Tag Archives: time of destruction

Chuck’s Place: Cruelty Is The Reaction Formation Of Unrequited Love

When cruelty shows up, find your way to love within…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

The dominant feature of those who hold power in the world at this time is cruelty. The rhetoric and behavior of those warring entities is both disdain and indifference toward the suffering of adversaries and a polarized philosophy that can only see solution in the destruction and elimination of opposition. Understanding the energetics of cruelty can truly lead us to a path of peace.

As we enter the autumn of our seasonal cycle, we must acknowledge Nature’s Law of Destruction as the necessary precursor to new life.  We are indeed in the cosmic season of Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Degeneration. World leaders are under the spell of such energy, channelling it with gusto. If we suspend all judgment, we see the necessity of this breakdown and can turn our attention to the process of preparing for renewed life.

Beyond the destruction of autumn lies the barren season of winter, where life moves inward to the darkness of the soul in the shadowland of Self. Winter offers a peek into the Dark Night of the Soul, where we are invited to face and resolve our inner mysteries. It is here, if we are ready, that we discover the covert defenses we have utilized to avoid our deepest feelings and needs. One such defense is that of reaction formation.    

Sigmund Freud introduced reaction formation as an ego defense that “transforms an unacceptable or anxiety-provoking impulse or feeling into its opposite” (from Brutus AI). For instance, instead of consciously acknowledging an unacceptable desire or emotion, we act outwardly with just the opposite of how we truly feel. Thus, we might act affectionately toward someone whom we actually feel hostility toward.

A more nuanced appreciation of the dynamic of reaction formation is the energetic exchange that occurs when something is transformed into its opposite. For example, the intensity of affection one might feel for a person, that is then followed by a felt sense of rejection by that person, might result in a corresponding emotionally intense feeling of hatred toward them.

This compensatory emotional reaction assuages and redirects the original energy of affection, while it also protects the ego from the feeling of rejection. Such is often the motive in stalking behavior, where one can be said to be in love with hatred.

Cruelty might issue from disappointments at the primal-need level of human development when one is most vulnerable, sensitive and needing of attention. The British psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein, went so far as to suggest that a frustrated infant would assign one of its mother’s breasts to be the ‘good breast’ and the other the ‘bad breast’ to energetically balance its joys and sorrows and preserve a lifesaving connection to its ‘flawed’ human mother.

Cruelty, however, permits no such defensive option. Cruelty bespeaks such a deep experience of felt rejection at one’s core, the shame of which is reactively transformed into the pleasure of rejecting others and bathing in their extreme suffering. The scapegoating of others creates a playing field where the ego is justified in its fixation of hatred, with an intensity that nullifies its deep sense of inner rejection and abandonment.

When we are able to acknowledge and feel the truth of our deepest disappointments, we are freed from defensive illusions and entitlements that fuel cruel thoughts and actions. These actions allow us to experience love for ourselves, at the deepest level, and love for all who  have taken on the challenge of loving in human form.

Planet Earth is the planet for the accelerated experience of refining love. Taking the Night Sea Journey of Recapitulation allows us to gather, from all our disappointments, a loving acceptance of everything. Immortal souls we may be, but in the context of a mortal life love is challenged to grow amidst its greatest adversary, death itself.

To move beyond the defense of reactive formation to true loving acceptance of all that is, is the foundation upon which new life will grow  in the New Age, beyond the Kali Yuga of now.

Those of us now present in human form are privileged to contribute to this energetic emergence, most especially through the practice and acceptance of all that is, within and without.

It’s all about love,
Chuck  

Soulbyte for Monday August 30, 2021

Nature’s way may not be logical but it is the way of all things that seek change, for nature knows so much more than the thinking species, the human being, how to enact change that is irrevocable. Watch how nature shows the way, how a path of destruction leads to new habits, new life and the changes that are ultimately necessary for survival and prosperity. Within the self let nature’s lessons sink in, and learn the ultimate lesson that nature instructs, that to be kind and loving in the face of disaster is the one and only response.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Monday September 24, 2018

Go with the flow. You can’t fight the energy that is so pervasive, but you can get in alignment with what is right, and in the flow of all things use your energy for that which is good, right, and progressive, intentionally taking things in a new direction. Destruction of the old is part of the process of change. Let old things go, but build anew in a new way that is energetically right for all beings. Take into consideration that change is the eternal natural law that effects everything, that all things change, even you. Without your permission you are changing all the time, naturally. Get in sync with that and be at peace with what is, even drastic change, within and without, and naturally go with the flow.

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: The Time of Saturation

Time of Saturation…
– Art by Jan Ketchel © 2017

When we can absorb no more we reach a state of saturation where we essentially shut down, functioning on a kind of autopilot. This trancelike fugue state is prized in shamanic training where a practitioner is inundated with unexpected events to the point of saturation. This saturation defeats the ego’s ability to maintain its sense of normalcy and control. Deprived of its familiar fixation on order and predictability the practitioner’s awareness becomes pliable and open to new possibilities. Such are the conditions for all Earth inhabitants at present. Who knows what will happen today?

Our planet Earth, Gaia, is in her own process of becoming pliable and opening to new possibilities. We are currently being saturated with the effects of her labor through an escalation of fire, wind, water and earth upheavals. As Mother Earth rejects the burgeoning impact of the human species upon her body so does her human cohort, woman, challenge the practices of how mankind goes about spreading its seed.

We are currently saturated with the wildfires of Amazon Woman turning to ashes the careers of the sexually abusive power elite. Indeed there are innocent casualties in this massive conflagration  but, as with Mother Earth herself, a saturation of destruction is the necessary prelude to major reformation. Humankind must integrate its sexual instinct in a new, more balanced, compatible way. The time of unchecked sexually abusive behavior upheld by the silent collusion of woman is coming to an end.

In the world of governance we are saturated daily with radical shifts that evoke terror, deep insecurity, and panic. The calming father leader has been replaced by the wrathful Yahweh type, replete with emotional tirades and vindictiveness.

This same wave of incessant storm issues equally from Nature, MeToo, and leaders of governance. The common feature of all of these eruptions is saturation. We find ourselves confounded in our inability to absorb anymore. As with shamanic training our traditional hold on reality is being loosened. We are all being made pliable and open to new possibilities.

These possibilities include a reshaped Earth, a vastly different relation between the sexes and with the sexual instinct itself, and a governance far more acquiescent to the true needs of the planet. I caution getting too attached to the radical shifts being proposed and enacted by governance now. The greater intent behind this cascade of events is a loosening of our fixation on a world without change, the preparation stage for major transformation.

Onslaughts of saturation generate reactions of protest, numbing and dissociated indifference, until we arrive at the place of letting go of control, what the shamans call the place of no pity. From this position new worlds of possibility open to us as our allegiance to upholding old beliefs and attachments loosens.

Beyond the current fog of illusion driven by the saturation of fake news lies a world of transparency and acquiescence to the true needs of the planet. As we travel through the turbulence of these saturated times we do well to shield our light in the inner recess of the heart. All that is happening now is transient.

This time of saturation is the preparation or breakdown phase of major transformation. We do best, like Old Testament Job, to bear with patience the extremes of these times. Nothing can take away the sanctity of the self if we refuse the call to spend our energy attaching to half-baked solutions that avoid the fullness of real resolution.

Real resolution, post-saturation, is the birth of a new possibility. Imagine, for instance, a world where love and sex find their enduring union. Everything is possible.

Holding the candle within,

Chuck