Tag Archives: masculine

A Day in a Life: Out Of The Shadows

Female energy in hordes, laying eggs in hordes, unstoppable... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Female energy in hordes, laying eggs in hordes, unstoppable…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

We have been and continue to be in a time of great feminine energy. The birth of the cicadas after seventeen years underground is only one sign of the emergence of long-suppressed female energy. Once emerged, the main intent of the cicadas, male and female alike, is to reproduce another crop of eggs that will lie dormant deep inside the earth until they too emerge in seventeen years and do the same.

The moon, the ultimate female symbol, is equally important now. The masculine sun has ruled for a long time. We know how important the sun is for life on earth; without it we’d perish pretty quickly. The feminine moon is just as important, ruler of the tides and time, linked to the seasons, to birth and death. She lights up the darkness, revealing things in a different light, while other entities not accustomed to light emerge and live. I always think of the moon in correlation with the oceans, with the ebb and flow of life, especially affecting the female body, its menses and moods, the salt of the oceans and the salt of our human bodies inextricably linked.

The Supreme Court knocked us back a few decades with their repeal of the Voting Rights Act. Texas wanted to close all abortion clinics, but the bill was filibustered by State Senator Wendy Davis, for 11 hours, and failed! My first reaction is an exasperated, “Woe! What is this world coming to!” But I see these things as last ditch efforts by the ruling male energy to suppress the emerging female energy. But they won’t be able to—just think of those cicadas. Nothing is going to stop this energy from coming out of the shadows now. It’s the time of the feminine. At least that’s the way I see it.

The Republicans don’t want Hillary to be President of the United States in 2016, but she will be. Even the Dalai Lama has spoken of the possibility of the next Dalai Lama being a woman, that it would be good because “females have more potential to develop affection or love…” Basically, it’s time. The world is badly in need of help. It needs a healing balm like no other. It needs the soothing energy of Mother, of nurturing energy, a new set of rules to play by. It needs a shift away from the male/masculine domination of our times to a new time of female/feminine intervention. The sun cycle is over; the moon cycle is about to begin. As the Dalai Lama also said, we need a compassionate approach to world leadership and women offer this.

I observe the cicadas. I can’t help it. They are everywhere in our yard, their carcasses littering the deck, the walkways, piled at the bases of trees, crunching beneath the wheels of our cars. I watch the birds swoop down and catch them in mid-air. Even the tiny wren easily grabs them. The cicadas, I notice, are a little clumsy. They flutter and buzz about with great determination but they often land on their faces and flop over onto their backs. They lie there inert, perhaps catching their breath before expending a lot of energy trying to turn over. Eventually they flip onto their prickly legs and stand dazed and unsure. I don’t think they really know what to make of this world that they are in for so short a period of time. Having lived in darkness for so long, they must struggle to get their bearings. In spite of this they attack life with great gusto. With their loud whirring, cheering, and piping sounds those little critters are having an impact!

Poppies popping up all over the place...more of that natural feminine energy! -Photo by Jan Ketchel
Poppies popping up all over the place…more of that natural feminine energy!
-Photo by Jan Ketchel

I think we’re going to have to be patient with ourselves as we move into a new cycle of moon energy. As I see it, it’s going to happen. There is no stopping it, just like there is no stopping the cicadas. But we all have to take full responsibility for where we’ve been and where we’re going. As human beings—not as male and female, but as an embodiment of both energies—we will have to learn how to navigate in a changing world. We may find ourselves as clumsy as the cicadas, but eventually we’ll get ourselves sorted out. We’ll align with the intent of now, which surely is that we correct what has been wrought by our dependence on the masculine energy of our society, as well as the masculine energy of our individual selves, on the suppression of our feminine, from outside and inside. Our egos have ruled for too long. Now it’s time for our hearts to take over and guide us forward into a new world.

We must pull our hearts out of the shadows and let them live and lead us to do what is right for all human beings, for the planet and all of life. Many of us are already there, doing it our entire lives. We must not be afraid to continue being the loving and tender beings we truly are, no matter what kind of backlash comes to stomp on us—and it will come, again and again. But just as we expect Hillary to go the distance, so must we. Just as we wish for a kinder, gentler nation, so must we accept that hatred, bigotry and racism abound, but we cannot allow them to harden our hearts and make us mean too.

We must not dismiss the lessons of the cicadas. They are here because it is their time. Their energy is decidedly feminine, their mission one that only females can enact. Yesterday, as I sat on the deck, a cicada suddenly dropped from the sky and landed with a plunk. “Wow, look at that,” I thought. “Just dropped dead from the sky.” I bent over to look at it and noticed that its back end was missing. “It must be a female,” I thought, “her reproductive cavity worn off with all that work of getting her eggs laid. This one’s mission is accomplished.” But just as I thought that thought, she suddenly turned over. Still alive! And then she got up and flew away! Wow, half dead, half her body gone and still flying! Not done yet! And so I say, we must not forget the cicadas!

Our own time to fly is now. Are we going to forget the cicadas as we move forward? Are we going to forget that we all have feminine energy inside us, just waiting to burst forth out of the shadows and finally live? We all know how good it feels to love, how good it feels to soften our edges, drop our ego pretenses and just be REAL. Why not do this all the time?

We must embrace and live by a new feminine paradigm. We are all charged with emerging from the shadows to change the world in a very new and untried way. We must challenge the status quo all over again. We must get up and fly again, no matter how exhausted we are. We may have to redo a lot of things we thought were already securely embedded in our American psyches. We may have to march again for our basic Civil Rights. Abortion rights, voting rights, and marriage rights are seminal to our growth and freedom as healthy masculine/feminine human beings. A female president of the United States and a female Dalai Lama are seminal if we are to not only heal the ills that we have all created, but move on in a totally new direction.

He died with his boots on, as they say! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
He died with his boots on, as they say!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Oh, by the way, I noticed that the male cicadas die with their reproductive parts intact. Once again, it’s the female who gives her all. Take that into consideration as we go into the new moon phase of life, rife with powerful and unstoppable female energy!

Just my opinion,
Jan

A Day in a Life: Disruption Leads To Mature Balance

Time for new growth…

We work in the garden in the early morning, weeding and clearing the summer’s growth. Time for fall plantings now. Time for a change. The energy is with us as we work in the early morning light, in the cool air and companionable silence. Our task done, we prepare breakfast and sit on the deck, content in our togetherness. Suddenly I have an urge. I want to go out to a restaurant that I like. It has a nice outdoor garden.

“Why don’t we go there for dinner tonight?” I suggest.

We discuss the possibility. After a while it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I acquiesce to the energy that says to take it slow, be patient, and stay put. It’s a day to be calm and to rejuvenate.

We sit and read. The air is calm, the day sunny and still. The birds are busy around us. I hear a fluttering of wings overhead and a zinging sound, like a jolt of electricity. Something has just been caught midair, right above our heads. A bird flies off with something big in it’s beak. I worry that it might be the hummingbird that had just hovered busily nearby.

We read for a few more minutes. Suddenly Chuck is restless. “I have such creative energy brewing inside me,” he says. “I have to do something with it.” I wonder if I can match it, if I can join him in this creative spurt, but no, my energy is utterly calm. I just want to sit and read. Chuck heads off to do some more yard work, shaping the hedges and ornamental trees, a good project for such energy.

While he works in the yard, I read and contemplate the energy of the day. A hurricane is brewing, and the Republicans are gathering for their convention, saying they will go ahead with it no matter what. I sense masculine energy stirring all around me. I don’t get attached, but stay in my inner calmness. I remember my own pull earlier to go out into the world and do something, yet I know I made the right decision to stay at home today.

Creative energies stir…

Soon Chuck returns, his energy spent. Contented and calm, he sits beside me and we enjoy a quiet few hours. The energy stirs repeatedly throughout the day, however, both inside us and outside us and we must make decisions about whether to acquiesce to it or wrestle it down. It just seems to be the way it is at the moment.

Things progress, the hurricane continues to gather energy, the Republicans begin their convention, the masculine energy continues to stir. Aggressive and controlling, I see it playing out in many instances over the next few days. Suddenly, I realize it isn’t masculine energy at all that I’ve been feeling all around me, but feminine energy, the energy of nature, the creative unleashed.

My urge to go out to dinner was the romantic feminine stirring in me. The bird snatching food from the air above our heads was Mother Nature in raw form. Chuck’s creative urge was also the feminine urge to give birth to some new creation. The feminine was stirred in us throughout the day, offering the possibility of new adventures, new desires, new experiences.

Now I understand the energy of the hurricane as it slowly amassed and headed into land as the creative force of the feminine unleashing, no man or woman able to hold such power back. This got me to thinking about whether or not we really have any control at all, over anything. Are we just fooling ourselves in thinking we make our own decisions? Are we all just subject to acquiescence, in spite of our best efforts to control and direct our lives?

I dream. I have no control in my dreams. The feminine energy of the unconscious emerges and takes me on nightly adventures while my ego is asleep. Ego is masculine; the controlling self in everyday life, thinking it has the upper hand, thinking it’s in charge. But is it really? I don’t think so. It tries hard, it asks me to conform and abide by its tenets, yet underneath other truths have been stirring for a long time now, truths that I have learned to pay attention to. And I know from paying attention to those inner truths that I am more like the hurricane, that I am nature, the creative.

We are all this force…

We are all this creative force, yet we must be accountable for it within ourselves if we are to live as mature beings. I must not let the creative feminine energy rule me anymore than I let the masculine force rule. I must learn to acquiesce to each of them when appropriate so that I am not overwhelmed or controlled by either. This is where I believe we do have power, the power to gain balance over the powers within us that constantly seek expression. This is how we become mature spiritual beings able to flow in the universe.

If we allow ourselves to be overly controlled by either force, we are not only out of balance, but we are not our true mature and evolving selves either. We become automatons to the powers that be, to the outside energy and the inside energy. In order to gain equilibrium within, we must attentively weigh the energy outside of us, making decisions on how to act and how we want to be in the world.

Do I want to control everything in my life? No, I don’t. I want to be available to flow with what comes, but I also know from previous experiences that I don’t need to be taken over anymore either. However, it’s appropriate at times to be overtaken, to allow both the masculine controlling energy and the unleashed feminine to teach us what we must learn. And so I have allowed myself to indulge in both kinds of energy, sometimes unknowingly and often intentionally. But there comes a time when it’s enough. There comes a time for living in the world in balance, as a mature and whole being.

As human beings, we have the opportunity to make choices. We are surrounded by nature in the raw, we have it inside us, and yes, it can unleash at any time. But in mature balance we learn to detach from and attach to it as feels right. We make decisions based on what is right for us at the moment. We can choose to maintain the calmness and contentedness we have so desperately sought and fought for our entire lives.

Inner and outer forces in balance…

In always saying no, we shut the door to life. In always saying yes, we leave it open to being overwhelmed by life. When in balance we offer ourselves possibility, the door always half open, and yet our choices become ones made in awareness, knowing what we are choosing and why. In choosing recapitulation—yes, I do have to mention it because it’s my life’s work and offering—we allow ourselves to gain the mature balance that leads to calmness, contentment, and access to the awareness of knowing what is right for us, at all times.

So, my lessons this week have been a growing awareness of what it means to be in mature balance, which is really a constant shifting in awareness, as if one were on a balance beam, making slight adjustments in inner balance to meet the outer energy that seeks always to upset the ego-dominated self. It’s just the way it is; the job of the creative feminine energy is to make new life, both within and without, and new life only comes from disrupting stasis. We all need a jolt of raw nature every now and then to catapult us into new life.

Sending love…

Here’s hoping that Hurricane Isaac, the feminine unleashed, doesn’t do too much damage and that it leads us all to opportunity for new mature life. And here’s to my lovely daughter who is living through it at this very moment, in her little house in New Orleans. May everyone be safe.

Sending love,
Jan

Chuck’s Place: Abuse of Power—In the Service of Whom?

In a dream, Jan and I are parked in our little black car in a vast Stop & Shop supermarket parking lot. We’re just sitting, quietly and calmly, Jan in the driver’s seat, I next to her in the passenger seat. A pick-up truck pulls in tightly to my side. A man opens his door, which smacks into our door. I’m not particularly fazed and turn to Jan and say: “See, that’s how we get those marks on the car when we’re parked.”

The man, who didn’t skip a beat after hitting into the door, walked away obliviously—we simply didn’t exist for him. He took no responsibility whatsoever for having left a scratch on our little car. However, after I made that comment to Jan, he turned and got back into his truck and pulled out, cutting his wheels too much and causing his car to catch part of our bumper and actually begin to drag us along. Eventually, it unhinged, but just as before he acted completely oblivious; not that he was refusing to take responsibility, but even more profoundly, he simply didn’t care even to waste the energy on us to defend himself—we simply didn’t exist.

I had this dream the night it was exposed that Pachamama had used Tweetie Bird to bring down Anthony Weiner, just another of her recent targets: high-powered men who abuse their power. This dream dramatizes the utter blindness, narcissism, and outright disregard by masculine energy when it dominates the personality. What this means inwardly for such a domineering individual is the total negation of the feminine energy within the self.

The feminine energy within all selves, male and female, is the energy that opens, receives, holds, joins, and nurtures life, bringing us into a deep experience of interconnectedness and oneness of all things. Feminine energy, when polarized and dominant, can bring forth death and destruction to clear the way for new life. We find ourselves in such a time now. Pachamama has gained the ascendancy after centuries of polarized abuse by dominant masculine power. Pachamama is on the warpath, and we are all feeling the impact of her path of destruction, as she prepares the planet for new life.

My dream dramatizes the abuse of masculine power that has led to Pachamama’s targeted rebalancing efforts. In the dream, the existence of Jan and I, our car, and damage to our car are not only dismissed; there is no evidence of any feminine energy present in this man to value or care about us. In the case of the driver of the truck, his dominant masculine energy is in the service of his narcissistic self: oblivious, unfeeling, and completely dismissive of the world around him. Whose needs within the self are being served by this tyrannical, self-serving despot who is blind to the needs or even existence of others? I propose that the culprit is a very primitive ego state, in control behind the scenes of what appears to be an adult.

There is a stage in the ontological development of the psychological self that Freud termed primary narcissism. Margaret Mahler called this same stage symbiosis to highlight the oneness of the unit of parent and child. Esther Harding coined the term autos to define this stage. I will use Ester Harding’s term autos to capture the ego state that all of these pioneers in psychology were talking about when reflecting upon the experience of the human being in earliest infancy.

In infancy, it is normal and appropriate to be completely absorbed within the narcissistic shell of the self. At this age there is no differentiation of self and other. Self is everything. At this stage of near utter helplessness the world must revolve around the needs of the infant—even read those needs without them being expressed—for that infant to survive and thrive. To the infant, the parent’s needs for sleep, rejuvenation and recreation don’t matter—they simply don’t exist. Plain and simple, the world is all about ME, as it should be, AT THAT AGE.

As development progresses beyond infancy, consciousness gradually awakens to a world of others, separate beings with their own needs. Growing up becomes a progressive paring down—or suppression of the world view and the power of the early stage of primary narcissism, with its primitive ego state of autos—in the service of becoming an autonomous independent person, capable of caring for self and becoming a contributing member of an interdependent community.

The charming baby of infancy, once cooed over, becomes the big baby of adulthood if it fails to acquiesce to more socialized and autonomous ego states. In truth, the autos of yesteryear remains an enduring ego state in all adults. All must struggle with the desire to return to the safety and security of being totally taken care of, loved, provided all that she/he needs or wants; the expectation of needs being met simply because they are so important.

This autos ego state may have been thrown out of the Garden too soon, never allowed to fully experience safety and love, or it may have been neglected and abused, or it may simply continue its longing to return to that paradisal state of oneness—without any effort. Nonetheless, as we emerge from early childhood our autos is forced into the background as we must navigate and adapt to the complexities and expectations of a world that demands that we too give.

When the autos remains dominant we find the child who demands all the focus and all the toys. In the autos state we want what we want when we want it. The autos has no energy to think about you. In truth, as with the truck driver in my dream—you simply don’t exist. And if you do exist your value lies only in your ability to serve the elemental needs of comfort, security, and pleasure. If an adult is covertly possessed by the autos ego state, beware its Trojan horse—often called seduction. The true motive may be to draw you in, ultimately to serve its own needs of comfort, security, and pleasure.

Anthony Weiner, in my judgment, is just the latest example of a man covertly controlled by his autos, emboldened and empowered by the dominant control of masculine energy. Sending an anatomical picture over the Internet and having tantalizing on-line dialogue is still, ultimately, an absorption in self-pleasuring. All interaction and stimulation takes place in the imagination, within the self. “Sexual contact” at this level is masturbatory—an offshoot of narcissism and self-pleasuring—it’s safe, you’re in total control. BUT, there is no real relationship, real connection, with a real person. This type of contact, actually, suspends real-ity. Real contact with a real woman or other person requires opening up to the feminine energy within the self, in all sexes. Only through that feminine energy can true merging and contact be made to unite with another.

Furthermore, even if Anthony Weiner made real contact with a woman he’d met on the Internet he is not a real person at that meeting. He is a fragmented being who has left his husband self at home. The bottom line: real relationship is simply too much work for the adult possessed by their autos.

Women are not exempt from the dominance of male energy within the self acting in the service of the autos either. Women must examine their own modus operandi in choosing partners. If, secretly, the autos’s need for safety and security, completely provided by another, is in control of the personality, then that woman’s masculine energy may act decisively on the autos’s behalf, choosing a dominant narcissistic partner who demands a caretaker/lover that the woman might overtly protest, but covertly covet, feeling secure in being taken care of.

At the other extreme, the autos may enlist the dominant masculine energy to choose a passive partner to covertly be assured of getting what she wants, though she might overtly protest that partner’s lack of drive, imagination, or initiative.

All must assume responsibility now for scrutinizing the interplay between masculine and feminine energies within the self. We are on the precipice of a major shift away from a free ride for dominant masculine energy control. All are charged to act in concert with Pachamama toward a new balance. But behind this balance of energetic forces lies the autos self, which must be reckoned with and put to bed. Pachamama has little nurturance or patience for the autos ruling an adult. In fact, as is abundantly evident, it arouses her destructive fury.

Time to get out of the nest and take responsibility, as an adult self, for the greater interconnected needs and survival of all.

Chuck

P.S.: I had completed this blog the other night and read it to Jan. Though it felt complete, I sensed there was something more to be said. I woke last night thinking of the blog and then had this dream:

Jan and I are in a rural setting. An old bridge had been repaired. It’s not a bridge of much consequence, but it’s the only bridge to get to the road that leads to more significant bridges.

I am driving over the bridge a little too fast. It’s only a narrow two-lane bridge. Suddenly, an oncoming car swerves directly at us with what appears to be an inevitable head-on collision as there is no place for me to go. At the last second the other car swerves back into its lane and we both stop.

I rush over to the driver, an Asian woman, who has already gotten out of her car and is busily typing on her laptop. I am now the observer, as she and a man take off their clothes. She mounts him and they begin to have intercourse. Suddenly, another woman, an older woman, appears who watches them intensely, first with an expression of shock, then anger, then jealousy, and finally deep wrenching sadness. As the Asian woman orgasms the older woman holds her, desperately trying to share some aspect of her experience.

This dream dramatically stops me and insists that I include one more point in my blog. The older woman in this dream embodies the impact of her controlling dominant masculine energy upon her own fulfillment. The experience of orgasm is a door to the deep feminine energy of Kundalini, an energetic rapture of ecstatic proportion. Letting go to such an engulfment can be fraught with fear for anyone, whether alone in a masturbatory experience of self-union or with a partner.

A woman might call upon her masculine energy to shut down her deep feminine energy under the terror of loss of self and dissolution—just as a man might limit his sexual experience to images of woman or objectified, depersonalized interactions with an actual woman—similarly protecting herself from the terror of loss of self in engulfment or failure in actual relational experience. In this case, the dominance of the autos ego state is protection at a very primary level. It is likely that the psyche, in this case, is housing a tremendum of unrecapitulated trauma that the autos, in its striving for safety, directs its masculine energy to cut off and protect itself from, resulting in loss of the feminine.

The challenge for both sexes is to release the stranglehold of control that dominant masculine energy can have on the need for deep union within the self, with a partner, and with the greater world. However, we must look beyond the dominance of masculine energy and address who is really in control and why.