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Chuck’s Place: Divine Bi-Spirituality

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Divine connection…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The typical splitting of body and spirit into a pair of opposites, though useful in contrasting gross and subtle expressions of energy, reinforces a spiritual prejudice against the body, encumbered with its instinctual life. Most spiritual traditions, while tolerant of life in a physical body, place a premium on sacrificing carnal life for the betterment of spiritual evolution.

Furthermore, the physical world is typically associated with feminine energy, which is equally devalued or seen as subservient to the superior masculine spirit. The body, with its instinctual inclinations, is associated with evil and passions, that which must be sacrificed to achieve spiritual advance.

This stripping of the physical body and instinctive mind of divine association has been the prerogative of ego consciousness, which has the ability to exercise its will over instinct and the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Most profoundly has been the explosive growth of the rational mind, with its associated prefrontal cortex, which claims absolute power over the belief systems of modern humans.

It can certainly be argued that the one-sidedness of modern ego consciousness matches the one-sidedness of our early ancestor’s absolute dependence on instinctual guidance. However, this modern one-sidedness has clearly reached the tipping point, as the world is currently being reshaped by the breakthrough of repressed instinctual forces of destruction.

Marie Louise von Franz, Jung’s most valued associate, reflected on a Romanian fairy tale about a 17-year-old princess who was turned into a cat via a curse from the Virgin Mother, Mary. The curse required that both her cat tail and cat head be cut off by a prince for her to be restored to her human self.

This association of witchy behavior with the Virgin Mother is highly unusual. Von Franz believed it represented the repressed state of the feminine by the Catholic Church. Mary’s shadow delivered a curse intended to fully redeem the feminine.

Von Franz associates the cat’s tail with its dominant animal instinct. Symbolically, the cutting off of the tail represents a humanizing ability to successfully handle the threat of being overpowered by one’s instinctual feelings and sensations. Feelings and sensations are a divine gift, but to be received in a fully human way they must be refined from their overpoweringly compulsive control and integrated as part of a balanced self.

Men who struggle with premature ejaculation learn to breathe and get calm to be able to tolerate and savor the feelings and sensations associated with sexual activity. Divine union must include the wholeness of feelings and sensations. 

Cutting off the head addresses the one-sidedness of mental control by ego or the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Most times, the experience of anxiety is the consequence of the projection of an archetype onto a person or situation one is confronting. Thus, if one’s boss evokes anxiety, it is likely that one is dealing with the image of the destructive side of the Great Mother, or wrathful Yahweh, which must be cut off before one can have a human interaction.

Shamanic journeys, active imagination, and dreaming all offer venues to heroically confront and ‘cut off’ the influence of these archetypes that overshadow human interaction. Breath work, yoga, and meditation provide pathways to gain control over the central nervous system to again cut off the power of the archetypes to possess human life.

Similarly, romantic relationships can’t progress to true connection if one can’t cut off the control of an Adonis or Aphrodite mental projection onto one’s human partner. One will always feel less than when their partner is experienced as divine. Mythology is very instructive in pointing out the pitfalls of human and godly union.

While fully appreciating the attraction and beauty of each other, a couple can truly communicate in a real, down-to-earth human way. Thus, the intensified experience of a divine connection with another human being is truly possible if one communicates directly with the actual person they are with.

Mental presence, unencumbered by divine projection, in combination with matured feelings and sensations is the key to divine bi-spirituality. Our spiritual essence is both body and spirit equally engaged, equally valued, equally matured.

Our collective world shamanic journey of now beckons us to retrieve the lost and captured parts of our wholeness, in particular, our feminine and  animal selves.

The body is as much spirit as the spirit itself. It must be granted its true value and raised to its highest spiritual potential. This is the essence of divine bi-spirituality: as above, so below.

Love all,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Just A Boy And A Little Girl*

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That inner partner might pop up at any time…
-Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Just like the roots of our computer programs, that boil down to zeroes and ones, human beings are all, at their core, a combination of male and female, (+) and (-) energy. Psychologically, this means that our wholeness includes the existence of an inner contrasexual partner.

Jung called the inner feminine character in a male personality the anima and the inner male character in a woman the animus. These characters are living entities that interact with our ego, and various other characters within our psyche, where they impact our attitudes, beliefs and moods. Often these characters project themselves onto actual people in the world, which greatly impacts how we judge and feel toward the recipient of their projection.

We are, psychologically, hermaphroditic beings, conjoined together for life. Our individuation challenge, regardless of our sexual orientation, is to achieve union with our inner contrasexual partner. This requires getting to know our opposite side, respecting and accepting its existence, and achieving inner harmony with what is often experienced as a highly conflicted self.

Failure to achieve union with one’s inner other-half often results in suppression of one’s inner partner’s perspectives and feelings, a total denial of its existence, and countless conflicts with one’s outer intimate partner, who may be confused with one’s inner unknown partner.

How often do we feel judged and offended by what we assume another person thinks and feels? Little do we know that our ‘intimate knowledge’ of our outer partner is actually a reflection of our own unknown, or rejected, inner self.

Qualities of masculine energy include the mental function of thinking, most dominantly within the constraints of logic. Masculine energy tends to be active and solitary.

The dominant feature of feminine energy is relatedness, which seeks emotional connection. Feminine energy tends to be receptive, seeking to receive and compliment the energy of another. All of human experience involves some combination of masculine and feminine qualities and energies.

Writing this blog has required my feminine energy to become pregnant with masculine ideas needing containment and maturation to bear fruit. My patience with this congealing process is reflected in the words and thoughts pouring forth as I write.

Sometimes my anima insists upon a colorful word because she likes an idea dressed in her style. Sometimes my masculine ego is too abstract, refusing to give a down-to-Earth example that would facilitate ease of understanding.

In dialogue with my anima, I concede my abstract bias and agree to use this example of my personal process to help readers connect to my idea. My anima agrees to let go of her attachment to attractive but unnecessary words.

Often one’s contrasexual partner defends the ego by using its ability to reason to argue a point, regardless of the absurdity of its argument. Sometimes the defense comes in the form of powerful moods, where one’s inner other tells it how undeserving it is of the treatment it has received.

Through genuine interaction with our inner other, we achieve a collaborative relationship that facilitates progress in our individuation and also clears the way outwardly for positive relationships with others.

If we find ourselves in conflict outwardly, we do well to first check in with our inner contrasexual partner, who we might be avoiding and meeting instead in projected form in our current impasse. Most relational problems originate in one’s lack of relatedness within. As is often said: as within, so without.

Go within; work it out. Become that boy and a little girl, actually changing that whole wide world.

Working it out,
Chuck

*Words from John Lennon’s Isolation.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Close Your Eyes To Projection

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Discovering royalty within…
– Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Our attention and emotional excitement are drawn outwardly to events that show us our very personal drama within. Our inner director is so stupendous, we hardly realize that our outer fascination is directed from  the depths of our own psyche, as it seeks to captivate the attention of our consciousness.

So held in the grip are we by certain events upon the world stage that it seems impossible to believe that they are actually reflecting something quite personal within our own selves. The movie we are drawn to see might be our own personal shadow play, or it may reflect the seismic stirrings at the deeper, unconscious level of our collective Soul life.

To discover the source, close your eyes and ask your Soul to reveal the source of your attraction, fascination, repulsion, and passion for the story it has directed you to. Allow your spontaneous thoughts and images to interact with your reflective consciousness. Prepare to take deeper ownership for the fuller picture of the many selves of your self. 

The Queen’s funeral might find one unexpectedly overcome by a depth of emotion completely enigmatic to one’s conscious attitude toward the monarch and sense of self. Closing one’s eyes to the world, an image of personal mother may appear. A series of vignettes might ensue, expressing her life of self-sacrifice and service, as she provided  nurturance and security to all. A wave of old grief might invite one to emotional release.

Perhaps one might be drawn instead to images of mother repressing emotion in all, stressing rules and limitations in her reign over one’s childhood. Perhaps one is then drawn into the emotion of guilt that one actually felt joy at liberation upon her passing.

At another level, one might encounter the numinous energy of royalty, the Great Mother Queen, whose coffin concealing her lifeless body draws thousands to wait countless hours to walk by and to personally commune with her Goddess energy. Welcome to the the domain of the archetypes.

Archetypes are nature’s images that direct human behavior from behind the mind’s eye. In archetypal reality, royalty is the Queen Bee, whom the drones of humanity are organized to serve. Queen and King are the ultimate mother and father in all benevolent or cruel authority figures that we encounter throughout life. We react to their projection with anxiety, awe, fear, and anger.

Inwardly, these archetypes are the ego’s parents, to which it owes its life. When ego inflates, it identifies with their power. When it deflates, it abandons all its power, as it returns to the womb in total surrender.

In Queen Elizabeth, ego highlighted the value of service—service to the established rules. Queen Elizabeth represented ego sacrifice to a higher value. Human predilection must conform to royal expectation, without exception.

Inwardly, human guilt and longing may be the consequence of our relationship to these powerful archetypes. Has my life gone wrong because I refused to sacrifice to service, that is, to what was expected of me? Is my fulfillment denied because my needs have offended the royals within? Is it time to break free of royal bondage? Am I prepared to go it alone, to honor my right to choose? And if I do, am I prepared to bear the wrath of the royal parents?

At the deepest collective level the boots of the activated Gods are making the Earth shudder. The Queen is dead, long live the King. Inwardly, this transition of power marks the emergence of a new rule, perhaps dictated by transition to a new stage of the life cycle. Clearly, the world is floundering as it seeks a new value to live by.

The Queen’s adherence to ancient precedent cannot lead us to salvation. What is needed is not adherence and sacrifice to tradition but service and acquiescence to what is truly needed for the Earth, and all her inhabitants. Can ego serve such a King?

These are the many worlds within that play for attention in our changing world without. Though we might laugh at the silliness of monarchy, perhaps if we close our eyes and discover the powers that be within, we’ll understand the reason for a tear as we listen to the bagpipes sending this Queen on her definitive journey.

With closed eyes opened,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Beyond The Tyranny of Archetypal Misinterpretation

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How to break free from the patterns of the archetypes…
– Artwork © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Why are so many people afraid of public speaking? Simply put, it’s a situation of one person against many.

A mass of people wield a higher power than that of a lone individual. Talking to a group is thus experienced as a direct, terrifying encounter with a God!

How can a mortal stand up before a God without disintegrating? How could the offering of a mere  person be worthy before an audience of a God?

Our subconscious minds are programmed to interpret and respond to reality, based on what Jung called archetypal images. The image of a terrifying numinous energy hovers over a public gathering. This is the same image behind agoraphobia, the Greek word that literally translates as fear of the marketplace, a place of public gathering.

Archetypal images are preformed interpretations of energy that assemble and generate the reality we live in. They define what Robert Monroe called local traffic, the roads we travel in waking life. Monroe also discovered the interstate, roads that lead to the subtler energetic states of non-ordinary reality. The shamans of ancient Mexico call these different locales, alternative positions of the assemblage point, which generate real but relative realities.

Carlos Castaneda’s teacher, Don Juan Matus, was clear that we are solid beings in a solid world but that we are energetic beings, or spirit beings, first. Ultimately, archetypes are illusory and must be transcended to allow direct communication and relationship, as well as the freedom to navigate without the limits of preformed emotional reactions that inhibit genuine connection and expression.

When ego encounters archetype it experiences terror or ecstasy. The archetype behind attraction is, again, the energy of the divine. To be captivated by the beauty of another is a royal encounter with a prince, princess, God or Goddess. Fear and trembling hinder approach to one’s divine object of desire.

Archetypes can be helpful tools of interpretation, but they are projected images from within the psyche, not actual facts. Beneath the attractive person is a mere mortal being. Beneath the powerful uniform of a police officer or doctor is a flawed mortal, like all mortals. Uniforms serve to stir archetypal images, commanding high respect and trembling.

Often, individuals protect themselves from numinous archetypal encounters by staying safe at home. Others may take pharmaceuticals to regulate the anxiety activated by these projected archetypal images. Although these strategies may protect one from becoming diminished by the power of these images, they also reinforce the interpretation of these images as powers greater than the self.

The better course of adaptation is to withdraw the archetypal projection upon the outside world, neutralizing its overwhelming emotion of divine encounter. Projection, however, is not a choice, it simply happens to us: an object is encountered in the world and an archetypal image is activated to define it. However, the ego can take actions to master its ability to go into the world, speak publicly, and approach a person of interest.

Ego must first become humble and accepting of the self as it is. To inflate or deflate the ego to adapt to an archetypal encounter is merely transient survival. Ego should do the work it can do to improve itself. If you are going to give a speech, practice it many times.

Ego can practice biofeedback and neurofeedback to gain mastery over the emotions activated by archetypal images. This will allow the prefrontal cortex to remain online, granting access to one’s prepared talk. The subconscious can be instructed, through self-suggestion, to check the activation of archetypal images, thus enabling one to approach a person of interest as an ordinary human being.

Regular meditation and pranayamic breathing serve to ground the ego and invite higher spirit entities to energetically join with one’s intent. Ego’s ability to align with Spirit’s intent brings one’s greater wholeness to bear upon the ability to remain fluid during a numinous encounter.

Mastering archetypal images leads to true human interaction, perhaps the essential ingredient missing from the world stage at the moment. That work can advance on an individual level, as we each are free to free ourselves from the tyranny of archetypal misinterpretation.

Mastering,

Chuck

Soulbytes

Soulbyte for Wednesday November 25, 2020

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Proceed with cautious optimism, aware of the trickery and deceit that are sure to follow a loss. Do not blame or scorn another but look inward to rectify and straighten out your own inner house, knowing that that which unfolds outside of you is merely a mirror of your own inner world. Do what needs doing within and soon things will come to a calm peacefulness without as well. As within, so without.

Sending you love,

The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne