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Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Nature, Spirit & The Power Of Thought

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Fog is depressing. That's a thought that has power. - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Fog is depressing. That’s a thought that has power.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It’s raining and foggy today. I could be depressed, but my spirit is not depressed and so the weather outside is not having the effect on me that it might once have had, when I was clinically depressed. Back then the weather would have made me feel even more lifeless and given me a good excuse to stay in, vegetate, and feel sorry for myself. Today I take it in stride, knowing that the outside weather will nurture me in some necessary way, perhaps not clearly revealed until later in the day. I am certain that my spirit and my own nature will find the appropriate alignment that will lead to this nurturance.

Why is it raining? Nature says it’s time for rain. The conditions outside—cloud cover, temperature, humidity, etc.—produce fog, everything working together to produce this grey and rainy morning. We might look outside and wish for some sun perhaps. What we get, however, is nature saying, “no, I need the rain and everything is set up for rain to happen so this is what you are getting today.” This is the spirit of nature, nature and spirit as one, creating appropriate conditions for the planet.

Sometimes nature produces extreme weather conditions, fires, volcanic eruptions, melting ice caps, flooding rivers. Sometimes nature produces aberrant behaviors in human beings, rapists, murderers, terrorists. I can only surmise that nature knows what it is doing, that all of these extreme and seemingly destructive elements and events are actually necessary correctives. I trust nature. I know I cannot control it, but I can study the lessons it seeks to teach me.

We have similar goings on inside ourselves all the time, our nature and spirit work as one too, producing exactly the conditions that we need at this time in our lives. Sometimes the conditions within our bodies are extreme too, such as catastrophic illness, accident, or unexpected deeply emotional situations that send us spinning. Perhaps we also have a terrorist inside us, seeking to rout out some aspect of ourselves that we have not acknowledged or cared to deal with.

How we react to what is going on, both outside and inside ourselves, will tell us a lot about how in alignment we are with our own nature and spirit. Do we ignore the real reasons behind our challenges? Do we pull up our usual defenses, shift right into our ingrained habits and behaviors, the things we normally latch onto when we don’t want to face what is actually happening in our lives? On the other hand, we can turn inward and ask our own spirit and our own nature to come forth and communicate, to tell us the truth, to show us what is really going on.

We can take a scientific approach as well as a psychological approach to any situation we find ourselves in. In fact, viewing a situation from all sides is pragmatic, so that we have all the information we need to make a good, healthy decision for ourselves. Facts might be presented that explain what we are dealing with, alternative approaches to healing suggested, imperatives presented, but then it is up to us to go deeper into what is happening to us, if at all possible to invite our own nature and our own spirit to weigh in. Often, if we are to not only alleviate but fully resolve our inner conditions, we have to go beyond the facts and venture into feelings and emotions, and confront the deeper issues and circumstances of our inner psychological and spiritual makeup that produce our outer symptoms.

If we sit and go inward we might discover something we didn't see before, like the nurturing sage growing right beside us! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
If we sit and go inward we might discover something we didn’t see before, like the nurturing sage growing right beside us!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

For instance, if I’m depressed, my nature and spirit are telling me there is a reason, that it’s time perhaps to go deeper into old feelings about myself that need to be attended to. I take the view that my physical body is my personal planet, and in knowing that my spirit resides in my body I understand that they are one unit. This body unit is my personal “Nature.” Just like the nature of the planet outside of me they are always in agreement, constantly working together to alert me to my deeper issues, offering me the guidance I need to heal my mind and body so that I may take my place in a new and brighter world.

It’s sometimes easier to look outside of us and see how other people are in conflict with their own nature and spirit, but much harder to see it in ourselves. It’s much easier to look to the earth and see how we humans have been, for centuries, slowly destroying the planet we live on, but much harder to realize that what is outside is only a reflection of what is going on inside and that we personally are as responsible as anyone. It’s so easy to blame others, to rant about what they have done to us. It’s so easy to point out how others are so greedy and feel so entitled to take and to destroy. We are above it all, we say, but the world around us is telling us that we are all responsible for the state the world and the planet are in now, just as we are responsible for our own bodies and spirits.

As the rain pattered outside this morning, Chuck and I sat and spoke about our dreams and what we had been reading. The conversation came around to how to begin a process of healing that is practical, offering the most basic of principles: Change our thoughts; change our personal world. Yes, thoughts do have power, a lot of power. Negative thoughts powerfully effect us negatively. Positive thoughts have powerfully positive effect upon us.

Our thoughts set up our natural environment. They bring us rain and fog, or they bring us sunshine. If we say that we are sick, then we will be sick and we must take full responsibility for feeling sick. If we say that we feel great, we must take full responsibility for feeling great too. No one else, outside of us, has the responsibility or the ability to fix us or heal us. Just as we are all on our own journeys—responsible for all the decisions we make in our lives, offered the opportunity to take what happens to us to new levels of growth and understanding—so are we responsible for our own thoughts. And beyond that we are equally responsible for our own healing.

If we have negative thoughts running through our head we should pay attention to them. They are there for a good reason. They are our spirit alerting us to them, asking us to question if they are really true, hounding us to let them go. We will not be left alone until we do. We will suffer depression and inadequacies until we feed our nature and our spirit some healthier alternatives. This is how our nature and our spirit are in alignment.

How we decide to nurture our minds, bodies and spirits is up to us! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
How we decide to nurture our minds, bodies and spirits is up to us!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Are we polluting ourselves the same way we pollute the earth? Are we taking too much, giving too much, overdoing, thinking negatively? How are we using our power? Where are we out of balance in our own lives and what can we do to correct the imbalances?

It’s not really that hard to take the first steps in a healthy direction. But it takes a commitment to really taking up the challenges that are imposed upon us as we face what we need for healing. To bring our own personal planet into alignment we must let our own nature, our spirit and our body, drive us to the necessary balance.

The world outside of us is the perfect environment for our inner process to grow and evolve; as within, so without. In gaining inner balance, outer balance will also be achieved and our lives will advance. A rainy day will not be depressing, but the perfectly necessary environment that it truly is.

Enjoying the fog,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The New Dream Has Begun

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“The dream is over
What can I say?” *

The premise of the movie Interstellar, a wonderful and deeply meaningful movie on so many levels, is that the dream of Earth, as we have known it, is over.

This is no longer an issue for debate. Every human lives with the deep knowing that things are rapidly changing and devolving. If we can lift our eyes from our digital trance, the world reveals to us daily, rapid, unprecedented changes. This rate of accelerating change is paired with our insatiable hunger for new news. Even as we sleep our iPhones stay alert to change.

All the psychic messages that I’ve reviewed, including many from Jeanne, state clearly that planet Earth will continue to exist, though much changed, even taking a new orbital pattern.

This cannot be avoided now. It’s not a question of fate; it’s the inevitable outcome of humankind’s leadership and where it has led the planet.

Humankind is not a wise mother or father, but then, consciousness as the guiding factor is still in its infancy. The true parents of our earthly selves, nature itself, must step in to correct our blunders. Our lessons in stewardship will eventually accrue to an evolved consciousness where humankind can step up to the vision and responsibility of caring for the interconnected whole of this planet. Until then we are at nature’s mercy.

On an individual level, we are all challenged now to contribute to this evolving consciousness. If we are alive, in human form at this time, this is our overarching challenge, the imperative of our times. And although environmental decisions remain critical they no longer need be the main or only focus. Nature has already put in motion its own correctives, most of which cannot be stopped; we’ve already gone too far.

Our focus now needs to be the evolution of our consciousness with respect to the microcosm of our individual lives. We must face that all the forces we see acted out upon the world stage are present in the smallness of our daily lives. In fact, all those forces operate within each of us, pacifists and terrorists, activists and deniers, soothsayers and instigators alike; we are the world.

What is the truth I fail to see, refuse to see, allow to continue to control and dominate my personality, to the detriment of the interdependent whole of myself? This is where the buck stops, within each of us. Can we face and honestly answer this question? Can we take full responsibility for reconciling the powerful factions that operate within our own personalities?

This is our playing field now. Rather than in the escaping to new planets as in Interstellar, this is the one venue where we do have the ability to come into balance and reconcile with the truths of our own natures.

Every individual who takes up this challenge personally positions our species to assume real leadership as we reinvent the dream of humankind, driven forward now by nature itself. If we stay and change with nature, consciously accepting her prerogatives and the prerogatives of our own inner natures, we position ourselves to evolve with her.

As within, so without. Counter powerlessness with personal responsibility and feel the freedom and opportunity to fulfill the self in this life, simultaneously advancing all of human consciousness to responsibly take the dream forward, into new life and new possibilities, albeit in a vastly changed world.

Consciously dreaming it forward,
Chuck

* John Lennon quote from the song God on the album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band 1970

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Coming To Meet—Copulation

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The five yang lines trembling and tumbling at the approach of one little yin... - From The I Ching, translated by Richard Wihelm
The five yang lines trembling and tumbling at the approach of one little yin…
– From The I Ching, translated by Richard Wihelm

Five yang lines stacked together revel in their ordered, controlled, clarified mastery of life, life as idea. Suddenly, a coy innocent yin line enters from below, an impulse from nature, life in its utter sweetness and rawness. The yang lines are shaken at the vibrant appearance of yin, while at the same time they are magnetically drawn, their number and order shattered by the encounter.

Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching reading of hexagram #44, Coming to Meet, cautions: the maiden is powerful, do not marry such a maiden. Deng Ming-Dao, in his interpretation of the I Ching, goes further, naming Hexagram #44 Copulation. He takes us to the depths of human nature itself.

The urge to copulate is nature’s urge that will not be denied; it’s at the heart of nature’s imperative to survive. At that level it is an amoral force. Dress up “relationship” with romance and commitment if you will, but behind the scenes nature exacts its intent; copulation will occur, there will be offspring to continue the species. Nature has no regard for relationship, commitment or childrearing arrangements, it simply wants offspring.

In a recent channeling discussion (linked Here), Saleph pointed out that the disowning of nature—the ape in man—is at the core of sexual abuse. The disowning of the sexual instinct, and lack of respect for its power, has allowed for mass incidences of coming to meet in copulation—completely unregulated and dissociated from consciousness—to erupt in the most historically sacred countries, in the most sacred institutions, as well as in the most sacred place of all: in the family home.

Our distant ancestors were far more advanced at the regulation of this primal energy in their initiation rites and rites of passage. The modern world, having disowned its animal self, revels in a technological self image, with a rational brain machine that can replace all of nature’s parts, or so it thinks. This naive assumption has left the animal in man dissociated from its archetypal roots, as well as from its ego master. The instinct, in such an abandoned, neglected, manipulated state has gone off on its own, preying particularly upon the young. This is not nature’s program but an instinct gone awry, dissociated from even its own archetypal program. Copulation with the young will not fulfill nature’s imperative; it’s not in the archetypal program.

Praying Mantises in a sacred moment of carrying out nature's imperative... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Praying Mantises in a sacred moment of carrying out nature’s imperative…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Love, commitment, and relationship are only possible in a full integration of the sexual instinct with consciousness. Lack of integration leads to splitting, affairs, and the inability to commit. Consciousness must grapple with the fullness of nature’s imperative, but it must also be a worthy conduit for nature’s energy, able to both handle it, regulate it, and join with it in a deeper merging of consciousness, nature, and an other.

Richard Wilhelm also points out that the time of coming to meet is dangerous and yet, at the same time, is the meeting that brings forth new life. With respect to furthering this aspect of nature’s imperative, the door to delivering relationship itself to a new evolutionary birth is opened in full consciousness, offering the opportunity for the union of opposites, in playful cosmic dance, all elements fully present.

Committed to full consciousness,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Nature Of Defense

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Nature's defenses in control, oppressing life... - From the Thoth Tarot deck
Nature’s defenses in control, oppressing life…
– From the Thoth Tarot deck

The core intent of defense is to protect. Defenses are the actions of the survival instinct; they are nature at work. Both Freud and Jung agreed that psychological defenses originated beneath consciousness, a product of the instinctual or archetypal psyche.

We do not choose our defenses; they are the automatic compulsive actions the deep psyche employs to protect the self against real or imagined threats. Two of the most powerful and deeply-rooted-in-nature defenses are projection and dissociation.

If we feel uncomfortable within ourselves about something we’ve said, done, thought, or felt, our protective psyche might assess this as a threat to our self-esteem or ego integrity. Its response might be to employ the defense of projection whereby it literally projects blame outside of the self, rearranging our conscious perception of reality to keep the culprit at a safe distance, securely planted in someone else. On a grand scale this is how America keeps itself safe from facing its own deviousness: the bad guy is always the devil somewhere else, who we have to eliminate, thus our moral superiority is preserved.

Dissociation is perhaps nature’s most powerful defense. When we are confronted with a danger inwardly or outwardly—that our unconscious deems potentially lethal—dissociation will save us by splitting us into pieces, preserving our most precious and vital self by submerging it deeply within the safekeeping womb of the unconscious. Outwardly, parts of our ego self remain at the surface as an adaptive or survival self, functionally charged with navigating life disconnected from its wholeness. The English psychoanalyst Winnicott called this self the false self because it always senses that it is just functioning or pretending to be engaged in life, secretly knowing that its most vital parts no longer participate in outer life.

Projection and dissociation are archetypal defenses of the instinctive psyche. These are the default settings of our self-preservation. Unfortunately, when life is governed by these defenses it may be safe but totally unsatisfying, as life’s deepest needs go unmet. If the adult self attempts to raise its vulnerable parts and bring them into life, the instinctive psyche frequently opposes this action and sabotages the effort using negative thoughts, guilt, or shame. The instinctive psyche is invested in survival; wholeness threatens survival, as we are challenged to own fully our projected and dissociated parts, which may be laden with traumatic experience that could threaten ego integrity.

The solution to this dilemma lies in recapitulation. In recapitulation the adult self takes 100% responsibility for healing, releasing the instinctive psyche of its automatic protection. As the adult ego bears the full tension of encountering and integrating its parts, the instinctive psyche simultaneously tests the adult self, confronting it with all that has been projected and dissociated from and all of its accompanying terrors of disintegration. This testing process of the adult ego’s ability to manage the fullness of the self is a necessary interaction between archetypal defense and conscious ego. This may result in a one-step forward two-steps back kind of process for a while, but ultimately, once the instinctive psyche sees the ego’s ability to manage its own healing, the higher self is freed to support the ego in the recapitulation process through increasing synchronicities, dreams, and visions that lead to retrieval of its lost wholeness.

The ego unfettered and assuming full responsibility, in alignment with the grail, the true self... - from the Thoth Tarot deck
The ego unfettered and assuming full responsibility, in alignment with the grail, the true self…
– from the Thoth Tarot deck

Evolution is really about assuming full conscious responsibility for our lives so that we may be available for all else that is. If we allow our unconscious nature to merely keep us safe, it will, but only through its compulsive defenses and at the expense of our wholeness, our fulfillment, and our evolutionary potential. Is that really satisfying? Or are we ready to do the work to free ourselves from the divisiveness of our instinctual defenses and claim our true wholeness?

Recapitulation is work that is evolutionary for the individual—know thy self—and the world-at-large too. In moving beyond our personal projections and dissociations we open ourselves to more fully experiencing and participating in life in ways that we are unavailable for while under the control of nature’s defenses.

There exists another aspect to nature as well, the interconnected oneness of everything, and that’s really the nature our evolutionary self is striving to discover and cultivate. In fact, the collective charge of our time seems to be pushing us all to go beyond the self. That is really our greatest evolutionary endeavor.

Going beyond, with love and gratitude,
Chuck

Note: We pulled these two cards this morning, certainly in alignment with the publishing of this blog and our pursuit of truth and spirit.