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Chuck’s Place: The Sacred Technologies Of Everyday Life

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Dream synchronicity…
-Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

When our ruler of waking life, the ego, surrenders its totalitarian grip on waking life, as it dies to sleep, we are released into the underworld of the dream.

We emerge newly born each morning from this birth canal of dream to an innocent moment of new life before ego suddenly and pervasively snatches our wonder and reconstructs its familiar definition of life once again.

Every day we profoundly experience this death/rebirth motif. When we die to the day each night, we journey through the shadow of the day just lived, frequently in exaggerated compensatory dreams that insist we see and experience that which waking ego defended against and kept at bay with its array of defensive tricks.

Beyond these shadows, our soul ventures into holotropic states where we commune with helpers, guides, predeceased loved ones, and subtle realms of deepening revelation. When we awaken, we are sent back from these near-death experiences to remember our lessons and bring them to life in the birth of the new day.

Waking up in the morning is a sacred technology. The awe of first breath and first light greets us with our existential opportunity to exercise our free will in birthing a new possibility that transcends the limits of ego’s working definition of self. Seize the moment. Deepen the breath. Relive the dreams. Let them be brought to physical life.

The other day, as we walked in a parking lot, Jan suddenly recognized the outline of a heads-up penny, mired in the dirt. As she bent down to pick it up, she was immediately transported to shiny copper pennies on a marble floor she had excitedly picked up in her prior night’s dream journey. This synchronicity bridged waking ego with Soul, with the clear instruction to be led by its signs that would bring magic into the day.

Everyday synchronicities are moments of numinous communion with our truest soulmate, our High Soul. Be thunderstruck with awe and love as these magical moments of divine resonance unfold. Suspend the judgment of ego’s downgrading of it into mere coincidence. Allow yourself a moment of silence in your inner temple.

The shamans of ancient Mexico discovered that we construct and enact our lives each day through sets of movements they called magical passes. Everyday life is an endless repetition of the same physical movements that give definition to who we are. These include basics, like our posture, our way of walking, the cadence of our speech, how we breathe, and the incessant repetitions of our internal dialogue.

The shamans developed a technology to break the fixated trance of the archetypes we identify with through a practice they called not-doings. Not-doings are simply movements that break the pattern of the physical movements or habits we typically repeat to affirm our ego’s familiar fixated identity.

We might introduce the magical pass of inhaling our breath exclusively through our nose, or consciously changing our pattern of breathing to a different rhythm. For instance, breathe in to a count of 3 and out to a count of 4. We might eat an unusual breakfast, leave home at a different time, drive or walk in the world on a road less travelled.

The options for shifting patterns are infinite and each one of them provides divine moments of silence before the familiar chatter of the internal dialogue reasserts itself. In Carlos Castaneda’s book, Magical Passes, he shares many magical passes that shamans have practiced since ancient times to recondition their physical energy to enter holotropic states of awareness in waking life.

Keeping it simple, just make spontaneous small changes in everyday habits and experience a momentary crossing of the bridge to heightened awareness, where the divine empowers us to be the new life we long for.

Rites of Passage are formalized rituals designed to help us mature into the deepening challenges of physical life and beyond. Not-doings are magical passes that build the foundation for these crossings through accruing energy with the execution of each magical pass.

The death and rebirth of sleep, dream, and awakening—the spiritual audience of synchronicity where spirit meets matter—and the not-doings of our ritual and habitual magical passes are all sacred technologies fully in our grasp and capable of being exercised in everyday life.

Grasp them, though not too tightly! All habits, even the good ones, must eventually be broken.

Not doing Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Beyond Human Indulgence

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A simple way of understanding the need to reincarnate is to appreciate the very human reluctance to leave the human form. Humans are bipartite beings, humanly attached to the physical world, and energetically attached to infinity.

Beyond indulgence lies the magic of the energetic self…  – Photo by Jan Ketchel

As energetic beings, we have a living connection to everything in the universe. However, as human beings, we limit the scope of our connectedness.

Carlos Castaneda writes in The Power of Silence:

“Don Juan had asserted that our great collective flaw is that we live our lives completely disregarding that connection. The busyness of our lives, our relentless interests, concerns, hopes, frustrations, and fears take precedence, and on a day-to-day basis we are unaware of being linked to everything else.”

We come into this world equipped with a sensual body that is granted a finite life to experience, in magnified form, sensations and feelings of pleasure, pain, love, and hate. Indulgence can be defined as the intensity of attachment that we give to these transitory experiences, which we unconsciously maintain throughout our lives.

If we’ve yet to fulfill our experience of these states, or simply can’t get enough of them, our indulgence is tenacious. Mastery of these sensations and feelings could be defined as sobriety, a readiness to let go and deepen exploration, beyond the limits of indulgence.

Human exploration inevitably fixates on excess. The greater the excess, the more powerful the experience. Part of the exploratory process drives us to extremes to discover the boundaries of the human form. This drive to push, even beyond those boundaries, is often fatal, yet at the same time it is at the heart of our evolutionary imperative.

Even now, as the Earth dramatically reveals its limits to our human indulgence, humanity insists upon more, more, more. We can see the fatality of this attitude on the very near horizon, yet indulgence still dominates. At the same time, this indulgence is delivering us to our evolutionary destiny: the discovery of our energetic core.

We are being guided to discover our energetic selves out of survival necessity. At an energetic level, we are collaborative beings, all parts of the same whole. Survival requires a unity and an equanimity of our species that puts the needs of our wholeness over the specialness of our separateness. At present, despite the disintegrative signs that abound everywhere, we are still able to indulge in the excess of our specialness.

However, intuitively and viscerally, we know that our current level of overindulgence is unsustainable. This knowing is constantly under attack by the heightened concerns of everyday life, that which hypnotically showers upon us daily.

Our propensity to seek refuge in the worry of self-reflection—that is, in perseverating about our personal standing—keeps at bay the full impact of the direct knowing of our energetic selves. If we can luxuriate in the luxury of pure reason the full truth isn’t necessary, or so we surmise.

Nonetheless, we are precipitously close to abruptly awakening to our energetic selves, as the Earth, that great sentient being, moves closer to shutting down our viral overindulgence. The introduction of the interconnected energetic self is critical to survival after the fall of our current overindulgence.

Individuals can begin to experience their energetic selves through connection to their dreaming selves. The practice of not doings promotes the inner silence that allows for encounter with the energetic self.

Specifically, one can introduce the not doing of reversing one’s dependence on their dominant side, inviting their non-dominant side to take part in daily life. The intent behind such controlled folly is to cross the bridge to one’s energetic side and more fully experience the contributions of both sides of the self, beyond human indulgence.

Another simple gem, from the shaman healer’s world, to connect with one’s energetic self, concerns the use of water. Pour a glass of water. Then vigorously rub your hands together until they become hot. Next, place your hands upon the glass and allow the heat to transfer to the water. At this time, state your intent, then drink the glass of water. Be careful, however, to not overindulge this drinking practice! Once at night and once in the morning is all that is recommended. Then, see what happens.

Non-dominantly typing,

Chuck

Quote from: The Power of Silence, Carlos Castaneda, p.103.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Not Doing

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A Not Doing, one red shoe, one black shoe…

Not doing is a practice developed by the Seers of Ancient Mexico to break the fixation of habitual behavior. The most powerful reinforcer of habitual behavior is the internal dialogue, the things we tell ourselves, over and over again, about ourselves and the world we live in.

The ultimate not doing of the internal dialogue is inner silence, the springboard into unfiltered perception. Inner silence is a coveted state, achieved through an arduous unbending intent. That intent might include the not doing of a new internal dialogue, such as an oft-repeated statement, like, for instance, “I am silent.”

What makes this mantra a not doing is that when we say it we are not doing what we usually do. Our typical inner dialogue might say
“that won’t work” or “that’s not the way my mind works.” Thus, to state “I am silent” requires volition to oppose the limitation imposed by the default position of our internal dialogue.

The trick with this, and all not doings, is no attachment to the outcome; simply perseverance in performing the prescribed action. Attachment belongs to the inventory of the standard internal dialogue that insists reality be what is prescribed.

In that case, if our not doing is not quickly realized through our new internal dialogue, we can suffer the emotional energy drain of failure, which becomes defeat. Defeatism reinstalls the primacy of the familiar internal dialogue, which quickly shifts us back into our habitual self.

Not doing is a volitional action that forces our consciousness to be present in new ways. To eat or write with one’s non-dominant hand is an unfamiliar behavior. Energetically, a not doing explores untapped energy potential, as it ventures beyond the known boundaries of the habitual self.

While at a practical level, a not doing interrupts the habitual flow of our energy into repetitive thought and behavior, at a truly sublime level, we are learning the fluidity to fixate upon new worlds of possibility. This includes a very different experience of self and the world that we can fixate upon or hold onto at will.

Suspending all moral judgments, both nature and world leaders are introducing global not doings that are generating new worlds of possibility that we might fixate upon. Of course, there remains the not doing of not tracking world events, but none of us are immune from their impact on the ultimate, interconnected energy we are all a part of.

As I began writing this blog yesterday morning, a Monday, Jan was simultaneously channeling Jeanne’s spoken message for the week. Synchronistically, Jeanne prescribed a not doing breathing technique, to cancel the internal dialogue and experience a moment of inner silence. When I heard the message, I realized I must continue this blog, as it was prompted by the Tao of now.

What makes the prescribed breathing technique a not doing is the fact that it interrupts the natural flow of unconscious breathing, as one must consciously remain present to monitor the steps of the in breath, the pause, and the out breath. This not doing opens up new assemblages of energy, as it ventures beyond the narrow frame of automatic behavior.

Our automatic internal dialogue rests upon a very narrow set of beliefs, which limit our access to our true potential. Even nonsensical not doings, like wearing unmatched shoes, sends our awareness into uncharted territory, as it breaks its typical habitual fixation.

The intent of such a not doing, as wearing unmatched shoes, is quite private, loosening one’s tendency to fixate, unconsciously, upon the same things. The intent is not to feed the self-importance of being seen as an oddity. Not doings might be quite public actions, but not for the purpose of attracting attention. Such a motive would defeat the intent of not doing, which is to open the door to energetic possibility by learning to fixate on new behaviors.

Training awareness to be fluid, through the practice of not doings, hones our ability to navigate the unknown, particularly the unknown sides of ourselves waiting to be actualized. Not doings also promote the inner silence that leads to discovering our dormant potential.

As Jeanne suggests, take a breath of fresh air. Out with the stale breath of the internal dialogue, in with the not doing of new life.

Not doing,

Chuck