Tag Archives: Tao

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 

Soulbyte for Thursday January 6, 2022

When things are intense the wise calm themselves, not letting in that which is outside, breathing deeply, letting the breath calm the body and the heart calm the mind. In calm, centered breathing the heart hears the signal to be the center of decision making, and wisdom becomes its norm. Turn inward and let the heart speak its wisdom when things get tough, and notice how nothing draws a reaction from you and how all is calm within. This is good.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Within and Without

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