken up residence in the human psyche.

Carol Tiggs, the Nagual Woman of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage, called that tyrant Bobby the Flyer. Bobby is the self-condemning voice in every human being that sentences us to that black hole of utter defeat. Bobby uses our incessant internal dialogue to keep us unworthy, stuck in our internal prison of inadequacy.

How many times a day do we hear the following words, inside our heads: “I’m bad.” “I’m inadequate.” “I’ll never be able to…”  Or, “I don’t deserve.” The internal dialogue’s commentary on outer events is equally incessantly judging: “They treat me unfairly.” “I don’t matter.” Or “they look better, younger, thinner, more stylish, or, they’re more articulate…than me.”

Thus, outer offense mirrors the inner offense of Bobby the Flyer. Internally, the impact of attaching to offense is to define the boundary of the self with the belief that nothing will ever change. This overarching negative belief keeps our spirit in check.

To free the spirit we must free it from offense. A preponderance of offensive words are being personally intended now. How can we then say that it isn’t personal, when it clearly is? Everything is designed to personally impact and it does; it hurts. Hurt is hurt, but it’s not offense.

Offense is an abstract, subjective interpretation. When Victor Frankl was denied his most basic of human rights, he chose not to be offended by his oppressors. Instead he chose to save his energy, to place his attention on positive thoughts and memories that could sustain him. And he survived where many died, depleted of their vital energy by the black hole of defeatism.

In the martial art of Aikido, much attention is placed on the imbalanced energy of the oncoming attacker and how to strategically receive it. No attention is wasted on being offended by one’s attacker. To be offended is to lose focus, which could be fatal. Martial artists and shamans alike know the value of losing any attachment to self-importance if one is to hone abilities and preserve energy.

Self-importance should not be confused with self-worthiness. Unseat Bobby the Flyer. With meditation or magical passes learn to silence the internal dialogue. Assert your basic worthiness to the self, but don’t get caught in needing others to validate it. That’s a sure ticket to the black hole of defeatism.

Ironically, the biggest petty tyrant of our times is daring us to not be offended by him; it may be the only way to actually defeat him! Beyond that, he offers us the exercise of truly learning to preserve our energy for the deeply challenging times now unfolding upon this planet.

May we all have compassion for all beings.

Without offense,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place : Dweller & Angel

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Dare to trespass and grapple with the dweller!
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

The dweller* is the ruler of the subconscious, in the basement of our human being personality. I also call the dweller the little soul of the personality. The dweller is bound to nature’s survival instinct with sex in the forefront for species survival, and food, shelter, material resource and power acquisition its focus at the level of personal survival.

The dweller relies upon nature’s instinctual archetypes to maintain physical homeostasis and prompt behavioral action. The dweller is extremely conservative, it stays with what works, the programs that have ensured planetary evolutionary survival. These programs are encoded in our DNA, our ancestral memory and, ultimately, in our deepest karma, our high SOUL’s purpose for sending us into this earthly life.

The dweller doesn’t think and is not open to change. Like a conservative fundamentalist, it follows, without question, the commandments of the archetypes. In the absence of new orders it stays with what works. Even if one has been miserable an entire life, from the dweller’s perspective this represents successful survival and, hence, it is loathe to allow new, consciously sought after behaviors to stick. In fact, like a hidden sniper, it patiently awaits its opportunity to defeat them.

The ego Soul, bearer of consciousness, lives in the ground floor of the human personality, as a result of its decision to gain knowledge and make its own decisions in Eden, resulting in its banishment from nature, the dweller’s domain in the basement. Curiously, though the dweller is bound to its programs, like a willing soldier it immediately responds to orders from elsewhere, such as from ego Soul, influential others, or public opinion.

This, in a nutshell, is the heart of hypnosis. The hypnotist becomes the ruler of the dweller through suggestions that the dweller enacts upon command. In fact, we, as ego Souls, are all self-hypnotists, constantly sending suggestions to the dweller through the repetitive internal dialogue of our thoughts. Thus the dweller manifests in the body in how we think about ourselves.

This includes our central nervous system, which the dweller oversees. Thus, if we tell ourselves we are not safe, the dweller activates neurological signals and chemical processes that mold us into body-clenching, anxious beings. If we maintain this belief system over time, the dweller institutes this habitual thought pattern as a permanent program, with its resulting body state—however uncomfortable it may be—as a proven survival program, the dweller’s guiding priority.

Here we witness the familiar vicious cycle of ego Soul attempting to enact change by exercising intent, discipline, mantra, or downright discipline and, after some optimistic initial success, ultimately being defeated. The hidden dynamic is the dweller, at first following ego Soul’s orders but actually opposed to them, laying in wait for a vulnerable moment to defeat the ego Soul’s heroic efforts with doubt and defeatism, whereby restoring the more trustworthy program of familiar hell. In truth, the ego Soul might willingly collude with the dweller’s plot, as glimpses of the unfamiliar lightness of being might scare the ego to death!

Often, ego Soul turns to the upstairs occupant of its human personality, the high Self, who is connected to the high SOUL, to seek solace and guidance and, frankly, to escape from the dweller’s paralyzing grip, which repeatedly freezes the possibility of change. Thus, we might turn to inspirational music, prayer, or positive self-help books to infuse ourselves with the positive energy of heaven, seeking release from the darkness of our private hell.

Dweller in Angel, contained…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Many religions offer the technology to cast out and cut off the devil dweller and identify instead with the beings of light: saints and angels. Psychologically, this often results in a state of dissociation where a major part of the psyche is disowned, the consequences of which, in extreme form, can be seen in bipolar disorder, where one swings from living a powerful identification with the dweller to a powerful identification with pure angel.

The plight of the Catholic Church, as well as many institutions and individuals outed by #MeToo, reflects the consequences of the disowned dweller unleashed in the dark, contrasted by only the sunny angel appearing in the light of day. Out-of-body practitioners must also be aware of their own physical body dweller, as the tendency of New Age technologies is to covet the light and disown the dweller in the dark basement. If you are in human form there is no escaping the force of the dweller.

Ironically, both Jung and Trump agree on one thing: we must construct the walls of a mandala sanctuary within if we are to safely integrate the powerful forces at all levels of the personality: little soul, ego Soul and SOUL. Trump reflects everyman/woman in his struggle to contain those forces within himself and has consequently become a major channel to the dark collective dweller archetypes that are currently wreaking havoc on the human playing field. Would that Trump would grasp that his projected wall must be created within himself!

Trump’s journey is instructive to everyone. We all possess the dweller, the angel, and an ego. We must use our ego to fully own all that we are. We must create a container, build that wall within, versus identifying exclusively with dweller or angel while projecting the dark side outside of ourselves onto someone else, or some other race.

As we bear the tension of our mandala container in our own body, with the dweller’s help we can turn toward the angel for inspiration and comfort. And then, well, see what happens! This is the journey of soul to meet its higher SOUL, the topic of next week’s blog. Until then, build your inner wall mandala, the sanctuary and proving ground for your own personal journey of wholeness and completion.

Contained,

Chuck

*I am deeply indebted to Elmer Green and his life’s opus, The Ozawkie Book of the Dead, for introducing the term dweller in the context I use it. Jan and I are on our fifth reading of this treasured three-volume masterpiece. It is truly a diamond, cultivated from the rough work of living a fully explored life.

Also Please Note: We are currently publishing Chuck’s blogs on Tuesdays.