It’s early in the morning. This week my attempts to write a blog haven’t gelled. I’ve run out of time. As I go in and out of sleep, I’m met with painful images, someone dear always dying. I finally decide it’s not worth it to sleep; it’s time to wake up and write.
Out of my dreams, the topic of this week’s blog that I’ve struggled so hard to pinpoint suddenly becomes clear. What’s been churning in the background of my waking and dreaming experiences is the positive partnership of the unconscious even when applying its most tricksterish of methods. Taking pen in hand, I acquiesce to the guidance of this most secret partner.
The many scenes of death and dying that I enter in my dreams force me to confront excruciating feelings. On the deepest level I’m led to encounter my greatest fears, the loss of all whom I most cherish. Encountering the fears, even in dreaming, is active recapitulation, as I’m challenged to stay present and fully live through the inevitable changes. I’m challenged as well, at each awakening, to not project the experiences and people of my dreams onto real people and situations. I must keep my experiences inside me. The twists and nuances of my dreams make clear that there is nothing “really” to fear. This dreaming experience offers another exercise to awaken to the nature of projection, to not get caught in its tricky web. This is another trial set up by my secret partner—the unconscious—to further my conscious intent: the way of truth; and the Tao of the dream is to further this intent by paying attention to the instructions encapsulated in my early morning waking and dreaming experiences.
My trickster partner knows I must write my blog, and as it has done hundreds of times in the past, it encourages me to awaken at just the right moment. This time it sets the stage by asking me to choose between the unpleasantness of its dreams or the tension of awakening without a clear topic. My dreams, however, become so unpleasant that there is no point in staying asleep and so I “choose” to awaken, delivered to this day with this experience to present.
The message here is that we all have our secret partner. How our secret partner confronts us can vary from the uncomfortable, such as what I encountered in my dreams, to gentle support. The challenge is to awaken to the fact of its presence, tricksterishly presented or otherwise, for it is present whether we are aware of it or not. If we choose to ignore it, it will simply continue to approach us with unpleasantness, asking us to face our greatest fears, to live through them, and experience them for what they truly are. If we choose to engage our secret partner and develop a relationship with it, we will be supported in our intent, that is, if the intent resonates with the wholeness of our being.
We cannot control the methods by which our secret partner will confront us, though we can certainly challenge them, and that we must do. It’s one of the challenges of evolving consciousness, to assert ourselves even in the midst of overwhelming odds, just as I did in my morning experience. That, after all, is our ultimate preparation for our moment of dying, to stay calm and awake, even as we are delivered deeper into life.
“I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are,” says the Joker in the hospital scene of The Dark Knight, 2008.
James Holmes dyed his hair orange, became the Joker, and in REAL LIFE—at the midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado—unleashed a fatal assault upon an unsuspecting movie audience.
The Joker is a Trickster. The trickster is a force of nature, an agent of chaos with no attachment to the material world. The trickster’s objective is to disrupt the prevailing order, to break the rules with abandon. The trickster’s pranks may indeed result in tragedy, as evidenced in the horrific Aurora massacre, but they may also reveal truths and weaknesses that if faced squarely might lead to needed transformation and change.
Evolving human consciousness has relied upon spiritual institutions to mediate between its rational, civilized, ordered ego self and the powerful, chaotic energies of the instinctive self. Religious ritual has traditionally offered sacrifice to the instincts in exchange for energy needed to fund the structured, ordered objectives of the ego self in the modern world. In our time, similar to the crumbling of the absolute power of the Catholic Church during the Protestant Revolution, the reigning churches of the day have lost their ability to serve this mediating function.
In fact, modern humanity has become so rational that it has disowned its animal core, and religious affiliation or participation has largely become a place of social gathering or identity. The prevailing consciousness views religious institutions as relics of an unenlightened age.
What has largely replaced the mediating function formerly performed in religious ritual, in today’s world, is Hollywood. It’s a throwback to the days of the gladiators in the Coliseum in Rome or the bullfights in Spain. The modern movie theater is the setting where citizens vicariously project their instinctive energies onto the projections on a screen, as these images duke it out in epic battles of good versus evil. Moviegoers experience contact with their deep instinctive energies through powerful emotions that are enlivened and released, with the outcome being inner balance restored when they are safely delivered back to ordinary life as the movie concludes.
The massacre in Aurora instructs us that the sanctuary of the movie house has ended. It can no longer safely contain our psychic forces. The trickster broke through the screen in Aurora, showing us that the movie house can no longer safely mediate between our ego and deeper instinctive selves. The trickster has shown us that the psychic mechanism of PROJECTION—placing the issues and dangers within us outside of us onto some form of screen—can no longer keep us safe. We must grapple with the psyche directly, finding a new balance, a new relationship to the deep instinctive forces that both threaten us and enliven us.
On a global level, this tenuous balance is evident on every front. Global warming, with its consequent natural disasters, shows us the precarious hold humanity’s decision making has over nature’s wrath. Is it really time for another flood? Or will we do better?
Revolutions sprout up almost daily throughout the world as the urge for change and greater freedom press to topple outdated, repressive regimes.
Revolutionary energy is stirring throughout Europe and the United States from the economic underclass, as they balk at giving more while the 1% accumulate more. This is the energetic climate of Germany preceding the outbreak of Nazism.
All these revolutionary stirrings are threatening to disrupt if not submerge the world as we have known it. All are direct reactions to the collective world ego’s actions in relation to its deeper instinctual needs—nature reacting, both within and without.
On an individual personal level, we are all charged to deal with the psychic balance within our own beings, that is: between our conscious ruling selves and our unconscious instinctive selves.
Those in the midst of recapitulation are well aware of the tenuous balance between the psychic energies of their fragmented selves and their conscious selves. These individuals have heeded the trickster’s warning and have set to the inner work of integrating their deeper truths, to open a cooperative partnership with the deep unconscious.
But for those not currently in the throes of recapitulation, the urgency of the trickster’s exploits must be seen as THE CALL to introversion—to the facing of inner truth.
What are the ruling attitudes of my conscious ego? Are those attitudes listening to my inner revolutionaries: my symptoms and fears? What is my relationship to my deeply instinctive self—to safety, to hunger, to sexuality, to power? Am I being honest with myself? What is the true reality of my psychic economy?
We need to take responsibility for bringing our psyches into new and lasting balance, and not allow the collective imbalance that surrounds us to lead us into hopelessness and surrender. To attend to the self is to bring real change to the interconnected world that we are all part of. To place this call to action upon the self is to honor the victims in Aurora for their sacrifice.
May their sacrifice lead to a transformation that ends the need for human sacrifice as a means to needed change.
Petty Tyrants come in many forms and present us with many disturbing quandaries. I recently faced a petty tyrant, not a person I had perceived as such before, and it took me a few days to realize that I had been challenged very deeply. My petty tyrant ascertained that I must, of course, feel a certain way.
“No, actually, I don’t feel that way at all,” I responded. But almost immediately a small voice inside me posed a question. “Am I doing something wrong?” it wanted to know, and a feeling that I’m not doing life properly set in. I’m a disappointment. I’m bad. I don’t uphold certain conventions of family, of relationship, the structures of society that are often perceived as so proper and utterly necessary: this is how things are done and if you don’t uphold these standards then something is wrong with you. I was uncomfortable in that moment. A shadow descended and stayed with me for days before I finally realized that a petty tyrant had come into my midst.
A petty tyrant, according to the Seers of Ancient Mexico, is anyone or thing that makes us question ourselves, makes us angry, puts us on the defensive, affronts us or makes us feel foolish, diminished, unworthy. They come to fool with us, to challenge us, and to ask us to face our true selves. Unfathomed by boundaries they slip into our lives and wreak havoc, wrecking our staunch perceptions of the world. Judging, condescending, and selfish, they criticize us and pummel our egos.
In psychological terms, a petty tyrant bears our projections; our deepest issues and fears are placed on another, while we unconsciously ask them to carry them for us. In turn we may despise this other person, find fault with them, disagree with them, and overall find their company disturbing and uncomfortable.
We can stay attached to our petty tyrants for years. We begin our lives with them, in our parents, our teachers, our siblings, our childhood friends and foes. Often they follow us into adulthood, deeply embedded inside us. Along for the ride they find new residence in others we meet and interact with, in those we marry and have relationships with.
In my book, The Man in the Woods, book one of The Recapitulation Diaries, I write of my process of facing the petty tyrants that had haunted and controlled me far into adulthood. I confronted not only people but also ideas, thoughts, and beliefs that had been ingrained in the natural process of growing up in the family and society I encountered during childhood.
Later, in adulthood, with those conventions still active, I lived steeped in great inner conflict. Uncertain as to what was so wrong with me, I nonetheless knew that I was deeply wounded. However, I could not allow myself to attach much significance to that deep inner truth, for I had been taught that it was selfish to even think about the self in any way. Time and thoughts were meant to be utilized in the rational world, in being part of an external world that I found deeply disturbing.
It was not until I faced the disturbing world inside myself that I was finally able to release myself from that disturbing outer world that I just could not find a foothold in. Through recapitulating everything about myself, by allowing myself to be selfish enough to do deep inner exploration, I found my way through a myriad of false impressions and beliefs. Fully conscious, I faced and did battle with all manner of petty tyrants during my recapitulation. I reconnected with my inner spirit, the quiet one within, who had been calling to me for decades, asking me to find her again and live her life, a life of individuality and freedom, open to a far greater world than the conventional, rational, fearful one I had grown up in.
I think I did a pretty good job of recapitulating, so that when I recently found myself being challenged to react in an expected way, I immediately recoiled. “No, I don’t think that way at all!” But in the next second I found myself stumbling before this mighty view of reality. I faltered in the face of expectation that, of course, I would give the correct, pat answer, that I would agree, conventional boundaries upheld, the world as it should be, undisturbed.
In the second that I stumbled, I became inarticulate, and the inner child self immediately stepped in and asked that old question, “Oh dear, am I bad? Am I heartless, cold and unfeeling because I don’t think like that anymore?”
Now I see that I was set up to confront the decisions I make every day as I continue my journey. I have been offered such freedom as I have shed old world structures and ideas that I no longer believe in or care to uphold. No, I was being challenged to more firmly realize just how committed I am to my path.
The path is very clear.
For a short while my foot wavered as I lifted it, ready to take my next step. Where would I put it down? Would I let it fall back in an old world, simply for convention’s sake, to appease the petty tyrant? Or would I let it fall solidly on the path I have been on for so long now, committed to following my spirit, in spite of what others might think of me? Could I shed my ego in more ways than one, inflated ego and deflated ego alike, and stay true to my evolving spirit self?
As I put my foot firmly down on my spiritual path, solidly aligned with my recapitulating self, I also acknowledged the role of the petty tyrants in my life. Those petty tyrants do indeed still step out of the shadows and challenge me. Some of them I am used to. I meet them regularly enough and I am rarely thrown by them. But there are others, friends and strangers alike, who offer more abrupt and unexpected challenges. And then the question becomes, whom do I disappoint, them or my spirit? I choose the path of my spirit every time, even if it takes me a few days to realize that I have been wavering, confused, doggedly pursued by a petty tyrant.
Now, having recognized the situation for what it was, I am once again back on track, seeking balance in this world while simultaneously exploring the meaning and possibilities that lie ahead, in this world and all worlds.
As boundaries between worlds constantly dissolve, I find that we are all petty tyrants, to ourselves as well as to others. We challenge as much as we are challenged. Can we accept ourselves in such roles? In addition, I have discovered that my inner spirit is my own greatest petty tyrant, the quiet one within who constantly challenges me to keep questioning and keep questing. Who are your petty tyrants and how do they challenge you?
Recapitulating in everyday life is the way to keep changing and growing, to stay connected to the quiet one within, the inner spirit self who, we discover, knows all.
We are not all that we think we are. There is much to us that we don’t know about or that we find so unacceptable that we really don’t want to know about or deal with. It can be pretty scary to face the fact that there are parts of me that I simply don’t know exist. We utilize some amazing maneuvers to keep ourselves safe from disruptive intrusions from unknown parts of the self. Anna Freud, in her classic book, Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, outlines the variety of defenses we utilize to block, distort, or rid ourselves of unknown parts of ourselves. The important thing to know about our defenses is that they don’t really operate at a conscious level.
What are we reflecting?
We don’t say to ourselves, “I’m going to PROJECT a part of me that I’m afraid of onto my neighbor, and build a fence to keep him at bay so I can avoid that part of myself!”
We don’t say to ourselves, “I’m going to RATIONALIZE how I interpret this situation at work so I don’t have to see some part of myself that I’m unaware of that has just acted out and caused a problem.”
These defenses operate outside of full conscious awareness. They have to. If we were fully aware of our use of defenses they simply wouldn’t work, since we’d be directly confronted with the hidden truths of the parts of ourselves we seek to avoid! And so, it’s important to suspend judgment of our defensive egos. We’ll never get to know who we really are if we hate ourselves for using defenses to avoid scary things! On the other hand, we must take full responsibility for all that we are, even if we don’t know who that is!
If we can successfully suspend judgment—the shame of not knowing, the shame of feeling bad and unacceptable—and instead become archeologists and anthropologists of the soul, fascinated by and curious as we excavate, discover and trace the origins of the self, we arrive at a place of fuller knowing, accepting, and integrating all that we are. The shamans would call this a Practice of Awe: Awe for the Awesomeness of what is.
A comfy stack of meditation pillows and our breath...
A pragmatic process to support a practice of awe is meditation. In meditation we learn to be in stillness and calm as we are confronted with the cogitations of mind, emotions, sensations, and truths that come to greet us as we place our awareness on our breath. In meditation we return again and again to simply observing our breath entering and leaving our nostrils. We notice our awareness being taken to thoughts, reflections, feelings and sensations—hundreds, thousands of times. And each time, we simply acknowledge what has come to greet us, without judgment, without further attention or attachment, and gently return our awareness to our breathing, over and over—hundreds, thousands of times—without judgment, in gentle calm.
There is no failure; there is no success in a practice of meditation. There is simply being with and accepting all that is. As we practice we notice more of what we are. We withstand the knowing; we are not wiped out or thrown for a loop by what comes; we let emotions flow through us; we shift back to our breathing.
An old favorite...
Judgments are released as we shift constantly to our breathing, as we become observers of ourselves, in command of our awareness, in full acceptance, in awe of the awesome. We become curious travelers into the deeper self, no longer needing to defend an illusory self, because we have discovered instead, all that we are—perhaps for infinity!
In calmness, in awe,
Chuck
A special note on a special day: Today we honor Jeanne on the 10th anniversary of her departure from this world into the awe of infinity. Sending her love, as she continues her most amazing journey.
Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
I sometimes wake in the middle of the night, the weight of the world on my shoulders. I toss and turn worrying about how this crumbling world is going to end up, how everyone is going to survive and thrive. The nighttime is often a difficult time to slough off such worries. I turn to dreaming, setting the intent to resolve my attachment to such issues as I drift off to sleep, asking the universe, Jeanne, and my higher self to guide me to resolution. Sometimes I just end up entangled in fear, my mind racing, knowing I’m personally being challenged but unable to gain clarity.
Last night, in the middle of tossing and turning, I heard the following admonishment: Stop projecting! Face your own fears and challenges. Let others take their own journeys, including humanity itself!
In the light of day, I understand how pragmatic and sensible this guidance is, but in the middle of the night it appeared as daunting and even somewhat cold-hearted. Often the frightened child in me simply chooses to turn away, wanting sleep instead, but in reality I am far from a scared child. However, I know I must constantly turn to my child self to guide me to face my fears, for they reside with her. There are always new challenges to face as life unfolds, and who, but my child self, the knower-of-all-things, would be able to show me where I need to go?
Today, I ask Jeanne to give us all guidance on how to face our nighttime, and daytime, fears. How do we turn our fears into deeper inner work? Do you have guidance for all of your readers about how to keep going ever deeper into inner work, how to face our fears and find our way to new levels of awareness?
Here is how Jeanne responded:
Deep inner work requires awareness that there is work to be done, first of all. You acknowledge your fears—GOOD! That is step-one in going deeper. One must be humble and open to the facts of human imperfection and struggle. All human beings are imperfect; it is the nature of being human. Your lives are meant to be lives of struggle, conflict, and challenge. I don’t mean this in a negative way, but, in truth, it is just so. That’s why you are alive—to work through core issues so that you may evolve beyond them.
If one constantly pushes fears and difficulties aside one will fail to grow. Imagine a child, an infant who never evolves beyond infancy, who never meets the challenges to grow physically or mentally, though it is perfectly formed and fully capable of doing so. Would it not be frustrating if that child did not take up the challenges in life, even the physical ones, though it is perfectly fine and more than capable of doing so?!
In turning from their true challenges in life, many people are like such an infant. In pushing aside fears, in not facing or accepting the horrors in life, one remains infantile, in a state of paralysis. In such a state one does not really relieve the self of any of the fears and horrors but simply becomes entrapped in them. They gain power and control and thus there is no release for the true spirit self, lying entwined in such powerful stuff.
Turn to the ancient self and face all your fears
At the core of each one of you is an ancient self—the all-knowing self—who requires more than paralysis and acquiescence to the infant who refuses to budge. This ancient self is the one calling to you at night, using your childhood fears, asking you to go inside and find your way ever deeper.
This ancient self has already faced every fear there is; yet it asks you to review what is most important for you to review in this lifetime. The fears you face in this lifetime are the challenges your evolving spirit self must face in order to grow. It asks you constantly to face them, often using your child self to alert you to what they are, asking you to resolve them, and gain awareness of the self as an evolving being, fully capable of meeting all your challenges, in that world, and in other worlds as well.
It’s easy to think that life in that world is all there is, to believe that one cannot change circumstances. But, in truth, each one of you has more power than you think to change your circumstances, both your outer circumstances and your inner ones as well. You just need to remind yourselves, fairly often, that your ancient self has all the answers. Having already faced everything you are now facing, this ancient self is present to guide you through your reliving. Your reliving will lead you to a new place this time because you are awakening to the fact that you have been here before, done this many times, in many other lives. You sense the déjà vu of life in all its aspects. You know, at your core, that your real challenge this time is not really to face your greatest fears, they are just the premise from which to launch. Your greatest challenge this time is to become more fully aware of this ancient self and what it has to tell you beyond your fears.
Accept your fears as necessary steps to learning about the ancient self. When you desire to turn away from your next moment of fear, I suggest that you stand your ground. Ask your ancient self to take your hand and guide you through that fear, so that you may find the root of it. It may not at all be what you think!
