Tag Archives: Kundalini

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Chuck’s Place: The Greatest Love Affair Of All

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The subconscious becoming conscious…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The ultimate love affair, in Hindu cosmology, the union of Shakti and Shiva, takes place within the human body. Shakti, in her energetic form, as Kundalini, rests in the coccyx, at the base of the human spine. Kundalini is the divine manifesting substance and force  of all creation. Shiva, the God of pure consciousness, resides at the crown of the human head.

These divine consorts, situated at the opposite poles of the spinal column, are also oppositely charged. Shakti is negative and Shiva is positive. The resulting magnetic force of attraction of these opposites draws this divine couple irresistibly toward the goal of union.

The union of Shakti and Shiva is the union of Spirit, which is consciousness, and Matter, which is the creative energy of all material manifestation. The progeny of their union is the  world we live in. This dynamic union and creation is expressed in Judeo-Christian cosmology in John’s Gospel, “in the beginning was the word (Spirit consciousness) and the word was made flesh (Matter).”

Upon awakening early one morning, I was contemplating Shakti and Shiva’s relationship when Jan abruptly woke from a dream. She told me she had just been in India, where a very tall ladder that had pointed vertically into the heavens was brought down and positioned horizontally, both balanced and secure, across several buildings.

Jan reflected that the roof is the highest spiritual point of a building that is grounded in the earth. The message of the dream: the spiritual journey that is needed now is not a vertical rise, out-of-body into the heavens, but instead a horizontal in-body journey, as one traverses the challenges of their human life, with all its relationships upon the Earth.

These challenges are neatly laid out in Hindu science, as the path that Kundalini traverses through the chakras, or subtle energy power stations along the spine, en route to Shiva. Actually, each chakra entails its own horizontal journey, which requires mastery as we move toward greater fulfillment in life.

The base of the spine center asks us to find grounding, safety and security. The genital region introduces us to sexual and creative energy, which entail their own developmental processes. The solar plexus introduces us to I, as ego, and the mastery of personal power. The heart introduces us to our connection to our Spirit and deepest truth. The throat is about finding our voice. The third eye brings forth intuition. As Kundalini reaches Shiva, at the crown, consciousness unites and becomes one with all creation. In a human life, the fulfillment of this state is experienced as we relax increasingly deeper into ever-widening equanimous love.

The duality of Shakti and Shiva is also expressed in the two minds of the human psyche: the subconscious mind and the ego.

The subconscious, Shakti, is feminine in its receptivity to suggestions. The subconscious has access to all knowledge and creative possibility, as well as the substance to birth new life, but, without union with the novel suggestions of consciousness, is governed by instinctual programs and habits.

The ego, Shiva, is identified with life in the physical body and is the seat of consciousness. Regardless of gender, ego is masculine in its active thinking capabilities. It is the seat of free will and decision making.

The human ego has many developmental challenges it must master, similar to those identified with the chakras. Ego must establish safety and grounding; be introduced to and master sexuality and its animal self, as well as exercise its own capacity to intend creation; become autonomous and have the power of self-assertion; develop humility and acquiescence to truth and its High Spirit Self; use its voice; see beyond its narcissistic shell; and, ultimately, become one with everything.

The subconscious faces no developmental challenges because the subconscious is completely fluid, it can be anything. In contrast to the ego, the subconscious is attached to no identity; it simply responds to the suggestion it entertains at the current moment.

The challenge in human development is for ego to be in the correct relationship with the subconscious mind. Essentially, the ego is the creator, issuing forth the word or image of intent, whose suggestion fertilizes the subconscious, which then galvanizes its substance to manifest new life. The subconscious, in all of us, is the true mother of creation.

If ego does not master safety, it suggests danger to the subconscious, which then manifests an anxious, vigilant personality. If ego suggests inadequacy, the subconscious may manifest a tightened voice. If ego suggests superiority, the subconscious may manifest a pompous, condescending posture and attitude. If ego suggests entitlement to the subconscious, it may manifest a tendency to violate boundaries.

If, on the other hand, the ego aligns with and suggests the truth, the subconscious will open the eye to greater truth and perception. If the ego suggests true love to the subconscious, it activates an energy that draws to us resonant energy. If ego suggests it stay in alignment with its Spirit’s purpose, the subconscious will synchronistically manifest that yellow brick road.

The guidance here is to remain quite protective of the suggestions one both exposes oneself to, as well as personally presents to, the subconscious mind. We live in a time where highly suggestive messages are bombarding both our thinking and subconscious minds at an unprecedented rate, largely due to our attachment to devices, the self-importance of dings, and well-coordinated efforts to infiltrate and influence our subconscious minds.

At the most evolved level, the relationship between ego and subconscious is equivalent to the love affair between Shakti and Shiva. Ego, acting from the insinuation of its Spirt, joining with the magic of the subconscious, is truly the greatest love affair of all. May we all participate in birthing that dream.

With consciousness and infinite possibility,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Maturity Of Elemental Emotion

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Maturing…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

How is one not broken open listening to some version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah? Halle means praise, and jah, as the Rasta’s confirm, is God. Praise God!

The emotions aroused in listening to Hallelujah are transcendent bliss and love. These emotions, as reflected in Cohen’s lyrics (which evolved over many years), are refined from hungry sexuality and sensuality to the most expansive level of sublime spiritual union at a soul level.

The soul is the subtle dimension of a human being, which animates the physical body. The soul is composed of elemental emotional substance, as well as mental substance. Emotions are the soul’s passionately magnetic agents of desire that attract to it the substance and body of the human being we become.

The life we enter is constructed to fulfill our High Self’s karmic quest. That which must be fulfilled is the mission of the soul’s desire body, replete with its active body of elemental emotions. Part of that karmic mission is to refine its raw emotional substance to the pure innocence of mature love in human endeavors, attachments and relationships throughout life.

At the primal level of physical life, emotions are the desires that serve our instinctual imperatives to eat, protect and reproduce. Refined through the vicissitudes of human life, emotions draw us into spiritual communion with our source in infinity.

The  active elemental energies present in human emotion are latent elemental forces in all of nature. Fire, for instance, is a consuming elemental of nature that enacts necessary change, as old life is cleared to prepare the ground for new. Human beings have refined nature’s fire to produce warmth and edible food.

Within the human soul the latent elemental of fire is passion, a highly charged emotion that at a base level can lead to violence or simply gruff carnal union.  At a more refined level, passion can motivate a great technological advance, such as AI (artificial intelligence), a revolution currently descending upon us.

Actually, our technological advances, while fueled by elemental passion, are largely accomplished through the rational thinking of the mind, also housed in the human soul, in the mental body.

Our ability to reason is quite advanced, hence we are readily capable of sussing out the subtle elemental properties of the elements in nature, then recombining them to our seemingly unlimited material advantage.

Unfortunately, the ego’s refinement of elemental emotions has not kept pace with its refinement of its mental acuity. Thus greed and dominance have infused our technological advance with irresponsible intent.

The Hindu technology of yoga offers a clear path for the maturation of elemental emotions through the intentional rising of kundalini energy along the progressive energy centers, called chakras, that connect the soul body to the physical body.

Kundalini is the ultimate elemental life force energy that rises from the base of the spine, the root of our stability, through our sexual core to the solar plexus, the center of ego power.

As we align with the guidance of our Higher Self, at the heart center, our ability to speak our deepest truth opens at the throat, then travels to our intuitive center at the third eye. The crowning achievement of spiritual refinement is  enlightenment and deep empathy at the seventh chakra, at the top of the head.

Oftentimes, we might notice our throat tighten if we have an intense emotion and want to speak. Energetically we are experiencing an unrefined elemental emotion, too dense for transmission through the higher chakra channels.

In this case, the emotion might require further processing at a physical level, perhaps through belly screaming at the level of the solar plexus before it can move upward to the compassion center at the heart and then be calmly communicated through the larynx.

A psychological approach to elemental maturity involves similar dynamics at different centers of the soul. The subconscious mind is the base energy center of the soul that has the raw materials, desires and knowhow to manifest anything. The subconscious does not think, it follows orders via suggestions.

The ego, at the mental body center of the soul, has the power of consciousness and free will. The ego is the main character in a human life, orphaned by, yet on its assigned mission from, its High Self.

The ego must struggle to develop confidence and rise above its narcissistic infatuation with power. The ego’s charge, the hero’s journey, is to refine the desire body’s elemental emotions into love, its highest possible development.

The supra-conscious center of the soul houses the High Self, which supports the ego through its suffering journey of human life to transform its karmic elemental roots into the heights of spiritual purity and transcendental love.

Human life unfolds as a growing interaction between these tripartite  centers of the soul—the subconscious, the ego, and the supra-conscious—as ego gradually wakes up and moves toward greater acquiescence to the mission of its High Self in this life. And with that accomplishment we truly can sing Hallelujah!

Hallelujah,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: The Soul of Desire

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Soul rising…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Without desire human reproduction would lose its potency; there would be no future generation. At a fundamental level, desire is the vehicle of the High Soul’s intent for human life to continue and evolve.

The human ego possesses the consciousness to act from its own free will. The ego, with this freedom, enjoys its ability to take control over its inherent archetypal promptings, employing its instinctive energies as it sees fit.

Thus, for example, the ego can break ranks with the archetypes governing sexual behavior, in an exploitative way. This is what gives rise to sexual abuse, where the ego chooses to deviate from the inherent rules of sexual behavior, an example of which would be ignoring the incest taboo.

The ego is also freed to engage in sexual relations at any time of month, breaking ranks with the archetypal programs that control hormonal activation of desire at fertile times only. Individuals can create hormonal releases and bodily changes that activate desire through their own mind’s conjuring of fantasy.

Senior citizens can engage in sexual activity without any support from instinctual urging, simply through the spiritual refinement of love for their partner. When does one ever see senior citizen animals engage in sexual behavior?

Freud called the energy of desire libido. Besides supplying the energy for sexual functioning, Freud declared that sublimated libido provided the energy for creativity, and civilization itself.

Yogic science calls the energy of desire kundalini. Kundalini energy rests at the base of the spine. From there, it rises to innervate the ascending chakras, throughout an individual’s lifetime. Spiritual aspirants often close the door to the second chakra, the sexual center, to pressure kundalini to rise through the chakras with the goal of enlightenment.

Shamans call the energy of desire dreaming energy. For shamans, reaching the energy body with lucidity and control are the requirements to explore life beyond the physical body while in human form.

While not explicitly prohibiting sexual activity, shamans encourage their apprentices to accumulate their sexual energy in order to accrue the sum of energy necessary to explore infinity. All religious traditions similarly place a premium on regulating sexual energy for spiritual advancement.

The soul of sexual desire insures our birth as human beings, which then initiates a developmental journey that introduces us to sexual desire, as well as the ability to have power over, and desire for, objects of the material world. For many, this might represent the fullness of life.

For others, that soul journey might rise to the spiritual dimension of love for all interdependent beings, as well as union with the High Soul in infinity.

It could be argued that desire is the High Soul’s vehicle for the ego to ultimately reach love, which is the operating principle of the next stage of human evolution. Beyond the battlefield of now is love, the inevitable victor.

The world will only survive and thrive when it rises to the heart center, where love alone governs human behavior. That journey is fraught with a labyrinth of perils and illusions, but traversing it successfully is the key to the kingdom, both here on Earth and beyond.

For certain, the journey of desire, regardless of its current fixation, is indeed, a journey of soul.

With love for all,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Endurance

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Kundalini energy rising…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I would be neglectful indeed, in my duty as a licensed psychotherapist, were I not to validate the obvious current world predicament: walking the razor’s edge of latent collective psychosis. I would also be neglectful in my duty as a transpersonal psychotherapist were I not to share my vision of the multidimensional drama that veils our vision, just as the sands of the Sahara now blanket the world. Beyond the veil of ignorance coated by those desert sands lies the path of heart, the path of our redemption.

Psychosis, in modern psychological nomenclature, depicts a mental state where the ego, as the central governing force of the personality, sinks into the abyss of unconscious forces, as the personality becomes a rudderless ship taken over by the turbulent forces of nature. That violent nature, generally subdued by the matador, is overrun by the bull, the ultimate surge of a bull market, an inflation that refuses to yield to the axiom: what goes up must come down.

In earlier times, when modern psychology was expressed in spiritual terms, our current situation would be understood as the activation of the gods, what we now term the archetypes, competing with their enormous instinctual energies, in a game of chess with humans as their channeled pawns.

From a transpersonal perspective, the war we are in is ego vs archetype. When archetype possesses ego we risk psychosis. Ego’s challenge in such an onslaught, is to endure. To endure is to resist the enticing power and energy of the archetypes, the fine print of which is a truly Mephistophelian contract: total possession, loss of soul, slavery to the activated archetype.

Archetypes are spirit entities that program a species, the deeply subconscious patterns that rule instinctual life. They enjoyed total domination for millennia until the birth of human consciousness, an event that introduced the possibility of refusing or manipulating the emotional intensity and compulsion of instinct.

This power wrestled from the archetypes upset their balance and control over human life. Suppression and repression of instinct renders archetypes dormant but not dead. Jung wrote often, before the outbreak of WWII, that Wotan, the restless wanderer god of pagan origin, was stirring from the primordial depths, seizing control of the collective German psyche.

Inspiration from the archetypes seeks outlet in human life and is channeled, by human egos, in highly emotional spirited messages. The power and energy of these spirit forces are contagious, stirring frenzy in the masses. Their identifying mark is their disdain for reason, the human ego prison guard of instinctual energies. There is no reasoning with an archetype, instinct alone prevails.

Endurance is the capacity of the ego to weather the storms of passion without falling prey to possession. From a chakra perspective this is accomplished by containing the kundalini energy, the energy of the archetypes, forcing it to rise to the level of the heart chakra.

Pragmatically, this means refusing to engage the emotions of anger and sadness that feed the archetypes. Instead, go inward and exert calm over the excited kundalini emotion that begs outlet in excited action. Calm the autonomic nervous system with its typically unregulated dominance over the body. Send its energy through the breath to the cool respite of the heart chakra.

The heart chakra is the direct link to the Buddhic plane, the home of truth, love, and compassion. Kundalini at the level of the heart acquiesces to serve the High SOUL, as the true guide to right action. The pressure of world survival now is to rise to the level of action in conformance with true need over subjective want, it’s that simple.

All humans of all political persuasions are subject to this rising tide of kundalini energy seeking refuge in planetary survival. May the eyes of the masked and the unmasked meet in loving embrace.

From a transpersonal perspective, our current brush with psychosis is really our collective walking along the razor’s edge above the abyss, as we seek the solidity of higher ground.

Humanity is charged with raising the spiritual level of the planet beyond the blind control of the archetypes. The heart center is our destiny. May we endure this grueling transformation fueled with love for all. All for one, one for all.

With loving endurance,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Kundalini Rising

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We are in the time of the great healing crisis…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Tragic, the burning of Notre Dame. It takes us to the heart and the intent to rebuild. The energy, contained for centuries in this monolithic structure of Catholicism, has been released and will be reformed in its reconstruction.

Pope Benedict spoke from retirement last week, proclaiming, in a letter, the source of sexual abuse in the Church to be linked to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the free love of the 1960’s. His prescription for reformation is in keeping with similar calls throughout the world for conservatism as the solution.

His letter reflects, at the highest level, the schism within the Church. Pope Benedict reflects the power of control at the third chakra, will. Pope Francis calls for love at the fourth chakra, all-encompassing. The mounting energy of this schism can be depicted as kundalini energy rising and bursting forth, in flames, in the split between these two chakras.

In America, the same schism is being exploited and the fires stoked. Some hold to the true spirit of the American Dream, the heart chakra. Others hold that that dream is over, that America is full, back to an old conservatism, the third chakra. The same schism confronts Israel. And though Netanyahu emerges victorious, Beresheet crashed into the moon.

At the deepest level, all these local tragedies are signs of the earth’s healing crisis. That crisis is the earth’s reformation, as the farmers of the Midwest can well attest. Healing will require rising to the objective truth of what is needed to survive at a fully interconnected level, beyond all special interests.

Consider Katie Bouman’s modest contribution to the algorithm that made possible the first viewing of a black hole. The key was to bring all telescopes on the earth together as one. The ability to merge the data as one produced the light of consciousness that takes us deeper into the mystery of us all.

The fires rage and the destruction is painful. Nonetheless, the healing crisis, well underway, portends new life, on more solid ground.

Present,

Chuck