Can’t wear it when I go… – Photo of Chuck’s Jacket by Jan Ketchel
We issue forth from infinity, a seed planted with the intent to individuate, to become a unique life with a specific purpose in this world. All seeds share the same fate: to become fully what they are. And when this life ends, we return from whence we came: “Going home behind the curtain, going home without the costume that I wore,” -Sincerely, L. Cohen—from Going Home
All the while we are here, we seek our lost wholeness in the many masks of God we attach to, projections that reflect our infinite Selves. But, while here, we are also on a mission. Our infinite self, Brahman, must stay safely ensconced behind our bliss sheath, beyond our awareness, as we, in turn, seek our bliss in becoming the seed we are intended to be in this life.
Joseph Campbell, like Carlos Castaneda, encouraged us to fully embrace and experience the life we are in. After all, our challenges are experiments from the fourth-dimensional Self, as Jung put it. For Jung, the fourth dimension was the dimension of quantum physics, which grasps the unitary interdependent nature of reality. It’s the dimension beyond space and time, where psyche and soma merge like a particle and a wave, in infinite oneness.
Jung designated our Brahman self, the Self, granting recognition to the part of us that is infinite, that lies behind the curtain. Less than one year before his death in 1961, Jung confided the following in a private letter:
“…one can define a dream as an experiment of a four-dimensional nature. I have never tried even to describe this aspect of dreams, …because I have found that our public today is incapable of understanding. I considered it therefore my first duty to talk and write of things that might be understandable and thus would prepare the ground upon which one could later on explain the more complicated things…” –C. G. Jung Letters, Vol. 2
What does it really mean anyway? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Here, Jung hints that dreams, in sleeping and waking life, are experiments from the fourth-dimensional Self. The experimenter is the Self that lives in infinity. It is that Self that projects its seed of intent into this life. This higher Self intends the life we are sent to live in this third dimension of time and space, birth and death. Jung suggests that it is this higher Self—seeking to view, enhance, and experience itself in an experimental life—that projects us into this life, to then live that intent, whichever way it goes, bringing back its recapitulated experience to infinity in dying.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico came to the same conclusion: we are beings projected from infinity, granted awareness that may be enhanced through experience—whatever that might be—in a three dimensional life, which eventually ends and contributes its findings back to infinity.
From this perspective, we can see that we are always in two places at once: Self and ego self, eternal and transitory. Furthermore, the antagonists in our life, our petty tyrants, are necessary players in our quest to individuate. Our petty tyrants rattle our self-importance. In fact, by their merciless actions, they stamp out any flame of ego-worth. It can take years to emerge from the ashes of such abuse. Yet, freedom can only be obtained in accepting the true nature of things—that ego life is an illusive life, partitioned in third-dimensional reality.
If we drop our ego attachment yet maintain our awareness, we enter fourth-dimensional experience: enlightenment now. This is what our petty tyrants offer us. Our encounters with them tear apart any illusions of ego importance. We encounter fully the relativity of our life in this world.
Yup, everything dies. – Photo by Jan Ketchel
We are beings who are going to die, our lives are transitory. No need to build up a trust fund of worth to obtain immortality; it’s all a distraction. Our true purpose is to fully actualize the seed in keeping with the intent of our higher Self, without attachment to everlasting life in a temporary vehicle. This experience of bliss—fully actualizing the life in the seed—aligns us with that higher Self, without need for a protective sheath. We can handle the impact of our immortality while in our temporary vehicle. Here we join with our fourth-dimensional Self in our three-dimensional life, living now.
I’d been swimming along when I decided to stop and look around. All of a sudden I noticed that things had changed! – Art by Jan Ketchel
A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog called Silent Meditation, about my experiences in the presence of a female guru. I had gone to the silent retreat seeking to jolt my yoga and meditation practice to a new level. Now, two months later, I am beginning to string together the unfolding of that intent, coming in many forms of support—in dreams, in continued practice, and in the never-ending experiences of life.
The female guru was known not only for her teachings but also for her singing of the sacred mantras of India. From the time she was a young child she had been recognized for her unique ability. During the meditation session at the retreat, she put on some music and instructed us to focus on the vibration as we silently chanted our mantras and sought inner silence. She hoped that we would find her voice pleasing.
I have always meditated in silence, so it struck me that we would be listening to music. But as I thought about it, I realized that in my weekly yoga class there is always music. There is even a specific vibration in one song that rattles my bones, or at least that is how I experience it. Every time I hear it, the sound vibration seems to enter my body and go right into my teeth and bones and before I know it I’m vibrating. It’s not unpleasant at all, though it has always felt a little strong to me.
The music of the female guru was beautiful, the vibration extremely pleasant, and I found that I could connect to it. Unlike the sound vibration of the music of the yoga class that I also connect with in a different way, her music melodically flowed right into my physical body. I noticed how my muscles and skin responded by going completely relaxed.
Since that silent retreat, I have listened to music during my own practice of yoga and meditation. I’ve tried a few different types of music—drumming, chanting, and melodious singing, as well as other styles. I have settled on the chanting of a Buddhist monk, a man, who like the female guru, was recognized in his youth as being especially gifted in the singing of the sacred music. The vibration of his music strikes in yet another place, right in my heart chakra, matching the energetic vibration of my own heart. His vibratory energy soars right through my organs and then takes me with it, out of my body and into other worlds.
As I look back on these three experiences of musical vibration, I am struck by the three responses I experienced within my own body self. First, there is the skeletal vibration, which I experience each week during yoga class, representing the core of the physical body, the strengthening of which ensures physical stability. Secondly, there is the vibration of the female voice, much like a mother’s soothing touch that my muscles so responded to. The training of the muscles enables physical prowess and fluidity in this world. Thirdly, I find the vibration of the male voice, the Buddhist monk, so deeply penetrating that my heart and emotions immediately respond. Here, in the organs of the body, are the other aspects of the physical self that require honing if a spiritual practice is to be deeply meaningful, fulfilling, and freeing.
As I study these three experiences that have so aligned with my intent to strengthen and deepen my spiritual practice, I am reminded of dreams unfolding simultaneously. One Sunday night, a few weeks ago, I dreamed of a tall man in tails and top hat, the Master of Ceremonies at a three ring circus.
The first night I dreamed of him, I asked for advice. He told me that the first order of business in achieving a balanced spiritual practice was to get the physical body in tiptop shape. This I see as aligning with the yogic vibration of physical prowess. He also encouraged good eating habits and moderation in everything.
The second time I dreamed of him, exactly one week later, also on a Sunday night, he instructed me in establishing a firm spiritual practice and sticking with it. This I see as the meditation practice as encouraged by the female guru, which I have been deepening.
The third time I dreamed of the Master of Ceremonies, last night, I asked for more advice. “Teach me something,” I said. I dreamed of a woman I had known a long time ago. She told me that her mother had died, but that she was always with her, that they connected all the time. This I see as the awakening of the heart chakra to the truth of our vibratory existence, the kind of experience that I have every time I meditate with my chanting Buddhist monk. He takes me soaring. I am one with the vibration, the vibration is one with me, I am one with the energy of the universe.
There are many roads to the sublime… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
When I woke up this morning, I knew that the Master of Ceremonies had shown me the third ring in the three ring circus of this life, as we endeavor to reconcile our human/spiritual dilemma. The third ring of a balanced spiritual practice is to recognize that we are all comprised of energy and, as such, we are fully capable of existing in many realms simultaneously. It is our job to strengthen our awareness of this and open up to it. It is what the Shamans of Ancient Mexico teach as well, that we are primarily beings comprised of energy. We come from energy and we will return to energy. In the meantime, however, we must bear the tension of navigating life in the physical bodies that we inhabit.
Our job is to become aware of our energetic abilities and find a practice that will train us in the use of all that we truly are comprised of. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico offer the Magical Passes. I have always found yoga and mediation to fit my inner vibration most compatibly. There is music, there is art, there is dance, there are sports, and all kinds of other activities that can lead us to experience the transcendent. Joseph Campbell speaks of running track when in college and twice having experiences of the sublime, when he achieved complete and total alignment with the energy of the universe that he just happened to be flowing in at the time. We can enter the flow of such energetic alignment by happenstance, or we can train ourselves to enter it volitionally, as I work to achieve in my own spiritual practice.
As my vibratory experiences with three types of music point out, if we are seekers, if we are open and aware, we will eventually discover just what strikes the right chord with our own vibration. And then the universe will join in our endeavors and help us out in a myriad of ways. It may take some time to discover just what the right vibratory chord is. I stumbled upon what I needed by opening to some new ideas and challenging myself to have some new experiences.
By setting the intent to find our way to our energetic selves, we open the door to going beyond the three ring circus of life to vibratory experiences in other worlds. In fact, it was what the female guru was suggesting as we listened to her music. She was asking us to connect to the truth of our energetic reality. It is the key to everything, to the mystical and the mysterious, the awareness that we are first and foremost energetic beings, vibratory beings. Whether we exist in the here and now, or whether we have passed on into other dimensions, our connection to everything is energetic.
I thank the people who teach me, my dream teachers, the people that have intersected my life, the seekers who teach about another reality beyond this so solid one. I am thankful for all that comes to me, for all that I experience, energetically and otherwise!
Nature is on automatic pilot… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Reasoning, or thinking, is a function of consciousness. The far greater share of our mental functioning operates on automatic pilot, in the vast realm of the unconscious mind.
Although we can consciously decide to breathe, to breathe deeper, to adjust the rhythm and length of a breath, the majority of breaths we will take in our lifetime will happen automatically, outside the purview of our conscious awareness.
Our unconscious is filled with billions of such preset programs that we all share and inherit from the evolutionary journey of our species. This was why Jung named the deepest level of the unconscious the “collective,” versus personal, as at the deepest level we all share in common the same preset programs to react and survive as living human beings.
The unconscious mind does not need to think through eons of experience in order to gain the precise knowledge of how to react to a given need or stimulus. I was once deeply wounded in the palm of my hand on a beach. I was alone. I passed out; that is, consciousness left. When it returned, I discovered my hand packed in sand, the bleeding completely stopped. I was good to go. The program to “dress” that wound lay dormant and ready in the unconscious. It was triggered to action upon contact with the stimulus of the wound as it pushed the ego out of the way and took care of business. This is the essence of instinct—inherited habits to address adaptive needs to ensure survival.
With the advent of consciousness, human beings have a new source of habit making. Utilizing our faculty of reasoning and learning, we introduce new patterns of behavior into our lives. When we learn to drive, for instance, we—with consciousness—repetitively practice a series of behaviors, such as learning to brake and drive with one foot, learning to turn the wheel, to park, and to stay in lanes with others going in the same direction. Once these tasks are consciously mastered, they slip into the realm of the unconscious, as habits that react on demand, as needed, when we drive. After awhile, driving starts to require minimal consciousness—in fact, we easily daydream while our unconscious reacts to all the stimuli we encounter as we safely take our journeys.
The unconscious is a habitual mind that reacts to needs and commands. This fact lies at the essence of hypnotic suggestion. Like the habit of driving that we ask the unconscious to perform when we enter our cars, the unconscious awaits orders constantly throughout the day. Hypnotists are aware of this part of the mind that responds to suggestion, and speak directly to it.
The truth is, we are all our own hypnotists. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico identified our inner hypnotist as the internal dialogue that incessantly barks orders at the unconscious mind, manifesting in how we see ourselves and construct our world. That internal dialogue may tell us that we are inadequate, unattractive, unfulfilled, undervalued, underserving, etc. Of course, it can also deliver other consistent messages that support a sense of worthiness and adequacy, but this is less common. We become so entranced by the habitual definitions of our internal dialogue that we construct a personality and sense of self according to its dictates. We become entrenched in a familiar definition of self that, however uncomfortable or unfulfilled it may be, persists because of the constant redundant messages and orders delivered by the incessant internal dialogue.
Ready to dive in and create some new waves? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico suggest that we interrupt this automatic flow of messages by canceling the internal dialogue and consciously delivering new suggestions, what they call intent. Intent is the mantra of a new, consciously delivered, command, bent on manifesting a new sense of self, as well as a new world.
When we coin a new intention—i.e., I am calm—and repeat it religiously, like a prayer, we are delivering new working orders, entering a new habit into our unconscious mind that will activate the programs associated with manifesting that intent. We must be religious in our practice—highly repetitive—if we are to push aside the old messages, the conflicting old messages of the reigning internal dialogue, which can only serve to confuse, that is, deliver mixed signals to the unconscious mind. And mixed messages, as we know, confound the manifestation of change.
We must be disciplined and persistent in our practice. Remember, it took a long time and a lot of practice to truly master the art of driving as a guaranteed habit. It is the same with manifesting and inhabiting a new habit. Perseverance and repetitive practice will, ultimately, manifest intent in new habit!
In that dissociative fugue state… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
It’s been in the news, a man wakes up from a coma speaking only Swedish. He doesn’t recognize his wife or family. A diagnosis called Transient Global Amnesia has been applied to his condition. Medical personnel assigned to his case have also decided that he’s most likely in a dissociative fugue state, wherein a person forgets their past and can sometimes take on a new personality. When I first read the headline I was intrigued, having had my own experiences with the Swedish language and inventing a new personality, wondering if the man had woken up in a past life.
The man, it turns out, had lived in Sweden as a child and for much of his adult life, so the fact that he spoke the language was no mystery. The mystery in his case was, how could he forget his current life so easily? The Shamans of Ancient Mexico would diagnose him as having suffered a jolt to the assemblage point, a shift in awareness into a totally new world.
My own first encounters with speaking Swedish came in a dream when I was in my early twenties. In the dream I was traveling across the United States by wagon train. I leaned against the back of the wagon, in which I was traveling with my husband and children, and wept. Great sadness had occurred, the death of our child, whom we had just buried along the trail. My husband came up to console me. We spoke a language I had never heard before. I spoke fluently and without hesitation.
My dreaming self observed the entire dream episode, saw what I looked like and heard myself speaking this strange language. I even understood what I was saying, even though I didn’t understand the specific words. I saw that I was a tall and strapping woman, with thick blond hair tied back in a long braid. I was dressed in neat, clean, but poor cotton clothing, a long dress and apron. My husband was taller and wore a hat. His pants were tucked into high boots. My dreaming self watched as he came over and embraced me.
We wept together and then he told me that we’d have to move on, keep going, that everything would be okay. The rest of the people traveling with the wagon train were preparing to leave. We had to stay with the group. Moving on was essential. It was a strenuous journey, but I knew we’d make it to our destination. I just needed time to gather myself together, I told him. I’d be alright. Then I felt myself pull inward, into deep inner silence. I felt a core of strength shoot through me, like a fire rising out of the depths of me, energy like I had never felt in real life. Then I shook off my sorrow. There was life still to care for, life still to live. Times were tough, but the tough keep going. I woke up as I shrugged off my sorrow, that core of strength burning brightly inside me.
Upon awakening, I was immediately puzzled by the strange language I’d spoken and the sense of connection I felt with the woman in the dream. I knew it really was me, had been me, and that I too had that fiery core of inner strength inside me. I suspected, at the time, that the dream was related to a past life, though I had little knowledge of how that could be possible.
Within a year of the dream, I met my Swedish husband-to-be and six months after meeting him I was living in Sweden. It didn’t take long for me to recognize the Swedish language as the same language I’d spoken in my dream. I took language classes and within no time I was speaking Swedish fluently, like a native I was told, like a native from the southern part of Sweden called Smaland that had been so devastated by drought that the vast majority of farmers left and moved to America during the 1800s. I spent considerable time exploring the country and always found this southern region extremely warm and inviting, the forests and thick-walled cottages so familiar. At the time, all of this reinforced the real possibility that I had indeed lived a past life in Sweden.
Who am I really? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
At the time, however, I was dealing with my own deep issues, undiagnosed at the time. Indeed, I was living out my own dissociative fugue state. Many years later, as I write about in my books, I started working with Chuck. The first thing he did was give me a diagnosis of PTSD. The diagnosis gave me a sort of anchor, an anchor from which I could dive into the dark pool of the unconscious and do deep inner work, but it was not the answer. However, it was during that time that my past, including my decision to move to Sweden in the blink of an eye, all began to make sense. Unlike Michael Boatwright, however, the guy who woke up speaking Swedish recently, I had never lived in Sweden before, though I felt so at home there. I assimilated very quickly, learning not only the language but all the nuances of the culture as if I were, indeed, a native Swede.
Sweden offered me many opportunities. First, I got away from my past and, much like Michael Boatwright, I forgot what had happened to me during a certain part of my life, most of my childhood, in fact, as I write about in my books. I was also offered the opportunity to become a new me, and I did. I changed a lot while I was there. I stalked, as the Shamans of Ancient Mexico call it, a new personality. My introverted, shy self soon felt comfortable to become a new being. The distance really helped. I was so far from everyone and everything that had influenced me up until then that I felt really free for the first time in my life. And so I lived a new life for several years, until it was done, until it was time to return to what I had run away from, for I knew, instinctively, that I had run from something.
It would still be some time before I was ready to face my own mysteries. And, as I was to learn, a diagnosis, whether it be Transient Global Amnesia or PTSD, is not the real answer if one is to evolve. As Chuck likes to say, “Now let’s do the work!” The only thing that was going to help, was the work of recapitulation: facing the past, finding out why I was the way I was, and why I had to move so far away to begin with before I felt safe.
Upon return to the States, I had to reinvent myself once again, for the Swedish woman I had become was not appropriate for the life I embarked upon in New York City. Once again, I stalked a new personality, and I kept stalking different versions of who I thought I really was until I ran out of energy, until I finally collapsed and gave up. It was then that I met Chuck and began to learn about my own inner mysteries, the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, and the process of recapitulation. It was then that real change began and everything made sense.
It was then, as I embarked on a new journey of self-discovery, that I found I really did have within me that fiery core of inner strength that I’d experienced in my dream of the Swedish woman on the wagon train journey. For the most part, it had been deeply buried and inaccessible, as most of my life had been spent in a state of numbness, that dissociative fugue state. It was during my recapitulation that I saw my decision to move to Sweden in a different light. It became clear that it was a move on the part of my psyche to jolt my assemblage point.
With deep inner work, peace will come… – Art & Photo by Jan Ketchel
That journey to a foreign land had been pivotal in rediscovering some important things about myself, to not only awaken a past life experience in this life—and live it again in a sense—but more importantly to give me a hint of the possible self to one day look forward to in the future. For I now know that the free woman I became in Sweden was an immature model of my more mature, true self. I didn’t know any of this at the time, of course, but all of this and much more has been revealed as I’ve stayed on the trail of a life of change, the same kind of trail that my dreaming self was on.
The other thing that my time in Sweden hinted at, I understand in retrospect, was the first hint that I would have to go back in order to go forward. If I was to birth myself into a new woman and allow that fiery core strength to become a part of this life in a real way, I would have to go back into the darkness of my past and retrieve it. I would have to, singlehandedly, move it forward, out of my past life, into this life.
This is the real energy that moves through all of us, through our many lifetimes and many life experiences, but we must discover our own path to retrieving it. We don’t really have to go anywhere to do it, either, unless we have to. We can stay right where we are and do our deep inner work. But if we are to evolve we must take the journey of deep self-exploration so we can harness our energy, hone it, and utilize it as we travel along our life’s journeys.
The magical in the ordinary… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
We are beings of offense, collectors of rights and wrongs. Judgment is our guiding voice: “Look, over there, how hideous, how bold, how disgusting, how risque, how inappropriate, how divine, how unfair, how rude, how insensitive, how mean, how narcissistic, how beautiful, how perfect.”
Then there’s the voice from the Land of Me. “I’m not getting what I need,” it says. “I deserve more. I got screwed. They took advantage of me. They treat me like I’m invisible. It’s never what I want. I don’t matter. I’m not attractive. I’m better than him. She’d never be interested in me. Nobody cares about me. Why am I never chosen? Why was I born like this? Why am I singled out? Why am I being punished? How come nothing good ever happens to me?”
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico contend that we spend the lion’s share of our vital force, our life’s energy, judging and being offended by the world and those who inhabit it. To counter offense we might develop and accumulate an identity of accomplishments. “I can take it,” our accomplishments enable us to say. “I’ll survive. Inwardly I know I’m worth more. Look how well I dress—I’m coordinated. I have lots of friends who keep in touch. I’m well-respected where I work. I’m always polite. I say my prayers. I donate. I care. I walk for causes. I read a lot. I have many “Likes.” People like my pictures. I’m funny.”
So constructed are we of rights, wrongs and likes that we know not who we really are beneath those mountains of offense. We perceive ourselves and the world around us through the narrowly burdensome lens of where we stand vis-à-vis our fellow human beings. We navigate our lives to constantly improve that position, with better homes, bodies, cars, jobs, friends, lovers, companions, environments. Our obsession with improvement puts blinders upon our real possibilities.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico claim that we are magical beings capable of stupendous actions and experiences. However, as long as we spend the capital of our human time in being offended we have no accrued savings, no energy for true self-actualization. The Shamans suggest that we can build our energy savings bank by thoroughly appreciating the petty tyrants who so offend us. Rather than spending energy capital on constantly being offended, Shamans bank their energy by stripping away the shackles of self-importance.
“This is the room they stuck me in, with that kid upstairs jumping on the bed for hours! I should complain!” we might say, taking offense at a situation we find ourselves in. Such complaining, the Shamans contend, will get us nowhere. “Thank you,” a Shaman would say, “for reminding me not to waste my energy on being offended. Let me instead be more fully present to the moment and all the magic that surrounds me.”
Eventually, we notice that the world is quite ready to open, expand and reveal its deeper truths, beauties, and mysteries as we drop the veil of offense and navigate instead with awe. As we follow the signs magically placed before us, by reinterpreting and reworking that which has offended us, we offer ourselves a new and different world in which to navigate. Without offense, life and the world we inhabit become a totally different and very inviting, magical place. We might even find ourselves suddenly offered something that we could previously only have dreamed of.
