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Chuck’s Place: Reconciliation Of Mind

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Free your wings!
-Artwork © 2023 Jan Ketchel

We are all ultimately One, but the structure of this world that we live in is one of separate objects, with distinct differences.

Christian Science suggests we link our consciousness with our core identity, that perfect Oneness, whereby healing the illusion of disease in a non-existent, separate physical body.

Hindu philosophy calls this illusion of separateness maya. Maya spins and directs lila, the creative divine play that results in the current world drama that we personally experience as the fixed reality of our world. To become enlightened, one must fully engage in the current play yet be aware of the limitations of its illusory solidity, and the fact of its impermanence. That’s what is meant by non-attachment.

The shamans of ancient Mexico call assuming this role of non-attachment stalking. In stalking, we fully embody the character we intend to become, sometimes even temporarily forgetting our true essence as energetic beings when we do so. From a shamanic perspective, our world is generated by fixating our consciousness upon a program that assembles our awareness to perceive a world of distinct solid objects.

Carlos Castaneda pointed out that it is sheer magic to be able to conjure this solid world. He called human beings magical beings because of their ability to so fixate their awareness as to generate such a magical event. However, he truly lamented how this single assemblage point of  awareness had become the sole fixation of human consciousness. We have forgotten that we are indeed magical beings capable of unlimited possibilities.

In my time in Carlos Castaneda’s world, I once observed him personally demonstrate a physical movement to break this fixation of limited awareness. He was a short man. He turned his back to us, performing a kind of shoulder roll.

He keenly stated that we are magical beings whose wings have been clipped. With that he urged us to literally free our wings, demonstrating with a movement initiated from the wing itself; engaging the fullness of the entire back rather than a shallow roll of the shoulder. I saw the profound movement of the depth of his wing.

It’s a simple movement. Imagine the wing. Feel an impulse to move it. Be led by it.

The maya of the human mind is one of duality. We appear to have two distinct minds. That is the divine lila of life as it is played out in the current fixation of the human form. These two minds are the ego and the subconscious. The dance between these two minds is our true inner soulmate relationship in this life, replete with all the agonies and ecstasies of human relationship.

The ego is our objective, reasoning mind. The ego is the seat of consciousness. The ego greatly identifies with life in its physical body. The ego is the home of personal identity; the ego says, “I am.” The ego exercises the directive power of free will, choice, and decision making. The ego is charged with the responsibility of leadership in its human life.

The subconscious is the home of total memory. Every moment of our life is recorded there. While the ego may retain some memory, the subconscious records it all. During recapitulation we experience the relationship of ego and subconscious, as the consciousness of now is reconciled with the full experience of the past.

The subconscious operates through intuition. The subconscious is the remote viewer that can travel way beyond the confines of the physical body and observe events on the other side of the world, or in the cosmos. The subconscious has access to the Akashic records, the collective unconscious history and accrued knowledge of our species.

The subconscious is the seat of telepathy; it receives and can read the thoughts of others. The subconscious runs all the operations of the physical body. The subconscious houses the instincts and is the home of  emotions.

The subconscious is our magical mind. It does not reason; its modus operandi is suggestion. Whatever suggestion it receives, it will fully bring to life. With its vast tools and resources, the subconscious can manifest, to the best of its ability, any suggestion it decides to adopt.

Unknown to us, the ego and the subconscious constantly work in tandem. Thoughts from the ego become directive suggestions to the subconscious, which then turn into a set of habits that automatically control our lives.

The subconscious is also quite receptive to the suggestions of others. We may notice our attitudes, moods and behaviors greatly impacted by our interactions with others. This may largely be the suggestive influence of someone else’s energy upon our subconscious. As opposed to the ego, with its fixed identity, the subconscious does not have a personality. It is an open book that willingly embodies the content of suggestions, wherever they may originate from.

Healthy leadership by the ego, in the quality of its suggestions to the subconscious, creates the ideal relationship between the two minds. This requires the ego to firstly be in alignment with its Spirit as the arbiter of right action. The ego must also accept the existence of the subconscious mind with all its magical capacities. This is often a tall order for the ego to undertake, which clings to its rationality as ruler and dismisses the greater powers of the subconscious mind.

The ego needn’t believe in the power of the subconscious to access it. Merely rotely repeating a suggestion, ad nauseam, is bound to register eventually as a directive to the subconscious. If I notice a headache brewing, I direct my subconscious with the incessant suggestion that the headache is healing, and is healed. If it disappears, as it often does, I acknowledge the fact of the power of the subconscious to heal.

The ego comes into better relationship with the subconscious when it can expand its rationality to include the fact that the subconscious has abilities that appear to defy logic. Exercising the intentional practice of autosuggestion can produce results that broaden the ego’s reason to include the magical potential of the subconscious mind. Rather than dismiss miracle cures as placebo, scientists would do well to study the factual abilities of the subconscious mind to alter physical events in the body through the power of suggestion.

Reconciliation of mind is ego valuing the subconscious, and consciously feeding it suggestions for the greater good of self, other, and world.

When we leave this life in our soul body, our mental body, of ego and subconscious, will leave as one. As we journey beyond the physical body this reconciled mind is our navigator in the great beyond. Use this life now to bring mind into a partnership to truly serve your evolving soul.

Now and then,*
Chuck

*I am blown away by the magic of the release of the modernly engineered Now and Then, the Beatle’s final song, which is #1 on the musical charts. The generation of now is claiming their own rightful ownership of the Beatle’s Aquarian magic, as well as John Lennon’s soulful reconciliation of relationship. May its energy further permeate the world and its reconciliation of relationship.

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Chuck’s Place: Finding Stability in the Destruction of Now

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Bringing chaos into order…
-Artwork © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Ancient Hindu mystics predicted, with precision, the dire circumstances of the epoch in which we now live; they named it Kali Yuga. As the final stage of a repetitive cycle of four cosmic seasons, Kali Yuga is the moral rockbottom for humanity. It is currently expressed in the atrocities we are now living through, replete with loss of life, and lack of compassion and virtue.

The impersonal energetic imperative of this cosmic era is nature’s insistence that our collective shadow, with its destructive energy from all that has been repressed, erupt upon the terrestrial surface of the Earth, deeply wounding and splitting apart life as we have known it.

The intent of this energetic lightning bolt is to break apart our consensus reality—an agreed upon union of opposites of now tenuous solidity—to ultimately facilitate the creation of a more perfect union of opposites with which to nurture and support new life.

At present, our wholeness is being shattered into its constituent parts, which are opposites. The polarization we see and experience everywhere is the emotional state of these opposites. They are vying for dominance, warring to generate a new world order that is controlled by their polarized points of view.

The repressed emotional hot lava, that has metaphorically reached the terrestrial surface from the earth’s core, are beliefs and actions from prior eras of human history. The dynamic of a final solution to the challenge of opposites that gave rise to the Holocaust has reemerged today, with its emphasis on complete elimination of one’s opposite as the only solution to achieve stability.

This dynamic is active in the Middle East and Ukraine, and is certainly at the heart of the great American divide. The heightened tension between polarized extremes has given rise to a self-protectiveness and a self-righteousness that justifies violence and eschews the possibility of peaceful coexistence. At present, eliminating and punishing the opposition is the dominating strategy to resolve the clash of opposites throughout the world.

Social media is a war zone of opposites seeking to vex and destroy each other. Politicians pander to polarized issues and groups, seeking victory and rule through dominance versus a reconciliation that includes a rightful home for all the opposites.

Humans did not create Kali Yuga, but they do have their personal stamp upon the issues it has brought to the surface. How we reckon with what we must reckon with is of human decision making and responsibility. Finding stability rests in the hands of free will. Though one might feel instinctual rage from lethal attack, consciousness allows for  the possibility of higher levels of human response and reconciliation.

Stability begins with the knowing that this time of Kali Yuga issues from nature itself. The goddess Kali brings about a time of change that must go through destruction and death en route to renewal and new life. Even the Death card, in the Tarot deck, represents this inevitable stage in the cycle of life; a necessity for transformative change.

The death and resurrection motif in Christianity is central to spiritual evolution. Though concretely symbolized in the form of a crucifix, death symbolizes the letting go of a prior consensus reality in order to allow for life in a new and more stable union of opposites. The process of getting there is indeed a painful process.

No one can escape Kali’s energy. Within all of us is a personal consensus reality that has ruled our greater personality. The destructive energy of Kali is rattling our own ruling belief systems, as the ego is inundated with the energy of the complexes it has suppressed.

Complexes range from primal desires and needs to repressed personal traumas; from unsolved ancestral dramas to one’s soul’s mission for coming into this life.

Often our personal consensus belief system is ruled by an illusion or delusion that favors one pole at the expense of its opposite. Perhaps we are so dominated by rationality that we reject the irrational and emotional. In the time of Kali Yuga, we will not escape fits of passion or depression.

Ruthless honesty, within the self, offers the equanimity necessary to know the truth of one’s fuller self. Self-acceptance, and reconciliation with all that one is, is the prerequisite to individuation, a reconciliation with one’s whole self that gives rise to a more fully inclusive consensus reality to live by. This is how one achieves stability in this time of destruction.

The most powerful spiritual tool now available to all of us is being blatantly showcased in this time of Kali Yuga: The power of suggestion. Politicians boastfully chuckle at their power to exercise the power of suggestion to impact masses of people to bend toward their stated suggestions.

The power of the subconscious mind to heal is unparalleled. The power of the subconscious mind to destroy is equally unparalleled. All rests in the integrity of the one who suggests. Autosuggestion in alignment with the true needs of healing is the key to a more perfect union.

Suggestion is what the shamans call intent. Intent is the creator. Shamans maintain that humanity is asleep at the wheel of their power, unavailable to take command of their intent. When asleep at the wheel, we allow old programs, or the suggestions of others, to rule our personal creative force. That creative force molds our consensus reality.

When we wake up to this power, as the shocks of Kali rock our world, we are offered the opportunity to take back our own power, to mould and create our world, through conscious autosuggestion.

Stability rests in our faith in, and exercise of, our birthright to self-determination in the intent we hold for our lives. Turn your own intent in the direction of a more perfect union, within and without.

State, with authority and conviction, what your rational mind might even doubt is possible. Expand your rationality to include the possibility of a healing solution. Employ your rational mind often to express this intent to the subconscious mind.

Once the subconscious adopts the suggestion, it will become its truth. Fueled by its faith, the subconscious will employ its creator ability to manifest the stated intent.

Intending stability,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: At the Threshold of the Matrix

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The Dweller awaits…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Rudolph Steiner identified the dual nature of The Dweller At The Threshold as both guardian and adversary. In trauma, this inner guardian steals away and absorbs the traumatic experience, enabling consciousness to go forward, relieved of the impact of the unacceptable.

The price for this amnesia is an illusory life in the matrix. The guardian dweller plants triggers at the threshold of the truth, explosive emotions that electrify the nervous system and repel deeper knowing. The seeker is led to mistakenly identifying the trigger as the culprit, and to value successful avoidance as the cure.

At the simplest level, the vulnerable ego is protected by mechanisms of defense, as Anna Freud labeled them. Some of these are, at the very least, semi-conscious, such as with suppression, when we knowingly push down a disturbing feeling. Most defenses, however, operate automatically, at the behest of the all-powerful subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is nature, with its sweeping survival instincts that protect life at any cost. The subconscious represses that which would hurt the ego, regardless of the truth that it blocks from consciousness. The subconscious projects onto others the ownership and responsibility for the ego’s thoughts and actions that, if truly owned, would hurt its self-esteem.

The subconscious is also the Dweller, in both the role of the guardian and the adversary. The subconscious houses unlived karma, that which is yet to be discovered and resolved. The subconscious is like the moon, which ultimately upholds the fundamental balance of nature. Though it can shield at its dark side, it will ultimately reveal all in its fullness. Karma, like the moon, also holds the complete cycle of nature, those personal truths we are all here to work on, to reveal, face and resolve.

The ego is equivalent to the sun. With the light of consciousness at its helm, the ego has free will, to do as it chooses. In fact, via suggestion, that impresses itself upon the subconscious, the ego can override and violate nature’s inherent laws. The Dweller stores the effects of these choices in the form of karma. Although withheld, this karma will ultimately be repaid, by nature exacting its balance.

The ego can fashion its own persona identity, and even believe it to be its true self, but nature’s storms of anxiety, fear, anger and depression will inevitably prevail and breakdown of this fragile identity will occur. For ego to advance in health and wholeness, it must ultimately make the journey to the gate of the Dweller, in the hidden recesses of its shadow, and retrieve its lost soul, its true identity.

Ironically, as the journey into the shadow begins, Dweller as guardian will turn into Dweller as adversary, triggering ego back to the sensibility of its comfortably uncomfortable life in the matrix. Better safe than sorry. To overcome this, the ego must drop its false pretensions, lose its self-importance, and relentlessly pursue the fullness of truth before it can find its way to freedom beyond this stagnant moat of the matrix.

“Yes,” stated don Juan to Carlos Castaneda, “this is a world of solid objects, but first it is a world of energy.” This was the ultimate solution to the paradox that eventually freed Neo from The Matrix. When you lock into a solid definition, you generate your karma in the solid physical world.

In The Matrix, Neo learned to suspend judgment. He refused the story,  the subconscious habit that generated a lethal certainty. His energy was then freed to open to an empowered interpretation of self. The shamans call this shifting the position of the assemblage point, where freed energy assembles into a new reality. To do this one must suspend a fixated judgment.

Present events on the world stage suggest that the karma of WWI is beckoning us for resolution and a new reality. Judge Hatch*, our Astral dimension war correspondent throughout that war, was clear that the spiritual intent for that war was: to make the world safe for love.

Though Christ, as shaman, stalked that position of the assemblage point, the chakra center of the heart, and America embraced it in principle, neither America nor the rest of the world has moved beyond the ego and the personal power center of the chakra located at the solar plexus.

Clearly, the souls on the Titanic continue to draw us down to her depths, where we must face her truths but also her tests. Though two years before the start of WWI, her sinking foreshadowed the challenge that was about to eclipse the world.

The hubris of the Titan sub’s CEO, Stockton Rush, was parallel to that of Captain Smith, who insisted, in 1912, that the Titanic maintain full speed despite the threat of icebergs. Humbling is the lesson that ego—despite its solar-plexus power gymnastics, or inflated reach for adventure—is no match for the Dweller, who can only be approached with utter caution,  respect and truthfulness.

The sunken Titanic, whose passengers included Stockton Rush’s wife’s great-great grandparents, is populated with many souls who sacrificed their lives that others might live. This is the myth that resolves the paradox at the gate of the matrix. Those souls reached the heart center, the spiritual center that puts equanimity over class, gender and race.

The Titan was drawn down to the mothership of the Titanic. Its journey captured the heart of the world. May its fate lead us to fixate upon the truth, humility and compassion of the heart center. To return it to the judgment at the solar plexus would be to misinterpret it as just another competitive loss and failure, missing its golden message.

The Russian Revolution was ignited in the midst of WWI. Stalin and Lenin have either reincarnated as, or exerted influence upon, the cosmic dance between Putin and Prigozhin, once partners in crime, as they now face off with shades of the 1917 Russian revolution coming to life. In their time, Stalin turned on Lenin, whom he had poisoned to death.

In this present incarnation, the deeply ingrained Russian Tsarist subconscious habit, of total massacre of all who revolt, was averted, perhaps for the first time in Russian history. Like magic, the river of energy approaching certain bloodbath in Moscow completely reversed itself, all charges dropped. Strategic or not, this action is utterly unprecedented.

The significance of these events—insinuations of WWI karma emergent in our time—is that the ego has the opportunity to exercise its free will; all is not predetermined.

If the world ego exerts its will in alignment with the truth, with interconnectedness and compassion of the heart center, it might successfully navigate beyond the Dweller at the Threshold of the matrix, who keeps us embroiled in the karma of past mistakes, and instead launch us into heart-centered interconnectedness.

The best training, for all whom embark upon this quest to exit the matrix through the heart center, is the Four Fold Way:

Show up.
Pay attention.
Tell the truth.
No attachment to outcome.

At the Threshold,
Chuck

*War Letters from the Living Dead Man
Also, see Resources section in the left sidebar for links to other related books by Elsa Barker, who channeled Judge Hatch’s messages from the afterlife.

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Chuck’s Place: The Divine Conflict Of Now

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Out of the tension of conflict comes the possibility of resolution…
– Artwork © 2022 Jan Ketchel

In 1952, Carl Jung published an extremely provocative book entitled Answer to Job. I was drawn to read it this past week and find I must write my own provocative blog, based upon its insights, as they reflect upon the world stage of now.

I, like Jung, seek refuge from blasphemy by focusing on God as a psychological reality alone, with no comment on liturgical validity.

In a nutshell, Jung points out that for all of God’s omniscience—all knowingness—and omnipotence—all powerfulness—he mercilessly and even immorally tortured Job, his most faithful of servants, this all based upon a dare from his son, Satan.

Jung points out that at this pre-Christian stage of religious history it was evident that God blatantly expressed the full bipolar nature of his wholeness as both a loving and a vengeful God. Job, in his reaction to God’s undeserved cruelty, evidenced a moral superiority to God, as he remained completely loyal and quiet while bearing his undeserved punishment.

In effect, Job’s bearing the cross of this injustice without rageful reaction, yet with clear knowing of its undeservedness, achieved a reconciliation of emotional and cognitive opposites superior to that of God himself. Jung goes on to suggest that God actually requires human beings to struggle with these same opposites within themselves to advance His, God’s, own evolution.

Indeed, life in human form is fraught with the torment of opposites. Life is suffering states the Buddha. When Bad Things Happen to Good People writes Rabbi Kushner. The people of Ukraine are being slaughtered, like Job, for no fair reason. How can good and evil be reconciled to ensure a future for our threatened planet?

Christianity was built upon love, as in love thy neighbor as thyself. This heart-centered compassion for all beings does offer a reconciliation to the current tearing apart of life, as experienced in the extreme polarities at war in all nations of the world. However, this heart-centered solution has yet to advance.

The schism in the Christian solution of love is rooted in its splitting off, disowning, and condemning of the shadow side of self, and of God. Evil’s rightful inclusion as part of the wholeness of God, and human, is lost. This results in the projection of one’s own evil upon thy neighbor, which forestalls the commandment to love thy neighbor. This leads, as well, to the kinds of abuses resulting from the repression by the conscious personality of one’s shadow, and the subsequent possession of the personality by that shadow self.

If Jung was correct in his assessment, human salvation requires a human willingness to bear the tension of the opposites, such as is currently unleashing upon the world stage, in the disintegration of laws in such places as the United States Supreme Court, for instance, as well as in the overall governance of the world.

The fact that civilization, as we have known it, is breaking down, means that we are being called upon to reconcile the unleashed extreme opposites, which we are all composed of, in a new and durable form. Love may be the answer, but we won’t get to it through disowning our own evil side and blindly projecting it upon our neighbor.

Prayer may be helpful, but remember the challenge of Job: God required of him to find a reconciliation of love, hate, cruelty, and unfairness to provide an answer for God himself. Everyone of us is divinely challenged to take up the reconciliation of the extreme opposites inherent in our own bipolar nature, as reflected in the chaos of our time.

Bearing the cross of opposites to achieve balanced wholeness in human form is taking up the work of God’s karma. Assuming full responsibility for the life we are in is the only path to survival and sustainable evolution.

In pragmatic terms, we must begin by accepting, without blame or resentment, that life is unfair. Actually, this, in itself, is the outcome of a transformative process, which requires that we first allow ourselves to accept and express, in some form, the “evil” of our intense emotional reactions to being ruthlessly offended.

We are then freed to bear the tension of our unfair circumstances as we move beyond the entrapments of resentment and self-pity. From the groundedness of this acceptance we find our way to the equanimity that values all circumstances equally. From this place, we are emotionally refined and able to find our way to the love and transcendence available at the heart of our being.

Love does offer the breadth of acceptance that owns and reconciles the truth of our bipolar nature. To travel this human path is indeed a genuine resolution of the the divine conflict of now.

Assuming responsibility to love,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Emotion, Thought & Chakra

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The intricacies of reflection and refinement…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Emotion and thought are often experienced as polar opposites, warring Titans vehemently struggling for supremacy in human life. This is often illustrated in standoffs between thinking people devoid of emotion versus emotional people devoid of thought.

Interestingly, in both Hindu and channelled descriptions of the multiple bodies that comprise the full human form, which includes the physical, etheric, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies, the mental body is depicted at a finer or higher level than the emotional body, as one moves up toward the coveted spiritual dimension.

At first glance this would appear to cement the argument that thought is of superior value to emotion. However, if one observes such a clash of ‘opposites,’ in the form of an argument, one will be struck at how powerful emotion accompanies the ‘thinking type’ in their defensive argument as to the superiority of pure reason, as well as the amount of mental programs that defend the ‘feeling type,’ who digs in firmly behind the value of pure emotion.

Thought that lacks distilled feeling is not grounded or related to real life. This is like intellectual philosophy that dismisses spirituality on purely rational, non-experiential grounds. Intense emotion, driven by unprocessed experience or unreflected thought, overwhelms the circuitry of the central nervous system and also precludes spiritual advancement. To arrive on the spiritual plane, one must refine both emotion and thought, as they become companions on the journey toward wholeness.

Emotion is an energy that comes into prominence at the level of the solar plexus in the human body. This is the coming of age chakra for the ego, which establishes its separate sense of self by creating a moat out of defense mechanisms. Projection is prominent: It’s your fault, not mine. Denial is clear: I didn’t do it. Grandiosity fuels the ego’s narcissism at this early stage, as it takes its first solo steps on the human stage.

Tremendous emotional energy attaches itself to these defensive structures as one vehemently protects the sanctity of the ego. The ego, thus empowered, feels the necessary strength to hold its own as a separate being. As well, the will is established as the ego develops the ability to achieve and create, channeling its energy toward the satisfaction of its own goals and desires.

For emotion to rise to the level of the heart chakra one must first burn off the impurities of unregulated emotion. Rages, tantrums, and moods are heavily laden with disappointments stemming from the ego fixated at the early stage of narcissistic entitlement. This ego must first go through the refining process of controlling its outbursts and safely releasing its emotions. This develops a rudimentary respect for acceptance of the needs of others.

Arriving at the heart chakra with this control, one is impacted by the call to greater connection with self and others. This also manifests as the concretization of the spiritual drive, perhaps in the seeking of relationship or discovering of one’s soulmate. Both ecstatic and sad emotions accompany this pursuit of wholeness through relationship.

The distillation of emotion at the heart chakra—that arrives at pure love for everything and everyone, including oneself—allows this emotion to smoothly proceed to the throat and third eye chakras, the home of the mental body. If the throat becomes constricted as emotion rises, that emotion must return to the heart and solar plexus chakras to process what it is attached to. Until it is released, love cannot rise above its fixation.

Thoughts issuing from the mental body chakras, imbued with love, will act from right action and for the greater good of the interdependent whole, within and without. Thoughts lacking love are either dissociated from the human form or may be serving the wants of emotion at the level of the solar plexus that have circumvented the heart.

To develop the mental body, the home of thought, one must learn control of thought. Here meditation practices can help one develop the ability to control the randomness of thought and the ability to focus attention. Thought, like emotion, is a powerful energy, that must be regulated to journey into the spiritual dimension.

The spirit requires truth and total transparency to navigate freely. Uncontrolled thought lacks the steadiness and sobriety to ground one in spiritual discovery. Unbridled emotion is likely to waylay one in bardos of discontent or illusory worlds on one’s spiritual journey. These are the fantasy worlds that accompany elevated emotional states that end in empty imaginings.

Refined thought and emotion are able to merge at the spiritual dimension, the crown chakra, as one ventures into greater connection and discovery within and beyond the human form. Thought and emotion at this level are hardly warring Titans but true loving companions on their journey in infinity.

Sending loving thoughts,

Chuck