Tag Archives: subconscious

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Accessing The Magic

Leave a comment
Tap into the magic…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Use the remote to turn on the gas heating stove. The remote beeps, the fire does not ignite. Try it a few more times. Finally change the batteries in the remote, as well as in the receiver in the stove. Press ‘on’ again, still no ignition.

Suddenly, a flash of intuition! There’s a thermostat in the stove! The room is too warm for it to allow ignition. Raise the temperature threshold. Press ‘on’. Ignition!

As with the stove, preset suggestions to the subconscious mind can nullify the manifestation of new suggestions. These pre-settings might originate in karmic spells or choices, genetic predispositions, postnatal conditioning via the socialization that has shaped one’s core belief systems, or unrecognized shadow dynamics generating their own  balance/imbalance in the underworld of the personality.

Although our subconscious minds house the materials and facility for the realization of our creative magical intentions, our intent will be ineffective if prior beliefs or hidden agreements contradict our current suggestions. How do I know if I have hidden blocking beliefs?

Begin with this primary question: “Do I believe that anything is possible?”

Does the rational mind permit the possibility that a suggestion can create a reality? Is it willing to suspend its automatic critical judgment and submit that hypothesis to an unbiased experiment?

Spend a half hour a day, for a week, first getting physically relaxed, then stating out loud, or in writing, or both: “Anything is possible.”  At idle times during the day, state it again: “Anything is possible.”

After a week, ask yourself this question: “Am I worthy to receive the change I seek?”

Perhaps, for example, you intend your body to be healed. You might discover that though you believe there could be miracles, you also hold the belief that it could never happen for you.

Again, suspend judgment, and write and state for a half hour each day, incessantly: “I am part of everything; I am worthy to receive the change I seek.”

If you notice the emergence of contrary thoughts, state: “I suspend judgment. I am part of everything, I am worthy to receive the change I seek.”

At the end of the week, having established the foundation to suggest a new belief, state directly your intention for change to your subconscious mind.

As before, state and/or write this intention for a half hour per day, as well as throughout the day, at idle moments, when it pops into your mind to do so. Continue to state this suggestion every day with no attachment to the outcome.

Like true scientists, we are not interested in influencing the outcome, even at the level of thoughts. Yes, a suggestion is a thought, but this is a thought experiment, limited to the impact of experimental suggestions. The outcome of the experiment is what is and what becomes, as a result of specific suggestions being recited.

Most likely, our intention will begin to manifest as we continue our practice. However, if we observe no change, we must re-explore the possibility that another preset blocking belief is interfering with our intent.

Perhaps, for instance, I discover, despite my suggestion to the contrary, that my rational mind is the holdout. Secretly, and tenaciously, it doesn’t believe in the spiritual power of words to generate physical happenings.

Assign the rational mind the dutiful task of stepping up to the objective requirement of a true scientific experimenter: NO PREJUDICE.

Include this in the suggestion, as in: “I suspend judgment. No prejudice. I am part of everything, I am worthy to receive the change I seek.” With this new suggestion in place, restart the practice with your intent for change.

Be present to every suggestion you state. Even if your attention strays, continue the rote exercise. The subconscious listens to all suggestions. Suggestions of longer duration make a definite impression. The subconscious does not think; it needs to be impressed upon, given its marching orders.

We are constantly feeding our subconscious daily suggestions through our incessant internal dialogue, which delivers us our familiar sense of self and our unchanging perspective. Deliberate periods of new focused suggestions can eventually override these habituated, stagnated manifestations.

Be careful what you read, listen to, and state inwardly and outwardly. Words and thoughts are suggestions that bombard the subconscious with suggestions that it constantly reacts to. Be extremely sensitive to the words you live by.

As with all psychic powers, hypnotic suggestion can be used for evil as well as positive intent. This is what is called, unfortunately, black magic. We needn’t look very far to see the impact of negative suggestions made by political figures or influencers on social media, and how they destructively impact our world.

The responsible use of suggestion is suggestion that aligns with the values of one’s High Self. The ego, in its highest integrity, must assure that suggestions to the subconscious are for the greater good of self and other. Narcissistic and destructive suggestions, though they may materially eventuate, carry inevitable karmic consequences.

Also consider, however,  that shadow and light are both part of the same wholeness. Sometimes destruction is divinely necessary and needs to be lived.

Additionally, if one is dealing with a sub-personality that opposes an ego suggestion to the subconscious, this may undermine a stated suggestion. The work here is to first achieve consensus within the personality before proceeding with the practice of suggestion.

To access the true magic in our being we must be patient, persevering, observing, and light as a feather in the knowing that anything is possible and that we are a part of everything, worthy to receive the changes we seek.

Seeing what happens,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Formative Power of The Imagination

Leave a comment
Open to the power of your imagination…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh.” – St. John

“Thou shalt not Covet thy neighbor’s wife.” – Tenth Commandment

What do the words Word and Covet have in common? Both are insubstantial. Both issue from the creative action of the mind’s imagination. Imagination is the causal dimension of physical reality.

The mind’s imagination produces the energetic blueprint that draws to it and manifests all material creation. The major attractive energetic activity implied in to covet is judged equal to, if not more sinful than, the action of an actual physical affair itself. Imagination is indeed the primal force of creation.

Be responsible for that which you wish for. Be responsible for that which you think. The mind’s imaginative thought is a living entity, brimming with energy. Thought is a seed that once thought must take root and find completion, somewhere, in some form, somehow. Many a fiction novel is an outlet for the karma of unlived thought.

What does a conservative Jew, devout Catholic, faithful Muslim and evangelical Christian have in common? The answer is, reverence for the Law: the written Words in the sacred texts. This reverence for upholding the Law has animated the behaviors of humankind throughout the centuries. Sacred words originating from the thoughts and images in the imaginative mind are the guardians of that which must be obeyed.

In modern psychology these sacred laws and words are the archetypes of the collective unconscious of humankind. These dominants of our shared human psyche govern the unfolding and autonomous functioning of our physiological being, as well as the species specific behaviors involved in mating, parenting and surviving. In fact, all behaviors available to our species are, at core, latent archetypal potentials.

As conscious beings we’ve been granted the free will to obey, innovate, deviate from, or fully ignore the laws of the archetypes. Clearly, the transgender explorations of our time reflect promptings to express new permutations, beyond the limits of established archetypes. One only need consider the pivotal role that the Tenant, a death defier, had on the evolution of Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic lineage. The Tenant was equally facile at manifesting physically either side of humanity’s  inherent androgynous nature.

This, of course, gives rise to clashes with conservative upholders of primal archetypes, who feel it their duty to uphold the Law as once imagined and laid down.

Others would argue that if we allow the archetypes to press us into their molds we don’t exercise our obligation to evolve and create. The truth is that archetypal patterns are fixed. The phases of the moon never deviate. However, though the waning phase of the moon may urge that new enterprises not be initiated during this phase, a rogue adventurer might launch a successful enterprise anyway, though lacking the moon’s archetypal energetic support.

Typically, archetypes are nature’s best course of action, but humankind was issued consciousness to steer life into new possibility with greater efficiency. For example, to love one’s enemy is an innovative advancement from an eye for an eye, which seeks a new solution to conflict and opposition. So, sometimes archetypes in their primal form fit a need, but at other times, archetypes must evolve to ensure the present survival of the species.

By understanding and respecting the dominance of the archetypes upon life, we are freed to innovate in the magical world of the imagination. In this subtle realm of thought and image we become the weavers of our own lives. While accepting the concrete facts of our material existence, we are freed to suspend our attachment to the belief systems that manifest and uphold our physical lives and imagine a new and changed reality. The imagination has its own facts of reality.

The often laughed-at placebo effect is the greatest proof that what we imagine can indeed become our physical reality. The more we exercise our imagination to create what we want, the more we become the architects of our lives, drawing to us the material manifestation of our imaginal blueprint. The subconscious mind, the factory that converts imagination to materialization, will respond to suggestion.

Realize, however, that if we depart from an archetype we will be tested; archetypes are fierce warriors. We must be prepared to go it alone, as nature guards her established patterns. We must also be humble in our search for new frontiers, and accept that perhaps our ego is deluded by an inflation that is unsupported by the true needs of the Self.

On the other hand, we were granted the power of imagination to exercise the divine right of our existence to create and innovate, so we have every right to take life forward into new possibility.

We are all granted the freedom to square the facts of our own life with the power of the imagination.

Dream on. See what happens!

Imagine,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Mind Your Words

Leave a comment
Practice saying it…
– Artwork © 2022 Jan Ketchel

There are many voices in the head. The most prominent is that of the ego itself, the voice of consciousness that directs thought and decision making in waking life.

Just beneath the ego is the voice of the subconscious, that which stores the knowledge of our personal experiences in this life, as well as our genetic and ancestral knowledge and the archetypal programs that distinguish our species.

The subconscious also houses the split-off complexes formed through traumatic experience, which maintain their own consciousness. The voices of these split-off complexes represent learned beliefs, which exert their influence upon our everyday emotional states and mental functioning.

Additionally, the subconscious houses the soul’s journey through eternity, which includes many sub-personalities that weigh in on current life from their vast and varied experiences in infinite life. These influences, though pronounced, are generally veiled from waking ego consciousness, which spends most of its energy navigating survival and the tasks of daily waking life.

The subconscious is also the powerhouse of manifestation. All humans generate the life they are in via the suggestions delivered to the subconscious mind. The mere flicker of a possibility, housed in the words of a thought, immediately registers in the chemistry and emotion of the human body. The thought, “Did they get home OK?” can generate acute anxiety in the pit of the stomach, as the mind imagines possible accidents.

The shamans of ancient Mexico identified a parasitic, inorganic entity that produces an internal dialogue, which they called a flyer. The flyer influences the subconscious mind with incessant negative thoughts, generating intense emotion, the stuff of its sustenance. This parasitic relationship between species is quite common, as all life feeds upon life on this planet.

Whether the flyer be considered real or metaphorical, the effect of the internal dialogue upon human life is the manifestation of the consensus reality we live in. Essentially, the internal dialogue is a tour guide that cynically, and incessantly, defines who we are and the life we are in. The inner dialogue knows the fragility of the ego’s plight: a stranger in a strange land, cut off from the knowledge of its soul’s fuller journey and resources by the veil of the blank slate, which is installed upon birthing into this human life.

Through the internal dialogue’s generation of constant negative thoughts about the ego’s incompetency, and its negative view of outer reality, the ego easily becomes overwhelmed and thus spends much of life preoccupied with attempting to establish its worthiness. Meanwhile, it remains cutoff from its true royal lineage as a magical being. As a result, all the capabilities of its energy body soul self remain unknown and unavailable to ego consciousness.

The advantage of this parasitic arrangement is that the ego is able to remain fixed in the waking life it is in, thus effectively fulfilling its purpose for being in this life, which, cutoff from its history, it has little knowledge of. Had we full knowledge of our history, we would know of our immortality. Such knowledge would overshadow the time space limitation of this life, which actually motivates our efforts for fulfillment because of those limitations.

The disadvantage of the internal dialogue is the constant negativity it spews to the subconscious mind, which manifests in both anxious and depressed mood states. When we are cut off from our soul self, life can be made to appear nihilistic, foreboding and meaningless, with little possibility for joy and fulfillment.

Actually, the internal dialogue can be viewed as the gargoyle that guards the gates to the deeper knowing of our true selves, until we are able to subdue its influence upon us. Despite its negative influence, we tend to become addicted to the familiar sense of self that its cynical words generate and, regardless of our conscious intent to become more positive, we resist moving away from the comfort of a known self and world, with all its inferiorities and limitations.

Perhaps the greatest suggestion the shamans of ancient Mexico offer to transcend the insidious effect of the internal dialogue is to suspend judgment. When the ego gives this suggestion to the subconscious mind in the presence of an extraneous thought or interpretation, it opens the doorway to the world of possibility. Limiting beliefs are mere hypotheses that needn’t automatically define reality.

If we truly suspend judgment we are freed to open to a world of infinite possibility, with access to our magical selves. We are free to explore the subtle dimensions of the energy body, with its ability to travel beyond the body and communicate with more evolved spirits, who can guide us to latent abilities, such as telepathy and the deeper knowledge of the soul’s journey, with its many relationships in infinity.

The practice of suspending judgment is quite simple. Don’t engage in argument with the internal dialogue. Accept the basic truth of the inferior position of the ego. Rather than get caught in the struggle for proving self-importance, utilize the ego’s ability to approach life with the innocence of a child, in awe with the discovery of life and all its possibilities.

Mind your words.

State the intent: “Suspend Judgment.”

Enjoy the momentary inner silence such a suggestion manifests.

Allow the suggestion that anything is possible to be tested in the experiment of daily life.

Discover the positive outcome of such unbiased exploration. You won’t regret it!

Suspend judgment,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Beyond The Tyranny of Archetypal Misinterpretation

Leave a comment
How to break free from the patterns of the archetypes…
– Artwork © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Why are so many people afraid of public speaking? Simply put, it’s a situation of one person against many.

A mass of people wield a higher power than that of a lone individual. Talking to a group is thus experienced as a direct, terrifying encounter with a God!

How can a mortal stand up before a God without disintegrating? How could the offering of a mere  person be worthy before an audience of a God?

Our subconscious minds are programmed to interpret and respond to reality, based on what Jung called archetypal images. The image of a terrifying numinous energy hovers over a public gathering. This is the same image behind agoraphobia, the Greek word that literally translates as fear of the marketplace, a place of public gathering.

Archetypal images are preformed interpretations of energy that assemble and generate the reality we live in. They define what Robert Monroe called local traffic, the roads we travel in waking life. Monroe also discovered the interstate, roads that lead to the subtler energetic states of non-ordinary reality. The shamans of ancient Mexico call these different locales, alternative positions of the assemblage point, which generate real but relative realities.

Carlos Castaneda’s teacher, Don Juan Matus, was clear that we are solid beings in a solid world but that we are energetic beings, or spirit beings, first. Ultimately, archetypes are illusory and must be transcended to allow direct communication and relationship, as well as the freedom to navigate without the limits of preformed emotional reactions that inhibit genuine connection and expression.

When ego encounters archetype it experiences terror or ecstasy. The archetype behind attraction is, again, the energy of the divine. To be captivated by the beauty of another is a royal encounter with a prince, princess, God or Goddess. Fear and trembling hinder approach to one’s divine object of desire.

Archetypes can be helpful tools of interpretation, but they are projected images from within the psyche, not actual facts. Beneath the attractive person is a mere mortal being. Beneath the powerful uniform of a police officer or doctor is a flawed mortal, like all mortals. Uniforms serve to stir archetypal images, commanding high respect and trembling.

Often, individuals protect themselves from numinous archetypal encounters by staying safe at home. Others may take pharmaceuticals to regulate the anxiety activated by these projected archetypal images. Although these strategies may protect one from becoming diminished by the power of these images, they also reinforce the interpretation of these images as powers greater than the self.

The better course of adaptation is to withdraw the archetypal projection upon the outside world, neutralizing its overwhelming emotion of divine encounter. Projection, however, is not a choice, it simply happens to us: an object is encountered in the world and an archetypal image is activated to define it. However, the ego can take actions to master its ability to go into the world, speak publicly, and approach a person of interest.

Ego must first become humble and accepting of the self as it is. To inflate or deflate the ego to adapt to an archetypal encounter is merely transient survival. Ego should do the work it can do to improve itself. If you are going to give a speech, practice it many times.

Ego can practice biofeedback and neurofeedback to gain mastery over the emotions activated by archetypal images. This will allow the prefrontal cortex to remain online, granting access to one’s prepared talk. The subconscious can be instructed, through self-suggestion, to check the activation of archetypal images, thus enabling one to approach a person of interest as an ordinary human being.

Regular meditation and pranayamic breathing serve to ground the ego and invite higher spirit entities to energetically join with one’s intent. Ego’s ability to align with Spirit’s intent brings one’s greater wholeness to bear upon the ability to remain fluid during a numinous encounter.

Mastering archetypal images leads to true human interaction, perhaps the essential ingredient missing from the world stage at the moment. That work can advance on an individual level, as we each are free to free ourselves from the tyranny of archetypal misinterpretation.

Mastering,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Synchronicity, The Soul’s Messenger

Leave a comment
Molting gutter snake…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In a dream, I was beside a lake at night, sandwiched among a pile of undulating bodies, tracking an elusive sensation in my body. Suddenly, Jan awakens me; it’s 4:15 am, already late to rise.

I abruptly stand up. My body suddenly begins to seize into a full body cramp. Unable to stand erect, I carefully hobble out to the living room couch. As the seizure continues to threaten to go into a full-blown convulsion, I question whether my energy body, in its abrupt return to the physical body, from the dream, has docked awkwardly, impacting both my muscular and skeletal structures.

Next, I reflect on the dream experience itself, recognizing the purposive action of a contraction-like movement in the dream, suggesting a birthing experience. I know from personal experience that all dreams, however painful or frightening, are promptings from the High Soul for movement and change, in the physical waking dimension of life, that are in alignment with its higher truth.

This was not some kind of physical recapitulation of a suppressed bodily memory. This was a High Soul energetic chiropractic adjustment that had to be completed in the awakened physical body. My fear dropped away and I wondered, in awe, what new life was struggling to take form in my body as I entered the light of day.

With this growth-oriented perspective, I was able to be receptive to the physically challenging experience as it led me into new knowledge and consolidation of mind, body, and spirit self. This is the process of inner alchemy, as the body becomes the retort through which soulful transformation is achieved.

The shamans of ancient Mexico discovered that all energetic intent is embodied in the routines of physical postures and movements we subconsciously repeat each day. Changes in movements and postures open one to whole new worlds of possibility. Frequently, those shamans would be instructed, in dreaming, in new sets of physical movements, which they called magical passes. They then practiced these passes in waking life to bring intended change into their lives.

The synchronicity of my dream body’s and physically awakening body’s experience was my High Soul’s message crossing between the unseen dimensions of my whole Self. The message was non-verbal; like a new magical pass, the message of change was quite physical.

Synchronicity had already provided a startling sign the prior day. A black snake’s head hanging from the gutter above the front door greeted us as we arrived back home after our daily climb up and down Robert’s Mountain. We suspected that the snake was shedding its skin, as we have often found discarded snakeskins in the gutters. I too was soon to begin the painful process of molting.

At the level of the High Soul is the dimension of our experience at the transpersonal level of existence. This is, literally, the subatomic Soul level of existence, where everything that is, is interconnected as an ever-undulating wholeness of energy. All of us, everything, exist as one; nothing is exempt from this wholeness, this oneness. This is our life at the High Soul level of infinity.

Closer to home is the dimension of a circumscribed life in a physical body, where the interconnected energy of infinity is perceived as a discreet world of separate solid objects. This is the life of the soul, sequestered to the perception of ego consciousness, constructing the familiar dimension of everyday life in time and space.

The transpersonal dimension is light as a wave, as energy. The ego dimension is light as a particle, as solid. These two dimensions operate quite independently of each other, yet they do interact in the freedom of the dream space, where they share with each other both their wisdom and their experiences. High Soul has the broadest view, but ego soul contributes to High Soul’s knowledge through its own experiments in physical form.

I realize that my High Soul needed a willing partner, in its ego soul, to acquiesce to the molting and realignment that would allow for new discoveries in physical life experience, which are crucial to the High Soul’s growth and movement in infinity. Teaching and learning are a two-way street between the human and the divine. The particle and the wave are equal though opposite sides of the same coin.

I have come to realize that everything that occurs in waking life is meaningfully connected. From this perspective, the transpersonal knowing of the High Soul is channeled through the receptive ego, as it attends to the sensations of the world around it in waking life. Nature constantly provides signs and agreements to our cognitive meanderings as we navigate our days. This is synchronicity, the soul’s messenger, bridging the dimensions of Self.

To benefit from the High Soul’s messages from infinity, one must indeed suspend the judgment of an overly rational particle prejudiced ego, appreciating the promptings of the energetic High Soul.  As well, one must live a grounded life in the physical body and participate in the fulfillment of the physical life they are also in.

And so, I have daily come into alignment with the shift that occurred upon sudden reentry into the physical from dreaming, molting from an old ego stance into the new adjustment that was afforded me by the collision of worlds—my High Soul having instructed my ego to get into a new alignment that benefits both.

Get grounded, suspend judgment, open to the awe of possibility, and begin to dialogue with your own High Soul. It communicates everywhere, in every pulse of nature and the planet, within and without.

Forever molting,

Chuck