Tag Archives: suspending judgment

#693 Chuck’s Place: FATHER

June 19, 2010 Chuck Leave a comment

THE CONCERT

At Carnegie Hall, on a Tuesday night, a full day of work awaits, starting early the next morning. I make the sacrifice, my stepson is singing in Eric Whitacre’s Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. Paradise Lost is the story of a lost generation of angel children left behind by their dying parents, walled off, without their wings, in a deeply protective structure. Logos is the leader of the now grown up lost children. The Gospel according to John begins: In the beginning was logos (the word), and the word was with God. Logos is the word, the law, the blueprint, the archetype of God, the ultimate father. In Eric Whitacre’s story, Logos frequently imbibes “amber,” some kind of hallucinogen that opens, for him, the channel to his deceased father, who communicates the message that he must protect all the children, at all costs. The decree of the father is to protect, maintain the status quo, keep things unchanging within the highly guarded and protected walled-in structure.

The love of Logos’ life is Exstasis. Exstasis is the Greek root for ecstasy, which literally translates to going outside of the stationary or static walls. Their names, Logos and Exstasis, foreshadow the ultimate conflict between conservative protection and freedom. Exstasis, in her own amber journeys, discovers from her own ethereal mother that her wings are hidden and retrievable, but she must take up the journey and go beyond the walls to visit the Oracle in the sacred temple. The Oracle insists that she face the truth, only the truth, to be guided to her wings. She passes this test and ultimately discovers her wings. However, in her final confrontation with Logos in which he burns her wings, she is killed, as the secure and protective father principle cannot tolerate her flight beyond the known, into potential danger.

A DREAM: The Great Train Robbery

I am at a train station on Long Island, right next to the ocean. In the first half of the dream, dimly recalled, I am part of a well-planned and executed plot to rob a train/railroad station. I recall a knapsack full of bundles of money. The robbery is successful, and involves the use of packs of dynamite, placed in several places around the station, set off just at the moment of getaway.

The consequence of this robbery is the end of this railroad station being included along this train line. A nostalgia sets in, particularly from my father. I join him in a campaign to restore the destroyed station. My father becomes involved in the beautification effort, the landscaping. I, in turn, distinctly recall where the planks and stones from the explosion had landed, which I easily begin to retrieve and restore. The dream ends as a smart detective, who has been tracking my activity, confronts me on the boardwalk about the crime.

I immediately awakened from this dream charged with the energy to record it, as well as contemplate it, with my consciousness still between worlds. I suspended my ego’s judgment about being a criminal and instead asked myself: what was the true nature or meaning of the crime? Not all crimes are criminal. When Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, mankind gained in consciousness. When Adam, at Eve’s urging, bit from the apple of the tree of knowledge, the world advanced in consciousness. In both cases, God’s, the father’s, rules were broken and there were punishments, paradise lost.

To go out alone, without the protection and security of father’s walls is both a reward and a punishment. In my dream, the destruction of the train station was a boon for me, a backpack full of money, a tremendous pick-up of energy. The seers on ancient Mexico devised the practice of recapitulation as a means of freeing oneself of static behaviors, returning that energy to the self for new possibilities. The train line, with its familiar stops and fixed rails, which cannot be deviated from, is the security of known habits and routines in life, the protective walls of the father. After I had committed the crime of breaking the routine, freeing myself from a familiar, well-trodden stop (the train station), I was drawn back to the old familiar place, by father, in the form of nostalgia for the old, known, unchanging stasis; the old way.

Regardless of our formative experiences with our actual fathers, real or imagined, present or absent, supportive or threatening, we are all our own fathers now! Formative experiences with our actual fathers are merely awakenings to this father within, the true father, who will guide and protect us through life. The father within us guards and protects the status quo of our lives: our habits, whether good or bad; our rules for ourselves, however limited or open they may be. The guiding principle of the father is the protection of the family. Inwardly we execute this father function by upholding the familiar safe-place train stops of our daily lives. Familiarity breeds safety and security, a bulwark against the changing sands of time. Zeus’s father, Kronos, Father Time, consumed all his children at birth to ensure the longevity, the unchangingness of his rule, that is, until his clever wife wittingly exchanged a stone for baby Zeus, which ushered in a new era.

Sometimes, of course, the conservativism of the father within us is wise to clip our wings. Daedalus, father of Icarus, constructed for his son wings to fly, made of feathers and wax. He tried desperately to warn his son not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus, so enthralled with his freedom, refused his father’s warning and suffered the inevitable consequence of his inflation, a perilous fall. Obviously there is a need for this protective father function, at times, but more often than not the supportive protective arms of our inner father attitude is just as likely to keep us entombed, limited within the safe walls of our familiar selves, however dysfunctional that might be.

Father is the guardian of the familiar: our inner family of known habits, behaviors and attitudes. The true challenge of my dream was to let go of a tried and true habit, to eliminate it from the repertoire of the self, to take back the energy spent on it and take up my wings, untethered to the tracks leading to an old station in life. But alas, I succumbed to the reconstruction of the walls of Logos, the protective rule of the father, enticed by the safety of the old familiar way, resulting in paradise lost. Thank God I woke up!

P.S.: As I conceived of this blog today, moving through the experiences of this past week, it never dawned on me that tomorrow is Father’s Day. There was no conscious intent to write on this topic, to highlight Father’s Day. I take that to mean that I was moved in this direction by the collective energy that marks the celebration of that day. In keeping with the intent of what I wrote, I wish you all a Happy Father’s Day! Whether we are male or female, our true father is the powerful father within us all, who exerts a tremendous influence upon the blueprint of our lives. To become fully conscious of the operation of this father principle within us is a worthy exercise for Father’s Day.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Messages from Jeanne

#690 Suspend Judgment & Shed the Layers of Crust That Life Has Laid Upon You

June 7, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What message of guidance do you have for us today?

My Dear Ones, look not askance at your own dealings but look them straight in the eye and allow your truths to be revealed, fully known and wholly acceptable to you. In accepting the truths of the self, one is much more accepting of the dilemmas that will arise in one’s own life, as well as be much more accepting of the difficulties faced by others. Until one accepts the truth that one is imperfect perfection will remain an enigma. To lead an impeccable life does not mean that one must be perfect according to the laws of man or God alone, but one must be perfectly able to allow the truths of the self to fully come forth in total realization.

Are you going to talk about recapitulation today?

No, not specifically, but I am talking about learning to love the self, including all the imperfections, the dark secrets as equally as the light ones.

Okay, go on.

I know that you all struggle, My Dears, to make sense of your lives. I know that you wonder if you are doing the right things and making true progress; or are you only fooling yourself? I know that reaching impeccability means leaving behind all that you once thought was so necessary and so important. I know that you often find the ideas of recapitulation difficult to allow into your process because in so doing you must face so many aspects of the self, aspects that you thought you understood and other aspects that you had no idea even existed inside you.

Today, I ask you to more fully learn what it means to suspend judgment so that your progress in life may accelerate to a new level. In suspending judgment, at all times, you will begin to open many doors previously closed or never even observed. In learning how to constantly suspend judgment, by taking back all questions of whether something is right or wrong, and sitting with inner truth and calm, you may discover that your energy self comes forth to guide you. In suspending judgments, formulated by the world you have lived in and by the definitions so firmly planted in the mind, you may discover that there is another being inside you who knows far more that your mind could ever provide or hold available.

A process of suspending judgment involves constantly asking the self to notice where you are judging, first of all. Is that thought you just had a judgment of self, of others, of opening to new ideas, such as I propose, or of facing something you must face? Do questions immediately arise offering alternatives and categories, excuses and reasons to avoid, to dismiss, to push away something that might feel disturbing? Are you uncomfortable about something, so it becomes easier to judge it and place it away in a neat package, in the recesses of the mind or body, where it will not bother you?

As you begin to notice just how often you allow your mind to fix you in a position of certainty, you may also begin to notice that, although that fixed place of certainty is well known and perhaps even comfortable, it may not be your truth. Is it what you truly feel is your very own determination?

Then I ask: How do you personally, you, without forethought and without the opinions of others interfering, feel about this determination? In learning to suspend judgments one learns what it means to access innocence. Innocence is true spirit energy unencumbered by judgments, unencumbered by the thoughts and ideas of the mind. Innocence is totally energetic and flowing, unable to attach to that which is outside of itself, for it cannot attach to anything in that world, for it does not belong in it. Innocence belongs in the world of spirit. In the world of spirit, innocence is the true guide, the true gauge, and the true voice.

You see, in the world of spirit, which resides deeply inside each one of you, there is no need to judge or decide anything but only to flow with the truth of its knowing, its purity, and its impeccable presence in your life. Can you allow this innocence to come forth now, to push through all the judgments, and be present in your world? Can you allow your innocent spirit self to more fully be present as your guide? Can you find comfort in this aspect of self, rather than in the overbearing judgmental self? Can you shed the layers of crust that life has laid upon you and find this true life beneath? Can you connect with your inner energy?

Yes, of course you can! Begin this week with engaging in a new practice of suspending judgment. Look at the self that you are in the world. Look at how you treat your self, and how you treat others. This is the place to begin investigating your own actions and thoughts, and the habitual tendencies to dismiss and peg people, ideas, and truths of the self. What disturbs you needs to be looked at more closely. In suspending all preconceived ideas of how the world works, you may offer your self the first open veil to understanding the spirit self, the energy self, and all things as interconnected, full of potential, full of innocence.

Look today at your world with innocence, without your usual eyes but with unveiled eyes, and see what happens!

Chuck's Blog

#689 Chuck’s Place: The Ego Ideal & The Veil of Self-importance

June 5, 2010 Chuck Leave a comment

Over one hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud introduced the concept of the superego, an internalized component of the human personality, the product of socialization, which both judges and tells us what we ought to be. This what-we-ought-to-be component has become known as the ego ideal, the ideal image of the self that we expect ourselves to become. Our ego ideal dictates our notion of success: what our bodies should look like, what our skills and abilities should be, how others should view us, what level of education we should have, what kinds of relationships we should be in, how many worldly goods we should accumulate, how well we should be able to meditate, etc.

How well we do at actualizing our ego ideal becomes the basis of our sense of self-worth. Our judgment of personal success or failure rides upon how well our actual life “measures up” to our idealized expectation. If we are “on course” we “feel good.” If we don’t “measure up” we may judge ourselves to be “failures,” sentencing ourselves to an emotional state of deflation, experienced as depression. Alternatively, we might inflate our ego, assuming the persona, or mask, of our ego ideal. In fact, our ego might be capable of truly convincing itself and others that this is, indeed, its true identity. This might result in grandiosity, or attempting deeds way beyond one’s true ability. This is when we can expect dreams warning us of falling off a steep precipice or being in a plane crash, etc., all signs of the dangers of inflation.

In the psychiatric diagnostic world this dilemma of ego inflation and deflation, with its possible swings, is described in variations of bipolar disorder. Psychoanalytic resolution of the ego/ego ideal relationship ultimately rests upon an acceptance of ourselves as we truly are, for what we are truly capable of, which may only in part, or not at all, reflect the internalized ego ideal. Successful treatment would result in a more realistic modification of the ego ideal to fit the ego’s true capacities. Nonetheless, even with this modified self-judgment we continue to live in an internalized paradigm fixated on self.

The seers of ancient Mexico would definitely concur with Freud about the profound impact of socialization upon our perception and interpretation of ourselves and our world. For these seers, our awareness is staunchly fixated upon the self, causing all our available energy to be monopolized by self-importance, whether it be in the form of self-worth, self-esteem, or self-pity. For these seers this fixation of awareness on the self creates veils, which narrow our ability to perceive and experience all there is to see, for instance, a world of energy, the true nature of reality. For these seers, most human beings live and die in a world of self-obsession that shuts us out from reaching our true potential. That potential is not measured as some form of a socialized ego ideal. That potential is simply the freedom to perceive, unencumbered by the self, which spends all its energy worrying about how well it is doing, or what it is entitled to.

These seers discovered that the number one key to unlocking the true potential of the self, to discover total freedom, is to embrace an enduring practice of suspending judgment. This orientation asks that we seek always to know the truth, without any consideration of the value of the self for its performance. For instance, if I made a decision, took an action, that resulted in an undesired outcome, my goal would be to examine the full truth of that process with a detached curiosity and quest for understanding. I might discover that I had forgotten some important detail or acted hastily, causing the “failure.” However, the “failure” would not extend to myself as some kind of measure of my worth or as something for me to feel bad about. This does not negate the absolute examination of my level of competence and how that might inform me in future actions, but it, in no way, is attached to my value or level of self-importance.

For these seers this is the critical point: to avoid constructing a definition of self based on competence and performance. These seers indeed seek to be impeccable in all of their actions; however, they attach no significance in terms of self-worth to the outcome of those actions other than knowing the truth of them. They seek to totally eradicate the self; the self too is a veil blocking total freedom. To eradicate the self, from the seers’ point of view, means freeing the self of the encumbrance of self-importance, becoming a being free to perceive what is. In this manner they accrue valuable energy for expanded perception, rather than spend it on the construction of the self, with its all-consuming self-importance. In the process of constantly shooing away self-importance, we are in fact working on the ego, which becomes a tool to actualize our true potential. This is one reason why the seers place so much value on the petty tyrants in our lives. Petty tyrants are beings who challenge our attachment to our self-importance to the max, and offer us the opportunity to arrive at the ability to laugh at ourselves, rather than get caught in the clutches of victimhood or the fixation of self-pity.

For the seers of ancient Mexico, if we never “achieve” anything in this world other than the ability to suspend judgment, we have indeed achieved the most important thing there is to achieve in this world. Suspending judgement allows us to break the fixation of self-importance, dismantling Freud’s ego ideal, which opens the gateway to expanded knowing and infinite possibility.