Tag Archives: love

Jan's Blog

Jan’s Dream Insights: Kill The Cobra

Leave a comment

I have been dreaming again. Last Saturday, we published the following dream with our Soulbyte for the day, after the Paris attacks, as it clearly foreshadowed what occurred in Paris on Friday night. Here it is:

Insights from the night bring light into the day... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Insights from the night bring light into the day…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

On Thursday night, I had a numinous dream in which a huge energetic force sucked all energy from the earth, destroying all of nature, revealing what lay buried in the depths of the earth, a large coiled cobra. Then a giant tidal wave came and washed over everything, bringing a new order. I stood calmly as all of this took place around me. After the tidal wave I calmly walked away, followed by the cobra, to higher ground, but all that had been was transformed. The valley that had been a river was now the ocean, transformed from the personal to the universal. This is what I understood as important now: the new world order is universal love and compassion.

Last night I had another dream in which I heard a loud booming voice say: Kill the cobra in the bathtub! At first I thought it ridiculous, there was no cobra in the bathtub! And secondly, I couldn’t kill anything, let alone a cobra, the symbol of spiritual awakening and universal consciousness in my earlier dream!

Upon reflection, I realize that is exactly what must happen. We must kill the cobra in the bathtub. Not to be misconstrued as killing the enemy, but as per the following meaning:

If we are all spirits living a human existence our challenge is to bring spirit fully into our human lives. To do that we must suffer. There must be sacrifice. Think of Christ on the cross, Buddha under the bodhi tree, Jesus in Gethsemane, all examples of suffering leading to enlightenment.

Marie-Louise von Franz, in Shadow and Evil in Fairytales tells a tale of a white horse that guides and protects the protagonist. The white horse tells the protagonist that in order to be saved in the end the protagonist must cut the horse into pieces and throw its severed parts to the four directions. The protagonist is horrified at the idea of killing this beautiful horse that has been its savior and companion, but at the crucial moment does the deed and all is well. Now, back to the cobra in the bathtub.

In the first dream, the cobra followed me and now it’s in the bathtub. It went from the ocean, the collective unconscious, to a small body of water, a bathtub. It’s in too small a container. The bathtub is personal consciousness, a small body of water over which man has control. The cobra in the bathtub is under control of the ego, though its real home is the ocean, the deeper, uncontrollable unconscious, which it longs to return to. Thus, a cobra contained is madness bursting to be free. It is the urge to go to war.

When the cobra followed me out of the ocean in my first dream, it was foreshadowing what was to follow if the natural balance was not maintained. In the first dream all was as it should be, nature restored to balance, though greatly transformed. The cobra, in following me, was hinting that there was more to come.

Restore the balance... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Restore the balance…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The truth is, the cobra doesn’t belong in the bathtub, it belongs in the ocean. In its containment it is going mad and thus has to be killed. Out of the sacrifice of the cobra will come healing, for the snake is a symbol of healing, yet it is also a symbol of destruction. The cobra specifically has a helmet-like mantel that when expanded means it is about to strike, so watch out!

The cobra is like the Goddess Isis that Chuck wrote about in his blog this week, a symbol of the dark and the light, life and death, destruction and healing. The lesson is that these contrasts must be kept in balance. And the greater unconscious does not belong in a tiny bathtub, as the human ego is quickly overwhelmed. It can only take in the fullness of what lies in the collective unconscious a little at a time or it will go mad. This happens to people who experience true reality in visions and overwhelming insights, they often go mad.

So what does this have to do with ISIS and world events? The lesson is that we must rid ourselves of the ego attitude that the cobra in the bathtub signifies, it is too powerful and unwieldy. We are kidding ourselves if we think we can contain this madness. We must sacrifice its deadly urge to strike, its dark side of hate and destruction and find the healing answer in love. We must all kill, within ourselves, the urge to go mad with hatred. We must overcome our passion for destruction.

Yogananda’s teacher, Yukteswar when confronted by a deadly cobra that rushed angrily at him, with hood expanded, conquered it with his love.*

The ego continues to toy with the cobra, wondering how it will tame it, but we must remember that the cobra is deadly. It will not be contained and nothing the ego comes up with will subdue it. Kill the mad cobra by seeking refuge in love, which releases the healing power of the snake, and then the Goddess energy returns to natural balance, as shown in my first dream.

The Soulbytes and the Message from Jeanne this week have all been about stabilizing the ego and remaining focused on what is right. Monday’s audio message implied that those who pray are innocent at heart, i.e., it is not Islam that is the enemy but the disenfranchised, misguided and misdirected youth unable to find meaning in today’s world.

As Hermann Hesse stated when the German youth were being drawn to antisemitism preceding World War II: “…the form of [antisemitism] with us now among misled German youth does a lot of harm, because it prevents these young people from seeing the world as it is and because disastrously it encourages the tendency to seek out a scapegoat on which to blame everything that goes wrong.” **

We must keep in mind that we are spirits living a human existence and as such we must each create our own bridge from the spirit realm to the human realm. I bring what I learn in my channelings and my dreams, daring to speak of what comes through me.

Even just a little love will do the trick! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Even just a little love will do the trick!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Much as I would rather just recoil back into my own little world, I feel the obligation of these dreams and messages as they ask me to leave my comfy quiet and put out what comes through. I have, after all, resolved to walk this path of spirit more fully. It is what we must all decide to do now.

The messages are clear: Love, which will only fully release from the the healing power of sacrifice, is the answer.

Jan

* Autobiography of a Yogi, p. 98.

** Portrait of Hesse, Bernhard Zeller p. 98

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Compensation

Leave a comment

Compensation is the action of balance. In everyday life, we work—we give of our energy and are compensated with wages. Hence our efforts are compensated or balanced by stored energy—money—that we are then freed to use as we see fit.

We are all guilty; we all compensate... - Art and Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all compensate…
– Art and Photo by Jan Ketchel

Psychologically, compensation operates as the balancing agent of the unconscious to our conscious decisions and actions. If we spend our day studious and bored, our dreams may compensate by taking us on faraway adventures. In this way our conscious life is compensated—balanced—by our unconscious adventures.

The more extreme our conscious attitude, the more extreme our unconscious compensation. If we insist on keeping ourselves in flighty behavior, the unconscious might compensate with a bad mood, a depression, or a physical fall, bringing us back to earth.

This same compensatory mechanism operates on the world stage. When the ruling attitudes become extreme in any direction they are compensated by a counter movement of equal and opposite energy that reacts in its own destructive wake.

If we accept the premise that the world is an interdependent whole, then outbreaks of behavior, such as the recent horrific tragedy in Paris, should be explored as a powerful compensation for an equally imbalanced ruling principle, not necessarily within Paris or France but within the prevailing governing attitudes of our times around the world.

I have often proposed in my writings that ISIS is not simply a coincidental acronym for the Goddess Isis, but in fact has become an agent of the dark side of that Goddess, constellated from the depths of the collective unconscious. This would suggest that the ruling powers of our world have gone so far from valuing the sacred feminine Mother Earth that she is now activated, from her destructive side, to bring down the ruling order.

As we face the reality of the condition of our world, where the earth and the environment—the purview of the Goddess—have been completely denigrated, threatened with extinction, it becomes clear how a wrathful Goddess might invoke such ruthless destructive retaliation upon civilization itself.

Of course, this compensation cannot be allowed. ISIS must be stopped. But how? The outrage evoked by the destruction caused by ISIS sounds an appropriate battle cry. Nations will join forces to defeat this devil. But how? Seal the borders? Too late and, furthermore, ISIS infects many homegrown disenfranchised youths who can find no meaning in the world as we know it, though they do find meaning in bringing it down. What battle plan for this insidious entity?

We must face the individual shadow to destroy the collective shadow... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We must face the individual shadow to face the collective shadow…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Every individual is a hologram of the entire world. Each and every one of us, in the microcosm of our lives, has a ruling ego attitude that is being compensated by our unconscious forces. Each and every one of us must study our conscious decisions and behaviors. Where are we neglecting the true needs of the Goddess? How are we out of synch with Mother Nature?

Are we so obsessed with the digital world—which is a purely masculine abstraction—that we have lost touch with our physical bodies, our true nutritional and self-care needs?

Have we so abandoned our instinctual selves and instead turned ourselves over to the Goddess Amazon.com?

Have we so abandoned human eros and squeezed it into Match and Tinder?

Do we listen to the wisdom of our birthright—our dreams—or have we completely shifted our connection to wisdom to the great god Google?

Are we so enamored by the glitter of consumerism that we cover over true need with empty objects?

We must study the nature of compensation in our own lives. If we are ridden with anxiety, fear, compulsions, and moods, these are compensating clues as to the problems in our conscious ruling attitudes. If we can humbly see the one-sidedness of our ruling attitude and change it, we will change the wrathful compensation of the dark side of the Goddess within.

If the truth is that there are very painful feelings or inconvenient truths that our ego has been avoiding, resulting in dastardly unconscious compensations, if we then turn around and face the unfaceable—mourn a deeply imprisoned feeling, for instance—then we completely shift the inner balance.

If the ego can align itself with the true needs of the self, the Goddess Isis can usher in a renewal, a new stage of fertile creation and meaningful life.

That’s the compensation we must seek now, the compensation of renewal over destruction. We are all empowered, and charged, to arrive at proper compensation within ourselves. This is how we will change the world for the better.

Some day... a world of light... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Some day… a world of light…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Of course, there will be necessary responses to the intolerable violation of innocence in Paris. But if we are not careful we might find ourselves drawn into a purely scapegoat compensatory reaction that actually plays into and empowers the reach of the collective shadow that now threatens us.

If we collectively face the compensatory relationship within ourselves, we can shift the balance of the forces that threaten us and restore calm to the world. Ultimately, love is the key. Love rejects nothing. Love faces the truth, Love restores proper balance. Love is always the answer.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Melding

Leave a comment

“…I lead not one but three lives, hers, mine, and our meld…” Robert Monroe writes these words as he recapitulates another lesson from sleep school where he encounters the death of his partner and the depth of his love for her. As I read his description I know his experience.

I have never missed Jeanne since she left physical form. Her transition was our completion for this physical leg of our journey together. It was our graduation. The truth is, what Monroe calls “our meld” is right here and now, with me in every decision I make and every action I take.

Meld of heaven and earth... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Meld of heaven and earth…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I turn to our meld, that energetically merged being we created, and know “we” are in agreement as I come to a decision. At other times, I experience my separate self venturing into new life, kindling love in a new meld. Likewise, her separate self ventures in infinity on journeys I’m not privy to. From our original meld we granted each other the freedom to continue to evolve in both our separateness and our meld.

Our physical completion birthed new separate lives, and though the labor had its challenges the births we delivered ourselves to have been filled with joy. The results of our willingness to let go of where we once were has enabled our three selves—the meld of hers, mine, and ours that Monroe speaks of—to continue to evolve and circle back in the new constellations of the Soul Sisters of Jan and Jeanne, each of whom has shared separate journeys with me in this physical world and yet are joined in a new energetic relationship that allows us to live a magical possibility and share it with others. Anything is indeed possible!

What is required to achieve the magical, however, is detachment. I define detachment here as total acquiescence to the truth: Everything changes. If we can flow with the changes we remain connected and spawn new life and new adventures. If we resist and insist on holding onto an old relationship that has been completed, through death or in some other fashion, we simply are not ready to enter the next magical phase of relationship possibility and evolution.

Okay, you might say, but where’s the union, the sex, when your partner is no longer with you, no longer in the dense physical body state? How can a relationship evolve beyond physicality? Robert Monroe takes up this issue as well. As he explains in his out-of-body night school lesson:

“…that physical sexual drive is not the fundamental of this energy I don’t know what else to call but love, but one of the most common inducements to kindle the process… once the full flame is created, the inducement (sex) is not even the fuel that feeds it, but instead (becomes) a multileveled minor physical note in an infinite cord…”

Perhaps the greatest challenge of our species upon dying is letting go of the idea of our physical body’s desire for union. Many beings are so attached to this need that their energy bodies seek physical union after death, unaware that they have died and no longer have a physical body. Monroe states that of all the energetic bands that surround the earth this is the loudest and densest in population, a band of writhing energy populated by beings desperately seeking sexual union. Their insatiable desire for physical sexual union will only be fulfilled by new life in physical form, though they may writhe in this energy band for centuries before that new life occurs.

There is always the possibility of golden melding... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There is always the possibility of golden melding…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The lesson Monroe brings back from his encounter with this above mentioned energy band is the actual minor role of sexual union in the true experience and development of love. He calls sex an inducement to, but not actually a vital component of, the process of evolving love. And love is the greatest natural resource of our planet, but it must be refined and evolved to its true grandeur—beyond the inducements of sex and romance—to become a multileveled vehicle for deepening journeys beyond the physical, into infinity.

Of course, while in physical/animal form we must reckon with the instinctual need to reproduce the species and experience the fulfillment of the carnal desires of the body. It is part of life here. However, as Monroe discovers, the true fuel for love is the development of conscious relationship after the romance has relaxed. The creation of meld requires commitment, deep transparency, acceptance, compassion, respect, honesty, resonance, sharing, and a mutual desire for ongoing growth.

Perhaps most important for meld is total acceptance of change. If we can love in full acceptance that things will not stay as they are now then nothing stands in the way of creating a meld that seeds separate lives and a deepening magical adventure in infinity.

Melding,
Chuck

Robert Monroe quotes from: Far Journeys p. 119

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Love In Impermanence

Leave a comment
We search for love in the solid... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We search for love in the solid…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Someone shared with me, rather uncomfortably, a dream that they’d had where it was revealed that Jan and I were breaking up. My immediate reaction was to smile and say, “We already know that.”

Of course, I clarified that we are deeply in love and compatible partners, with no plans to break up, but we both know that change is the only real constant.

I had the same experience of utter love, fulfillment and compatibility with Jeanne in this world, yet she flew off without me into new energetic form. Beyond the veils of this life she has merged with her fuller self—a being far more comprehensive than the Jeanne Marie I knew in this life.

In the final analysis, all relationships break up because in becoming our complete selves we must surrender our attachments of permanence and acquiesce to the fuller nature of reality: Everything changes form.

I remember, as a young man steeped in the existential encounter movement of the 60s, confronting Jeanne with the reality that our relationship, as we knew it, would end in death. She would cry. I felt it was a necessary encounter, this truth.

Little did I know how relevant that confrontation would be for us a few decades later. Though I must say, when Jeanne did fly away I was steeped in joy, love, and utter calm. I have never wavered from those feelings and my love for her has only deepened over the past 14 years since she left.

Jan and I know that love transcends all change, and in fact can continue to grow if it can ride the waves of impermanence, the ultimate reality.

We are all in Earth School to suffer the illusion of permanence. And the solid Earth reality has offered a pretty predictable source of permanent security! But it does not provide all we truly need or want.

The gift of our time is that the Earth is revealing its own impermanence, as it struggles to survive mankind’s hubris. The challenges faced by our planet force us all to grapple with the true nature of reality all around us, that nothing is permanent. Actions taken from this knowing have the potential to be evolutionary, if we respond to the true needs of our planet, our human species, and all living beings.

The truth is, only Love will save us all. And the true nature of this Love is an ever-expanding love that transcends me and mine and includes everyone and every living thing in our interdependent whole.

Ready to ride the waves of impermanence? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ready to ride the waves of impermanence?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

To graduate from Earth School, we must solve its most challenging question: Can love grow and expand in spite of impermanence? Only through solving this question are we really ready to enter more deeply into the ever-changing nature of infinity.

Until then, we grasp for the security of love in permanence, as we glimpse its many dimensions in this world and seek fulfillment here. But “here” is only part of the story. Earth School isn’t all there is, though it offers us all the necessary courses, preparing us for our final exam: to love in impermanence. And then it’s on to graduate school in infinity!

In ever-expanding Love,
Chuck