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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Love Is No Pity

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A place of no pity…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Perhaps the most Herculean task that we all face is for our Soul to have to fit itself into the helplessness of a human infant’s body, completely dependent upon the kindness of others to usher it into a human life and support it to maturity.

Stan Grof, with his extensive research into the perinatal stages of birth and the accompanying impact of primal birth trauma, has extended our knowledge of the Soul’s consciousness of itself as it evolves through all stages of gestation.

Back further still are the Soul’s prior lives and identities, which the Soul is required to temporarily forget in order to create the blank slate needed to authentically engage in the purity of a totally new, unfettered human life.  Knowledge of one’s infinite life would completely minimize the impact of any suffering in this life, undermining the very reason the Soul chose to enter into the life it is in. Earth School’s working axiom is simple: no pain, no gain.

The postnatal stages of development are archetypally governed by what are called object relationships with significant others, essentially our parents or first caregivers, to reach the necessary milestones of physical and ego autonomy. What we call ego is actually a part of the Soul, wiped clean of its eternal history, capable of growing into a mature adult; ego is the center of the Soul’s identity in this life.

In truth, what we call the inner child is actually the ego itself, a lost soul separated from its true parentage, forced to grow and learn how to navigate this mysterious world it was adopted into. How does one not feel sorry for this lost soul? Even great Master teachers in infinity have a soft spot for the plight of the innocent infant ego. However loving or unloving its adoptive world may be, it will never truly be home.

How does ego not fall prey to self-pity? No matter how much it inflates or deflates itself, at its core, ego feels itself as an abandoned child, disempowered of its divine heritage, inadequate to the task it unknowingly tasked itself with. This pervasive and inescapable self-pity might be tucked away in the ego’s guiding attitude of perfectionism, but even here it sneakily binds one’s attention and emotion through projecting itself upon the sad state of victimized others.

The shamans of ancient Mexico pierced this true reality of human suffering. They understood that the majority of human energy is spent on self-pity. To unclip one’s wings and fly to true freedom one needs a ruthless awakening to this hostage state. They called this great accomplishment, arriving at the place of no pity.

Carlos Castaneda truly loved his Master teacher, the Nagual, don Juan Matus. One day, don Juan had Carlos drive him into a city. Suddenly, Don Juan transmogrified himself into a feeble old man, who had seemingly just suffered a stroke. Carlos was beside himself with fear and pity. Don Juan then started screaming for help, claiming that Carlos was a predatory foreigner trying to rob and kill him. This aroused a group of young men who chased after Carlos.

Carlos was able to get away and ultimately reach a place of cold indifference toward don Juan, at which point he returned and found don Juan transmogrified back into his more familiar, kind and youthful self. Carlos had reached the place of no pity, total detachment.

In fact, the place of no pity is the place where the ultimate veil of narcissism is lifted. Don Juan explained that Carlos’ apparent love and pity for the old suffering don Juan was actually a projection of his own self-pity onto don Juan. The egoistic inner child state of self-pity was lifted as Carlos stepped out of the matrix of his projected self.

A modern example might be a parent blocking their adult addict child’s phone number. This ruthless act is in fact an act of true love, as the child is given the opportunity to assume responsibility for sustaining their own life in this world, a hallmark milestone of mature adulthood.

This cutting of the phone cord sends the message to the child that they truly have been let go to live their own life, and for them to trust in their own independent Soul to guide their journey, wherever that may lead. Trust that this being has their own angels and spirit guides. Retire the overbearing helicopter parent attitude.

In letting go, the parent must suffer the dread of the deep subconscious parental archetype that refuses to ever release the parent from parental responsibility.  However, to fully let go, the parent must in turn assume responsibility for their own innerly projected wounded child, which they had previously sought to rescue in the person of their actual child.

For love to rise above the veil of narcissism we must free ourselves from our own self-pity. Outwardly, this means reclaiming our self-pitied selves and facing them squarely. Ego is next tasked with assuming its true purpose and capability in this life: aligning with and mastering its greater Soul’s true mission for this life. That mission is likely situated in the very life circumstance that draws one to self -pity.

Truthfully, the adult self must arrive at the place of no pity toward its own inner child’s journey. This involves deep loving compassion for all of the child’s suffering yet appreciation for the lessons learned and a total assimilation/integration of those experiences into the adult self’s being.

From a place of no pity all experiences are valued with true equanimity. The real question becomes not how was I victimized, but what have I learned? And yes, the journey requires feeling the fullness of all life lived, however traumatic, and the release of stored emotional energies, but ultimately it is awe for the fantastic journey of the fullness of one’s actual life that one seeks.

In the end, full assimilation means to appreciate one’s life, regardless of its experiences, as a beautiful work of art. In this way the child self is dissolved into a powerful adult being, who discovers how much it has truly learned and grown through all of life’s many experiences, good and bad alike.

With this loving embodiment of all that one is, one is reunited with one’s greater Soul. And then one is able to handle remembering their true identity, in and beyond this life.

The willingness to suffer the fullness of one’s Soul’s mission is true love of self, love of Soul, and love of other.

On the mission, with love,
Chuck

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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Economics of Changing Dreams

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We must begin by assuming personal responsibility for the world’s current dream. Last week, I proposed that we are in the Time of the Usher, the dream changer. That lead role mysteriously fell upon Donald Trump.

Our very own Petty Tyrant!
– Art by Jan Ketchel

If we face the deeper truth that our world is spinning out of balance and requires a radical shift to survive, perhaps we can appreciate why we have called upon such a ruthless sorcerer from the dark side to usher in change. This sorcerer fits the bill of what the Shamans of Ancient Mexico call the petty tyrant.

Petty tyrants rank as extreme narcissists and psychopaths who wield the power of life and death over others. For shamans, encounters with petty tyrants are fundamental to their training. Most importantly, since tyrants lack any capacity for empathy for the cruelty they perpetrate upon their victims, shamans are offered a golden opportunity to lose their self-importance when dealing with them. Those indulging in self-pity under the reign of the petty tyrant exhaust their energy quickly and unwisely, as the petty tyrant has absolutely no concern for their needs.

Instead, shamans learn how to hone and revamp their energy, wasting none in seeking sympathy or validation for the hardships and cruelty directed at them by their petty tyrants. This energy saving training has the secondary benefit of preparing them to face future onslaughts from the unknown.

In this time of changing dreams that we are now experiencing, we are all at a distinct advantage, as it is very clear who the petty tyrant is. We can choose to stand up to him, by deciding to have all our energy available to meet the unexpected challenges and shifts that are occurring daily, with a minimum of energy expense.

Shamans ultimately seek the defeat of the petty tyrant but realize that getting caught in the traps of indignance and being offended both exhaust energy and cloud the ability to observe and plan strategically. The bigger the tyrant the greater the challenge to preserve  one’s energy and stay centered on the task. This is the position of the assemblage point that the shamans call the place of no pity. This position requires extreme mindful presence without ego attachment. The only question to ask oneself is, what is the appropriate action now, all personal attachment removed from view.

Since January 21st of this year I have limited myself to one minute per day of taking in the news. I came to this practice after observing the energetic impact that one hour of news was having on my energy as I went through the day.

Donald Trump, our news tyrant, seduces with outrageous antics and threats, which literally suck the energetic life out of a person. The emotional volatility evoked, and the attention given, literally feed the tyrant entity, who clearly has an insatiable hunger for attention.

I observe a tremendous energy savings with my one minute per day limitation. Each morning, I quickly receive the bullet points of necessary information, intentionally avoiding the trappings of emotional reactivity and seduction to track, think about, react to , and talk about the stories that are circulating in the news throughout the day—all energy-zapping practices. As a result I am free to decide if I need to do something or if I can just move on.

I don’t spend my energy on worry, fear, or rage. It simply depletes too much energy. Being offended by Trump is a waste of energy! Refusing to give him the attention he feeds off of, starves him of my energy and I get to keep it for myself. Having detachment from his outrageousness allows me to see clearly and to strategically navigate now.

Thus, I see Trump’s role as the usher, who has disrupted the familiarity and security of our world, as the role of the petty tyrant as well. He offers himself as the one to help us hone our energy and prepare for the real changes that we will invariably face as the world changes dreams again.

It’s a dangerous situation!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Please don’t misconstrue my perspective as a benevolent casting of Donald Trump. He is a tyrant and he is dangerous. Many people will be and have been crushed by his ruthlessness. However, the world must evolve now into a new dream in order to survive, and the silver lining in Trump is that, though he appears the antithesis of survival, he has had the ability to interrupt the status quo of the world. This interruption of energy flow is a move of a sorcerer and it allows us all an opportunity to hone our own energy and prepare for the challenges on the horizon. These challenges may be hastened by Trump, but they hardly originate with him.

The deeper dream we are leaving is the self-centered dream where it’s all about “me” and “us” (U. S.)! Trump’s embodiment of that dream is the catalyst for the new dream, the one centered at the heart level: the real truth, transparency, and all-inclusiveness.

For us to prepare for this new dream, we must learn the economics of saving our energy resources by losing the self-importance of being offended and raising our consciousness to the truth of the heart.

The heart stays in alignment with the soul/energy body—spirit—call it what you will, but it is that divine center within us all that tells us the truth, the real truth, and whose guidance will lead us forward into a truly sustainable dream, the dream we are really preparing for, a heart-centered world dream.

From an energy miser,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Shamanic Tools Of Freedom

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Freedom is the unmasking of the petty tyrant and seeing it for what it really is… - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Freedom is the unmasking of the petty tyrant and seeing it for what it really is…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

As a seeker and a therapist, I search for tools of freedom. Freedom is the ability to flow with life as it is. Life is flux—change—and with change always comes a wounding to that which once was. Woundings create fixations, protective shells of holding on, to that which was. Such fixations interrupt our ability to flow with life as it has become.

The shaman’s world accepts the inevitability of woundings and tracks the human tendency to fixate on judgment of the self for its woundings. These judgments take the form of self-blame or self-rage. Either judgment further infects the wound and alienates the self from the flow of life energy. The shamans are empathic to woundings but ruthless in their goal of freedom. Hence, they go to extraordinary lengths to uncouple from attachment to their woundings.

To break the fixation with wounds to self-worth, self-importance, or self-esteem, the Shamans of Ancient Mexico encouraged their apprentices to saturate themselves with the doings of tyrants who made their lives miserable. In order to free themselves from the effects of these tyrants, these shaman initiates needed to astutely study the tactics and behaviors of these petty tyrants to precisely plan and execute their defeat. If they allowed themselves to indulge in blame, shame, rage, pity, or self-defeat, they would lose focus, often to fatal outcome. Those shaman initiates learned to waste no energy on taking anything personally, but focused instead on staying present in objective reality. This was the path of freedom from their woundings.

Traumatic encounters are uninvited encounters with life’s harshest petty tyrants. Shaman initiates seek out the encounter with the tyrant, but innocent recipients aren’t given that choice. Whereas the shaman initiate is in an active playing field with the tyrant, in real time, the trauma recipient’s playing field is the field of recapitulation, the reliving of the trauma once lived.

The means of achieving freedom from traumatic fixation, however, is identical to the means of achieving freedom from all woundings. To complete the process, we must arrive at what the shamans call the “place of no pity,” for self and other. From this position, there is total clarity and total release, as the ability to be present for the full truth of what happened, and the full release of energies previously fixated by life interrupted, is achieved. This is the ultimate defeat of the tyrant: complete release from its grip and complete release from the protective shell of fixation. From this place of no pity we retrieve the journeying self. We shift and reengage in life, as it is. Freedom achieved!

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

# 673 Chuck’s Place: Thank You Petty Tyrants!

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Why are we here? One thing is certain: our time is limited. Our life here is only a visit. In the end, we must leave on what the shamans of ancient Mexico call, our definitive journey.

Unlike other journeys we may take in this world, in preparation for our definitive journey there are no bags to pack and only one appointment to keep, our appointment with death. At that appointment we are required to relinquish our bodies and our attachment to all things material as we enter the unknown in pure energetic form.

Throughout their physical lives shamans enter their energy bodies and take journeys into infinity. Upon returning they report that, though they discover amazing things on these journeys, the true preparation for facing the unknown is in this world, in the form of our encounters with petty tyrants. One major reason for our being in this world is, as I see it, to encounter and master our petty tyrants, the true proving ground for our definitive journey in infinity upon dying.

Petty tyrants can be defined as anything in this world that interrupts or shatters our expectations. Examples may include a crying baby that won’t allow us to sleep, a defiant teenager, an unloving parent, an exploitive boss, a ruthless ex-spouse, a rejecting lover, a condescending partner, a prejudiced teacher, a violent psychopath who physically or sexually abuses, etc. Petty tyrants can also come in the form of natural or unnatural disasters such as earthquakes and wars. In fact, the examples are endless and range from annoying everyday interactions to traumatic experiences. Petty tyrants are not fair, they don’t play by the rules; they devastate us, they use and abuse us, they take what they want, they destroy what they want. Our experiences of petty tyrants force us to relinquish our expectations of common decency, respect, love, or basic entitlements. Although these expectations may be our preferences in this world, they are, by far, not the true nature of reality, which is unpredictable. When faced with a petty tyrant we are thrust into a completely unpredictable, uncontrollable reality where anything can happen, anything goes.

Shamans say that our encounters with petty tyrants provide us with the necessary training to face the true nature of energetic reality; this is our destiny, this is why we are here. Energetic reality is fluid, ever changing. To maintain cohesion in energetic reality we must be able to flow without requirements, that is, preconceived expectations. Petty tyrants force us out of our world into the unknown. If we refuse to accept the unknown and choose instead to cling to our expectations of reality then we are not prepared for our definitive journey. If we insist upon a world that conforms to our expectations, we are not ready to enter the unknown. The Buddhists point out that if we cannot detach from our expectations upon dying, we must re-materialize; that is, reincarnate in the material world for more classes on detachment, with our petty tyrants as teachers. In fact, petty tyrants are our greatest teachers in this world.

The process of mastering our petty tyrants requires that we recapitulate. In recapitulation we face, squarely, all our experiences in life, releasing any attachment to them in the form of anger, resentment, fear, regret, hatred, sadness, self-pity, etc. Staying attached to unfairness, for example, would keep us attached to a predictable world that follows the rules. As long as we hold to the position that we are undeserving of the petty tyrants in our lives we remain deeply attached to creating our own world, a world of illusions, what the Buddhists call maya. Through recapitulation we arrive at a place of complete neutrality toward all our petty tyrants. We let go of any sense of being special or deserving of anything, we simply accept all the experiences in our lives as part of the journey, without judgment. Experiences are simply facts, they happened. With recapitulation we are released to completely let them go, with appreciation for lessons learned. We arrive at a place of readiness to enter an unpredictable world, our tyrants having prepared us well!

When we arrive at the place of utter neutrality, what the shamans call the place of no pity, we are offered the opportunity to thank our petty tyrants for journeying with us and preparing us for our final appointment with death, as we embark upon our definitive journey in infinity.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck