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Chuck’s Place: Always Find The Positive In The Negative

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Finding the positive in the negative…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Most of what we are is either inherited or molded by our formative social experience, essentially, what we brought in with us into this life and how we were greeted when we arrived. The force of these influences can make a strong argument that the course of a human life is predetermined or mechanistically determined.

Nonetheless, as noted existential thinkers and authors Victor Frankl and Edith Eger have demonstrated: Regardless of circumstances beyond our control, we always retain the free will to choose the attitude we will take toward our reality. And attitudes, it turns out, are powerful suggestions that we, as creators, present to our subconscious minds that can completely shift the reality that we live in.

Some of those inherent programs, however, are so powerful that they simply cannot be overridden, like the one the shamans of Ancient Mexico emphasize: We are beings who are going to die. Ironically, this is the one inherent program that human beings refuse to acknowledge and, in fact, spend most of their lives living as though it will never come true!

Of course, the argument immediately arises that to focus on the inevitability of death is morbidly negative and casts too depressive a shadow over opening up to the fullness of life. So what could possibly be the positive side of death?

Death advises us that our time in human form is limited. This impact of limitation allows for a legitimate scientific experiment in the living of a human life. Science insists upon a beginning and an ending to assess the truth and full knowing of something. The awareness of inevitable death keeps us positively on track to discover and test the core hypothesis of our lives. But what is our core hypothesis?

Carl Jung would identify that hypothesis as one of individuation, which entails successfully bringing into realized wholeness the unique combination of opposing parts that we are. Frederick Myers, from his advanced perspective in infinity, would identify that hypothesis as an incarnating soul’s mission, assigned by its Spirit, to answer a question through the trajectory of a human life, which ultimately allows one’s soul group to further refine and thus to advance on its ever-unfolding journey in infinity.

Wholeness must include light and shadow. Individuation is the ability to accept, with equanimity, all parts of self and all parts of the world. Buddha, during his enlightenment, remained utterly calm, as he saw the illusory and transitory nature of all forms. Carlos Castaneda suggested that, as one discovers the specific role one has been assigned in this life, one suspend judgment and live and appreciate it to the fullest, whether it emphasizes the light or the dark side.

The power players on the current world stage are truly playing their parts to perfection, both those who reflect the light and those who blatantly reflect evil. The collective individuation challenge  of our time is well represented, with worthy opponents whose interplay is critical to advancement of the soul group of planet Earth’s dream.

Closer to home, we all struggle with these opposing forces within ourselves. We all contend with genetic consequences, which both limit and promote our physical structure, health, and attractiveness. If we can see these effects, no matter how undesirable, as critical factors to our individual and soul group’s need to master, we can embrace the positive side of the negative.

At the level of the psyche, we all deal with forces that can be extremely critical, deprecating and incessantly negative, generating depressed mood states and compulsive behaviors. If we can understand the necessity of these negative forces in our journey of mastery, we can see the positive value of these petty tyrants to help us emerge from the captivity of self pity.

Self pity shapes our vital flowing energy into a rigid negative form that completely clouds the positive potential latent in the present challenge. It’s a dream where many of the stone steps of a narrow circular stairway are missing, as we feel hopelessly barred from ascent to higher ground. Our energy is fully spent on body armor, condemning our innocence and unlived self to the isolation of solitary confinement.

The shamans of ancient Mexico always included powerful petty tyrants in their lives to help them stare down the imprisoning bars of self pity. Being challenged by ruthless petty tyrants frees our energy from the confinement of defending our hurt selves, allowing it to be deployed in focused action in full conformity to what is needed to master the tyrant’s labyrinth.

To achieve this mastery we cannot afford to spend an ounce of energy on being offended. Here, the petty tyrants of this world offer us the greatest opportunity to break through the narcissistic shell of self pity and entitlement.

The success of individuation in the limits of a human life is the achievement of acceptance; complete acceptance for every experience and character one has ever encountered, as well as complete acceptance of one’s self.

The fruit of this acceptance is an even more refined purity of love. And that refined love is what fulfills our lives and advances our soul group another rung on the infinite ladder of love.

Always find the positive in the negative; it’s the truly soulful thing to do,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Relativity Of Mind

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An integrated mind is a mind at peace…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

We might ask ourselves: “Who am I?”

The answer? It depends.

We are of two minds. One of those minds has an identity, an ego, that thinks, feels and knows who it is. The other mind is the subconscious, a far vaster mind that has access to all knowledge and has the potential to become anyone and anything. The subconscious mind has no ego or fixed identity. The subconscious simply becomes what is suggested to it.

When the ego thinks, the subconscious takes the suggestion of that thought and creates it in the physical body. The subconscious does not discriminate fact from fiction. If the ego imagines a frightful possibility, the subconscious treats it as real and armors the body to tense and prepare for clear and present danger.

The subconscious is the older of the two minds. It stores the evolutionary history of the body for its duration in physical life, as well as the historical journey of the soul that inhabits that body. Consequently, the subconscious lacks a specific identity, as its roots stretch way deeper than its current incarnation.

Without locking into any personality the subconscious reacts automatically and instinctively, in a way that has best served the survival of the species. Thus, it reacts to situations based on the suggestions of survival programs that automatically present themselves via association with a current challenge.

However, the subconscious is highly influenced by suggestions from many sources. The ego, or actual personality, exerts a powerful influence through its thoughts, beliefs and imagination. The ego thinks and reflects, which the subconscious does not do, and the subconscious manifests these dramas. Many a psychosomatic symptom or illness is directly the creative manifestation of a suggestion to the subconscious through conscious rumination.

The subconscious is also highly impacted by the free flow of thoughts in the universe, or by the points of view we expose ourselves to in news shows and social media. Political campaigns are judged by the size of one’s financial war chest, which is ultimately spent on suggestions to the subconscious mind’s of voters as to what they should believe and vote for.

Additionally, the subconscious is influenced by our divided selves. Beside our conscious identity are many parts of ourselves that live below the threshold of consciousness, in the region of the psyche that Jung called the shadow. These sub-personalities have minds of their own that constantly offer the subconscious suggestions that immediately register in the body.

I utilize a simple neurofeedback device that registers immediately a changed brainwave state should a background doubt whisper during a meditation session. The subtlety of sensitivity by the subconscious to become what is hinted at is extraordinary.

One does well to bring consciousness to these shadow ideas, that they reach levels of resolution to not unseat one’s conscious intent. This is the path of individuation where one enlarges one’s personality by truly reconciling the oppositions within the self.

Suggestions from such an integrated personality promote health, creativity and fulfillment where that which is within truly reflects that which is without. Such a mind finds duration beyond the relativity of time and space.

Beyond relativity,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Existential Encounter And Free Will

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The many shades of will…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

In 1966, Puerto Rican psychiatrist Efren Ramirez, my first therapist and mentor, captured the heart and imagination of New York City when he introduced his singularly unique treatment approach, based on existential principles, as a method to tackle the drug addiction problem ravaging the city.

The fabled success of his addiction treatment programs in Puerto Rico prompted Mayor John Lindsay to offer him carte blanche support to replicate this success in New York.  As a result, Therapeutic Community treatment programs (TCs) soon sprang up throughout the five boroughs of New York City.

Efren’s treatment approach, called The Concept, utilized existential encounter to awaken, within the addict, knowledge of the absolute power of their choices in determining their reality.

Rollo May, noted existential psychiatrist and author, pointed out that, for Ramirez, emphasis on diagnosis, etiology and prognosis actually obstructs and weakens the patient’s ability to gain full access to, and assume responsibility for, the central power of choice in determining the outcome of their lives. (Existential Psychology, 1969 edition)

The ability to assume full responsibility for one’s choices requires existential confrontation with one’s behaviors and attitudes, which brings to consciousness the choices one is already making, though largely at an unconscious level.

Through the enlightenment gained by one’s encounter with the feedback received from others, one becomes fully aware of how one blindly exercises one’s free will in one’s attitudes and behaviors. With this heightened awareness, one’s free will can be more judiciously exercised to the benefit of one’s life.

A generation before, from the heart of the holocaust, existential psychiatrist Victor Frankl observed and experienced that the single most important variable that determined whether one would survive or die in a death camp was the attitude one chose to assume while interned in the most terrifying, horrific and dehumanizing conditions imaginable.

The exercise of will to choose a positive attitude in the midst of a death camp could literally save one’s life. Furthermore, no one and nothing could take away an individual’s free exercise of imagination and will.

Carolyn Elliot, in her recent book, Existential Kink, takes one down the rabbit hole of one’s inner shadow to discover, own, and radically accept one’s unconscious yet willful collusion with the consciously rejected behaviors and habits active in the hidden recesses of one’s shadow.

Elliot stresses that “having is wanting” and that one must accept this in order to encourage one’s existential encounter with the many shades of will active in one’s being. This fuller acceptance of the polarities within the self frees the will to make choices that accommodate the wholeness of self.

The shamans of ancient Mexico sought to galvanize the will to be fully, mindfully present each day by shocking the ego with an existential encounter with death as an advisor.

Stating, each morning, “I am a being who is going to die” awakens the will to a heightened level of unified presence in each moment, as it chooses its attitudes and behaviors throughout the day. This intent of the will treats each moment with an equanimity that is fully prepared to seamlessly transition from this life in full consciousness as well.

Will is the creator of personal reality. Existential encounter with the fullness of self frees the will to responsibly exercise its power from the vantage point of total presence in the current moment. The intent of the will is then materialized through the suggestions one delivers to the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is the Mother of creation.
The subconscious mind stores the journey of the soul through all of its  history.
The subconscious mind has total control over the functioning, sensations  and health of the body.
The subconscious mind is the home of the instincts.
The subconscious mind has the knowhow and materials to manifest anything suggested to it.

As powerful as the subconscious is, it is still pure Yin. Yin is completely receptive, the feminine principle/anima, and capable of creating anything, but requires a suggestion to begin operations. Yang, her partner, the masculine principle/animus, is the Will.

Will is the active side of infinity, whose task it is to activate his partner’s creative process via suggestion. With their creative energies in sync, anything is possible. Every one of us is a combination of this divine couple and have the ability to both activate and create.

With consciousness raised through existential encounter, the will is freed to truly transcend the self-deceptive suggestions often made to the subconscious mind that keep one frozen in habitual disappointment.

Will, freed to suggest to the subconscious full healing of self and world, is indeed the necessary and adventurous order of our day.

Heal the self, heal the world,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Being Of Two Minds

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Objective and Subjective Minds…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The science of hypnotism has provided us with utilitarian knowledge of the distinctions between, and synergistic possibilities of, our bicameral mind.

The objective mind is the rational mind of everyday life, essentially the ego. The salient feature of the ego is its ability to exercise free will. Despite all the advice of others, its own prior experiences, or strong instinctive warnings, the ego can change course in a heartbeat and simply do what it wants. Regardless of consequence, the objective mind is free to make its own decisions.

The subjective mind is the subconscious mind. In contrast to the objective mind, the subjective mind can only operate via suggestion. A famous example of its operations would be the medically intuitive readings of Edgar Cayce. Cayce would put himself into trance to gain access to his subjective mind and then a trusted associate would present him with the name of a person seeking treatment, asking what treatment would heal them.

Cayce would then channel an elaborate reading of medical treatments required to heal the patient. In his waking, objective mind state Cayce had no medical training or knowledge, yet his subjective mind could tap into the relevant vast knowledge stored in the etheric layer of the akashic records.

The subjective mind is the mind that links to the collective unconscious,  has access to all evolutionary history, including past lives, and can remote view in many dimensions. The subjective mind is the home of imagination and creativity. When we  doze off, we enter the subjective mind, where the objective mind-thoughts we’d just mulled over instantly generate into full-blown stories, replete with characters and images.

The subjective mind is the energy body proper that is propelled by thought in the form of suggestion. In a dream, we are fully in the subjective mind. If however, in the dream, the objective mind suddenly comes online and we become lucid and state the suggestion, “Fly, now!” Then off we go!

The objective mind and the subjective mind constantly work together. The things the objective mind says to itself are what the subjective mind generates in the body. If we tell ourselves that we are a failure, the subjective mind will generate that story and mood, even changing body chemistry to generate a depression!

As I have pointed out many times, the placebo effect of spontaneous cure from fatal disease is the result of the objective mind suggesting to the subjective mind that it has ingested the cure. The miracle worker subjective mind then refashions the physical body to be totally cured.

Of course, cure reversals can be just as rapid if the objective mind suddenly changes its belief or suggestion, such as: “Oh, it was just a placebo!” This tells the subjective mind to reverse course. Objective mind beliefs are powerful suggestions to the subjective mind.

For duration, the objective mind must either work hard, consciously, to overcome its blocking beliefs, or actually choose to incessantly state beliefs that it doesn’t fully believe yet, but knows will impact the subjective mind, regardless of belief.

A concentrated focus on overcoming blocking beliefs can lead us into recovering the fullness of ourselves, that which was previously lost in the shadow dimension of our being, as well as lead us to the High Spirit center of our Soul.

This contact with, and consolidation of, our total personality—our fuller individuation—can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the objective mind’s power of suggestion to the subconscious.

However, incessant repetition of suggestion, regardless of belief, will also impress itself upon the workings and creations of the subjective mind. Obviously, the fuller the individuation of self, the greater will be the duration of sought after changes, no matter which technique is used.

However, in spite of concerted effort, some changes may not hold, as influences from one’s deeper karmic intent in this life may require further experience with one’s current uncomfortable challenge.

Judge Hatch, who died in physical form, channeled the suggestion, from his soul body in the astral plane, to Elsa Barker in 1913 (Letters From the Afterlife), saying that humans, still in physical form, should strongly intend to fully optimize their objective minds after leaving physical life, to greatly enhance their experience in the afterlife.

He observed many souls in the afterlife and discovered that their preference for the subjective mind, the dreaming/creative mind, helped them to realize their unrealized, unlived dreams from their prior life in human form.

As wonderful as this dreamy, creative fulfillment is, he also observed how much further one could explore in their new plane of existence if they had full access to their volitionally suggestive, objective minds. So, he also suggested that we intend to remember our identity, the fullness of our life just lived, and maintain an active presence of our objective mind in our next chapter, in infinity.

This same guidance applies to all of us currently in human form. We are witnessing the impact of incessant suggestions from political leaders seriously manifesting in many citizens, as they take these suggestions as their marching orders.

To maintain and exercise our objective mind amidst these intense storms of suggestion, secures our freedom of will to choose our own suggestions to our subjective mind, now and going forward.

The best guidance is to practice conscious self-hypnosis, where our objective mind responsibly directs wise and positive growth-oriented suggestions to our subjective mind. This will deliver us to our greater individual fulfillment, as well as our entire world to its greater good.

Bicamerally yours,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Talk To Your Avatar

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You are loved…
-Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Theoretical physicist Tom Campbell likened the relationship between mind and body to that of a video game where mind is the gamer with the controller and the body is its chosen avatar on the screen. This analogy accomplishes two points: 1) Mind exists beyond the brain of the physical body and 2) Mind, at some level, is completely in control of its physical body.

In spiritual terms, mind is Soul, that which exists in its own energy body and lives on after the death of the physical body. The Soul is ever-present  and interactive with its physical avatar yet lives simultaneously in transpersonal dimensions beyond the physical world.

The Soul contains what we identify in psychology as psyche, which includes the ego as the center of the conscious personality, the subconscious mind, which houses the programs that essentially run the physical body, and the unconscious, which includes personal and collective dimensions.

The physical body is so linked to the operations of the subconscious mind  that the two have been identified as synonymous. One need only observe the physical materialization of hypnotic suggestion by a subject in trance to see how powerfully the subconscious controls the body.

Of course, the precise manipulations of a surgeon will greatly shift the movement of the physical body, as will pharmaceutical interventions that alter chemical balance and affect healing of a disease. But, at the most subtle energetic level, where thought meets matter, the subconscious can completely transform the condition of its avatar, the physical body.

This is completely evident in the placebo effect. If we believe a sugar pill will cure us, it will. Belief is a strong suggestion presented to the subconscious mind that produces the expected change. Discovery of this positive effect having been caused by a placebo will often cancel the suggestion to the subconscious and reverses its miraculous effect.

Belief systems restrict the subconscious to stick to pathways that conform to their rules. For this reason, though I am driven to learn and experience, I personally try desperately to avoid any system that insists on its set of facts as the one and only unchanging reality. Infinity is, as I experience it, an endless adventure into ever-deepening paradigm shifts. Best to follow the shaman’s dictum, Suspend Judgment, when approaching any new learning.

Nonetheless, we can operate within the state of our present knowledge, as long as we understand that our facts will ultimately be washed away by future discoveries. Nothing is sacred; nothing is permanent. Hence, we can talk to our avatar and see what happens.

When we do some form of progressive relaxation, we suggest to each body part that it release and let go. As we deepen this practice, we will notice the body lighten to a state of pure energetic relaxation. If we visualize our hands being penetrated by the sun, we will experience our hands getting warmer. In both cases, our suggestions and imagination instruct the subconscious to change the condition in the body.

If we state a healing intent to the body with calm but enduring perseverance, the subconscious may eventually be persuaded to enact the called for change. Again, suspend judgment. Limiting beliefs may impact the flow of our intent, but don’t argue with them; simply let them go. Simply persevere, without attachment to the outcome.

Talk to your avatar in a state of loving kindness. This magnificent vehicle we are granted for our physical lifetime should be loved and cherished. Be accepting of the state of the body, at all times, even if great changes are desired. The subconscious has programs that can compensate for, and override, errant programs. Instruct it with love and clear intent.

Loving the Avatar,
Chuck