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Chuck’s Place: Mind Your Words

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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

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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

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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

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Tell Your Body What To Do

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Image by Jan Ketchel

I would like to say that, yes, it is that simple. By telling your heart to beat slower, it will beat slower. By telling your blood pressure to flow more calmly, it will flow more calmly. By telling your breathing to calm down, it will calm down. By telling your body to relax, it will relax.

And though I know from personal experience that these things are true, I  also know that our internal programming, largely molded by our social conditioning and education, tells us that such things are not possible.

The rational mind either rejects such a simplistic possibility and refuses to do it or makes half-hearted attempts a couple of times and proves its absurdity.

If we allow our accepted beliefs to control our actions without honestly testing out possibilities beyond those beliefs, we will be slow to evolve. Evolution requires that we allow life to progress through its changes. If we grasp too tightly to old beliefs without testing new possibilities we create roadblocks to our own growth and evolution.

The true scientist is not offended when the outcome of an experiment disproves the stated hypothesis. To the contrary, there is the thrill of the discovery of a new truth. Science, at its purest, is a lover of truth. Beliefs that refuse to yield to an unprejudiced experiment are no lovers of true science.

It is true that many of our cognitive, emotional and behavioral actions happen outside the control of consciousness. Our subconscious minds are the home of the programs that automatically operate our physical and mental systems.

We should be quite thankful that the subconscious automatically shoulders the directing of these systems. Imagine if we had to tell ourselves to breathe every breath we inhale throughout the day! We’d have little energy and focus to do any other activity. Yet, it is a fact that at times, when we do assume conscious control of our breathing, it can have a deeply calming effect upon our body and state of mind.

The science behind the efficacy of conscious self-regulation can be traced to the pioneering research of German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz in what he called autogenic training. The marvels of hypnosis were in deep display in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. No one could deny that the subconscious mind could be influenced to vastly change the condition of the body.

What Schultz advanced was the possibility of a direct relationship between the conscious mind and the state of the body. Rather than put the conscious mind to sleep in a state of trance and then have the subconscious controlled by the suggestions of the hypnotist, in autogenic training the conscious mind is fully awake, talking with conviction to the body and the underlying subconscious, consciously directing physical changes.

The mind, at the level of the ego, the chief navigator of daily life, can decide at any time to direct thinking and behavior. This means volitionally, with conscious intent, interrupting and overriding the currently active program operating from the center of the subconscious mind.

With calm, unbiased perseverance, one can discover, for themselves, the power they have to directly influence the state of their central nervous system. Of course there are many other ways to influence this relationship, such as through the use of medications, whose chemicals exert direct influence over the automatic programs running the body.

Energy therapies such as acupuncture also directly impact the energy channels in the body, by overriding subconscious programs causing energy blockages. Massage therapy deals with the relaxing and redistributing of energy at the level of the densest concentrations of energy, the physical body.

All these methods have their benefits and may be helpful to creating harmony within the CNS. Statements made directly to the body empower an individual to directly impact their state of being. Of course, one should always investigate the reason behind an uncomfortable body condition, as there may be a message behind it to the psyche from the body, asking it to change a dysfunctional behavior or to investigate some deeper issue.

Nonetheless, even that kind of investigation requires a calm state of being to allow for clear mental processing. For this, the simple directive from the conscious mind, telling the heart to beat slower, may prove extremely useful.

Try it. See what happens. Be a true scientist.

My heart beats slower,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Trigger, Habit or Both?

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A sting can cause a trigger; gathering pollen is a habit!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

“That really triggered me!”  Here, a sore spot, a vulnerability has been touched by someone’s comment, setting off this emotionally explosive reaction. Typically, the wounded party expects that others should know and respect this sensitivity and refrain from going near it. One often feels entitled to an apology.

A trigger is anything that can cause one to remember and feel an unprocessed emotionally charged experience. If someone tries to forget being attacked by a dog, the mere mention of its name can arouse anger and terror. Inwardly, the experience of being bitten has been pushed out of consciousness, protecting one from the discomfort of the reactivated memory.

The psyche envelops overwhelming experiences with strong defenses to keep the dreaded event far away from consciousness. Traumatic events may be so far removed from consciousness as to render one amnesic of their existence, even for decades.

Though the need for distance from a disturbing event may be necessary to function, it comes at the price of wholeness. The psyche must employ a good amount of energy to contain the disowned, unwanted or unknown parts of its experience. Furthermore, relaxed functioning may be compromised, as vigilance may be needed to avoid encounters with triggers associated with the split-off experience.

Ultimately, all events of a lifetime must be reconciled. A shamanic recapitulation, in this life, emotionally neutralizes all experience, rendering the psyche fully cohesive and able to be open to life without concern for triggers.

The life review referenced in near-death experiences, or reported by spirits in the afterlife, is required before one can advance into new life. Problems we haven’t resolved will preoccupy our lives, regardless of what subtle plane we may transition to. Recapitulation in this life both frees one for fulfillment in this life but also advances one in preparation for new life in the afterlife.

Habits are automatic beliefs, programs or pre-programmed behaviors that lie dormant in the subconscious mind. Programs are connected to genetic coding, as well as instinctive and archetypal imperatives that are specific to the nuances of the human species.

When a need or suggestion is encountered, the subconscious automatically activates the relevant program to address the situation. Thus, if one is attacked the subconscious will automatically activate fight, flight or freeze in response to the event. These reactions are not reactions to triggers, they are purely instinctive reactions to an existential threat. An instinctive habit is objective, a trigger is subjective.

The subconscious is also filled with habits that are derived from one’s subjective experience in this life. Thus, a person who has been bitten by a dog may consciously choose to always avoid dogs. This intentional behavior becomes a suggestion to the subconscious mind that molds it into an automatic, unconscious habit.

Thus, for instance, our bitten subject may unconsciously find themselves only walking certain routes that are known to be dog free. Now, if, while calmly walking one of these routes, a bark is heard, the subject may be triggered into emotional distress via encounter with the unreconciled memory of the original bite.

While triggers require a successful recapitulation if they are to be neutralized, habits, to change, require new suggestions to the subconscious mind. Thus, if one’s habit is a belief that one is unable to dance, one must first eliminate the conscious restating of this long-held belief. The subconscious will only manifest the suggestions one states.

To change a habit we must routinely state the new instruction to the subconscious mind: “I am able to dance.” This is not a discussion with the conscious mind. No reasoning or processing is required. What is required is the statement of intended fact to the subconscious, without any discussion.

To avoid conflicting suggestions to the subconscious, which virtually nullifies the formation of new habits, it is critical that one have complete faith in one’s suggestion. If one can embrace the belief that anything is possible then one can mobilize the requisite intensity of suggestion most likely to influence the subconscious.

One is often tested by the subconscious by the activation of old programs, despite one’s new intent. Old habits will reassert themselves until the new habit is established. Be calm, patient and persevering until the subconscious automatically prompts the newly established program. Simply repeat the new intent with calm assurance that it will manifest.

Trigger and habit are frequently intertwined. A new habit will be blocked from formation if a defensive habit must be retained to protect one from a potential trigger. Triggers, which represent split off experiences, must be neutralized through recapitulation before a habit, used to keep triggers at bay, can be effectively replaced.

Though both habits and triggers may be permanently altered, their pathways to change are distinctly different. Triggers must be processed at a conscious level to be neutralized; habits require rote repetition of new marching orders to the subconscious to result in a changed habit.

When triggers and habits are intertwined it is necessary to first reconcile  the triggered event to effectively free the subconscious to take in the instructions for the desired change of habit. Change itself is always possible. Remember, anything is possible!

Peace,

Chuck