Tag Archives: the mind

Chuck’s Place: Taking Responsible Command Of The Dual Mind

The dual mind is inseparable…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

The mind, though dual in function, is but one, inseparable mind. Half of it, known as the conscious mind, exists in the light of consciousness. The other half, known as the subconscious mind, lives in the darkness of unconsciousness. And in that darkness it is connected to everything beyond our conscious awareness, including infinity itself.

These different locations of mind perform complementary, yet vastly different, mental functions. Understanding their differences, yet most vital and intimate relationship, is key to the realization of one’s full potential.

With the bright light of consciousness the conscious mind is afforded the awareness to observe, study, reason, judge, decide and take action in life. Such exercises of its will allows it to override both common sense or instinctual impulse as it charts its own course.

This freedom to exercise one’s intent is akin to divine prerogative and comes with enormous responsibility. Conscious decisions are causes which become the effects of manifest reality. Consciousness is free to act both in its own self interest alone, or for the greater good of all. It is the responsibility of consciousness to choose wisely.

This responsibility is extremely crucial because it is the subconscious mind that, without reflection, produces the outcomes to the suggestions it receives from the conscious mind. The divinity of the subconscious is its supernatural ability to indeed make manifest the many whims of its intimate partner, the conscious mind.

The subconscious mind has access to both the personal unconscious of individuals as well as the collective unconscious of humankind. It remembers everything beyond the scope of conscious memory. If we are trying to solve a problem, it reaches, via association, into the annals of human history and brings forth images and knowledge to memory, dream, or intuition, that often provide consciousness with the missing piece of the puzzle of its current struggle.

Notice, however, that this process has nothing to do with logical thinking. The subconscious mind associates; it doesn’t think. Thinking is purely the process of the conscious mind. Furthermore, the subconscious mind, once it is impressed by a suggestion, manifests that suggestion via a pathway of events that often completely defies logic. This is the reason for the caveat to all autosuggestion: don’t attach to the outcome.

I conjecture that the subconscious taps, via association, the pool of collective wisdom available to it that best fits the accomplishment of its mission to fulfill its working orders, the suggestion from the conscious mind. It charts, via feeling, its course.

This might involve many preparatory events that clear the way for the expected manifestation of its goal. It is often only in hindsight that we can appreciate the role of seemingly unrelated or counterintuitive events that actually provided the foundation for the desired result.

This ability to often miraculously create is applied to any suggestion the subconscious attaches to. It trusts implicitly the vetting process of the conscious mind to decide upon a suggestion. Its role is to create, not judge whether a suggestion it is given is good or evil. It will not argue with the morality of a suggestion; it spends all its energy on manifesting what it is told is needed.

If we don’t have leadership within the conscious personality that suggests to the subconscious outcomes for the greater good, we become burdened with bearing the outcome of poor decisions. This is the law of cause and effect, the karma of all thought and action. We certainly can see this mirrored in the outer world now, where the creative forces of manifestation are being directed by tenuous leadership, creating tremendous instability all throughout the globe.

The conscious and subconscious minds are indeed a royal couple who are responsible for the full course of our human life. The royalty of consciousness is its ability to direct. For maximum, sustainable success, this requires great humility and the ability to think for one’s self by suspending judgment and determining what is truly right for self and all.

The subconscious mind, our inner miracle maker, can do anything. This is its gift.  When the conscious mind provides its intimate partner, the subconscious mind, with the gift of suggestions grounded in love and the greater good, we take best command of our dual mind for the betterment of all.

For the betterment of all,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Here Comes The Judge

Sigmund Freud called the judge the Superego. For Freud, the superego is an amalgam of the significant authority figures in our early life—taken in, internalized as an active life force inside the psyche of every human being. The superego becomes the architect and active judging force that structures our experiences of right and wrong, good and bad. This judging function has its origins outside the human psyche—it is a Not I—yet, it is taken in and experienced as a formidable character, incessantly controlling and shaping the I of everyday life.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico saw the Mind itself as the judge, an internalized entity of extraneous origin. Like Freud’s superego, those shamans see the mind as largely shaped by the socialization each human being undergoes from the moment of entry into this world.

Socialization formats perception into a uniform interpretation system. The mind shapes reality. The mind tells us what is real and dismisses, as fanciful illusion or imagination, all experience that does not fit its precepts. The mind acts quickly to reshape and dismiss any perception that defies its definitions of real and possible. In fact, the mind acts so rapidly to forget irrational experience that we are left helpless in its wake. How quickly we forget the experience of the dream upon awakening.

How dare you enter here!

The mind is actually a massive gargoyle that guards, through terror, the entry to the library of true knowing and seeing. Let he and she that transgress beyond its menacing countenance be forewarned: You are on your own! When you suspend the judge, you enter the theatre of the truly real. For the ancient shamans, the theatre of the real is interconnected energy as it flows in the universe.

I stepped out of my office on Tuesday night and into a dream. Almost immediately, a gargoyle appeared out of nowhere and embraced me, seeking my attention. I was caught off-guard by an onslaught of unrelenting intensity; the gargoyle in my face momentarily distracting me. The clock was ticking. I was aware, in some vague, deep place that I was on a mission. I had to gather my energy and maintain my focus. I stepped beyond the gargoyle.

For ten years now, I have not been able to fully recapitulate all that I experienced at the moment of Jeanne’s death. Others have dreamed that dream and reported it to me to jostle my awakening, but thus far my memory of that magical moment remains quite edited. On Tuesday night, I made the decision to go to the hospital to be with Jan. I made the decision to fully show up for death, the most meaningful encounter in life—to see what happens.

I exit the highway at the wrong Rinaldi Blvd. and enter the twilight zone. It’s dark, one way streets to nowhere appear. I’m caught in a maze with no reentry to the highway. I feel the clock ticking. I steady myself, drive the wrong way down a one-way street onto other streets that seem to lead back the way I’d come. Suddenly, I’m in the heart of Poughkeepsie and a sign appears: Rt. 9 South. Okay, let’s do it again!

This time, I exit properly and trace my way to the parking garage at the hospital. I’m met by a powerful river of cars and humanity moving in the opposite direction. I’m swimming upstream, against the current. Visiting hours are over. Will getting in pose a problem?

I enter a dimly lit, quiet lobby and proceed to the desk. Immediately a commotion breaks the silence. Gargoyle #2 is raging. His face is elongated, distorted, his eyes bulging. He cursingly demands drugs for his girlfriend, in pain, “improperly treated in Emergency!” he screamingly exclaims. The security guards and welcoming woman are pensive, seeking clarity, seeking to restore calm, unsure of his next move, seeking to avoid an explosion of lethality.

I remain completely calm. I give him no energy, simply stand quietly, awaiting my turn. Eventually, others engage the gargoyle and the shaken clerk at the desk informs me that, although visiting hours are over, she’s sure I can go up for a few minutes. A phone call is made; a pass issued.

As I get off the elevator, the sign for room 350 points to the left. I walk into a quiet dark area—Orthopedics. Something is not right.

I return to the elevator. The sign now points in the opposite direction. Though I now walk right past the room and must retrace my steps, I finally arrive.

Jan sees me. She is aglow, staring at me as if she has never seen me before.

“Oh my God! Look at you! You’re so young!”

I look back at her and think, “Her energy is amazing!”

We adjust our chairs and calmly await the miraculous. No words are needed.

I carefully listen to the breathing: I know how that works. My attention keeps being drawn to the feet: waving, jostling energy. Each time it happens, my mind wakes up and examines: “No. No movement, no activity,” it states. My perception is cursorily dismissed; my dream forgotten. But, it keeps happening! And each time the alerted mind steps in, reexamines and reaffirms its precepts: “This can’t be happening! Look again, there is no activity, only complete stillness, as expected.”

Soon enough, the final breath comes. Jan and I sit in total calmness, immediately recapitulating our shared experience of the energy body as it exited. The miraculous had occurred!

Carlos Castaneda once wrote that when he finally was able to see energy, he was amazed at the realization that we see energy all the time as it flows in the universe. But then—here comes the judge! And we remember only what it tells us “really” happened, as it rationally dismisses the magic of the real dream.

The mind persists in a steady effort to restore order, dismissing and forgetting what we really see all the time. It’s only through persistent recapitulation that we are able to change the mind, or, in reality, relativize its dominance.

The dream continues,
Chuck

See also Jan’s blog: A Clandestine Meeting, published earlier this week.