Tag Archives: transformation

Messages from Jeanne

#746 Navigating the Mystical

Leave a comment

Sorry this is so late in getting out today!

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Over the past few weeks we have been exploring, with Jeanne, practical techniques for navigating through life while confronting our issues and embracing our journeys. As many of you know, back in 2001, I began a very intense three-year personal journey, a recapitulation, as the seers of ancient Mexico call it, reliving the most important and transformative moments of my life. However, it was not until I actually began that recapitulation process that I was able to clearly perceive those moments as the most important and transformational, before that they were either merely disturbing experiences or totally unknown memories. I also learned that if one has a knowledgeable, aware, seasoned guide as one takes the recapitulation journey, one is indeed fortunate, even though the bulk of the work to be done lies within the self, both the questions and the answers.

During my odyssey into my self, as I took that recapitulation journey, I was offered daily opportunities to break through perceptions, judgments, definitions, and just about everything I had previously been taught to emerge on the other side of myself in a new world. In more modern terms, I took a transpersonal journey, working from where I was in my life at the time and going far back through myself to emerge in the prebirth world of the so called collective unconscious, as termed by Jung. This transpersonal world is what I would describe as access to all knowledge, all worlds, through all time. It is where ancient wisdom resides, and where all things are possible.

Lately, Chuck and I have been studying the work of Stanislav Grof, who over the past half century or so, has explored the mystical experience in great depth, and who coined the modern term transpersonal to describe the realm of the collective unconscious. He was disturbed by the fact that within Western modern science and psychology there was nothing to define the mystical experience, no categories existed and no credence was given to this most ancient of experiences. Experiences of the sublime, such as out-of-body and near-death experiences, as well as transcendent meditation experiences were given little or no value. In essence, experiences in the ancient pre-scientific world were pooh-poohed, dismissed as meaningless and crazy in the face of real hard-proven scientific fact. Grof seriously began to explore and document mystical experiences and attempted to bring this ancient wisdom into mainstream psychology. It still sits somewhat on the edge, though many, many people in the West have been offered validation and acceptance of their experiences of the unexplainable through his work and that of many others.

Anyone who has had experiences of the mystical knows how impossible it is to dismiss the experience, especially in cases when it has been transformational. Of course, it can be pushed aside as meaningless or disturbing, which is what I once did in an attempt to stay in tiptop control over everything in my life, but as time went on it became increasingly more difficult to do so as the experiences began to intrude on real life. It was not until I was ready to receive the messages that these mystical experiences were attempting to deliver that I could finally turn and look them straight in the face. I believe everyone has had experiences of the mystical and sublime and, when ready, these encounters will be accepted into conscious awareness.

In undertaking a recapitulation journey, if properly guided, we learn not only how to use these experiences to continue our life’s journey, but we may also be afforded the opportunity to use them to transport us to the transpersonal realm, where all knowledge exists, the personal, the pre-personal, and awareness of the interconnectedness of all energy, including us.

I have, and I say this with great humility and thanks, learned to transport back to the transpersonal quite easily. Through my recapitulation process I eventually learned to trust the mystical experiences I had, to allow myself to go where they took me, documenting my journeys, gathering from them the truth of the real possibility that all of us can access this transpersonal world volitionally. Although Grof led many experiments into the transpersonal using LSD, I have never used drugs. I didn’t need them. Life itself was enough of a catalyst to get me where I needed to go, as it rocketed me into the surreal over and over again, both before I ever heard about recapitulation and then certainly once I began that journey.

Once I learned to cultivate those experiences, understanding them as meaningful experiences of awareness, I gained a personal understanding of the mystical and how we can use it to guide us, through understanding not only life, but death and the greater universe as well. Now, after ten years of journeying by choice, I know I can never stop. It is my path, my intent, and my most personal challenge as well. Unfortunately, I can’t live there all the time, much as I would like to. In the meantime, I am happy to write about it, and help others achieve the peace it offers.

What I am getting at today in this blog is the true fact that we can all do this. I am nothing, no one special. I call myself by no name except the one I have in the real world, and even that I am not that attached to. In all the work I do, I seek only to offer guidance based on what I have learned through my experiences in the transpersonal world, the shamanic world, a world where everything goes, where one is able to access the darkness as well as the light, where one can experience the mystical without fear. It is my greatest wish that all of you be able to do so too, to allow for the mystical be a fuller part of your personal journey, without fear.

Once again, I turn to Jeanne, my personal guide and yours, and ask her to offer some insight into how we can access her world. How can people access your world, especially those who do not have access to means beyond their control, as I did, or just perhaps do not realize they do? Jeanne, what guidance do you offer us today along these lines?

Access to the mystical, as Jan terms it, is really only available through the self. One cannot have such experiences through others, but only through personally challenging the self, for otherwise there is no meaning to be had. In reading of such experiences one gains great benefits; by that I mean: the benefit of suggestion. Use of suggestion and awareness of possibility lead to intent, and that is the key to becoming open to all experiences, no matter what world one wants to enter.

Say you wish to get a new job. A new job may or may not magically appear, but I guarantee that if you set your intent for a new job, visualize yourself in it and set your specific requirements, that job will materialize. Intent works very specifically.

Intent can be used in all cases of desire. It can result in negative as well as positive challenges. You can intend illness, death even. You can intend a fuller life, drastic change in your personal experiences upon that earth. Your intent affects you, but others as well. If you keep your intent focused on the self, on doing inner work, on challenging the self to learn how to become nonjudgmental and pure, you are doing not only the self, but the entire world a favor. So, all of that being said, if you begin to set your intent in a certain direction, you will have experiences.

If you wish for experiences of the mystical, I suggest you begin a process of intending such experiences, but you must then be ready for what comes. I do not mean to alarm you, but you had better also set your intent to be able to withstand the process that will undoubtedly unfold. You must also set your intent to become aware, so that you do not dismiss what comes to you. You must be able to comprehend that it is truly happening.

Yes, I agree with Jeanne wholeheartedly here. This aspect is perhaps the most important. If you aren’t able to recognize the mystical experiences as such you will miss a lot. I still have to train my awareness, to find ways to allow myself to accept the truth of my personal experiences without the rational mind interfering, whether psychic knowing or experiences of the sublime. Noticing them and fully accepting them can be a challenge, as the rational will always step in to correct, that’s its job; and then there is the ego to deal with too, but that is another blog. What else should we set our intent to do, Jeanne?

Intent must be embraced wholeheartedly and used wisely, in an all-encompassing, thorough manner. Do not shirk yourself from having a full experience by laziness or over-eagerness. It is a serious matter and a serious process to engage in, this desiring entry into other worlds. One must be ready. You may already be at the point of readiness, but use practical and intelligent steps in setting your intent, otherwise you may not notice or be able to fully comprehend your experiences. But that being said, I do not wish to thwart any effort or desire for action. Take action on your personal behalf with innocence at your core. You can even set your intent for accessing innocence, for an experience of pure innocent energy, for instance, and you will surely have it.

As I mentioned, your awareness is key, as well as your attention to how your mind works, for it will pop up immediately to tell you that, “Oh, that didn’t just happen.” If you listen to that you will of course not be able to fully access the experiences that you so desire.

For what reasons can you suggest that people might want to access the mystical, Jeanne?

There are, of course, a multitude of reasons, personal and otherwise, but I would suggest that, to begin with, you stick to the simplest reason: to have an experience of energy, because that is really what this is all about, experiencing the self as energy. You can do this while awake, asleep, in meditation, volitionally. Or you can call upon the universe to give you the experience and then be ready for what comes; be alert, and wait for its arrival. If you ask for something you will receive it, but in what form you do not know; so you must be alert and understand how the universe sees fit to address you at this time in your life.

Beyond that simple reason—to simply have an experience of the energetic interconnectedness of all things—a far greater purpose of such experience is to gain personal awareness and insight, so you can understand why you are you, what you are alive for, where you came from and why, and where you are going. The greatest purpose in life is to gain awareness and that involves awareness of energy, how it works—not intellectually as so many do—but by personal experience. And, as Jan suggests, accessing the mystical, simply because you want to, is a good way to start.

I also warn that if you are not ready, that is okay too. But I ask that you begin to open to the truth of the mystical anyway, that you begin training yourself to trust that it is possible, that you will one day be ready, and that you will be better prepared when that day comes by your openness to and your awareness of the possibility that everything is available to you, the mystical as well as the rational.

Good luck, My Dears, as you challenge yourselves into having new experiences. You can do no great harm to yourselves, if you stick to practical and sober means. And please be patient.

Thank you, Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: 2012 is Now!

Leave a comment

“I am convinced that for man to survive now, his perception must change at its social base,” states don Juan Matus on page 3 in The Art of Dreaming. For don Juan this change, an evolution of consciousness, means that we must embrace the wholeness of our beings, a world of energy, the wavelength self I wrote about in last week’s blog.

Stanislav Grof points out in an interview with nonsoloanima TV that the end of the Mayan calendar at the winter solstice, December 21st next year, simply represents the end of a cycle of time. This cycle is the completion of the sun’s rotation around the solar system upon which the Mayan calendar is based. This completed cycle in galactic astrology results in an alignment that births a new era. However, all birth is preceded by labor. This labor can manifest as aggression, destruction, or violent revolution as new life struggles to be born. In addition, there must be a death, or ending to the old way of being, to bring forth new life. The question for mankind is whether this birthing process will result in the necessary evolution don Juan describes, or will the forces of resistance put an end to our human experiment.

Grof also points out that December 21, 2012 is but the apex of a bell curve. The changes of 2012 have been rapidly unfolding for decades. Undoubtedly, the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s followed by the psychedelics of the 1960s was the unleashing of the energy needed to move masses of humanity to shift into a deeper search for themselves, at more profound levels. In fact, for decades this mass shift in consciousness has launched a major revolution to bring down the solid precepts that have governed awareness for centuries.

Energetic mass movements, such as the Internet, are rapidly tearing down all attempts to maintain or create walls of illusion. Facebook, though I decry its dark side of self-importance and its exposure to the greedy marketing giants, can probably be credited with bringing down the government in Egypt as the energy of change was initially directed by postings on Facebook, telling people where to gather for the nonviolent revolution. The election of Obama, also largely orchestrated through digital wizardry, marked an earlier magical evolutionary advance of consciousness, materially realized.

The energy of 2012 has been advancing for decades and we are clearly near the climax of this struggle. Stepping, for a moment, out of time and viewing ourselves from a cosmic perspective, we are indeed living in a highly charged, agitated energetic time. The speed of change appears greater than our human ability to absorb and indeed this is probably true, hence, the pressure to evolve into out greater energetic selves. Whether this revolutionary energy is sufficient to push through the birth canal and bring forth this necessary transformation into new life is still an open question. The forces of resistance undermining change, so apparent in Obama’s presidency, are evident everywhere on the globe. We are not a world of individual countries and governments, despite those illusory walls. We are now an interconnected global economy where the special interests of the parasitic few are relentlessly seeking new ways to spin reality to hold onto power and control.

Bringing this challenge down to a very individual level, we do well to inventory the status of the power monger within ourselves: the inflated ego with its rationality über alles. Are we taking on the challenge of allowing ourselves to claim the fullness of our energetic beings? What is the status of our own inner revolution, our own transformational journey of rebirth? Are we allowing ourselves the opportunities to wake up in our dreams and explore our greater consciousness beyond the body, or does rationality still dismiss the possibility? Do we allow ourselves to go inward in meditation, or do we choose medication and/or materialism? Do we free our breath, or remain constricted in the rigid body armor of defense? Do we open up to the world of energy by engaging our intent, or do we remain frozen in doubt?

I say, Viva La Revolución! But remember, revolution starts at home, within the self, by embracing the depths of our energetic selves. The revolution of 2012 is now! Let’s all fight for that necessary change at our social base; let’s insure our survival as evolved energetic beings!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Magical Books

1 Comment

Some books simply are magical. Every time I pick up any book of Carlos Castaneda’s—books I have read dozens of times over the past forty years—I encounter new knowledge. These books are alive with an energy that takes me deeper in my journey of awareness. They inevitably lead me into heightened awareness where my clarity of knowing is unparalleled. I experience directly the intent of the seers of ancient Mexico. Carlos channeled that intent in those living books by completely removing his self-importance from their pages. He reserves his words for precise descriptions of his experiences in the seer’s world.

Recently, while rummaging through the books at the local recycling center, I came upon the big book, AA’s “bible.” Though I’ve read countless works on recovery, I never actually read this book. This book is also a living book, a magical book. Unpretentious, blue, with no outer appeal, in fact, rather anonymous looking, it nonetheless called out to me.

As I began to read through its pages, I recognized the evolutionary intent it channels. AA is the most successful mass movement for evolutionary change on earth. The guidelines of that intent are clearly spelled out in shamanic terms. For change to happen one must beckon a power beyond the ego. The ego must then open to a shamanic journey with that power to experience genuine transformation. In preparation for that journey the guidance requires a complete loss of self-importance, in fact, in AA everyone remains on a first name basis only. No one is more important than the other—there is no hierarchy. No profit is to be made from the program and no one is rejected; all are equal. (I think Senator McCarthy was barking up the wrong tree when he was seeking out the true communists in America in the nineteen-fifties!)

Furthermore, the growth of AA was predicated on the energetic law of attraction, clearly spelled out in the book, attraction versus promotion. The guidance also strongly recommends one’s individual encounter with the truth in the form of a moral inventory and making of amends. This is a version of recapitulation that enables the seeker to put down old burdens, erase the constraints of personal history, preparing the ground for freedom and transformation.

In describing the magical origins of AA, the book chronicles the role of C. G. Jung. After failing to cure one of AA’s founders, the dejected patient pressed Jung for any glimmer of hope for what to do next to heal. Jung, offering little hope to this advanced alcoholic patient and without any further guidance, suggested he might experience a transformation through a spiritual experience. “Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences,” Jung told him. (p. 27 in Alcoholics Anonymous Third Edition.) He did indeed go out and have a spiritual experience that channeled the path to AA, and the rest is history, as chronicled in the big book, a living viable path for transformation.

Jung himself, the son of generations of protestant ministers, was faced with the personal experience that dogma and belief could not serve the needs of his soul. As Aniela Jaffé writes in C. G. Jung Word and Image: “In his eyes, the ability to believe was a gift of grace, one which he (Jung) and many others no longer shared. That loss justified the search for new approaches to the numinous.” This was the impetus behind Jung’s suggestion to his alcoholic patient to go out and seek a spiritual experience.

Jung himself recorded his own spiritual journey in The Red Book, another magical book. In this book Jung chronicles his personal confrontation with powers greater than himself, a series of numinous experiences that ultimately paved its own path to wholeness in the form of analytical psychology. This book, like other magical books, is bereft of self-importance and hints at a means for each of us to discover our own individuation.

The common thread running through the magical books of Carlos Castaneda, AA, and C. G. Jung is that they all channel the energy of transformation and evolutionary intent, offering access to a personal spiritual transformative experience. Whether the journey happens in the shaman’s world, supported by a nagual, or in psychotherapy under the guidance of a therapist, or in “the rooms” supported by the AA community, it is only a personal experience that will lead to genuine transformation and change.

These magical books speak to our time, where the grace of dogma and belief can no longer serve the spiritual evolutionary needs of a planet in crisis, in dire need of transformation. However, to go beyond dogma and belief and truly achieve transformation each one of us must individually take the journey, and see what happens!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#709 Chuck’s Place: Bearing the Tension

1 Comment

“I am obsessed with her, or him!”
“My loneliness is all-consuming.”
“My fear is paralyzing.”
“I am so angry I could burst!”
“I’m terrified of his/her anger.”
“I cannot accept what I have done; I hate myself!”
“I can’t get over what they have done to me.”
“I cannot stop crying, I’m so hurt.”
“I cannot bear to experience another memory.”
“My body is in such unbearable pain.”

The I Ching depicts the time of tension, inherent in each of these very real life circumstances, as the time of waiting. It offers the following counsel, but first a note of clarification. In The I Ching “the strong man” represents the masculine principle in both women and men. The strong man, the ego in us all, is confronted by the intense forces of nature within us that both nourish and deeply challenge our conscious stronghold.

Hexagram #5 Waiting: When clouds rise in the sky, it is a sign that it will rain. There is nothing to do but to wait until the rain falls… One is faced with a danger that has to be overcome. Weakness and impatience can do nothing. Only a strong man can stand up to his fate, for his inner security enables him to endure to the end. This strength shows itself in uncompromising truthfulness [with himself]. It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events by which the path to success may be recognized.

The bird sits upon its egg and broods, in the time of waiting. The bird cannot create life, but if it refuses to brood, to sit and wait patiently, new life will not emerge. The period of waiting, as the bird sits upon the egg, generates heat, a vital ingredient to the transformation from egg to chick. For humans, the time of waiting requires containment of our emotional state (our egg), which generates inner heat, the basis for new life. When we are confronted with seemingly insoluble problems—gripping emotions, beliefs, or obsessive projections—our ego cannot make them go away with some new formulaic spin.

True solution, resolution, new life will only emerge from a source beyond the ego. The ego must acquiesce to the feminine principle of waiting, the labor of bearing the tension, in consort with its masculine consciousness facing the absolute truths inherent in the forces of tension upon which it sits. The outcome of this time of waiting is the irrational process of deliverance to new life. I highlight the word irrational because deliverance is a function of nature, not ego. The rain comes when it’s ready. New life is a changed self, fully relieved of its prior state of tension.

We live in a time of the collective inflated ego. Science has become the rational One True God, master of creation and solver of all problems. The irrational forces of nature are studied and corrected by science, as it perfects nature’s random and haphazard processes. We can’t help but see the consequences of such hubris upon the earth, with the irrational forces of nature wreaking havoc upon it in the form of oil leaks, floods, earthquakes, etc.

On a more personal level, nature confronts the rational forces of consciousness with moods, gripping emotions, needs, irrational beliefs, and compulsive projections. These forces are the messengers of our souls. Some of these messengers are angels; some are demons. Regardless, they are all demanding something of us. If we refuse them acknowledgement through repression, denial, rationalization, or projection, they intensify their approach and, like the earth, disrupt our functioning through volcanic emotional eruptions or earthquakes where we break apart into fragments. No amount of ego solutions will quell these forces permanently. No amount of medications will obliterate these forces of nature. We must reconcile with our deeper nature.

Reconciliation requires the correct ego attitude. We can’t simply lie down and give up. Nature has no respect for such a regressive attitude. This approach will land us in the flood, but not on Noah’s ark! We must remain aboard our ark of consciousness amidst a sea of forces, unknowing of the outcome, bearing the tension, awaiting the sign of the dove that we have arrived at new life.

We must respect the power of the unconscious, as Noah respected God, knowing that its power is greater than our ego, yet it seeks reconciliation with us. Nature wants consciousness. It created us. We are part of it, but we must assume the right attitude toward it to further our evolutionary potential. Nature has the resolution to our problems in its womb, however, it will not lead us to land or birth a solution unless we stand up to it, face it, acknowledge it, and discover what it has to show us in full consciousness and truthfulness. This is the period of bearing the tension, which we must, of necessity, suffer the heat of.

If we can bear the tension without succumbing to illusion, without falling prey to one of the demon’s tales, nature ultimately will reward us with deliverance. But this is an irrational process where consciousness must willingly ride the waves, without interference, bearing the tension like Christ upon the cross or Buddha beneath the bodhi tree. If we attach to any illusion, for example, the big baby inner child, who can lure us into sadness and fixate us in an eternal hell of pain with the illusion of emotional catharsis, then we become the ego that cannot remain aboard the ark of consciousness. If, on the other hand, we can bear the tension of the pull of that inner child, but refuse to attach to its drama, that is, remain the adult bearing the tension without drowning in the sadness, a time will come when nature will pull back the energy of this burden and release us into new life with the potential for innocent fulfillment at a deeper level. This is genuine transformation, genuine change, new life.

In summary, if we seek to achieve genuine deep change, we must be willing to bear the tension, suffer the pulls of opposite forces coursing through our moods, thoughts, and projections. Bearing the tension means waiting; patiently remaining still amidst the torment of intense emotions that seek release through acting out, giving up, or some form of ego spin on reality. However, waiting also requires standing up to all the truths that are presented while we wait.

And then, ultimately, nature, that non-rational force, will intervene: the clouds will release the rains, the chick will be born, the ark will land—new life through transformation. Such is the fruit of the time of bearing the tension.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#703 Chuck’s Place: The Power of Experience

Leave a comment

“I only went downhill skiing once in my life, Chuck, many years ago,” states a client who has graciously given me permission to share her experience. “I was with a friend who kept telling me to lean. Every time I did, I fell. I just couldn’t get what her words meant. Eventually, I shifted my weight and didn’t fall. I realized, oh, that’s what she means by lean! You’ve been telling me I need to detach for years; I think I’m finally getting it.”

Next she shared what she described as a very powerful dream. “I’m with my son, (currently twenty-four years old, incarcerated in the New York prison SHOCK program) only he’s eight years old, at a summer camp, yet it’s also the SHOCK program. He seems removed. He’s playing with other kids. I’m furious and confront him. There is no outlet for my anger. The scene changes, I’m with an old best friend and her husband who moved down south years ago. I want to vent my feelings to her, but she doesn’t want to listen. Her husband has started a small fire behind a door. I fan the flames of the fire. He gets angry and chastises me. His wife tells him to leave me alone, but he forces his knuckles against my throat so tightly it cuts off the air and I begin to suffocate. I awaken, deeply sobbing, gasping for air. My first thought: my son will die in my arms; I can’t cope with the pain.”

She went on to explain that she realized that she’d been holding onto her son, frozen in time at eight years of age, and felt terror that he’d never stand on his own as a man in this world; that he would die, a boy, in her arms.

Since the dream experience she has received two letters from her son and noticed a marked shift in her own attitude as she read his words. “I finally am experiencing what you mean when you tell me to detach,” she said. “Something is definitely different. I love him, he’ll always be my son, but I’ve let go.”

I went on to suggest to my client that she had been approached by her dream shaman, in the form of the friend’s husband. Her preparatory work of long-suffering having been completed, she was ready to be grabbed, killed, and reborn, and ushered through the rite of passage where parents release their children to be adults in their own right. This rite transformed her inner experience, a transformation far more comprehensive than a rational understanding of letting go. She is changed. Our work together had been part of her necessary preparation for this rite, but this mystical rite was performed by her own unconscious, which had determined the time and the method for this terrifyingly necessary ritual.

Jung pointed out how the modern rational world had stripped away the ancient rites of passage that once ushered humankind through the stages of life. These rites had a social context where the entire community participated and acknowledged the shifts and new roles in the community for the newly initiated. Inwardly, the initiate experienced a profound and permanent change, a recasting of self. No one in the community was exempt from rites of passage. What is left in the modern world are mere vestiges of these rites, watered down and nearly meaningless, in the form of sacraments in our various religious institutions. Jung realized that the collective unconscious inside all of us had become the home of these necessary rites of passage and, when activated, provide an experience so powerful that we can’t help but be changed by them. This is why the rational mind fears the night and sleep, where conscious control can be usurped by the powers of the deep; yet this is the healing power of the instinctual psyche, which, if held back, results in psychic disequilibrium and unpreparedness for the unfolding journey of life.

In truth, the loss of the collective rites of passage leaves the vast majority of people emotionally unprepared for adulthood, especially since a living relationship with the unconscious has been subsumed by a modern scientific focus on brain chemistry as the solution to psychic disturbance. In the absence of genuine transformative experiences, we move into adult roles faking maturity and preparedness or dallying in a prolonged adolescence of lawlessness, irresponsibility, and addiction. Ironically, my client’s son has been participating in the SHOCK program, a program within the prison system where participants are ushered into adulthood along the lines of an ancient rite of passage. Participants are taken out of society and forced to submit to an arduous period of suffering where they are subjected to the whims and irrationalities of those in control. There are no mommy and daddy protectorates, and life is not fair. If you are to succeed, you must die to your infantile fixations and become an adult, prepared to take responsibility for self in the real world.

Amazingly, as my client now reads her son’s letters, she sees a maturing man behind his words. He is no longer her eight year old boy. She has released him and he has released his dependence upon her. In the truest sense, he is completing the “graduate school of life” and despite the fact that he will be saddled with a mark on his record, much like a scarlet letter, it pales in comparison to his solid maturity, hard won, as he is fully capable of taking on the challenges of adult life. This “degree” is far more valuable, in my judgment, than a graduate degree from Harvard in the hands of an immature, uninitiated personality. Of course there are no guarantees of success in life, but if I was a betting man, I’d put my money on him.

We must all go through our own SHOCK program. Unfortunately, there are far too few societal institutions capable of providing the necessary rites of passage. However, as my client’s experience demonstrates, the collective unconscious will come forth and perform the necessary rites. However, the prerequisites for a successful transformation are often a long period of suffering, including many groundhog day experiences, as well as a softening of ego control, as ego often alienates or devalues the deeper instinctual psyche. This experience of my client’s was well prepared for, and thus was transformative. I ask that we all energetically congratulate her!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck