Tag Archives: reality

Chuck’s Place: Assume Your Quantum Responsibility

Within this tomato is the entire plant…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Quantum is the world reduced to its energetic base, a wave of interconnected energy that has the alternative potential to fragment into discrete solid objects, distinguished by their uniqueness.

Carlos Castaneda complains to don Juan: “I can’t conceive the world in any other way… It is unquestionably a world of objects. To prove it, all we have to do is bump into them…”

“Of course it’s a world of objects. We are not arguing that,” responds don Juan. “… I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it’s a world of objects.”

Don Juan also said, “I am convinced that for man to survive now, his perception… that the world is [only] made of concrete objects… must change.”*

Humankind must access its energetic, interconnected self to survive the clash with its separate, split apart objects, the crisis of now.

Quantum physicist David Bohm proposed that the universe is one giant hologram and that all the separate “objects” in it—i.e., people—are really of one interconnected whole. Each separate object is really a hologram that contains the whole within itself.

Assuming quantum responsibility means that the buck stops here. Within myself is the entire universe, that which is being acted out and debated right now on social media, in the news, and in the world. If we fail to recognize, contain, and reconcile all that is warring within ourselves we evade our quantum responsibility for the maintenance and survival of our entire world.

Too often the tensions of the opposites within us, or as we see them mirrored outside of us, cause us to polarize: things become black and white and we strongly identify with one side or the other. When we do this we project the rejected parts of ourselves outwardly, onto another, who becomes the enemy. This results in opposition, scapegoating, hateful banter, and, at times, attempts to literally destroy each other.

I risk here a sensitive example: twenty-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. slams his car into a Charlottesville crowd; an innocent woman is killed. Earlier Mr. Fields had stood with a group of men believed to be associated with Vanguard America whose manifesto declares that “a government based in the natural law must not cater to the false notion of equality.”**

If I distill this rhetoric down to its energetic essence, I see the irrational, instinctual, amoral, survival-of-the-fittest aspects of our being reacting to our evolved consciousness where reason advocates for evolved programs like equality.

This opposition of the natural order of things versus our evolved consciousness, the irrational versus reason, is inherent in the body/mind split that every being on earth has to contend with. Can I reconcile my own animal instincts with my own spirit’s consciousness? In setting out to do that I take quantum responsibility for the current challenges facing our world. My little hologram of self impacts the greater hologram that is our shared world.

The power shift in the world right now is toward the rise of the irrational; instinct versus reason. Reason has held a tight control of the world but is now rapidly diminishing in power.

The first quantum tool to stabilize the world is to face the hologram of the world, as it is being lived, within the self. Without blame, without projection, own the warring sides within. Where is the “Vanguard” within the self? How to acknowledge it, contain it, and integrate it more peaceably and responsibly within the self, into a living inner wholeness, is the task at hand. If I change my own hologram the world hologram must change as well. That is quantum physics; as within, so without.

Don Juan Matus also taught Carlos Castaneda the quantum tool of intent. For shamans, intent is a force that permeates the entire universe, that responds to the beckoning or command of human beings.

When a hypnotist plants a suggestion in the mind of a subject, the intent of that suggestion is frequently acted out by the subject. This propensity for human beings to mindlessly be influenced by suggestion can lead to high level manipulation at an individual level as well as on a collective level with large groups of people becoming controlled by suggestion. This is the kind of black magic that leads to the destruction being acted out daily on the world stage.

Regardless of the current exploitation of intent by the dark side, and we all must face the demands and commands of the dark side within ourselves, intent can always be beckoned for healing and evolution. On an individual level, the call for healing is sure to result in a cascade of unfolding events that shape the healing possibility. However intent answers the call, it is always incumbent upon the individual to face, recognize, and reconcile with the life circumstances shaped by intent in order to effect a cure.

Intent can provide an opportunity but consciousness must seize the day! Consciousness must acknowledge and safely live its darkness. All that is repressed will eventually break through with a vengeance.

Wholeness can look like this…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

On a world level, individuals can beckon intent to lead us into a collective world healing. Such intent might sound something like this: I intend that the world heal. I intend that the world survive. I intend that the world embrace its wholeness, rational and irrational alike, with heart centered consciousness as the arbiter of reconciliation.

With that intent, I merge my intent with the intent of many. I also promise to assume quantum responsibility for the events that appear in my own personal hologram, facing them and reconciling with them, and in so doing furthering the healing of our energetic world.

Intent!

Chuck

*Quotes from The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda, pp. 3 & 4, bracketed text added by Chuck

**Reference to Vanguard America from the New York Times

Soulbyte for Wednesday July 19, 2017

Don’t get so caught up in your own mess that you can’t see what’s really there, what’s come to help you, or what you’ve been missing. What you are searching for may be right there, looking you in the eye, asking you to look back and get what it’s been telling you. When you get caught in your own mess you become blind, deaf, and dumb, virtually shut down, and then life, going on all around you, has a hard time communicating. Time to pause and look around at all you’ve been missing. You might be surprised!

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: We’re All In The Same Dream

Chuck starts off with our first blog of the New Year, restating the intent that we embody, to take full responsibility for who we are and how we choose to participate in the dream of this reality. It’s what we at Riverwalker Press are all about. As the New Year begins we invite all of you to participate in dreaming a new dream with us. Happy New Year!

Warmly, with love and gratitude from us both,
Chuck and Jan

This is the dream we are in today... What does your dream look like? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
This is the dream we are in today…
What does your dream look like?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Every cell in our body has a life of its own. It is challenged daily to obtain necessary resources for its survival, maintain balance, rid itself of wastes and spawn new life. Little does that single cell know that it is actually part of a much greater integrated whole, a human body.

The interdependent reality of our wholeness escapes us as we focus daily, like every single cell within us, on our individual tasks of survival and fulfillment. Nonetheless, if we contemplate our greater cosmic reality, perhaps we might glimpse, through reason or intuition or experience, the oneness of everything. And, from that place of oneness, all of us are responsible for the dream we are in and where we are going to take it. We are all empowered, through consciousness and intent, to advance the dream, that is, to change the world we live in.

Over the past couple of days, the stock market has been in a downslide. Why? Because the price of oil has been plunging rapidly. Meanwhile, the auto industry has had its best year in sales in decades, due in large part to increased sales of gas guzzlers, the consequence of cheaper gas. Meanwhile, many, whose economic survival is dependent upon the stock market, are faced with threatening losses as “safe” investments like oil plummet in value. Behind all these challenges to daily survival lies the reality that fossil fuels are a major contributor to the rapid destabilization and destruction of the planet that feeds and houses us.

We, as individuals, are empowered to decide where this dream will go next. Many are so focused on personal survival that they feel obliged to make the best investments, irrespective of environmental consequences or the total destruction of lives and cultures outside of their own. Gas guzzling cars are one of the things that most of us use daily and yet most people can’t afford to switch up to hybrid vehicles or they are drawn to the perks of less fuel efficient cars, while still others have much more basic needs of daily survival, putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads.

If we look to government to solve the greater issue of climate change we are confronted with the likes of today’s headlines: Big Threat For Obama’s Climate Efforts From GOP-Run Congress.* It’s easy to indulge in powerlessness and point fingers at the GOP, but to be truly responsible we must examine the GOP within ourselves. No one can separate themselves from deciding which way this dream will unfold; we’re all part of the same whole.

The GOP reflects an old dream that insists that the world is ours for the taking, that consideration beyond the needs of self and ours is unnecessary. That dream downplays the interdependent reality and the global concerns that effect us all and instead focuses on the individual’s responsibility to ensure survival of the personal dream. That dream has been given full latitude to play itself out and now finds itself approaching nightmare, as that dream and the world it has generated are unsustainable. This nightmare has caused many to wake up and face the facts, but still many others, reflected in the newly elected American Congress, remain staunch champions of the supremacy of the old dream; self above all.

The truth is, we are all living cells of the same dream, each empowered to decide, within the context of our own lives, which way the dream will proceed. On a concrete level, if I refuse to invest in fossil fuels, I am changing the dream. If I choose to buy a fuel-efficient car, regardless of other sales’ enticements, I choose a different dream. If I choose to replace my light bulbs with an expensive, highly efficient LED bulb, I choose a different dream. There are even simpler choices we can all make, such as to recycle or to be less wasteful overall.

How powerful a little pocket of intent is! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
How powerful a little pocket of intent is!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

When Jeanne was in this world—as the Hindus say: at the gross level of reality—she strongly preached the power of the purse to effect change. Now she resides fully in the astral plane, the next, finer dimension of reality that houses our soul or spirit, guiding us to exercise the power of intent to effect change in our lives within and without. Though the main fuel of the astral dimension, intent is equally effective in the gross dimension of our reality, awaiting our discovery of its power.

When we pray, when we state our intent, repeat our mantras, send love and compassion, we are transforming the dream world we are in. Everyone who loves their enemy reconciles with their own divided wholeness and advances the dream.

If I can love the GOP within myself—the part that demands individual responsibility but is also so susceptible to self interest—exploitative and greedy—I can make responsible choices in the myriad of decisions I make today to advance the dream in a new direction for all living beings. Such a decision might be as simple as where I choose to place my awareness, how I choose to think or spend my personal energy.

If worry and fear beckon, I might shift to some moments of intentional release of tension in my body, into calm, deliberate breathing. This simple act changes the energy I bring to the integrated wholeness of the one dream that we all live in and are dreaming together.

Imagine if each of us decided to awaken to the power of intent and bring it into the gross dimension that we all live in in such a calm and nurturing way. It might just be a strong enough intent to course-correct the orbit of the dream we are now in, sending us into a new dream of sustainability. We are never powerless.

Staying awake in the dream,
Chuck

* Headline in The Huffington Post January 6, 2015

Message from Jeanne: Creating A New Reality

Is this squash really as vibrationally significant as we are? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Is this squash really as vibrationally significant as we are?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Here is a channeled message for the week. May it offer insight into how to live in our changing world. The clicking sounds in the background of the recording are from the wood stove—hope they are not too disturbing! I am using an unsophisticated handheld device without capacity to edit, so you get whatever is happening in the environment I am sitting in.

We will be posting links to additional information later in the day regarding the recent messages that have been coming through, especially as we experience what is happening in the world around us, as we see resonance, and as feels appropriate to pass along. This feels right, as our way of participating in the time of gathering that Jeanne spoke of in this morning’s Soulbyte, passing along what comes to our attention. Feel free to share.

Offered in service to the expansion of our greater consciousness,
Jan

A Day in a Life: Of Blue Jays, Dreams & Resolutions

What's the story Mr. Jay? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
What’s the story Mr. Jay?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Why are there so many blue jays in my yard? I ask this question because it’s true; the jays have taken over! I study them as they come to feed on the seeds I’ve put out. If I don’t get there early enough they knock impatiently on the window, suggesting that I hurry up and feed them! Their coloring is a combination of blue, gray, white and black. They have come to teach me something, I surmise.

Along with the usual New Year’s resolution to do more yoga and meditation, to eat healthier, to cut back on what I know is not good for me, I have set the intent to become a better dreamer, to train myself to be aware while I dream, and to discover what the shamans and Buddhists, and many others mean when they say that all worlds are one, whether we are awake or dreaming. I’ve had plenty of experiences of this concept, but I’m interested in going more deeply into the true meaning of reality while I’m asleep and my energy body is active. So far, I’ve had some pretty cool dreaming experiences, which I won’t go into here, but suffice it to say, my intent is working.

If I am to use my dreams to evolve beyond this reality, as is my underlying intent, I must learn how to remain fully aware as I dream. This is all in preparation for the time of my death when I intend to seamlessly pass through the bardos and achieve life beyond human form. At least that’s my intent. As far as I know, this is what we are all challenged with, to find a means of not having to reincarnate in human form more than we absolutely have to. If I can do this, I feel that I will have not only accomplished my own personal soul intent, but that I will free up space on earth for others to live more comfortably. We all know that the earth is overpopulated and overtaxed. I don’t really want to come back again, knowing that I could possibly have done more to free myself of this realm, and this realm of me! Now, back to the blue jays.

While they sit and scarf down the seeds I’ve put out, I study their coloring and the way their wings lie enfolded across their backs. When in repose, an intricate pattern appears, so beautiful that I am reminded of stained glass windows. As soon as they spread their wings and fly, solid bars of color appear and the intricate pattern disappears. Okay, this, I see, is what I am being shown, what I must learn something from.

Ted Andrews, in his book Animal Speak, says that the blue jay “has the ability to link the heavens and earth, to access each for greater power.” The jay represents both heaven and earth, the white of the heavens and the dark of the earth separated by the blue of the sky. The gray perhaps represents the veils that keep us from fully knowing and experiencing our full potential, to be both of the heavens and the earth, aware in dreaming and while awake. The colors also represent our light and dark sides, what we show about ourselves and what we keep hidden, to both ourselves and others. Andrews also notes that the jay is a little tricky in that it can be a bit of a dabbler. It shows us our potential, but if we are to gain mastery and fully utilize all that we are capable of we must grapple with this side of ourselves. I see how my New Year’s resolution, to train my dreaming intent could be a challenge if I don’t stick with it, but I have no intent of dabbling.

I notice that when in repose—in dreaming, as I see it—the blue jay’s colors are all present, though the pattern of them is quite different from when they are actively flying—going about in their everyday reality, as I see it. We all wear certain stripes and patterns. We are perceived and perceive of ourselves in a certain way. But in actuality, all that we are is present in us at any given moment. When we dream, I surmise, everything that we are in waking life is also present. Likewise, in waking reality, all that we are when we dream is present as well.

Will I remain aware when I enter the bardos? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Will I remain aware when I enter the bardos?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It’s easy to assign to our dreaming selves some of our more challenging possibilities; the ability to fly or shape shift, to instantaneously be in one place or a thousand miles away. But, if we keep in mind that all that we are, all of our potential, is present in us at all times—like the colors of the blue jay—we might just be able to appreciate what our dreaming self is trying to teach us about the oneness of worlds, the fluidity of our energetic selves, and the fact that all realities, dreaming and awake, are equal and the same, just formatted a little differently. Whether we are in stained glass pattern or striped pattern, it doesn’t matter, we’re all composed of the same substance, and that is energy.

I watch the blue jays fly back and forth, feeding on the seeds and then flying into the trees or off to have an adventure in the world. They drop to the earth with ease; they fly to the heavens with ease. This is what we are challenged to do in our lives, to be fully energetically present in our daily lives, finding the means to realize our fullest potential at all times, all parts of us assimilated and in alignment with the fact that we too can fly. At night when we spread our wings, disrupting the usual patterns of who we are on a daily basis, we earn our energetic stripes as we fly through our dreams.

And so, if we can just remember that we are energetic beings all the time and not only while we dream, we are well on the way to achieving what the Buddhists call enlightenment, freedom from samsara, the suffering of being in human form. With intent, we can gain mastery to fly seamlessly, and with awareness, between heaven and earth, just like the blue jay!

Happy dreaming!
Jan