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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Energetic Fact or Phantom?

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What does your conjuring mind look like? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
What does your conjuring mind look like?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Riding in the front of the train, we encounter oncoming time, what is factually, energetically happening right in front of us, NOW. Speculation, in contrast, is riding in the caboose, the back of the train, inundated with mindless ruminating on life lived or life possibly to be lived, as the energetic facts of our life—what is happening now—passes us by without our awareness. Speculation plants the seeds of obsession, which in turn generates phantom life—energetic capital spent on an unreal world, an abstract world that runs on our vital energy. Energetic fact disappears as we are inundated with phantom “what ifs.”

Phantom life is generated by obsessional thinking before sleep or upon awakening in the middle of the night. Phantom life is worry, energy given over to the conjuring mind. Phantom life literally sucks the life out of us. Phantom life cannot exist if we don’t fund it with vast amounts of our energy.

In order to perceive the true energetic facts of our lives, we need silence—detachment from the internal dialogue that incessantly conjures our view of the world and all that we encounter. We need silence so we can see what is really there.

Silence is not the absence of noise, nor the absence of dialogue. Silence is mastery over where we choose to place our attention. If we let the mind say what it will, let the noise in the surround remain while we disengage our attention from its activity, we unhook, or de-tach. In this way, we free our awareness.

I offer a few simple examples of phantom thought and practical aids to achieving silence. If I really focus my awareness on an inhalation, I notice that I cannot hold a thought. If I am gripped by a thought that evolves into a phantom story, I notice that my breathing slows to a mere maintenance level as the story takes precedence. If I shift my awareness away from the phantom story that my mind is busy conjuring up and take a deep breath instead, the story desists. The two cannot exist simultaneously.

If I do Tensegrity, the Magical Passes of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage, I cannot maintain a thought. If I step into thought, I cannot remember the next move in the pass. I cannot maintain thought and accuracy of movement simultaneously. Magical Passes shift attention away from the internal dialogue, offering moments of silence. Any focused physical movement achieves the same outcome.

If I stare at a candle flame and listen to my internal dialogue, I notice that I lose connection to the flame. The flame remains, however, inviting my attention back, offering the opportunity to burn away my attachment to thought.

In practicing moments of silence, we eventually achieve mastery over phantom life; we hone our energy to be utilized with intent. In silence, we are fully present to the energetic facts of our lives. In silence, our energetic reserves are fully prepared to engage and live to the fullest, in NOW time.

In silence, from the front of the train,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Practice Inner Silence

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In meditation we learn to master our awareness. The mind is a powerful thing, a think tank that never stops. When we meditate we are confronted with the products of this ceaseless mind engine: thoughts.

Thoughts approach our awareness like vendors selling their wares on Black Friday, sales people lobbying for our attention. And just like the freedom we exercise to buy or not to buy, we have the inner ability to attach or not attach to a thought. If we attach we spend our inner capital, our energy, on the thought by giving it our attention, letting it unfold and journeying with it wherever it may take us. If we don’t attach we store our energy in deepening silence. When we surrender our awareness to the activity of the mind, we drift along on a current of free association, floating from thought to thought, our awareness completely captured by a mind-constructed world of thoughts.

With mindfulness we learn to exercise our innate freedom to attach or not to attach to thought. We learn to simply notice the inner lobbyists of thought, and choose not to attend to their wares. We decide to bring our awareness instead to our bodies—to our breathing, or to the sensations we notice as we scan our bodies in this moment.

When thoughts of varying intensities vie for our awareness, we notice them. We don’t struggle with them; we simply bring our awareness back to our bodies. In an instant we feel the vibration in our fingers or lips, or hear the sound of energy deep within our ears. We breathe; we are present. We judge nothing; there is nothing to judge.

Judgment engages the mind. It quantifies, rates, categorizes, etc. With mindfulness everything is equal, the same—no judgment, no distinction. Everything just is and we are fully present with what is without attachment.

Mastering awareness is staying present with what is, and freely, consciously, choosing where to place attention. We are no longer adrift on the sea without a paddle; we volitionally place our awareness where we want it.

If we are eating, we are not reading or watching—we are fully present in eating, in chewing, in tasting, with awareness. If we are walking, we walk without purpose or destination—we are fully present in our bodies, slowly feeling the sensation of connecting to the earth beneath us.

The shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage practice magical passes to achieve inner silence. Fully mindful in their bodies, they engage the intent of inner silence and move in patterns discovered by shamans of antiquity during dreaming. These shamans don’t worry if they are doing the movements correctly. They suspend judgment and mindfully move. They know intent alone will correct the movements; they don’t fall for the tricks of the cogitating mind that seeks to interfere with the flow of silence.

Practicers of mindfulness and practitioners of shamanism alike are gentle but persevering in their practices. They know, as the I Ching so often states: perseverance furthers. Eventually, the mind desists and we become masters of awareness, fully engaged in our journeys. Without mind we experience total freedom.

Silence the mind, journey in infinity!
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Facing Oncoming Time & Recapitulation

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In his book The Art of Navigation Felix Wolf shares the following anecdote from Carlos Castaneda.

“The Nagual always maintained that the average man traveled through life in the caboose, always looking back, always keenly aware of his personal history, his experiences, and his identity as an accumulation of the past. It was one of his favorite analogies. A warrior who wants to become a man of knowledge, however, has to turn around and face life as it unfolds in front of him. Instead of facing receding time he has to face oncoming time, as he put it. Life in the caboose versus life in the engine.” (From page 60. *)

Isn’t the shamanic practice of recapitulation in fact living in the past, the exact opposite of facing oncoming time? Is there not a contradiction here? Doesn’t recapitulation strap us firmly to a seat in the caboose with a view out the back window, at life that has already passed us by? What about total presence in the NOW, the coveted goal Carlos describes as being seated in the engine, directly perceiving oncoming time, engaging life to the fullest? To answer these questions and resolve this seeming paradox we must first explore what it takes to truly live life in the moment.

Both the seers of ancient Mexico and the Buddhists place a premium on reaching a state of inner silence to become mindful, fully aware and present in the NOW. Toward that end Buddhist masters prescribe the practice of meditation where we learn to quiet our restless hearts and become keen observers of all that presents. The molding of this observing self that allows life to be known directly, without the interference of the thinking, judging mind, prepares us to be innocently present in the moment, freed of the cogitations of the mind that interprets versus lives in the moment. Achieving detachment from the ceaseless internal dialogue of the mind is certainly a major component of mindfulness. Like the Buddhists, the seers of ancient Mexico employ their own active meditation practice of magical passes to achieve this coveted state.

Another major component of mindfulness is access to a fully integrated self. How can we be fully present if parts of who we are remain fragmented, unknown and tucked away in the luggage compartment of the self? Furthermore, the legacy of our hidden baggage is the burden it places on life in the present. For instance, if we carry deep wounds of loss, abandonment, negligence, and violation, we will surely be limited in opening to all that life invites us to in the present moment. Recapitulation is the shamanic practice that frees us from these limitations and fully unites the self to be present in the NOW.

In recapitulation we allow ourselves to be taken on a train ride to all the stations of life already lived. We arrive at each of these old stations with our present self keenly observing, taking the journey with our younger self that has been stranded at the station, frozen in time. Our present self opens to the full experience of our younger self, and thereby faces fully the confusion and struggle that once froze our younger self. Often we discover in recapitulation that our younger self was forced to leave its body under the impact of overwhelming trauma and hence the full truth of that moment was never consolidated and made real. In recapitulation the full truth of the past becomes known, allowing its burdens to be released. The energy and innocence of the younger self is freed and united with the present self, firmly seated in the engine, facing oncoming time.

Part of what we encounter as we face oncoming time are triggers that take us out of the present moment. Meditation can help us to remain present in spite of a trigger, but it can’t help us to fully open to the moment if the trigger signifies a lost, frozen part of the self. Life often places triggers in our path to awaken us to discover our lost selves. We cannot simply transcend our triggers and fully open to life without recapitulating the truth that lies behind the trigger. We must be open to completing all our journeys, especially the train wrecks buried deeply within the self if we are ever to be fully available to life in the NOW.

Recapitulation, then, is actually a major component of being able to face oncoming time. Freed from the past we can allow life to approach us with all that it offers, unfiltered, without limitation. From this vantage point, firmly seated in the engine, we can read clearly the signs and synchronicities life presents us with to guide our evolutionary journeys, in infinity—NOW!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

* NOTE: The book mentioned in this blog is available through our Store listed under the category of Shamanism.

Messages from Jeanne

#733 Become Eagles Today

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Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
I awoke in the middle of the night and as I drifted back to sleep I asked you to teach me a shamanic lesson in a dream. I then fell into a dream about transforming energy from the dominant right side of this reality to the magical left side and back again. In the dream I was taking awareness from “The Eagle.” I had huge eagle wings myself, and I was sweeping energy toward my body, pulling it in from the right side, then from the left side, and then inward toward my chest and shoulders. I seemed to be learning a magical pass.

Can you please elaborate on this dream? What did it mean and why did you feel it was important to teach me that lesson?

My Dear Jan, when you ask, you receive. As you know, this has always been true, but, as you also know, specifically how you receive is up to the giver. This is true in all realities. On the other hand, if you ask for something specific, as you did in asking for a shamanic lesson, you will receive that specific request, however, the delivery is up to the giver as well. You see, in your request for knowledge I felt it was most meaningful to offer you something practical: a magical pass.

There are millions of magical passes, though not even a fifth of those millions of passes are known or utilized. Many of them you do without even knowing they are magical passes, though you may include them in your daily lives. So many and so frequent are these movements, filled with intent, that it is hard to be concerned with calling them one thing or another.

Be contented with the fact that in your very lives every action holds buried intent, and this is the crux of all magical passes, the intent that lies behind them. When you walk or skip or run you stir up ancient intent. Though you may not be aware of just what that intent is, you may be aware that something in you shifts, your energy, your mind, your senses. You stir up intent with practically every movement in that world, with the potential to offer you insight into infinity.

Now, in your dream sequence, I did indeed send you, upon your request, into a state of awareness where you knew how to shift your awareness from your right-sided self to your left-sided self and back again. This is an energetic process related to the energy body of course, but your physical body is what you must work with in that world. So, suffice it to say, your right side is your awareness in one world, the world you reside in most often, and your left side is your awareness in other worlds, including dreaming. Neither awareness is keenly aware of the other. Most of the time they are separate entities, only fully utilized one at a time. However, in dreaming a shift takes place whereby you may indeed maintain awareness of both sides of the energy body simultaneously. That was what you were learning last night.

The eagle’s wings pass is indeed an option for gathering your personal energy to greater awareness at all times. By sweeping the intent of awareness from the right side and then from the left side, as if you did indeed have broad feathered eagle’s wings, and pulling it into your heart center you begin to stir up these two awarenesses, mixing them together inside your energy body. But I also hazard that they will be most noticeable in your physical body as well. The eagle’s wings pass is quite accurately a good energy builder if you feel somewhat depressed, have low energy, or need a mental and physical boost. Simply sweep in energy from the right with your right wing, then from the left with your left wing, and then both together ending by wrapping your wings around your shoulders in an embrace of sealing in that energy.

This will invigorate your spirit, clear your mind, stir your heart and present you with inner calm all at once. Do not hesitate to do this pass whenever you feel the need. It is my gift to you.

Thank you, Jeanne. I am passing this message on to others. Is that okay? And may they also use this eagle’s wings pass?

Of course! That is a fine idea. It is not meant for you alone but for you to pass along, as are all the messages you encounter, if it feels appropriate. I encourage all of you to pass on what you learn in whatever way feels most right. For only in so doing will your lives evolve and your world too.

In the past you have mentioned that you thought the disciplines of the seers of ancient Mexico might be too archaic for modern man, yet here you have given us a magical pass. Have you changed your thoughts about Tensegrity as a practice? Should it be taken up more seriously by myself, as well as by others? I have never found it especially suitable to my personality, as I prefer yoga and meditation, though there are certain magical passes that I do regularly.

I do not advise anything along the lines of practice, except to advise that you find ways to stir up intent within your body, in both your physical body and your energy body. In order to evolve one must become aware, and to become aware one must wake up out of the slumber of that one world. One must open the eyes and be ready and alert to the experiences that abound, that in fact are being missed every day due to a lack of awareness. So however you choose to stir up your awareness works fine. In my book, your personal preferences must be appreciated and acceptable to you over anyone else, for it is your journey and your life. However, that being said, I do advise that in order to promote healing and evolutionary growth, awareness of the self as energy must be part of the process and this is why some sort of energy work is most beneficial.

This can be as simple a process as walking, as I mentioned earlier. This can be as easy as sitting quietly and learning what your personal energy feels like, as I have spoken of before in other messages. This can be a practice of yoga and meditation, as I know you are so fond of Jan, for it does indeed fit your personality and your quiet temperament. This may also be a more vigorous activity if that is what one needs to stir up the personal energy. It may depend on how long it has lain dormant and how far from its calling you really are.

Have you not heard your personal energy calling you? If not then it might be a good idea to begin stirring it up with the eagle’s wings pass as laid out thus:

1. Stand up and face the direction that feels most personally right and spread your eagle’s wings.

2. Breathe into your heart center and awaken your self. From the heart center invite your tender self—who may be afraid or simply dozing and unaware—to join you now, a little at a time, on your journey through that life, as you begin a new trip, so to speak, into the world of energy.

3. Sweep in energy from the right with your right wing and press it to your body and then release your wing back out to the side.

4. Then sweep in energy from the left with your left wing and press that into your body as well, releasing your wing back out to the side.

5. Then sweep in both wings of energy together, ending by wrapping your wings around your shoulders in an embrace of sealing in that energy.

6. When you are done release your wings and discover, My Dear Readers, that you do indeed have a vast storehouse of energy at your disposal, in fact an endless amount.

Invite yourself into the dream of awakening with your energy body fully present and participating in life. It is not so frightening as you may fear, for in reality it is who you are, in the reality of the true meaning of life.

Lift your wings, stir up your heart-centered energy and become eagles today, My Loved Ones. You cannot harm yourself or anyone else by doing so. You can only grow, heal, awaken, become alert, aware, and more fully present. Enjoy the experience!

Thank you Jeanne! As I was channeling and putting this up on the website today the winds were whipping and howling, as if the eagle were outside flying back and forth stirring up the energy!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Fondly and most humbly offered.