What we wish for is right there, beyond the boundaries we surround ourselves with… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
To make room for the new, we must clear out the old. The challenge, in letting go, is the depth of our attachment to the familiar. The identity we have forged secures us within the safety of the known.
The known identity is often heavily laden with negative and limiting beliefs, which become the boundaries of the self. To find the self in new ways, we must venture beyond the comfort of the chrysalis that has provided stability, darting past the limitations it has imposed upon the unfolding of our fuller selves.
The internal dialogue, specifically, the words we say to ourselves and others, powerfully determines the self we know. St. John begins his Gospel: “en arche en o logos” (in the beginning was the word). And that spoken word became the flesh. Or, as the Shamans of Ancient Mexico put it: words are directly linked to intent, the key to manifestation. As Descartes put it, “I think therefore I am.”
Norman Vincent Peale highlighted The Power of Positive Thinking, as a practice to suspend the power of judging words to forestall the unfolding self. We are all programmable beings, much like the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of Siri and Alexa.
Our subconscious awaits commands in the form of the words we tell it we are. Those words manifest in the behavioral patterns, moods, and beliefs that we program ourselves to automatically enact. Change the words, change the mood and the outlook.
Would, of course, that change were so simple. And yet, in many ways it is that simple. Observe the power of a charismatic leader whose words galvanize the mood of the world. This is the action of mass hypnosis, and, at some level, we are all hypnotic subjects. Why not give ourselves positive, supportive, and encouraging messages?
Always forgive the self, for everything and anything. Rather than bemoan one’s weaknesses and limitations, validate the willingness to face the full truth, and move forward unburdened with negativity.
Observe and interrupt automatic conclusions about one’s abilities, such as, “I am a terrible writer.” Reframe it with, “I am a being learning to write.”
Treat words as power objects capable of casting spells. Cast only positive spells upon the self.
Try, “I am a being open to the magic and mystery of life.”
Or, “I am a caring being open to sharing myself with a compatible other.”
Beyond the words that we consciously state are experiences we may store unconsciously, beyond our awareness, that hold their own powerful words of influence. These are made known to us through the triggers of everyday life that suddenly transport us to dark, frozen places.
To neutralize the spells these triggers cast, we must take the journey of recapitulation. In recapitulation we relive and fully retrieve our lost selves, as we open to full acceptance of every aspect of life lived. With acceptance comes love. With love comes the energy to open to new life, with all our vulnerabilities.
Finding self is the journey of a lifetime. Carefully chosen, supportive words and ongoing recapitulation are the tools to achieve this wholeness of self. Exercise these tools! See what happens!
Dare to trespass and grapple with the dweller! – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
The dweller* is the ruler of the subconscious, in the basement of our human being personality. I also call the dweller the little soul of the personality. The dweller is bound to nature’s survival instinct with sex in the forefront for species survival, and food, shelter, material resource and power acquisition its focus at the level of personal survival.
The dweller relies upon nature’s instinctual archetypes to maintain physical homeostasis and prompt behavioral action. The dweller is extremely conservative, it stays with what works, the programs that have ensured planetary evolutionary survival. These programs are encoded in our DNA, our ancestral memory and, ultimately, in our deepest karma, our high SOUL’s purpose for sending us into this earthly life.
The dweller doesn’t think and is not open to change. Like a conservative fundamentalist, it follows, without question, the commandments of the archetypes. In the absence of new orders it stays with what works. Even if one has been miserable an entire life, from the dweller’s perspective this represents successful survival and, hence, it is loathe to allow new, consciously sought after behaviors to stick. In fact, like a hidden sniper, it patiently awaits its opportunity to defeat them.
The ego Soul, bearer of consciousness, lives in the ground floor of the human personality, as a result of its decision to gain knowledge and make its own decisions in Eden, resulting in its banishment from nature, the dweller’s domain in the basement. Curiously, though the dweller is bound to its programs, like a willing soldier it immediately responds to orders from elsewhere, such as from ego Soul, influential others, or public opinion.
This, in a nutshell, is the heart of hypnosis. The hypnotist becomes the ruler of the dweller through suggestions that the dweller enacts upon command. In fact, we, as ego Souls, are all self-hypnotists, constantly sending suggestions to the dweller through the repetitive internal dialogue of our thoughts. Thus the dweller manifests in the body in how we think about ourselves.
This includes our central nervous system, which the dweller oversees. Thus, if we tell ourselves we are not safe, the dweller activates neurological signals and chemical processes that mold us into body-clenching, anxious beings. If we maintain this belief system over time, the dweller institutes this habitual thought pattern as a permanent program, with its resulting body state—however uncomfortable it may be—as a proven survival program, the dweller’s guiding priority.
Here we witness the familiar vicious cycle of ego Soul attempting to enact change by exercising intent, discipline, mantra, or downright discipline and, after some optimistic initial success, ultimately being defeated. The hidden dynamic is the dweller, at first following ego Soul’s orders but actually opposed to them, laying in wait for a vulnerable moment to defeat the ego Soul’s heroic efforts with doubt and defeatism, whereby restoring the more trustworthy program of familiar hell. In truth, the ego Soul might willingly collude with the dweller’s plot, as glimpses of the unfamiliar lightness of being might scare the ego to death!
Often, ego Soul turns to the upstairs occupant of its human personality, the high Self, who is connected to the high SOUL, to seek solace and guidance and, frankly, to escape from the dweller’s paralyzing grip, which repeatedly freezes the possibility of change. Thus, we might turn to inspirational music, prayer, or positive self-help books to infuse ourselves with the positive energy of heaven, seeking release from the darkness of our private hell.
Dweller in Angel, contained… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Many religions offer the technology to cast out and cut off the devil dweller and identify instead with the beings of light: saints and angels. Psychologically, this often results in a state of dissociation where a major part of the psyche is disowned, the consequences of which, in extreme form, can be seen in bipolar disorder, where one swings from living a powerful identification with the dweller to a powerful identification with pure angel.
The plight of the Catholic Church, as well as many institutions and individuals outed by #MeToo, reflects the consequences of the disowned dweller unleashed in the dark, contrasted by only the sunny angel appearing in the light of day. Out-of-body practitioners must also be aware of their own physical body dweller, as the tendency of New Age technologies is to covet the light and disown the dweller in the dark basement. If you are in human form there is no escaping the force of the dweller.
Ironically, both Jung and Trump agree on one thing: we must construct the walls of a mandala sanctuary within if we are to safely integrate the powerful forces at all levels of the personality: little soul, ego Soul and SOUL. Trump reflects everyman/woman in his struggle to contain those forces within himself and has consequently become a major channel to the dark collective dweller archetypes that are currently wreaking havoc on the human playing field. Would that Trump would grasp that his projected wall must be created within himself!
Trump’s journey is instructive to everyone. We all possess the dweller, the angel, and an ego. We must use our ego to fully own all that we are. We must create a container, build that wall within, versus identifying exclusively with dweller or angel while projecting the dark side outside of ourselves onto someone else, or some other race.
As we bear the tension of our mandala container in our own body, with the dweller’s help we can turn toward the angel for inspiration and comfort. And then, well, see what happens! This is the journey of soul to meet its higher SOUL, the topic of next week’s blog. Until then, build your inner wall mandala, the sanctuary and proving ground for your own personal journey of wholeness and completion.
Contained,
Chuck
*I am deeply indebted to Elmer Green and his life’s opus, TheOzawkie Book of the Dead, for introducing the term dweller in the context I use it. Jan and I are on our fifth reading of this treasured three-volume masterpiece. It is truly a diamond, cultivated from the rough work of living a fully explored life.
Also Please Note: We are currently publishing Chuck’s blogs on Tuesdays.
There is indeed a developmental line of soul. Although we are born with the fullness of an immortal SOUL, it takes a human lifetime to bring on line a fully conscious knowing and relatedness of all dimensions of SOUL.
The subconscious dimension of our tripartite SOUL is connected to the physical body at the lower chakras, located beneath the solar plexus. The major intention of the little soul at this first level, as distinguished by a lower case “s” in the word soul, is survival, both at a species and an individual level. Sexual energy is its currency. As Freud rightly discovered, the little soul bridges body and mind, as it stimulates the psychosexual development of the individual and ultimately secures continuation of the species.
This subconscious little soul is not a thinking center; it strictly obeys the spirit laws of DNA, instinct, and the archetypes of the collective unconscious. The subconscious little soul oversees the majority of functions of the central nervous system, through the ancient limbic system of the physical brain.
As well, repetitive conscious behaviors drift into the subconscious little soul and become automatic habits. One obvious example is driving a car, which is largely managed by the subconscious little soul while the conscious mind, the ego Soul (distinguished by an upper case “S”), floats elsewhere.
Although the subconscious little soul is highly automatic it is equally highly responsive to suggestion. As hypnotists demonstrate, the subconscious little soul can be influenced by conscious intervention. In trance, a hypnotist’s suggestion can become the subconscious little soul’s instructor, as it materializes, in behaviors, the instructions it has been given.
Furthermore, yogis, deep meditators, and shamans demonstrate a high degree of control over such functions as heart rate, physical healing, and shapeshifting, where the actual physical form can be changed via the power of conscious intent, i.e., the Soul’s will, at the ego level, directing the subconscious little soul’s relationship with physical matter.
I suggested in a prior blog that projection is the language of the little soul at this subconscious level of being, where it purposely mirrors itself on people and things in the world that attract and stir the ego—the conscious level of the Soul—to further its primal intent.
The subconscious little soul is equally capable of projecting its will through one’s own physicalbody. This is the basis of psychosomatic medicine, where ego Soul’s decisions that impact the body are challenged by the subconscious little soul. Essentially, the subconscious little soul creates a dysfunction in a body system to communicate to the ego Soul the error of its ways. Healing then requires the ego Soul to interpret the problem and change its ways.
The second level of Soul (with a capital “S”) is ego-consciousness, centered at the solar plexus chakra, the power center. Likened to the Garden of Eden, the ego Soul is where human beings grabbed and consumed the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, gaining their ability to choose their own behavior, even over the will of the archetypes, the gods of the powerful collective unconscious, rulers of our automatic, subconscious being.
From the furnace of the solar plexus center come the powerful emotions that influence the ego Soul’s will. Regardless of the freedom of choice, at this center the ego Soul’s worldview is largely narcissistic; it cannot see beyond its own needs and being. Whereas the little soul, at the subconscious level, operates via projection, the ego Soul, at the solar plexus chakra, operates through the mirror of self-reflection. Thinking is limited to what one sees in the mirror! World leadership is currently largely fixated at this level, where meonly is the dominating principal.
The next level of ego Soul refinement takes place at the heart center chakra. Here the ego Soul cracks its mirror of self-reflection and begins to be able to reflect, that is, think, objectively. At the heart center, the ego Soul can see beyond itself to the true nature of interconnected reality and thus is capable of deep compassion for all beings.
Deep compassion does not mean allowing oneself to be harmed by an attacker. As even the Dalai Lama points out, sometimes we may need to protect ourselves aggressively from attack. Nonetheless, we still hold compassion for our enemy, a vital part of our totally interconnected world. This is the message of the Bhagavad Gita: both sides of the warring parties are God. This guidance appears particularly poignant in the world’s current fixation.
With the ego Soul equipped with interconnected awareness at the heart center, it is fully capable of right action—action that is truly right for our interconnected world. Thus, at the heart center level, decisions reflecting global warming would be in alignment with the overall survival of the planet, as opposed to the ego Soul stuck at the self-reflection level of the solar plexus, which cannot see or act beyond what it sees in the mirror: me!
Perhaps the best characterization of an evolved ego Soul, residing at the heart center, is that of a General following the plan of a Ruler, residing in the immortal third SOUL level, as distinguished in full upper case letters: “SOUL.”
The immortal SOUL is the high self that corresponds to the highest chakras, from throat to crown. Communications from this high center reflect the journey of the immortal tripartite SOUL through infinity. From here, we have access to all knowledge, as was evident in Edgar Cayce’s healing readings from the Akashic Record. From the immortal SOUL comes knowledge of all past life, much as the brain, at a physical level, can be seen as a storage drive for all sensory experience in this current life.
The immortal SOUL communicates via intuition and synchronicity. An ego Soul that has broken the shell of its narcissistic encasement and evolved to the heart center recognizes and resonates with the intuitive promptings of the immortal SOUL.
Synchronicity is the immortal SOUL’s manipulation of time and space, and even matter, to validate, support, and further the ego Soul’s decisions and actions, or, as needed, invalidate or challenge them as well. The immortal SOUL is the ultimate source of manifestation of intent.
Ego Soul does best to align its intent with immortal SOUL’s intent, which would be to solve one’s deepest challenges and find fulfillment in one’s current life on Earth. This alignment is sure to bring positive synchronicities, including positive relationships and resources to complete the necessary tasks of a lifetime.
All levels of our tripartite SOUL selves—from subconscious little soul, to ego Soul, to immortal SOUL—coexist in our human energy body, intertwining with our physical body in this lifetime. To judge and negate the subconscious little soul, due to its lowly position, would be to lose one’s footing in the world. To cling to, or solely identify with, the immortal SOUL would be to live in the heavens, without doing one’s work while in material reality.
To negate the needs and concerns of the subconscious little soul could prove fatal to one’s physical body. To not seize appropriate power at the ego Soul level, and protect one’s person, could prove equally fatal. The ego Soul, at the heart center, must mediate between the subconscious little soul and the immortal high SOUL. As above, so below is the operative suggestion here.
When subconscious little soul, ego Soul, and immortal SOUL are on the same page, all is right with the world! May this coming New Year bring us closer to such alignment!
Peace, alignment, and a whole lot of SOUL to all, and remember to enjoy your Soulplay,
