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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Controlled Folly to Temper the Spirit

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Temper that spirit, you gluttonous bee, and control your folly!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We live in the most spirited of times! Exhilaration is thrilling yet energetically exhausting, and as current events highlight, potentially perilous. Conserving and accruing energy is key to longevity and full self-realization in human form.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico developed a practice they called controlled folly to conserve energy, through tempering the human spirit. The human spirit is actually the ego-Soul portion of one’s greater SOUL. The two are connected, but it is the ego-Soul that lives and acts upon the world stage in our current sojourn in human form. It is the ego-Soul that grasps at life and wants more. Our greater SOUL lives as our silent partner, in infinity, the more comprehensive context of the human life we are currently in.

Controlled folly is engaging one’s ego-Soul in one’s chosen path of heart in this world, with great earnestness, like a true warrior and yet, having NO attachment to the outcome  of one’s actions. This detached edge is possible because one never loses touch with the fuller backdrop of one’s surrounding life in infinity.

The Shamans cite three essential facts, gifts of wisdom from the greater SOUL, as the foundation of controlled folly: (1) All life in human form is transitory and terminal, hence, (2) regardless of the role we play, or story we live, all roads lead to the exact same ending: death in human form, therefore, (3) the greater backdrop of all human life is our full transition into infinity, the ultimate destination of our definitive journey.

Shamans see, in some form, their energetic interconnectedness with everything, glimpses of infinity. Shamans read their journeys in dreaming, and the synchronicities in everyday life, as revelations and promptings from their greater SOUL to wake up to the fuller storyline of their ongoing life in infinity. By inviting the full awareness of ultimate death into their current incarnation, they transform an ordinary life into a magical life.

From this seemingly morbid perspective an individual can recognize that indeed, all the world’s a stage. And, as Carlos Castaneda once recommended, be the best actor you can be in the role you’ve chosen during your present time on the human world stage. Live the life you’ve chosen to the fullest, yet don’t get too attached to its significance; it’s not the main event or the only event.

Practicing controlled folly does not absent us from expressing human emotion. What great actor has not fully lived and expressed the true emotions of their role. Nonetheless, when the show is over the actor disengages from the role and shifts to their true human identity.

Controlled folly allows us to live with passion while knowing that, in the ultimate sense, none of it really matters. Thus, we can simultaneously be incredibly engaged in all that life offers, with utter seriousness, yet ultimately, be completely detached. This dual focus is how we temper our passionate spirit and how we are able to let go when what we have fought for doesn’t come to pass.

Similar to the message of the Bhagavad Gita, Carlos deemphasized the morality of the role you play. No one role is more important than another. To judge harshly another’s role is to get caught in the self-importance of overvaluing the particular play you are in. All roles are parts of the play, angels and demons alike, creating a complete cast. To remember this is how to temper our own extreme emotional reactions to the dance of now, that which is taking place upon our world stage. All spirits are equal actors in the play, and yes, Marianne Williamson, though some are dark psychic forces, they nonetheless have critical parts in the play.

Life in this world is extremely important, why live it as a failed play? But at the same time, it’s all relative when contrasted with forever, the greater reality we will all return to when this play is done. Nonetheless, this is our play now, our moment in time to experience this drama to the fullest, and that matters; and yet, at the same time, it doesn’t. This moment is assured its place in infinity’s ultimate historical record, the Akashic record. It will never be erased, no fake news in infinity’s library. Nonetheless, it is only one moment among infinite moments.

The significance of the play we are currently in is the completion of Kali Yuga, the utter destruction and disintegration of civilization’s  highest achievements. But what is the reality that lies beneath civilization’s false self? Freud really did call it accurately when he called civilization a sublimated id. What has emerged from the depths of the collective human shadow now is the repressed ancient rivalries and conundrums that have never been resolved in our revolving human dream. We’ve all acted in plays together before; this is just one more show. And yet we have an opportunity to finally resolve some things that we’ve left hanging from previous lives.

Where, for instance, on the globe is the core center of volatile unrest? In the lands of the Middle East, of course, where ancient issues have yet to be resolved. Who’s entitled to the land? How does one protect what they feel is their’s? Simple questions, ancient, never-solved dilemmas. We all have them.

And yet, these ancient core dilemmas are impacting the safety of the globe, and they are being mirrored in the dominant politics and daily atrocities in most countries throughout the world, impacting us all. We are coming frightfully close to absolute rulers, outright racism, nuclear winter, concentration camps, and flirtations with final solutions. We’ve lost our perspective on the greater reality we all face.

As the Shamans codified, it is our awareness of death that elevates our time in this world from ordinary life to magical power. Why settle for a redundant, mediocre play when we can elevate our time here to a Tony award performance! Why not let all the actors stand on center stage to deliver their best performances? Why settle for world neurosis as the best compromised dream we can deliver? There is so much more.

Woodstock 50 is cancelled, no time for hallucinogenic reruns, but alas, Marianne Williamson has entered center stage! She is indeed the ticket to call out the dark side of the force. The play we are now in would best be played by such a rivalry; Donald Trump requires such an opponent as Marianne Williamson. He gets bored, and rightfully so, without a worthy opponent to challenge him.

We must all call upon controlled folly here to temper the spirit. We are all here for such a brief moment, such a brief appearance on the world stage. At the end of the day, the curtain falls and it’s the end of an era; this play is over. All of us will exit the stage, where we will shake hands with our fellow cast members, all rivalries dissolved. Only self-importance, the seed of reincarnation, will keep us replaying the same drama.

Controlled folly offers us the opportunity to truly advance the issues that have thwarted humankind for eons. Imagine Marianne’s Department of Peace. Imagine hugs in the Middle East. Yes, John, we can still Imagine, but with the edge of controlled folly we can do it with no attachment to the outcome.

Live the dream, intend it forward, and when it’s time to go, exit the stage, in love with it all.

Don’t hold back,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Truth of the Heart

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A path with heart…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Don Juan Matus contended that in the final analysis all paths lead to the same place, death. However, a path with true heart offers fulfillment in the finite life of human form. Thus, to find the truth of the heart is central to life while in human form.

The heart has been popularly associated with the path of romantic love. Romantic love is a spiritualized quest for one’s true soulmate.  That quest is imbued with archetypal energy that generates a heightened state of awareness that erases boundaries and creates the experience of oneness or wholeness between two people.

Most seasoned human travelers come to discover the trickster ally inherent in romantic love. What is experienced in one moment as deep closeness can abruptly shift into great distance in the next.

For the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, an ally was an entity that enabled one to enter the world of non-ordinary reality. Romantic love is indeed entry into a state of non-ordinary reality. However, the ally that works its projective magic to land us there also tests us.

Are we merely hooked on the ecstatic energy of romance or does our relationship truly have heart? If it’s the high we seek, the ally will send us on many journeys of illusion. Despite the highs and lows, we remain hooked compulsively to the pursuit of the next candidate that shines with promise.

Though Cupid, as the Romans named romance’s ally, may be useful to awaken to love’s potential, only the truth of the heart can tell us if we are on the path of love. The truth of the heart is calm and clear. The truth of the heart is not swayed by romance. The truth of the heart is a feeling and a knowing of whether something is right or not.

Thus, our attachment to the heart, as the home of romance, clouds our ability to access the objective truth of the heart. This is the test of the ally. Despite the wonderment of romance, can we get calm and ask our heart the truth about our potential traveling companion?

The true nature of the heart is compassion, rooted in its knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things. Romance is in fact an experience of greater interconnectedness with someone, however, it may be so narcissistically tinged by one’s own needs that one is unable to actually see their partner.

Furthermore, the heart is the meeting place for ego Soul and High SOUL, our ultimate Soulmate. Our High SOUL knows our intent for the life we are in and can guide and support us through the trials and tribulations of life in human form. But we must be able to sacrifice the pressure of our needs if we are to get calm and be open to the truth delivered by our High SOUL.

The truth of the heart is the key to finding one’s path of heart. If a path has heart it resonates in both ordinary and non-ordinary reality. Love is constant in all realities. Romance that does not transmute into the fullness of love in ordinary life fails the ally’s test.

Love, in this higher sense, is the true energy of the heart center, which is connected to the indivisibility and, hence, compassion for all life. As well, the heart center is connected to infinity, which puts into perspective the relativity of life in human form.

From these considerations, the truth of the heart guides the journeyer to their specific path of heart, truly the journey of a lifetime.

From the heart,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Finding Equanimity

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Finding equanimity in nature…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The ability to remain consistently calm, in this time of incessant turbulence and rapid unpredictable bipolar shifts, is a cherished resource. Equanimity greets every moment with equal attention, appreciation, clarity and calm.

Buddhist practice embraces equanimity as the ultimate attitude needed for successful transition from human to infinite life. The ability to be present, to not sow a seed of reincarnation—by distraction or attachment—in the dying process, frees the energy body to evolve in its definitive journey beyond human life.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico also valued the relationship of equanimity and death. They reasoned that any moment in life could be one’s final moment, hence one should be fully present, alive, and equally appreciative of every moment in life, regardless of personal preferences.

The Shaman’s perspective is the ultimate Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all moments are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Shamans cultivate equanimity as a program for living, the Buddhists as the key in dying. Both cultivate an attitude of deep calm in approaching life’s greatest encounter—its final moment.

How can we cultivate equanimity?

The Shamans contribute an attitude shift. Each day they remind themselves, ” My name is ________, a being who is going to die.” Far from being a morbid ‘Good Morning, World,’ this use of death as an advisor heightens one’s awareness to be fully present and engaged in every moment of the day, regardless of the activity.

How often do we lament a Monday morning, or the end of a joyous encounter? Even worse, how often do we dread an encounter or work task, and pray for it to quickly end. The intent of equanimity is to be equally calm and present to each equal moment, regardless of its intensity.

The Buddhists contribute the practice of meditation to still the mind, a great perpetrator of non-equanimity known as worry. Yoga, with its Hindu roots, uses self-regulation of the body to achieve equanimity. The practice of pranayama breathing exercises greatly enhances voluntary control of the autonomic nervous system’s mobilizing defenses, in the face of real or imagined stress, a valuable tool to achieve equanimity.

Autogenic training and self-hypnosis are tools to deepen the conscious relationship between mind and body. When we give the body a specific instruction when in a deeply relaxed state, the subconscious begins to listen and override its genetic, archetypal, or habitual programs.

Thus, we can instruct every part of our body to remain deeply calm while we remain fully awake and present to all conditions. Jan and I recently discovered the gift of Dr. Eleanor Eggers, a 97-year-old  semi–retired psychologist, who developed a simple website giving away the secrets of her life’s work. This is her contribution to the greater good.

Her website offers the autogenic phrases that Elmer and Alyce Green developed at the Menninger Foundation, for deep relaxation, as well as other resources from her long and fruitful career. We happily pass on her website link: Dr. Eleanor Eggers.

Though, at present, we may experience limitation in exacting needed changes to our chaotic world, we are all free, as Victor Frankl would say, to assume the attitude we will embody in our encounters with that world. Equanimity ranks highest in our approach to life, in and beyond this world.

May all beings find equanimity.

Peace,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Unlimited Growth

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Unlimited growth… this baby sprang up overnight!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Perhaps the one thing the majority of politicians of all political persuasions seem to agree upon is the need for economic growth. This mantra trumps reckoning with the impact of unlimited growth upon the delicate ecosystem of a finite planet.

Last week, moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, in a Washington Post editorial, politely encouraged the President to fund exploration of Mars, seeming to suggest the inevitability of Earth’s inability to house us, a somewhat codependent enabling of the sacrosanct right to unlimited growth.

Perhaps Buzz’s solution of space as the final frontier will come to pass, but I see this as an externalization of the evolutionary spirit in humans, who must turn their unquenchable thirst for growth in a truly sustainable direction.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico recognized that evolution of the human physical body had largely reached its limits and that evolution for humans was a more subtle energetic affair, in the form of the energy body. Exploration of life beyond the physical body is their outlet for the very human need for unlimited growth.

Those shamans begin with the very pragmatic observation that human beings, in physical form, are beings who are going to die. From this fundamental truth, they propose that all human beings are equal, none escape this inevitable transformative appointment with death.

Though they encourage that all find a path with heart in their journey upon this Earth, their central focus is on cultivating the vehicle of the energy body, that which launches into infinity when the physical body is put to rest. Shamans suggest engaging intent and becoming energy misers to amass the energy for this dimension of spiritual exploration, now, while in human form.

Intent is energetic instruction. Intent is the law of attraction. These are my characterizations of intent. Don Juan Matus said, quite simply, we intend by intending. Intend to dream and dreams come. If blocking beliefs prevent intending, intent is not discovered or cultivated, as we simply manifest the same old, same old. If intent is spent on materialism, it will manifest as such. Intent is not about conscience, it’s about utilization.

To intend to find the energy body with perseverance will result in its discovery. The unlimited exploration of reality and infinity is available to everyone, simply through intending it and having enough energy to go there.

Being an energy miser does not mean being selfish, as the name implies. It does mean refusing to spend one’s intent on illusion. The glamour of self-importance, in all its permutations, the black hole of worry and the fixation of power at the level of the solar plexus, are all poor investments of energetic capital. None of these promote the unlimited growth potential of the journey we all share in common.

Heart-centered truths are good investments in energy body growth and exploration, as the heart does not validate illusion, only true energetic facts.

Robert Monroe journeyed with his energy body into the future of planet Earth, perhaps two thousand years from now. He discovered that though humans still had physical bodies they rarely used them, as they had become masters of the art of intent in their energy bodies.

Everyone is invited to discover, for themselves, the unlimited growth potential at the subtler energetic body level of reality. This is particularly apropos at a time when illusion spills out of control at the denser physical level of reality.

Energetic exploration will only enhance physical reality, as energy is withdrawn from exploiting it and invested instead in furthering its evolution, where we are all headed.

Unlimited growth is indeed at the heart of the human spirit. It’s simply time for a course correction. Plant your seed of heart-centered intent and let the growth begin!

Growing,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: MirrorIng, The Heart of Connection

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Mirroring in nature…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We can use words to communicate, but connection requires more than words. Connection is meeting in pure transparency.

The intimacy of meeting so directly can be overpowering. The removal of boundaries, at that level, recalls a state of union and oneness that long preceded the notion of a separate self.

The terror of loss of self in such encounters generates ambivalence. Though we might seek the closeness of connection, we seek refuge in the protection of small talk, roles, and prefabricated expectations and interactions. Why do we find it so necessary to hide?

Carlos Castaneda was emphatic that we should avoid looking into the mirror; at most, a brief unfocused gaze for shaving or combing of the hair. For the shamans of his lineage, looking in the mirror results in the fixation of attention upon self-reflection, what the psychotherapist of today calls narcissistic preoccupation with the self.

The more we focus upon the presentation of the self, the more we become alienated from our true selves. The more we stare at our reflection, the more Bobby the Flyer takes command, and we find more and more fault with ourselves, which leads to a state of narcissistic loathing. Why then do we hide? Because we are so damned unacceptable!

Loathing the self is then compensated for by the insatiable attention we seek for our outer presentation of self, what Jung called the persona, or the mask we wear. Regardless of how much attention it receives, it is never enough to erase the underlying belief of unworthiness of the true underlying self.

Mirroring, in the modern psychological sense, happens between two people, not one person viewing their own appearance in the mirror. To mirror with another is to feel, know, and be with the truth of one’s own and the other’s experience in the moment. A meeting of the eyes in that moment reflects an unmistakable acknowledgement of a shared experience.

Mirroring requires no words, though words might be exchanged. Words are not necessary because the knowing of the meeting has already been validated through the mirroring effect. Meetings of this kind crack the mirror of fixation upon self-reflection. Meeting in transparency, with nothing hidden, transcends judgments of self and other.

Mirroring actually requires no special skill. In fact, shamans suggest that we all have access to the direct knowledge experience of mirroring. Direct knowledge is knowledge unfiltered by the mental processing and judging of the mind’s internal dialogue.

The key to direct knowledge is inner silence, a state of mindful presence that shuts down the mental process, that is, thinking. Devoid of thinking we are treated to the experience of what is, unbiased by interpretation.

Connecting at the heart level is mirroring at the level of truth. Of course, this can be experienced as extremely romantic, where “hearts meet as one.” Romance is highly sought after for this mirroring experience of transparent meeting.

Unfortunately, romance soon becomes overwhelmed with archetypal expectations of each other, which quickly engages the judging mind. This closes down the purity of the mirroring channel between partners, who then become utter strangers. The mirroring of romance is co-opted by nature’s underlying intent to simply continue the species, not deepen spiritual connection.

Romance is a limited subset though valuable experience of mirroring. That is, while it lasts. Mirroring is possible in all human and non-human interactions. Mirroring frequently happens between humans and animals, or humans and plants. Mirroring is the basis of successful early parenting. Mirroring is the essence of true bonding.

Mirroring is the active relational tool for the current and coming evolutionary advance of the human species. It springs from the heart because the heart brings us to the true interconnected oneness of everything, which is the active principle in mirroring.

Relax the mind, suspend judgment, and mirror. See what happens!

Mirroring,

Chuck