Tag Archives: Robert Monroe

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Chuck’s Place: Gasp, Then Segue

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Ahhh…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

The gushing river, hammered with thunderous rain, topples the restraining power of its dikes, flooding the lands it borders. We gasp at the breakthrough of this violent release.

As the I Ching points out, in the hexagram of Breakthrough (#43), this release is the consequence of a long period of accumulated tension, such as in that of a cloudburst that results from an extended accumulation of condensation in a cloud that can no longer bear the weight of the water it holds.

That tension was released, on the one side, by those who felt it their patriotic duty to storm the Capital. From the other side, the release took the form of vindication: yes, they had indeed been living under the tyranny of a despot. Those tense energies have climaxed simultaneously, as we approach the end of one era and the dawn of a new. We are now in the time of Segue.

As Bob Monroe wrote in his book, Far Journeys:

“…’segue‘  is defined as a proper interlude of musical melodies and harmonies that moves from the conclusion of one composition to the introduction of another. ‘Proper’ infers a transition that smoothly loses that previous theme or mood and sets the stage for what is to come.” (p. 63)

How now will we compose our segue?

The I Ching states that the facts must be announced truthfully. There is danger, but it does not favor one to take up arms. Nonetheless, the I Ching states:  “Even if only one inferior man is occupying a ruling position in a city, he is able to oppress superior men.”

That kind of power must be checked.

On an individual level we are guided to address any passion still lurking in the heart that would obscure reason. Passion and reason cannot coexist, therefore the true fight is to unseat the passion so that good might prevail. If we allow ourselves to indulge in the fires of rage, from any side, we risk devolving a peaceful segue into total conflagration.

There is no compromise with evil; it must be openly discredited. This includes an objective assessment of our own passions and shortcomings. Nonetheless, it is not wise to fight evil with proactive aggression, as this would only enflame its impulse and likely infect the good with evil, as it regresses into rageful reaction.

Perhaps the best segue the I Ching can offer, from the time of Breakthrough, is to shift the composition to one of making energetic progress in the good. The flames of evil require the kindling of negativity to continue to burn. A positive, loving attitude that embraces the opportunity for energetic progress in the good can unify a nation, and a world, that the common good may finally prevail.

Segue to love,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Human Complexity

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Working on unity…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Carl Jung defined a psychological complex as a ‘feeling toned idea’ that acts quite autonomously in the human psyche. When Jung was performing his word association tests he observed that certain words triggered delayed reaction times and emotional reactions in his experimental subjects. Something ‘else’ was interfering.

This led to his discovery that there are autonomously functioning parts of the psyche acting outside of consciousness. Jung called these influences ‘complexes’. Freud spent his entire career highlighting the Oedipal complex, which he considered the greatest unconscious influence upon the human psyche.

Today we have terms like alters, ego states, fragmented parts or archetypes to depict these autonomous influences upon consciousness. Robert Monroe took Western psychology a step further with his research into out-of-body (OBE) states, where consciousness discovers non-material parts of the self that regularly influence consciousness from subtler planes of existence.

Monroe’s discoveries concur with Hindu science with respect to the emotional/desire body as the first to be encountered in an OBE state. Many OBE explorers report an encounter with excess sexual desire in their early explorations. Monroe also discovered a preponderance of sexual preoccupation by many travelers who had left human form through physical death, as they remained fixated on sexual activity, though lacking a physical body.

Monroe’s discovery certainly lays credence to Freud’s emphasis upon the overarching significance of sexuality for human beings. Sex may be the major karmic issue that sends disembodied spirits back into human life. Monroe also reported encounters on the astral plane with the energy body of sleeping human beings, equally preoccupied with sex in their dream states.

Beyond sex are the many emotional attachments that humans, in their energy body OBE states, are found to be preoccupied with. Civilization, with its emphasis upon reason, uniformity and conformity, has suppressed and repressed the spontaneous living of impulse. What we previously considered as repressed and contained within the psyche in the physical body may be very actively living on the astral plane outside of human consciousness.

The current polarized attitudinal split in the human race might actually reflect this polarized split within the human psyche, manifesting as an outer collective opposition. If we distill this opposition, it could be reduced to, simply, reason vs impulse. Resolution of this opposition is fundamental to unified progress.

Shamans introduced the practice of recapitulation as one’s individual soul retrieval journey. If one can bring consciousness and reconciliation to all of one’s parts, one can achieve wholeness while in human form. To the extent that this remains incomplete will determine one’s karma. After all, how can one go forward as a fragmented soul. One must first discover and gather together all of one’s parts.

Elmer Green served as his wife Alyce’s shamanic guide in her journey through Alzheimer’s disease. Alyce had spent her entire adult life immersed in the highest of spiritual principles. As her energy body journeyed into the astral plane, as she went the course of Alzheimer’s, she encountered her shadow self, the repressed and unloved side of herself, for the first time.

Besides her memory loss, she became paranoid and rageful much of  the time. These experiences were largely driven by her encounters with her unknown self. With extreme patience, Elmer helped her to get grounded and reconcile with her fuller self. This enabled her to enter infinity at an advanced level, well beyond the shadow bardos, when she physically died in this world.

Jung’s choice of the word complex to denote autonomous parts of the psyche truly holds up. Humans are complex beings! The key challenge in human form is to resolve all of one’s complexes and become one’s true wholeness. With wholeness one’s energy is fully united, as everything becomes possible.

From complex to unity,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Energetic Life Comes of Age

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The sky’s the limit!
Photo by Jan Ketchel

The world has “Zoomed” into a virtual habitat of connection. With the physical world on lockdown the human spirit has found its way to energetic community and heart-centered connection.

The technological infrastructure is well advanced to support our necessary journey into virtual reality. However, it has the physical limitation of requiring electricity and machinery to maintain connection.

The ideal energetic connection would shed this physical dependence through the medium of the energy body.

In his out-of-body journeys into the future, Robert Monroe experienced a future time on Earth where human beings lived dominantly in their energy bodies. Their physical bodies were kept securely safe, to be worn like costumes, only occasionally, like we now do at a halloween celebration.

This evolutionary transition into energetic life is our human Spirit’s manifest destiny. Spirit prefers the largesse of infinity to the confinement of limits. The human Spirit is at the gateway to expanded possibility.

Actually, this is likely the same for the Spirit in all beings, human or otherwise. In a dreamscape the other night, I encountered a bug that had invaded my living space. Not wanting to kill the intruder I sought to return it to its natural habitat. I discovered there to be a shallow pond where others of its kind were swimming about.

After returning to its home it immediately climbed out, letting me know that it was moving on to new adventures, beyond the comfort of its known world. Spirit likes comfort but ultimately tires of the familiar. The heart of all addiction is Spirit seeking more, whether it be through substance, materialism, or daring leaps of faith.

Our planet Earth has given herself freely to the insatiable human Spirit. The resources of her body have been the building blocks of our Spirit’s expansive hunger. Her body can no longer surrender itself to our excessive demands, and she knows it’s time for us to let go of our dependence upon her physical bounty and move on to discover our energetic potential.

The basics of this energetic transition begin with dreaming. Dreaming is where the energy body is fully active. The task is to bring waking awareness into the dream space. Though there are many techniques to achieve this, the simplest is through intent.

Don Juan Matus said we reach intent through intending.

State: I intend to remember my dreams. I intend to remain aware when I dream. I intend to journey out-of-body. I intend to meet such-and-such in dreaming. I intend to explore the moon in dreaming. The possibilities are endless. The key here is gentle, patient persistence.

Know that your intent will be realized because we all have an energy body awaiting waking consciousness for direction. Keep your intention free of the heaviness of pressure and judgment. The subtle world of energy requires a much lighter touch than the physical world.

Take full advantage of the physical pause of now to begin the energetic discovery of self. It all begins with intent. Intend, and see what happens!

Intent,

Chuck

Jan's Blog, Recapitulation

Just a Bag of Bones

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What is this body that we are so attached to but a mere bag of bones. When the life force leaves a body, what is left is just that, a bag of bones. Yet we spend our lives and our energy totally attached to the bag of bones that we identify as “Me.”

We are, in reality, so much more than that. As Robert Monroe has taught so many explorers of higher consciousness: “You are more than your physical body.”

Our life force, our spirit energy, though it resides inside our bag of bones finds ways to also leave it, to go beyond it and explore. Exploits outside of our bag of bones happen most naturally and most familiarly at night, when we dream. We all dream, even if we can’t remember doing so. Thus, we’ve all had experiences of our selves as spirit energy alone, sans bag of bones.

So many things can hold us back from uninhibitedly experiencing our spirit energy. To fully appreciate such experiences, to be able to engage in them with our full awareness, we need to be freed of our fears, our incessant internal dialogue, our traumas, our sexual abuse, our judgments, and anything else that might hold us back from further exploration of the many and varied spiritual possibilities we all hold within us.

Recapitulation is one means by which to rid ourselves of the things that hold us back from greater enjoyment of life, from spiritual exploration, and from understanding the knowledge and wisdom that our spirit might present us with.

During recapitulation, our spirit helps us to recall and relive past events while simultaneously keeping us grounded in our bodies, that bag of bones that we love so much, or hate so much, or just can’t seem to reconcile with.

As we recapitulate, old beliefs about ourselves are stripped away. Our energy is freed from where it has been stuck; in memories, in all those old beliefs about ourselves, in entanglements with the energy of others, in pains, regrets, resentments, self-pity, judgments, etc.; the list is endless.

In the process we learn to trust our spirit, that part of ourselves that is so eager to explore beyond the physical body, that just can’t wait to show us what we are really made of—energy! Our own spirit then becomes our greatest teacher and guide, and we come into our wholeness.

As we lose our fears and discover that we are really energetic beings, we become fluid and fearless explorers, in-body and out-of-body. But best of all, we become loving beings, fully happy in our bag of bones.

Sending you love,

J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries

Published simultaneously on The Recapitulation Diaries Facebook page.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Beyond the Shadow of Doubt

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The shadow is everywhere…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Reason is the dominant tool of the first attention, what the Shamans of Ancient Mexico call everyday life. Beyond the first attention is the second attention, the world of energetic life, which is replete with all things irrational.

The Hindus note, for instance, that the emotional body component of the energy body, which is the home of powerful emotions and passions, is a prominent feature of the second attention.

Jung calls the second attention the collective unconscious, which lacking consciousness to guide volition, operates through the activation of powerful archetypes that can overwhelm the reasonable ego of the first attention, causing it to perform outrageous acts. To preserve the order and decency of normalcy, Jung asserts that these deeper dimensions of the psyche are repressed and housed in what he called the shadow, a component of the second attention.

Reason and shadow are mortal enemies, hence the natural tendency to keep them separated. Reason insists upon the rules of logic and fairness for decision making. Shadow insists upon the release of intense emotions and passions as its modus operandi, reason be dammed. Reason, in its own condescension, snubs the irrational shadow, misjudging the power of the repressed.

The history of humankind reflects the occasional reckoning of these two dominants in the clashes of world wars. Our current world predicament is a prime example of reason clashing with the formidable energy of the irrational. The world is rapidly disintegrating into such a primal clash at this very moment.

At a fundamental level the worlds of the first and second attention are layers of the same onion. As humans we are both consciously reasonable, solid beings, as well as irrational, energetic spirit beings. The totality of ourselves requires that we integrate these worlds despite their inherent opposition. Evolution is absolutely requiring such an advance at this time. How can we achieve this integration without the ultimate disintegration, Armageddon?

To begin, reason must address the limitations of its own belief system: “Things aren’t that bad… no one would let that happen…” In fact, the shadow thrives on letting anything happen that offers it powerful release.

Next, reason must recognize that shadow is a dimension of its own self. Reason often doubts this, despite the many addictions or obsessions that it notices in its own functioning. Does it also notice its fascination and vicarious excitement with the emotional outbursts of now?  Reason always believes that it has things under control, or that things are, ultimately, under control.

Reason must accept responsibility in developing a relationship with the energetic world of the second attention. When people discover the out-of-body world, they are often at first driven by insatiable desires, repressed in the first attention of everyday life. Maintaining the operation of reason, with the intents available in the second attention, is critical for deep responsible exploration.

I strongly recommend Robert Monroe’s three books, which detail his own journeys into the second attention with the evolving accompaniment of his first attention, reason. With his success and guidance, he is truly deserving of the title of American Shaman.

Exploration and reconciliation with the deeper dimensions of the self offer a playing field of deep soulful satisfaction, which checks the tendency of the shadow to need to project itself upon habits and outer events that mesmerize the ego and take over consciousness.

Ego must humble itself to the existence of energies within the self that are far more powerful than ego itself. Ego has reason, but that’s no match for the irrational. Ego, in its humble smallness, can say no however. What change would happen overnight in the world if all individuals just said no, not driving today, not consuming today? Such a world strike of no would force a different relationship with power.

Nonetheless, ego must not be unreasonable in its demands. The world of the irrational, the world of passion and spirit must be lived. Beyond the shadow of doubt, reason must join with its passionate, spirited, irrational self in deep exploration and life, beyond reason.

Living the irrational, with reason,

Chuck