Tag Archives: Tao

Chuck’s Place: The Way Of The Tao Of Now

The Tao of Divine Wholeness…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

The phrase “being in the Tao” suggests that one’s thoughts and actions are best fitted to, and in greatest harmony with, the needs of the whole. However, thoughts and actions that poorly address the needs of the whole are nonetheless in the Tao, as the Tao is wholeness and wholeness includes everything.

America just expressed a powerful wave of action in reaction to its governance. Although America is a democracy, with separation of church and state, at a deep archetypal level citizens project onto their president the role of hierophant, or spiritual leader, imbuing him with a divine numinous presence.

The current president has fulfilled this spiritual role through assuming the role of trickster, completely defying all dignified expectations and blatantly exposing and embodying the shadow of America in his daily doings, both day and night.

The impact upon the American psyche of this leadership was to have it brush up against a latent psychosis. The challenge was for the individual to wake up from its trance and take responsibility for the direction of its personal life and that of the country.

It truly could be argued that the president went to such extraordinarily bizarre behaviors to shake people to disidentify with their spell upon him and to assume conscious control of their destiny. This would represent him as truly being in the Tao in the most necessary sense. But regardless of whether it is actually that, or the Tao of extremism, it is the way of the Tao of now.

At the level of the individual, the hierophant is operative in the relationship within the divine triune self of father, mother and child.

From the inner divine father issues the beliefs and deepest desires that impregnate the mother, the subconscious mind, that brings to physical life the child of its intent.

The inner divine father, to best be in the Tao in his suggestions, must own and settle with his shadow. The shadow is a trickster that will live out all of our hidden doubts, desires and resistances, whereby diluting the potency of our stated intentions. The trickster will confound our lives with distractions and obsessions that seize our vital energy yet offer us a glimpse at our hidden selves. This is the opportunity to wakeup.

The inner divine mother will manifest that which is most potent within our beliefs. Mother may indeed know better, but her role is to create, in the most auspicious way. The best way of being in the Tao with the inner mother is to be sure that the suggestions she receives issue from what is truly needed. Once assured, retire doubt and quietly hold the knowing that it is done.

The inner divine child is best in the Tao when it maintains its innocence and remembers where it came from, its divine parentage. As the president reflects, there can be great temptation for the inner child to deify itself alone, setting the stage for cataclysmic extremism in the Tao.

With gratitude for all the gifts we are given, both within and reflected without, that wake us up to our own divine power and responsibility.

Being in the Tao of now,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: When Is It Time To Act?

Time of Waiting,..
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

Hexagram #29, The Abysmal, has become one of my most instructive hexagrams from the I Ching. How odd to be drawn to the abysmal!

The image is water on top of water. I imagine being stuck at the bottom of a deep well. The water level is low but slowly rising, fed from below.

Instinctively, the hero attempts to climb up the steep walls of the well. Perhaps a couple of attempts are made, but they result in slippage back into the water below. Resurfacing from the unwelcome dive, the hero sees that there’s a place on the wall to hold onto and stay afloat, buoyed by the pressure of the rising water from below.

The realization comes forth to rise with the water as it reaches new levels, finding new places to nestle, in awkward balance with the water pressure from below. Acquiescing to the Tao of water, going with its flow, rather than climbing without support, is the true staircase to eventual freedom.

The water, in its own time, will rise, filling the vacant space in its container of well walls and ultimately move on when it reaches level ground. And when it reaches ground level it is indeed time to act, time to move on.

The Tao is a combination of waiting and acting, yin and yang. When we act we are subject to the karma of our action. Climbing up the well walls resulted in falls into the water and the struggle to get the head back above the water; cause and effect.

Decisions to act are at the level of ego consciousness, which holds the power of choice. Erroneous decisions at this level result in necessary consequences. The question for ego is: What truly is right action?

Often, ego acts precipitously, based upon fear, or opinion, lacking alignment with truth and right action. Even so, these are necessary actions, as one must learn the art of surrender to right action; action in accordance with the truth of the circumstance one is in.

Learning the patience of waiting, which is being receptive to the higher power of the truth of the Tao, conserves ego’s energy to act decisively at the right moment when action is truly required.

Likewise, we may be seized with the impulse to act for what we perceive as a greater good, and act we do, only to discover that it was not the right time nor the right action to take. Ultimately, as mentioned, no action is wrong action, as all actions lead to necessary experience and knowledge.

However, with experience, we begin to realize that there is a deeper dimension of wholeness in motion at all times, with actions best exercised from the perspective of this broader view.

Taking in this broader view, we open to the necessary times of patient waiting, which sometimes means bearing tension until things become clearer, as in my image of the hero waiting patiently in the well. This is alchemy taking place in a sealed container, where necessary actions, sometimes powerfully destructive, must be completed before things can advance to a new level.

Such is the state of the world now, where we are being challenged to bear the tension and to not act precipitously. Have faith in the rising water in the well, that it will eventually rise to the level of freedom, to nourish us all.

In the waiting time, despite all the tension, remain in the calm of knowing that the right time to act will show itself, and when it does, we will act rightly and with precision.

Calm in the knowing,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Getting It Right Within The Self

Be the Rainmaker…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Here is Jung’s favorite story, The Rainmaker. It was  told to him by his friend Richard Wilhelm, a theologian and missionary, who lived in China for 25 years and translated the I Ching:

In the ancient Chinese province of Kiaochou there was a drought so severe that many people and animals were dying. In despair, the citizens called for an old rainmaker, who lived in the mountains nearby. Richard Wilhelm saw how the rainmaker was brought into town in a sedan chair, a tiny little gray-bearded man. He asked to be left alone outside the town in a little hut, and after three days it rained, and even snowed!

Richard Wilhelm succeeded in being allowed to interview the old man and asked him how he made the rain. But he answered, “I haven’t made the rain, of course not.” And then, after a pause, he added, “You see it was like this – throughout the drought the whole of nature and all the men and women here were deeply disturbed. They were no longer in Tao. When I arrived here, I became also disturbed. It was so bad that it took me three days to bring myself again into order.” And then he added, with a smile, “Then naturally it rained.”

Toward the end of his life, Jung shared with Marie Louise von Franz, his chief collaborator, a spontaneous catastrophic vision of destruction of much of the world as we know it. It worried him greatly. We can understand why Jung so cherished the Rainmaker’s story. Humankind, he thought, still had the possibility of just sneaking around the corner of such devastating destruction, and the Rainmaker teaches how.

In our time, all of nature, including all of humankind, is deeply disturbed. The disturbance is infectious and cannot be avoided. Even the balanced Taoist priest who entered the infected province in his time could not escape infection. His infection was actually necessary for him to arrive at the ultimate cure.

The guidance here is to avoid the trap of blame of self and other. To be alive at this time is to be infected with extreme imbalance. The disorder, whatever its cause, can only be put right by action within the self; and nature, like the Rainmaker’s rain and snow, will respond accordingly to this individual gesture.

The Rainmaker’s first insistence is to be left alone within a hut. This guidance to withdraw is critical in our time as well, as the hypnotic suggestions of influencers—whether they be politicians, artificial intelligence or astral entities—seek to incessantly saturate the human subconscious mind with their intentions, whereby maintaining chaos.

Thus, though we cannot avoid infection, we can create a boundary around ourselves to ward off continued penetration by outside influence. Self-hypnosis that states such an intention can materialize such a boundary. Meditative practices to not attach to thoughts inhibit their impact upon the central nervous system.

Current immune research observes that inflammation is an immune response to viral infiltration that draws one inward, forming a boundary around outside interests, that enables energy to go inward, much like the solitary Rainmaker in his hut. Even friends and loved ones are withdrawn from, as libido is needed for the inner journey of self love.

Practically speaking this requires assuming sovereignty over the central nervous system. Victor Frankl demonstrated that one could even achieve calm while interned at Auschwitz. This was how he survived. When I project myself into Gaza right now, I breathe myself into calm. Alpha calm can be achieved through the breath: 8 counts in, hold 8, exhale 8, pause 4 and begin again, and again…

Proverbial to the Rainmaker’s inner journey is the duration of three days, after which the heavens released water to this world in cloudbursts of rain and snow. Three is the number symbolic of completion. Christ’s journey to resurrection came on the third day after his death.

Completion itself might be of much longer duration than three days. Carlos Castaneda advised us to take all the time we need, but also to hurry up, as old age is real in human form. He knew this intimately, as he died to human form shortly after delivering this guidance.

Christ spent those three days in hell. When we have steadied the central nervous system we are prepared for this deeper journey. This time period is symbolic of the night sea journey into the unconscious, where we retrieve our fragmented soul in our personal unconscious, as well as our ancestral soul in the collective unconscious. Only through such reclaiming and reordering of our wholeness can we align with our spiritual center and open the heavens.

Be so empowered. Every one of us who embarks on our inner healing journey is part of the collective savior of now. As the Rastafarians would say, and Bob Marley sings, “I ‘n’ I vibration yeah! Positive!”

One Love,
Chuck

Soulbyte for Monday January 8, 2024

-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Balance, achieved first within the self, will bring balance to the world. Each person has the capacity to change the world by first changing the self, by first getting the self into a balance that is neither excessive nor inflated, neither spare nor deflated but of good even tone so that the personal energy is nurturing and supportive, helpful and stable for all systems of the body, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. As the self comes into right balance everything around the self will also come into balance. It’s as simple as that. Begin with the self. There is no greater goal at this time. Heal the self and you will heal the world.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Refusal To Feel*

Capture your wholeness and don’t let it go…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Despite all the manipulations of public thought, driven by master political hypnotists and well-endowed special interests, the root cause of the Tao of Now is the refusal to feel. At a global level, the collective will insists upon unlimited more, refusing to feel the impact of its actions, as the world heats up and overflows daily, and all of its people with it .

The fallout of such a one-sided refusal to feel and act upon emotional knowing is a transmogrified fervor of eruptive passions, gathering in the streets of Ottawa, as well as on the borders of Ukraine. On an individual level, the ego finds its fragile boundaries on guard against the tsunamis of dreams and its inner terrors projected fearfully and aggressively upon others.

Individuation, what Jung defined as the spiritual goal of human life, is the achievement of conscious wholeness. Conscious wholeness first requires the full knowing of all parts of the self, no secrets in the form of projections, dissociations, or rationalizations distorting the truth of self.

If I am to recover my lost parts, I must be willing to fully feel them. I must be willing to allow them the release and expression of all their emotions, however uncomfortable, unnerving, or threatening. I must grant the truths they reveal the right to exist, regardless of their shattering impact upon my ideal of self, or my idea of other. I must accept their contributions toward the greater truth, however limited they be, due to their one-sided perspectives.

Having felt the emotions of these parts of self, and been physically reshaped by the release of them and their revealed truths, I must endeavor to bridge these parts with the greater whole of the self. Wholeness is not perfection; perfection finds wholeness through the full integration of its parts into a comprehensive  whole. The collaboration of all parts for the best balance of the greater whole is true perfection, however momentary.

Reshaping the self, like reshaping the world, requires action. Though we are capable of stillness and concentration in meditation, we really exist in this space/time plane to experience physical action and reaction. The physical world is our sandbox. I might have to take a journey into deep sadness, as I overturn the blockade to primal pain, but then I must forge new pathways of action, beyond the pre-established habits of suppression and sublimation.

This might include full breathing, where once it was only shallow. This might mean presence, where once there existed only a freeway of ceaseless thought. This might include communication, where once there was sulkiness. This might require movement, where once there was rigidity. This might include allowing the trickster to live all the cardinal sins, as it travels kundalini’s arduous path to enlightenment. This will definitely require full transparency, to self and other, combined with awakening compassion.

The destruction of now is the karma of the refusal to feel. If we look around, at self and other, we see it all around us and know this to be true. The obvious antidote is to learn to feel, compassionately.

The construction of now is the Path of Heart that is guided by transparent mind and loving kindness for all parts of self, and all parts of other, however good, however bad. Oneness, after all, requires all its parts to be whole.

Not refusing to feel,

Chuck

*Title inspired by a talk by Darryl Robert Schoon with Jeffrey Mishlove