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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Synchronicities & A Tale Of Two Siblings

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What is the significance of a burnt out compressor? - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
What is the significance of a burnt out compressor?
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

In 1916, the period that came to be known as Jung’s Confrontation with the Unconscious, as recorded in his now publicly available Red Book, Jung’s household and family were seized by a haunting. As he relates in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

“There was an ominous atmosphere all around me. I had the strange feeling that the air was filled with ghostly entities… My eldest daughter saw a white figure passing through her room. My second daughter, independently of her elder sister, related that twice in the night her blanket had been snatched away… (T)he front doorbell began ringing frantically. It was a bright summer day; the two maids were in the kitchen, from which the open square outside the front door could be seen. Everyone immediately looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. I was sitting near the doorbell, and not only heard it but saw it moving. Then I knew that something had to happen.” (From pp 190-191.)

What ultimately did happen was Jung’s interaction with a group of ancient spirits. Once he engaged in the dialogue the hauntings stopped. These dialogues were documented in the Red Book, and prompted Jung to embark on his lifetime career of mapping the deeper structure and dynamics of the psyche.

Among his major discoveries was the principle of synchronicity. As evidenced from his personal haunting, spiritual forces from within the psyche can effect physical reality. In Jung’s case, he had not been paying attention to the deeper layers of what he came to call the collective unconscious and so the collective unconscious came to encounter him in a physical haunting. Physical events in one’s personal life may represent the true energetic picture of reality at a moment in time. This is the synchronistic value of an oracle like the I Ching as well, who’s reading is built by the image generated through the physical throwing of coins.

In Vedantic science we are beings comprised of five layers. Our outermost sheath is our physical body within which lies a series of energy bodies, housing our emotional, mental, wisdom, and blissful selves. Beneath all the sheaths lies the Atman, the Buddha, or simply God, beyond all the many Masks of God, as Joseph Campbell would say. We become enlightened when we fully realize—become—our deepest nature, shedding our attachment to all our sheaths.

In the meantime, we are complex beings who synchronistically interact with our deeper spirit in a myriad of ways. We are constantly being pushed by our spirit to discover and become who we really are. Life events can be viewed as our conscious or unconscious relationship with our knocks from spirit. This happens individually in the events of our lives and collectively in the events of our time. We are now in a time of great knocks from spirit, asking us to awaken to our truths and make great changes in how we care for ourselves and our planet.

I share today a most personal story, as spirit has drawn the events in my family into a public forum. I must answer this call, this request from spirit for transparency. We are all requested now to become, as Joseph Campbell put it, transparent to the transcendent. In this manner, we release our attachment to the self-centered demands of our individual sheaths and open to the energy and truths of our deepest spiritual selves in new balance. And so, here is how spirit, the impersonal, came to interact with the personal in the recent life of my family.

It was a Friday afternoon, around 3 PM. I decided to mow the lawn. A tire was flat on the mower. I turned on the small air compressor to fill it when suddenly the motor died and sparks started shooting out of it. It was finished.

I gathered Jan to drive to Kingston with me to purchase a new compressor. We took our time studying what was available at Lowe’s and finally made our selection. As we approached the tollbooth to the Kingston bridge on our return journey, something compelled me to notice a black Mercedes in front of me. I noted the word Kompressor above the back bumper. I said nothing.

After crossing the bridge, we drove a ways and came to a light. Jan’s attention was drawn to the same black Mercedes. “Look,” she said, “Kompressor! Funny that we see that just after we’ve bought a new compressor. I wonder what it means.”

After returning home, I mowed the lawn and in the early evening the phone rang. It was my younger son, a Georgia resident, who informed me that he was in town for a surprise visit. He was ten minutes from the house and would like to come over. Excitedly, we awaited his arrival. A car pulled up—it was the black Mercedes with the word Kompressor on the back. Unbeknownst to me, my son had bought a new car.

The bell tolls for all of us... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The bell tolls for all of us…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Over the next two days we had brief visits that ended abruptly due to energetic/emotional turmoil. Saturday evening, Jan and I slept outside beneath the stars. At about 5 AM Sunday morning, Jan awoke me to share a very powerful dream she had just experienced. Here is her dream as she related it:

“In my dream, as in reality, I am sleeping outside with Chuck on the deck—lying beside the bench where the stone Buddha sits. I have my back turned to the Buddha both in reality and in my dream. I am startled by the sudden PING of a tiny bell that sounds like it is made of glass. This PING wakes me up in my dream and is immediately followed by a shattering sound, as the bell breaks and the shards of glass fall to the ground. I am aware that if I roll over to look at the bell, which I had envisioned over the head of the Buddha, I will see nothing, for in the moment of ringing the glass bell has shattered. I lie awake in my dream, aware that something has happened regarding a life, but that the message is for all of us, that it’s a universal message: there is only one opportunity to wake up. I understand that although we have many small wake up calls throughout our lives there is only one big wake-up call from our spirit, because at the moment it calls out, the opportunity is gone, never to come again. In its ringing, the bell breaks, thus there is no longer a bell that will toll for us. The sound of the bell, so light and ethereal, yet so profoundly startling and penetrating, stayed with me as I woke up and told Chuck of my dream. “Your son is in serious trouble,” I said, for Chuck’s second son came clearly to mind.” (Here ends Jan’s dream.)

We went back to sleep for about an hour, arising by 6:30 as I was determined to finish stacking several cords of wood. Shortly after 7AM the phone rang. It was my son’s fiancé calling from Georgia. She had just received a call from a State Trooper. My son had been in a serious car accident at 5 AM and had been taken to St. Francis Hospital. The Kompressor had crashed.

I called the ER to discover that he was alive, somewhat conscious, but bleeding internally. We arrived at the hospital emergency room. The doctor told us that he needed to be airlifted by helicopter to Westchester Medical Center as he has severe internal injuries and numerous shattered bones. A helicopter was on the way. They also awaited a heart surgeon who might be able to find and stop the internal bleeding. In the meantime, he was being given blood transfusions to compensate for lost blood.

The helicopter was arriving, but so did Dr. Kobak, the heart surgeon. With competence and compassion, he assured us that he’d do his best, and he did, as he found and cauterized a severed artery on one side of my son’s pelvis. “Don’t worry,” he assured us, “the artery on the other side will supply more than enough blood to the entire region.” Dr. Kobak held my heart in his hands. I feel nothing but gratitude for this man. Within ten minutes of this surgery, my son was strapped to a gurney and loaded outside onto a helicopter and off he went, with us following, to another hospital and another surgery.

The Kompressor had crashed... -Photo by Jan Ketchel
The Kompressor had crashed…
-Photo by Jan Ketchel

Two surgeries later, my son was put back together with screws and a tension bar with an excellent prognosis to fully recover over the next several months. He himself views the accident as a rebirth, having crawled from the compressed and mangled car on his elbows, having received new blood, and having to be contained until he can learn to walk again. His containment is the creation of the impersonal, his opportunity to meet his inner truth and change the direction of his life.

Within ten days of his surgeries my son was discharged from the hospital to begin a driving pilgrimage back to Georgia with his fiance. Just ten minutes from the house, on this past Wednesday evening, he called me from the car to tell me that he’d be stopping by to say goodbye. I hung up the phone and it immediately rang again. Suddenly, the sound of a large helicopter hovered over the house, and the synchronicity did not go unnoticed. On the other end of the phone was the sullen voice of my older son. “Dad, it’s bad, I’m in the Ulster County Jail.” It turns out that he was involved in some kind of illicit drug transaction, involving heroin. He faces three felony charges.

My younger son pulled up within minutes and I had to deliver the news about his brother. He became hysterical, but himself recognized the knock of the spirit. Everyone had been given the events they needed to face their lives, their inner truths, at the deepest level. As Jung discovered a century ago, and as my family experienced in this series of events, if we don’t voluntarily go to meet spirit and take the journey of recapitulation, then spirit will come to claim us in the daily physical events of our lives.

We can refuse that call, but as Jan’s dream warns, we only get one chance, at least in this life. Then it’s all about karma, not as punishment, but as the necessary picking up of the thread of where we are stuck, perhaps to be addressed in a new life, in a new time.

Personally, I love deeply, and I am deeply affected by the journeys of my sons, but I am not attached at the level of anger, pity, or victim to the events that have transpired, for I am more fully aware of their significance and the greater interconnectedness of present day life with lives lived, and lives still to come—with the urgent call of our spirits to wake us up. In fact, these events have pushed me to further stalk the sheath of bliss, bliss in the form of deep compassion but nonintervention in the fate of others, even those closest to my heart.

Beyond the sheaths lies the opportunity for new life... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Beyond the sheaths lies the opportunity for new life…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The bliss sheath reveals what lies beyond the veil of personal emotion and sees, without judgment, the workings of spirit through the events of our lives, traumatic and awesome alike. My love is expressed compassionately, in my guidance, when sought, and in the respect I have for all to heroically face their deepest truths in full transparency. We cannot rescue anyone. If we do, we make them victims and cloud their access to their own deeper truths.

We live in a world now that must transcend blind allegiance to family, tribe or nation and acquiesce to the truths and needs of our greater interconnected whole. To do less is to stay steeped in the greed of “me and mine” that has brought us to our current brink of destruction.

May we heed now all our knocks, the signs and synchronicities from spirit, and go to meet our truths directly, as Jung guided, and stop the hauntings—the extreme compression spirit resorts to in physical catastrophes—though sometimes that’s the only way to prompt us to wake up.

In transparency,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Ark of Emergence into the Fifth World

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In Hopi cosmology the world we presently inhabit is the fourth incarnation of previously destroyed worlds. Like our own, those worlds were composed of the same primary elements and life forms of plants and animals, as well as populated by peoples challenged to responsibly handle their own natures.

With a mythology nearly identical to that of Noah in Genesis, Hopi legend—or history—recounts the failure of human nature and thus the gathering of the worthy few to be saved, as each successive world is destroyed and created anew, for a fresh start led by the wise, saved ones.

Hopi prophecy predicts that the Fourth World we presently inhabit is in its final stages, with the process of destruction and transformation to the Fifth World quite apparent in current world events. In Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters, on page 33, the Hopi spokesmen state:

“The Fourth World, the present one, is the full expression of man’s ruthless materialism and imperialistic will; and man himself reflects the overriding gross appetites of the flesh.”

The Hopi view of the energetics of the human body is remarkably similar to the chakra system of Eastern mysticism. The Hopi focus on the spinal cord as an energetic pathway with energy centers beginning at the crown chakra. The energy center at the solar plexus or the navel, what the Hopi call The Throne of the Creator, is the place of dominant fixation in our current world. This chakra in Eastern mysticism is called Manipura, the place of personal power.

This center, from a psychological perspective, focuses on the ego/Self dilemma. The Hopi designation, Throne of the Creator, acknowledges that true power ought rest with the Creator, God, Self, or Tao. With the birth of ego consciousness man must learn to exercise personal power in alignment, and in respect for, this higher power. There are many trials and challenges to arrive at this correct alignment.

At one end, the challenge is for the individual to discover, claim, and exercise legitimate power. This is about self-acceptance and self-confidence—emergence from fear, shyness, dependency, and meekness onto solid footing.

The challenge at the other extreme of this chakra is the complete usurping of the higher power of the Self by the ego, the ultimate hubris: I am Man, the Creator. We see examples of this attitude played out daily now on the world stage: man the bully, abuse of power, greed, rape of woman and material world. This is masculine power, dominant and out of control.

This week, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known as “The Seducer,” is charged with sexual assault. Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Mr. Universe,” separates from his wife as he admits to a love child. The shadow of Senator John Ensign’s sex scandal extends to other Republicans, and Osama Bin Laden’s apparent porn stash is exposed. In one week the sexual abuse of masculine power by some of the most powerful men in the world is revealed.

In that world view, of man as entitled to do what he wants, the feminine exists for the use and abuse of the masculine will, as well as to feed the sexual appetite of narcissistic men possessed by their own sense of absolute power. That world can never know anything of “the magnitude and splendor of the bliss and ecstasy of a clean, uninhibited and fully abandon-packed sexual union [that] could never contribute to anything derogatory to human dignity.” (From Yoga and Sex by Pandit Shiv Sharma, page 29.)

This quote describes a full union of complimentary opposites: a meeting based on commitment, trust, and mutual respect; the Tao of love. In this union, power is expressed in upholding these tenets to channel the full energy of divine primal love.

The IMF chief is an apt symbol, as well, of a power-based organization that has turned nations into indentured servants to serve the greedy few. Witness the plight of Jamaica when the IMF destroyed Jamaican industry and agriculture whereby undermining Jamaica’s ability to remain a self-sufficient economic entity. This debacle is well-documented in the film Life and Debt.

Beyond the IMF is the complete rape of the feminine physical earth, of its natural resources, purity, and balance by unbridled greed. We see now, every day, the reaction of Pachamama to these abuses in the earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, swollen rivers and floods.

The Hopis prophesized that the revolutionary energies of destruction/transformation of the Fourth World would arise from the peoples who first received The Light of Divine Wisdom in the countries of India, China, Egypt, Palestine, and Africa. We indeed see, every day, the revolutionary stirrings in those lands.

Carl Jung was fond of telling the true story of the rain-maker, told to him by his dear friend Richard Wilhelm, a German scholar and Protestant missionary who immersed himself in the study and translation of the I Ching while living in China. Here is the story, as Jung describes it in Mysterium Coniunctionis, page 419-20:

“There was a great drought where Wilhelm lived; for months there had not been a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result. Finally the Chinese said, ‘We will fetch the rain-maker.’ And from another province a dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked was for a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great snow-storm at the time of the year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumors about the wonderful rain-maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it. In true European fashion he said: ‘They call you the rain-maker, will you tell me how you made the snow?’ And the little Chinese said: ‘I did not make the snow, I am not responsible.’ ‘But what have you done these three days?’ ‘Oh, I can explain that. I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be by the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came.’ “

Wilhelm’s experience dramatically validates the principle of synchronicity, but even further demonstrates the far reaching effect of one individual who finds his way from a state of disorder, like that of our current world, back into the Tao. This is a story of empowerment, the story of how to find one’s way onto the ark of emergence into the Fifth World.

The Hopi spokesmen point out:

“It is only materialistic people who seek to make shelters. Those who are at peace in their hearts already are in the great shelter of life… Those who take no part in the making of world division by ideology are ready to resume life in another world…” (Book of the Hopi, page 408.)

The rain-maker demonstrates the truth of our holographic universe. In a hologram, every minute slice of the hologram actually contains the full picture of the entire hologram. We are all holographic slices that contain within ourselves our entire world. Like the rain-maker we reflect the disorder of our entire world. If but one of us truly restores order within the self we can, like the rain-maker, profoundly influence our world.

What does it mean to restore order, to return to the Tao within the self, in the chaos of this Fourth World we currently inhabit? We must individually address the issues connected to the fixation of this world on the Manipura chakra with all its challenges and how they play out within our personal lives.

What is our relation to personal power? Are we meek, like beggars seeking permission to be in this world? Are we bullies with no regard for our interdependent world? Are we seducers who use and abuse, or lovers fully capable of meeting? Are we in alignment with powers greater than our individual ego, like the Self or Pachamama, or do we rape the planet of its resources for our own greed? Do we care for our bodies, our nourishment, or do our appetites make us ill from greedy overconsumption?

If we can find our way to balance in alignment with spirit, Tao, Self, in all of these questions, then nature will release us onto the ark of emergence into the Fifth World.

Let’s meet in the Tao,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Seeds Scattered Upon the Earth

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I sit on my meditation pillow and do the sweeping breath; exhaling, emptying of breath while turning my head to the right, breathing in while moving my head to the left, and then holding my breath while I sweep my head back to the right again. I do this over and over again, sweeping back and forth in an effort to recapture the dream I had last night. I have most of it, but there are a few details that I want clarified. The shamanic sweeping breath, the recapitulation breath, works like EMDR to capture experiences, dream and otherwise.

In my dream I am planting a garden. Chuck is with me. We have prepared everything according to what we feel is good for the earth, for the soil, imbuing everything with our intent to do it right so that everything we plant will feel welcomed and loved and provide us with sustenance and nurturance in return. Now it is time to put the seeds into the ground. I am standing with my cupped hands full of seeds. I am looking at them intently, knowing that I have done everything to prepare for this moment, but still I am aware that something is missing.

Ethereal Light

Chuck is standing next to me, also looking at the seeds in my hands, both of us trying to figure out what it is we have forgotten. Suddenly there is a loud crack and the pile of seeds is emblazoned with energy. They glow with a vibrant ethereal light and then I know that this is what is missing, the energy of Mother Nature beyond what we personally could intend. At the same time I am startled awake, because the loud crack was, in reality, a powerful jolt of lightning and thunder that rumbles on and on, Mother Nature, the earth reminding us of her power.

“It sounds like an earthquake shaking the earth apart,” Chuck said, as we lay awake listening to its insistent rumblings, the significance of this statement highlighting the truth of what has been happening lately in Japan and other parts of the world. As we fell back to sleep I thought about writing the dream down so I didn’t lose it, but I chose instead to replay it over and over again in my mind so I could more readily remember it in the morning. Alas there was something missing when I woke up too, just as I knew there was something missing as I stared at the seeds in my hands during the dream experience itself.

Doing the sweeping breath helps clarify the intent of the dream, which I am aware, is teaching me something important. What I remember now is that at the moment of the crack of thunder I was aware that I was as the tiny seeds in my hands, that no matter what I personally did it was the energy of Mother Nature, in all of us, that would determine the outcome of my garden. It is important to prepare for life, for planting, making preparations according to what is in alignment with what is right, but it is hubris on our part to think that we can control anything. It is important to be an active participant in life, but the truth is that the energy of life, of nature, is unstoppable.

This is what I also understood as I lay in the dark listening to the thunder rolling and cracking open the silence of the night. In all that I have been writing about lately—pointing out the decisions that we have all taken and that we are all responsible for, whether we agree with them or not—in the end, the one who will determine our fate will be the Earth itself. Mother Nature holds the real power.

We are but seeds scattered upon the soil, we fall were we fall. We must each one of us find our way with where we have landed in this life. Some of us live in the richest country in the world, in a material sense. Some live in a country with a belief in the richness of Mother Nature, Pachamama, as I mentioned in a note yesterday regarding Brazil’s law of equality, granting nature and all living things equal status with humanity. How is it possible that such diverse and drastically different attitudes exist? On the one hand our own country of America continues making decisions to ravage and destroy the earth in an effort to uphold our standard of living, while another country seeks to return to ancient alignment with the earth. The truth is that Brazil too has ravaged the earth, but now seeks to return to ancient alignment and identity with nature. Something powerful is being expressed in turning to this other truth that lies at the heart of our human presence upon this earth.

As in my dream, something is asking us to pause now and question what we have done. We are at a crucial moment in our time, but synchronistically in the time of all living things. We must all ask what is missing. What is it that we have not done to prepare, what is not right here? What have we forgotten?

Mother Nature has the answers. As we see happening in Japan, in Arizona where fracking for natural gas has unleashed earthquakes deep inside the earth, in the tragic truths of gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, mother nature is responding, even as she did in the night as I dreamed. I take the synchronicity of that loud crack of thunder at the moment I was dreaming very seriously. I also see its synchronicity in all that I have been reading and writing about recently, in the wake of national and international events and discussions regarding how we all treat the earth.

Even as I was wondering in my dream what was missing from my own little effort to do something earth-sustaining, taking personal responsibility for growing some of my own food, nature herself spoke loudly and clearly, reminding me of her powerful presence in my life and in all life as well. She is life and she has something to say. We all need to listen.

I don’t mean to be preachy nor do I wish to impose my personal beliefs. I think we must all come to what feels right for us personally, but at the same time I do strongly feel that it would be amiss to not point out the synchronicities all around us. I truly believe that Pachamama must be treated with respect and awe—not simply granted equality with humankind, though this is a good start—because she is far more powerful than we are. This is the truth I learned in my dream.

I am just one little seed, sending you all love and good wishes.
Jan

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Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Crow Energy

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I set my intent a long time ago to become psychically aware, not to become a psychic per se, but to become aware of the signs and synchronicities in my life that were showing me things I might not have noticed without this intent uppermost in my process of transformation. Today, I write about the significance of the crow as a sign of this intent manifesting in the world. As Jeanne mentions in her message on Monday, we must use the outer world to the fullest in order to grow, and I have found this to be one of the truest statements and especially useful in doing inner work.

In his book Animal Speak, Ted Andrews says this about the crow:

“The first noticeable characteristic about this bird is its striking black color. Sometimes it will have hints of deep blue and purple on the feathers as well. Black is the color of creation. It is the womb out of which the new is born. It is also the color of the night. Black is the maternal color and thus the black night gives birth to a new day. Although the crow is a diurnal or daytime bird, it reminds us that magic and creation are potentials very much alive during the day. The crow, because of its color, was a common symbol in medieval alchemy. It represented “nigredo,” the initial state of substance—unformed but full of potential.”

As I wrote about last week, in recounting our experiences with the death of our dog in On the Wings of the Crow, a crow made repeated passes over the house, a sign I noted as the energy of our dog moving on to new life, the transformation from one state of being to another. Had I not been deeply immersed in the process of my original intent—to become more aware—I might have missed the opportunity to round out the experiences of that day in such a satisfying and transformational manner.

The crow has continued to show itself. In fact, in our rural neighborhood, crows are some of our most vocal neighbors, posting themselves as sentinels for other crows and birds, but for their human neighbors as well. I have learned to pay attention to the noisy crows. More often than not, if I hear a racket of crow energy I can be pretty sure that something of interest is happening in nature. If I am alert, I know I will be treated to a little magic. Paying attention to the crows has become one of my personal educational processes as I seek to train my awareness, so it was not unusual for me to take note of the cawing crow outside the window on the day of Spunky’s death.

It was lovely to have the warmer weather over the weekend, rainy though it was. The twenty-four inches of snow still covering the ground, having accumulated since last December 26th, melted away as we watched the winter weary lawn reappear and the first green tips of the daffodils peak up from the cold ground, letting us know that spring was not far off. It was drizzling a little on Saturday, though warm enough to be outside for a nice long walk, but then, on Sunday, it rained—torrentially. The wind blew all day and all night, and then the rain changed to freezing rain and then it started to snow. In the middle of the night I heard the loud cracks of branches breaking in nearby trees and ice crystals pelting against the windows. Up at five-thirty we were astounded to see the ground covered, blanketed in snow again, our hopes of an early spring dashed.

Once again I armed myself with my trusty snow shovel and headed out late in the day on Monday, after a full day’s work, to clear what snow remained on the driveway and pathways. It was still cold, only the top layer of snow had melted during the day and I was left to remove the thick layer of ice I had heard falling through most of the night. I was not feeling especially happy about undertaking this task yet again, now getting quite tiresome after a full winter of weekly snowstorms. But the sun was shining and when I looked up into the branches of the oaks and maples the late afternoon light coming through their ice-covered branches was beautiful against the still blue sky. Squinting into the light, the glistening branches turned into thin fingers of refracted light and rainbows of color danced before my eyes, and this lightened my mood considerably and the work wasn’t so hard after all.

A big black crow flew overhead, cawing loudly, as I shoveled and I noted its presence and once again thought of our dog Spunky and an incident that happened just a few days after her passing. I had gone to the woodpile to get a load of wood for the woodstove. Stepping out the basement door I heard something scrambling on the other side of the woodpile, out of sight. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it sounded big. I thought an animal was most likely rooting through the compost pile, taking frozen bits of food scraps, scrounging for something edible. I surmised it had been a hard winter for the animals with the thick frozen snow cover and so I did not want to disturb whatever might be feasting on whatever our frozen scraps could offer.

I quietly crept up to the woodpile, but whatever it was must have heard me coming, for I heard a quick scurrying. Not knowing what to expect, a little wary, I waited to see what might appear. Suddenly, I heard a heavy shuffling and a loud bark, as a large crow spread its heavy wings, staggered off the compost pile, and flew into a nearby tree. It landed on a branch, turned and looked back at me, cawing loudly, almost barking, its body bobbing up and down, looking and acting very much like a dog vigorously barking an excited greeting.

“Oh! Hello there, Spunky!” I said, without hesitation. “Nice to see you again. I see that you are well.” The crow responded with more happy barking caws as it watched me load up my wood sack with logs and, as I turned and headed back into the house, I noted that one of Spunky’s favorite little outings was to sneak off to munch at the fresh compost, rotting banana peels one of her favorite treats.

As I shoveled the driveway, I noted again the large crow, and acknowledged its presence as that of the energy of Spunky: energy transformed, still viable, still present, still seeking connection. I also noted that I no longer feel doubt creeping into my experiences as I did in the past. For the longest time doubt was the greatest petty tyrant and I was forced to deal with it again and again. In my interactions with Jeanne, in my personal encounters with phenomena of energy and magic, it would immediately sweep in and hurry me back to the world of solid reality, asking me to test my experiences against the rational mind, what the seers of ancient Mexico call the foreign installation. It took a long time and many battles against the foreign installation, against the world of solid objects, before I was able to suspend judgment and fully release my attachment to an old perception of reality and fully embrace a different reality, different means of perception, and finally to release myself from my ego’s embarrassment and dismay at the birthing of my psychic abilities.

Now however, after having dealt doubt so many deadly blows, it rarely creeps up on me. Now freed of its heavy depressing cloak of reality I can fully enjoy the magic of the world I elect to live in, the world of all nature. I can look into the magic of light dancing through the ice-covered branches of the trees and hear the barking crow and connect to the energy of all things, myself included.

Every time I go outside now there seems to be one large black crow calling more loudly than the others. I greet its energy and thank it for showing me once again that my intent to notice is working for me, my desire to understand the interconnectedness of all things is being given priority within that intent and that desire, and I thank my innocent self for taking the journey that has allowed me to get to this place. For I feel free now, open to life in a very different way. Without the petty tyrant of doubt I am indeed free to experience the magic, but I am also free to keep taking it one step further, into deeper awareness.

Open to learning more about how the world of energy works, I look forward to each moment of each day, taking note of what I read, what I hear and see, and how in alignment with nature I am becoming. In noting how synchronicity works, in paying attention to what comes to greet me, I continue training my awareness, my psychic abilities; the ability inherent in all of us.

I take the sign of the crow as meaningful and I listen to what it has to tell me. As Ted Andrews also writes about the crow:

“Wherever crows are, there is magic. They are symbols of creation and spiritual strength. They remind us to look for opportunities to create and manifest the magic of life. They are messengers calling to us about the creation and magic that is alive within our world everyday and available to us.”

Be open to the magic, and without doubt embrace your own psychic abilities; take note of what life presents, and without fear embrace the energy of interconnectedness.

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below. And don’t forget to check out our facebook page at: Riverwalker Press on facebook. And you might also note the synchronicity of the quote for the day on our facebook page that Chuck selected, quite in alignment with what I have written about today, unbeknownst to both of us. Synchronicity in action!

Thanks for reading and passing these blogs on to others! Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

NOTE: Animal Speak by Ted Andrews, and many other books of interest are available for purchase through our STORE.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Midas Touch of Intent

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I intend a change. Midway through the night, I am suddenly awoken. Outside sounds abound around me. I am captive; they will not let me return to sleep. For hours they exhaust me. All I can do is breathe, breathe into deep relaxation.

The next day, I am present, but a step behind the action. My intuition, ordinarily my guiding light, is shut down. The world moves at its normal pace, but all I can do is watch it unfold as I fumble for words and meaning. I meet extraordinary challenges in the day. I notice an exhausted, detached calm.

The next night, I dream I am at the Grammys. I sit next to Bob Dylan. From his seat he delivers an acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement Award. He rambles on, monotone, almost incoherent, like he’s talking to himself. Someone from behind, with a long wooden pole, tries to poke Bob, to make him shut up. I protect him by deflecting the pole. He deserves respect.

In another dream, I’m in a large lake at night. I’m swimming. A huge oceanlike wave is approaching. I dive through it, only it doesn’t pass, it engulfs. I realize it’s a tidal wave. I’m now well beneath the surface. I do seem to be able to breathe. I’m not overwhelmed by fear, but it does feel like death is imminent.

More and different challenges appear the next day in waking life. Encounters coalesce around the theme central to my intent. It’s clear I am being softened, made malleable, as intent pulls me forward, pushing me to experience a much deeper level of groundedness and detachment.

The next night, in a dream, a Chinese man translates the soup choices on the menu at a restaurant. I choose the soup called: “A Light Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” Something has shifted; light can now pass through where once I was caught, between a rock and a hard place.

This series of events, which occurred in different states of my multidimensional self—dream body, physical body, social body—were all different ripples of the same intent, synchronistically related. This is the Midas Touch of Intent. Once the universe engages our intent, like Midas with his golden touch, intent turns everything in our path into gold; everything becomes the substance of our intent. You simply can’t get away from it. Everything, indeed, becomes meaningful and is tied to the intent of our intent.

On the first night, after I set my intent, intent awoke me and refused to allow me to sleep. It was as if the Sirens had me under their spell, all I could do was relax my body. This physical experience shut down my intuitive function and rendered me a therapist without vision. In the dream with Bob Dylan, I sought to protect the icon that deserved respect, but the truth is, it was time for new life: change. This is the time of revolution. The old kings must now die to usher in a new era. Jan informed me the next day that an Indie band from Canada called Arcade Fire, had won the Album of the Year Award at the Grammys. Like Bob Dylan, I too had to let go of the old self to make room for the new.

In the next dream, a tidal wave, like Noah’s flood, swept away the old and ushered in the new. There was nothing I could do but breathe and go with the flow, into the unknown. Finally, I experienced a new self, my intent realized, a new life, where once life was frozen between a rock and a hard place.

Jeanne cautions us to be careful of what we ask for when we set an intent. She suggests we be specific, but also be prepared, as the path intent chooses to realize our intent may not be as we expect. Midas might have been wise to choose a more careful intent so that he would have been able to eat his food, rather than have it all turn to gold when he touched it!

Intent will ripple through all the dimensions of the self. At first, the meaning of events may elude us; sometimes we are simply in the grip of the experience and need to allow ourselves to be led along. What choice do we really have, once we are in it?

Suspend judgment. Go with the flow. At some point you will arrive at the shore of a new self, intent realized, and marvel at the magical journey that brought you there.

Bon Voyage!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck