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Chuck’s Place: Within and Without

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We are the drop and the whole ocean too…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we contemplate the oft-cited metaphor of an individual human life being but a drop of water in an ocean of its greater wholeness, we might come to another apt metaphor: Is the glass half empty or half full? Being half empty is the deflated perspective that a mere drop of water is so minuscule as to be essentially insignificant.

From this perspective it’s hard to imagine that anything we might do could possibly positively impact the greater world, especially in this time of such obvious great upheaval. A mere droplet of water could hardly reverse the tidal wave of energy impacting Earth’s many shores.

From the more optimistic glass half full perspective, we might appreciate the holographic perception of that drop of water as a fragment that in fact mirrors and contains the entire ocean. Transformations within that single droplet inevitably impact the entire world.

The challenge is to claim ownership for the entire world within the province of the self. Nothing that exists without does not exist within. On some level, in some form, we are, each of us, as individuals, also the world.

Outwardly, societies have struggled to create civilization—a humane interconnectedness that eliminates the extreme cruelty and brutality of barbarism. Regardless of a given civilization’s progress in actualizing its civilized intent, greed and self-interest remain part of the self and part of the world.

Wars, at their root, result from the breakthrough of these shadow energies, previously held in check by a civilized container. The explosive release of these powerful energies leads to great destruction of the Earth and human life. Postwar optimism and renewal of life become possible once the deployed energies of destruction are on the wane, and as good once again begins to assert itself.

The inefficiency of this war and peace cycle is obvious, particularly at a time when modern weaponry can destroy the Earth. Quite simply, humanity must develop a new technology to harmonize the bipolar energies within itself. Rather than simply repress and imprison its unwanted self, humanity must own and integrate all parts of itself.

This brings us back to that droplet of self we know ourselves to be in this life. Within that droplet is every person, every act we see perpetrated in the world. Firstly, can we own that behavior out there that we so disdain? We can believe that we would never do some of the things we see happening in the world, but can we own the fascination, rage, joy, contempt, or hatred we might be inwardly experiencing that vicariously activates and releases like energies in ourselves?

Own your shadow. Jung believed this to be the greatest challenge and necessary next step in human evolution. Carlos Castaneda left us the technology of suspending  judgment of others to own our own shadow. When we judge, we put ourself above the person we are judging. This separation of self from other is actually a disowning of the part of ourself activated by the other’s behavior. When we suspend judgment, we are freed to face honestly all we discover in ourselves, good and bad.

The Buddhists highlight the technology of compassion to reconcile with the unwanted within the self. Every time we find ourselves triggered and enraged by the behavior of another, feel loving compassion for that human being in deep struggle with the forces within themselves. Use such moments as teaching moments, asking the self, “What am I supposed to learn from this experience?” In this manner, everything becomes personally meaningful and part of our own journey to reconciliation and wholeness.

This in no way means to deny the rage and hatred experienced at the barbarism on display, but to reach a feeling of deep compassion is to absorb and transmute those warring energies, creating deep acceptance of self and other. True love requires that we love all.

Our holographic droplet of water self that achieves both a suspension of judgment and compassion for the other is in such a state of advance that its greater wholeness, the ocean and humanity at large, can’t help but be changed by it, within and without. Do not doubt; this is the power of the humbly small.

Half full with compassion,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Being Intent

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Woke up at midnight to a powerful headache. So begins the internal dialogue: “You didn’t take care of yourself. You brought this on. You won’t be able to sleep well. Tomorrow will be compromised. There is no way this headache will go away. Well, maybe if you took some Motrin. Some healer you are. You are powerless to change this pain…”

Stalking healing intent…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The impact of this messaging stirs anxiety and fear, and a general belief of defeat and failure, accompanied by a somewhat depressed mood.

The net effect of this internal dialogue is to securely embody a definition of self as flawed, limited, and of low value. To stalk such an experience is to add an impartial observer alongside this internal dialogue, with the intent to separate itself from these negative wrappings, and unleash the fullness of possibilities.

From this impartial place of awareness, the observer suspends judgment, awaiting other possibilities. Suddenly, a vague memory appears with some certain knowledge: “You can relieve your headache through your own agency, through your own intent.”

Immediately, the internal dialogue chips in: “That experience you think you remember was a fluke, maybe it didn’t really even happen. There’s no way you can eliminate your headache short of 1000mg of Motrin. Some healer you are.”

The stalking observer decides to place its full attention upon the details of its prior self-healing experience. Recapitulating that experience, it knows it began by placing full awareness upon the sensation of pain in the exact locale of the head from which it pulsated. From there, the command had been issued to release and relax, deeper and deeper.

The stalker decides to apply this method. The inner dialogue casts its aspersions, but the stalker finds inner silence, by simply placing its full attention upon the sensation, and giving the command to release and relax. No attention is given to the internal dialogue nor any other thought thread. The stalking observer then fully merges with the intent, into a state of being intent.

Within minutes, as relaxation and release deepen, the head becomes completely spacious, as inhaled breath flows freely through its caverns. The headache is completely erased! It never returns. Being intent has operationalized and fully realized its intent.

Don Juan Matus joked with his much younger apprentice, Carlos Castaneda, about how much physically older Carlos appeared than he. Don Juan attributed his youthful vitality to his refusal to uphold physical agreements he had never signed up for.

Socialization shapes and limits what we believe we are capable of physically changing. The body itself is governed by inherited archetypal intents, in the form of subconscious programs. The internal dialogue upholds these ‘facts’ of physical life. These facts are rarely challenged by consciousness.

Yogis, for eons, have demonstrated that full consciousness can be brought to, and take control of, every organ and biological system in the body. Being intent is the active agent of that consciousness. The key is to suspend the judgments of the internal dialogue, leading to inner silence, and then shifting into being intent.

The Sorcerers of Ancient Mexico became such masters of being intent that they turned their prowess into defying death, staying in human form indefinitely. Modern seers, though they appreciate such feats, see them as traps, as all beings must eventually change form through physical death, the destiny intent of the human form.

Nonetheless, being intent certainly opens the door to possibilities in human form, which are well-worth exploring. To be able to erase a full blown headache and slip into deeply rejuvenating sleep is deeply appreciated. It may not always be possible, but my motto, taken from my earliest mentor, Dr. Efren Ramirez, has always been: Anything is possible, until proven otherwise.

May all discover the possibilities of being intent for themselves.

being INTENT,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Lifting the Veil of Self-Blame

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What masquerades and torments as self-blame is often, underneath it all, the placeholder for painful truths we are not ready to assimilate. How does this work?

Trauma comes in many forms, but what makes all trauma, trauma, is the encounter with an experience we are unable to assimilate. By assimilate, I mean, able to take in—physically, cognitively, emotionally—the full breadth and truth of an experience regardless of how disruptive, intrusive, or devastating it might be.

When we are unable to assimilate part or whole of an experience we must store it within ourselves, in some form, until the day we are ready to fully assimilate, or recapitulate, the experience.

The storing of traumatic experience creates a fragmentation within the self because one part of the self can no longer communicate with, or know about, another part of the self. However, some form of inter-self communication can occur in a traumatized self, if the traumatized part wears a disguise that doesn’t reveal the truth hidden within, the real trauma.

Self-blame is often a disguised trauma. How does that work?

Self-blame implies “criminal” activity. This criminal part of the self is seen and felt as bad, abusive, unworthy, lazy, unlovable, or inadequate. On some level we hold onto self-hate and loathing, and blame ourselves for all the misery in our lives.

We then get caught in a cycle of old guilt and compensatory intentions and efforts to improve the self, to reform the criminal. Inevitably we fail, and around and around we go on this vicious wheel of suffering and redemption as our inner criminal resurfaces over and over again.

But, what if this blamed self is actually hidden trauma? After all, isn’t a trauma itself actually a “criminal” who invades our stable lives? Isn’t the trauma actually bad and abusive? Isn’t there an aggressive intensity inherent in trauma equivalent to the punitive energy of self-blame? Perhaps self-blame is the perfect placeholder for trauma and the unrecapitulated self.

In order to discover the true culprit behind the mask of self-blame, we must avail ourselves of Carlos Castaneda’s number one intent: Suspend judgment! Suspending judgment, in the context of lifting the veil of self-blame, means assuming a perspective of detached objectivity. We are looking to both understand the energetic function of self-blame in our lives, as well as discover the true nature of the experiences we have carried under the guise of self-blame.

As I pondered the energetic influences this past week, I consulted The I Ching. I received the answer of The Marrying Maiden, hexagram #54. This hexagram selects the role of the concubine to illustrate being selected to play a part, not for personal reasons, but because of the impersonal needs of others. How do we navigate being acted upon, as in the role of the concubine, simply because we are there and can fill a need of others, however inappropriate? If this is the objective truth of it, however distasteful and unacceptable that situation may be or feel, the truth is: it is impersonal.

Accepting the reality of the impersonal in our lives is a daunting challenge. To hold onto the truth of the impersonal and not change it back into the personal and self-blame, as a means of holding onto some degree of control, is what suspending judgment is all about.

Perhaps for decades we’ve needed to disguise the truth of abuse in self-hate. Can we now allow ourselves to know the real facts of that abuse? Can we now allow ourselves to encounter the truth of the impersonal forces that acted upon us, totally for their own needs? Can we face that we had no control and did not matter, in any sense?

In another example of impersonal experience: Can we take in that we were not loved, but that it was completely not personal—it was simply not our fault? Can we let go of our illusions of those we loved, and needed to preserve as loving people, in order to feel safe and cared for? Are we ready to take down the defenses that protect our wounded selves and release our true innocence, or do we need to hold onto the shield of badness and self-blame? Can we accept our lovableness, though others could not? Or, again, must we continue to protect ourselves with a cloak of unworthiness and self-blame?

Are we ready to release ourselves from the illusions of badness we repeatedly uphold through compulsive, self-destructive behavior patterns that falsely substantiate our sense of unworthiness? This is how that criminal wheel of suffering and redemption keeps spinning. Perhaps, for instance, we hold onto laziness as an ancient means of protecting parents who didn’t love us. In this example, we carry our laziness as a way to blame ourselves for our parents rejecting behavior. In other words, we deserve rejection because we are lazy. This keeps us from being confronted with the impersonal reality that they may just have been incapable of loving, and it was not our fault. Are we ready to face this truth, allow ourselves to break the criminal hold of self-destructive behavior and release the parents we’ve held onto for some kind of security? Can we release ourselves from this ancient flawed perspective and accept our lovability? Are we ready to be the adult self that suspends judgment and frees our innocence, seeing clearly, and releasing all who crushed our hopefulness and joy?

Are we ready to not flip self-blame into blame? If we attach to blaming others we remain bound to a new criminal. This is not about having to forgive. This is about being an adult and an innocent self, ready to open to life with a new found wholeness. With the truth revealed, the self is no longer bound by old ideas and fragmentations. The criminals, once needed to house unrecapitulated events, can be released.

Are we ready to come out of the shell of the blamed self and allow fresh air to touch our innocence? Lifting the veil of self-blame takes great courage and may take a lifetime, but it promises fulfillment in this life and opens the door to new worlds of possibility.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#730 Chuck’s Place: Intent & The Left Body

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“The concealed advantage of luminous beings is that they have something which is never used: intent. The maneuver of shamans is the same as the maneuver of the average man. Both have a description of the world. The average man upholds it with his reason; the shaman upholds it with his intent. Both descriptions have their rules; but the advantage of the shaman is that intent is more engulfing than reason.” —From The Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda, page 138.

The seers of ancient Mexico, who view the energetic dimension of human beings, observe two distinct energy patterns, on the left and right side of the body respectively. The energy of the right body moves in a continuous rocking motion. The energy of the left body, in contrast, is more “turbulent and aggressive, moving in undulating ripples and projecting out waves of energy.” —From Magical Passes, page 140.

Those seers also note that the energy of the right body is the dominating force in human beings. The right body energy is rationality; the left body energy is what Carl Jung would call the unconscious. For seers, the left body is both the more comprehensive reservoir of human potential as well as the human door to infinity.

The energy of the left body is accessed in various ways. Carlos Castaneda describes many times how, after a blow on the back from don Juan, he shifted into a state of heightened awareness, opening access to the energy of the left body. In non-shamanic life experience, trauma can force a shift out of body into heightened awareness as well. The peculiarity of heightened awareness is a state of detachment with a heightened ability to focus, understand, and know, at a profound level, as the dominance of rationality is suspended. However, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, heightened awareness suddenly ends with a return to right sided dominance, and all the accrued knowledge and experience of heightened awareness fades and is forgotten. These experiences are nonetheless stored elsewhere in the left body awaiting retrieval. This is a major reason to recapitulate. Recapitulation is an exercise in retrieving stored memory. The functional value of recapitulation is to open the channel to the left body and infinity.

Intent is also linked to left body potential. While the word intent is generally bandied about, full of ego desirousness or right sided control in such expositions as The Secret, intent belongs to the realm of energy and the left body. Intent is beyond ego, beyond reason, beyond the mind.

“Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend, simply by intending it.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, don Juan.”

“Pay close attention. Someday it’ll be your turn to explain. The statement seems nonsensical because you are not putting it in the proper context. Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively the realm of our reason, of our mind.”

“For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending, understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.” —From The Art of Dreaming, page 23.

There is no rationality to intent. If we want something from right sided awareness we develop a plan, employ a strategy, manipulate, and control in order to create an outcome. When you boil it down, that’s simply ego control, not intent.

Intent, from the left side, is a simple intent, stated, sent out—light as a feather—with no attachment. No reason, no control, no manipulation is necessary. A silent knowing that the energy body has received the intent and works its magic is all that is required.

The process of tracking the path of intent is synchronicity: everything is meaningful. Everyone and everything that presents in your life reflects intent in manifestation. Follow it, and be guided by it. Suspend judgment, the dominating influence of the right body, and track instead the meaning and signs of the unfolding events in your life.

These events are the signs of unfolding intent. The challenge becomes one of aligning right sided decisions with unfolding intent. So much energy is consumed by right sided resistance through doubt, fear, indecision, rationality, and, frankly, big baby refusal to take the unfamiliar journey beyond known habit, the rocking chair of right sided energy.

Perhaps our ultimate intent is the one we set from infinity before we entered this world, our reason for being here. That intent persistently presses upon our lives, through the years, seeking to awaken our right sided dominant body to its true mission in the world. In the final analysis, our reason for being in this life is to discover and acquiesce to this core intent; the one set long before the birth of the ego and the right sided human self.

Send your intent to your energy body; see what happens!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

NOTE: The books mentioned in this blog by Carlos Castaneda, and other books, are available through our Store.

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#728 Chuck’s Place: Here & Hereafter

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Yesterday, as Jan and I prepared to make a brief visit to Aunt Virginia before attending a matinee showing of Hereafter, I struggled to somehow dismantle the bathroom ceiling fan to free a trapped bird. Jan had just been outside and noticed a flock of bluebirds on the roof, calling loudly. The eyes of the trapped bird stared intently at me as I lowered the fan, it was a female bluebird and she was now freed.

We arrived a bit late to 91 year old Aunt Virginia to find her resting with her new Yorkie puppy Dewey sitting calmly in her lap. Dewey is adorable with bright attentive eyes, wise beyond his years. He locks onto my eyes, we connect. Aunt Virginia is a young mother again, constantly tracking Dewey’s whereabouts, fixing him lunch. We say our goodbyes; it’s time for Hereafter.

Back in the day, Jeanne and I anxiously awaited three things in life: the always postponed release of Stevie Wonder’s next album; Carlos Castaneda’s next book; and Clint Eastwood’s new movie. While Stevie and Carlos attended to our spiritual and magical sides, The Clint was pure masculine shadow. He mirrored the energy I aspired to and that Jeanne was attracted to. Who would have thought that The Clint would evolve into such a sensitive, gentle director willing to take on the question of the hereafter, only the greatest mystery of life?

This movie is at once engaging and seamless as it flows through the unfolding dramas of three characters in separate worlds whose lives ultimately intersect at the deepest level. The pace of the movie is decidedly Eastwood’s. He skips the explosiveness of most Hollywood dramas, calmly allowing the story to unfold without over-stimulation or over-telling. You’re not likely to encounter too many texting teens at this movie; The Clint does not cave to that energy. This is an intelligent movie.

Jan and I thoroughly enjoyed it, two thumbs up! I will say no more directly about the content of Hereafter. Go see it!

However, I am not a stranger to the hereafter, so I will describe my own experience. Jan and I have had profound experiences of Jeanne in the hereafter in the here and now. We literally lived a scene right out of Ghost where Whoopi Goldberg transmogrifies into Patrick Swayze so that he can connect with his wife played by actress, Demi Moore. Jan, Jeanne and I have verified this experience and that possibility.

What I can say however is that this experience doesn’t mean anything to my rational mind. The rational mind will always do what the rational mind does best: doubt and question. My rational mind doubts and questions every otherworldly experience I have ever had.

Here is the conundrum: We know this life will end. Then what? Lights out or lights on? Our reason knows there is no god, no magic; it can all be explained. We can choose to believe but our reason scoffs at belief. If we have genuine experiences of hereafter, reason, our own or someone else’s, quickly explains them away with reasonable doubt. And so, we are left with reason on one side and experiences on the other, with reason claiming ultimate control over the interpretation of everything.

My solution to this conundrum has been to suspend judgment and to have experience. Allowing for experiences leads to its own knowing. This knowing needn’t challenge reason, which has its own knowing, albeit limited. The solution lies not in convincing reason. This is not possible. Reason upholds our consensual reality. It is the foundation of that reality. Experiences of hereafter lead to knowing an expanded reality, one in which reason exists in its own right but is simply one world among others.

There was once a time when it was certain that the sun revolved around the all-important Earth. That it is now known that the earth—among other planets—revolves around the sun, does not diminish the reality of the earth, it simply diminishes its supremacy. Reason shares a similar fate, though it is fighting hard to maintain its supremacy over the hereafter.

I like The Clint’s approach to the Hereafter. It’s calm, no dramatic attempts of proof; an invitation to experience.

For those who haven’t read The Book of Us, I suggest this autobiography as a documented experience of here and hereafter. Of course, like all documented experiences, we are left with confronting reason with its doubts and questions. Take it instead as an invitation to have your own experiences. That has been the essence of Jeanne’s channeled messages: lessons in how to have experiences of hereafter, here and now.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck