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Chuck’s Place: The Path to Heart

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Wherever your path to heart may lead…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Often, what is experienced as traumatic in the moment becomes the seed of great growth and liberation when viewed from a deeper perspective at a future time.

Maya, a central concept in Hindu cosmology, is considered illusion at the level of everyday life, as events in the moment veil the fuller picture beyond the container of space and time. Yet, at the fully transparent level of the highest spiritual plane, Maya radiates as ultimate truth. The key to accessing ultimate truth is to revisit experience from the fullest and deepest perspective.

Thus, everything that challenges us, no matter how terrifying or painful, ultimately has the potential to lead us into deeper truth as we trod upon our path to heart. However, to benefit from this gift we must allow ourselves to review what we have already lived, by viewing it with a ruthlessly open and conscious mind and heart.

In viewing from a different perspective, we can release the emotions that have protectively shielded us and view the deeper truth that lies beyond our limiting beliefs. With this, the protective chaff falls away, as we now have direct access to the seed of our fuller knowing and future possibility.

One great antagonist in 2020 is Covid-19. At the level of everyday human life, its impact upon the world has been devastating. As a world, we hope to neutralize its impact upon us, even as I write. Many lives have been lost at the physical level, and many livelihoods and life plans have been radically changed through the lethal invasion of this virus.

Beyond personal impact, however, is the interruption it is causing to the energetic flow of the planet. Travel is severely limited. Gatherings of humanity, even the smallest of nuclear families, are suspended in physical space and consigned to connection only at the vibrational level of virtual reality.

The next higher vibrational dimension of humanity, the soul level, operates via thought and feeling, in its energy body, independent of the physical body. Though the virtual reality experience during the pandemic has largely been dependent upon human technology, it has also challenged the physical human being to find mental and emotional connection in non-physical contact. This has been a tremendous crash course on spiritual contact beyond the human body.

Of course, we all crave physical contact, as we also exist in human form. However, we are being ushered, via virtual reality, into another dimension of our human potential. When this potential is more inwardly developed, via the discovery and practice of innate psychic powers—such as intuition, conscious dreaming, and telepathy—the door is opened to unlimited possibility for travel and connection beyond physical reality.

Within the physical dimension, the quality of connection is spiritually enhanced to include greater movement to the heart, in a deeper experience of abstract love; that is, love beyond strictly physical attachment. The legacy of Covid-19 has launched us forever into a greater world of energetic possibility to satisfy our deeper mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.

Donald Trump has certainly presented as both central protagonist or antagonist, depending upon your perspective, in 2020. In fact, as I write this blog, it remains unclear what is actually going to happen at the completion of his current term.

Regardless of one’s perspective, Donald Trump has championed the fact that reality is truly relative. He has shown us that it is consensus of agreement that actually generates a reality. What we believe is true is more powerful than objective reality.

This is most powerfully demonstrated via the placebo effect in scientific medical trials. Many a person has actually been cured of a disease because they wholeheartedly believed they were being administered the curing agent, even if it was actually a placebo sugar pill. Though medicine may dismiss the change as mere placebo, cure is cure! The power of belief can concretely transfigure physical reality.

The power of the subconscious to change our mental and physical conditions is the essence of hypnosis. What we tell ourselves, often via forgotten or unknown subconscious programs, is what we manifest.

Donald Trump, as master hypnotist, has demonstrated the power of repetitive speech to determine one’s belief system. The use of affirmations, mantra, prayer, and suggestion to shift belief and behavior is extremely powerful. The collective massing of such efforts, when attuned to the common good, can spiritually advance the planet.

Donald Trump has also embodied the ego at its me-first zenith, which is a reflection of the collective planetary ego of our time. Every individual human must face that the dominance of the ego within their own personality is their greatest resistance to desired spiritual growth.

On a planetary level, it is the collective human ego that puts the wants and desires of itself above the true needs of the whole planet, presenting the greatest blockade to needed planetary change. Donald Trump has impeccably embodied this attitude of resistance, reflecting humanity’s struggle with its own massive ego entrenchment.

For the planet to arrive at the heart center, the needed perspective for planetary survival, the ego must acquiesce to the needs of the greater planetary whole. It is inevitable that we will get there, but we don’t know how far planetary disruption will go before we arrive at the heart center consensus.

To arrive at the position of unconditional love for all that is, is where we are headed. Begin to practice it now in full unconditional love for self. To love every aspect of self, from lowest to highest, will end the need for projection of one’s personal evil upon other.

To love other as self is indeed the path to heart. May we all take giant steps upon it this coming year.

Love to all,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: My Inner Trump

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Our baldheaded cardinal going at it again!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

A doggedly persistent male cardinal smacks into our living room window throughout the day. The top of his head is bald and blue, like that of a turkey vulture, from his incessant headfirst crashes. We have noticed that this cardinal has a mate and we surmise he must be trying to fend off his perceived enemy reflected in the window, but the truth is that his enemy, unbeknownst to himself, is himself!

Our Soulbyte of Tuesday July 17, 2018 begins: “Pay attention. Become more fully aware of nature assisting you on your unfolding journey.” What is the guidance of this display of nature, of this seemingly crazy cardinal?

A bird is a spirit being. It flies like angels. The cardinal is named after the Cardinals of the Catholic Church in early Rome, adorned in their bright red robes and pointy red hats. Thus the cardinal is an earthly representative of a spirit being. Closer to home, the ego is the earthly representative of a spirit being. Consciousness, the hallmark of spirit, is born as the ego at the chakra center located at the solar plexus.

The solar plexus is the fire in the belly chakra, the home of personal power, where the ego discovers its ability to rise above the absolute control of nature’s primordial energies that command the lower chakras and choose its behavioral responses to the world. Nonetheless, choices are inevitably constricted by the narcissistic, self-referential cognitive and emotional limitations of the ego at this newly awakened youthful state of emergence.

Our cardinal reflects this narcissistic fixation. He cannot differentiate his enemy from himself. This results in a repetitive pattern of self-destructive behavior based on a distortedly applied archetypal instinct of defense. That distortion is a narcissistic reflection that won’t allow him a perspective beyond himself.

When Donald Trump asserts that American intelligence is the enemy, not Russia, he reflects the cardinal who sees his own reflection as the enemy. Trump unwittingly sees his own country as the enemy, which he subsequently incessantly verbally attacks, just as the cardinal incessantly attacks his own image reflected in our living room window. This is likely a developmental issue where ego is fixated on a narcissistic worldview.

The question is why this developmental stage is being so graphically mirrored upon the world stage at this point? What does it mean for all of us, as holographically we all share an inner Trump?

If we bring attention back to our friar, the baldheaded cardinal, attention is drawn to the redness of its firery spirituality. The cardinals of Catholicism, as well as the leaders of all spiritual traditions, have stood for a morality that rises above instinctual dominance. This is the equivalent of transcending the solar plexus and rising to the heart chakra with its more inclusive consideration of others.

The heart center can recognize and value life beyond itself. It can see truth and make decisions based on the overarching needs of the interdependent whole world. Our spiritual traditions stalk a higher chakra than we have actually developmentally reached. Obama stalked the heart center, which resulted in major inclusiveness of groups long rejected and cast out by society.

The truth is, however, that developmentally we truly have not reached the heart center perspective, and the Trump election avalanche was fueled by the collective narcissistic shadow which now unabashedly asks: “What about me, why do we have to care about everyone else?”

We are guided to take up this issue on an individual level. As our cardinal reflects, we must incessantly ask ourselves: “What repetitive self-destructive behaviors am I engaged in based on illusion? Who within me is in charge of my decision making? Am I properly including my deepest instinctual self in my decisions, or do I avoid the fire in the belly of emotion by blindly adhering to moral platitudes that defend me from the tensions within and without?”

The greatest individual contribution we can make in this time of fierce splitting apart is to face squarely our own inner Trumps. Clearly the planet beckons us to take up the challenge to reconcile our deepest instinctual selves with our highest spiritual values.

Suspend judgment. Take responsibility to know the self beyond illusion. Bear the burden of instinct and spirit. Find wholeness in the self. Let love join body and spirit, as well as neighbor to neighbor.

Facing my inner Trump,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Fit to Serve?

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A sorry state of affairs…
– Artwork by Jan Ketchel © 2018

As the current of collective thought-stream challenges the mental stability of the Commander-in-chief, I find myself questioning the greater significance of such a mythological character at the helm of our government at this moment of our evolution. I begin by suggesting that, regardless of political or ideological persuasion, we view the current predicament as a reflection or symbolic mirror of the relationship between the human spirit and its physical host, all matter of creation.

Spirit is the character that functions on the mental plane, the architect and creator of reality as it defines it. In the flow of everyday life, spirit is the mind, the internal dialogue, and the ego that direct the course of daily decision making.

Matter, in this definition, spans all of nature, including the human animal. In human terms, matter is the physical body with all its instinctual needs and wisdom. The wisdom of the body is expressed through the archetypes, our inherited knowledge of the properties of matter and the innate formulas of how to respond to life on earth.

Thus, the human being is actually a microcosm of this greater spirit/matter relationship as it contains both spirit and matter in one being. Spirit and matter are the yin and yang of this world, each critical building blocks of our existence. The balance and relationship between these two partners determines the state of overall health in our world.

Just as I was writing the above explanation a synchronistic event occurred that intimately expresses the relationship between spirit and matter, mind and body. My daughter (who for psychoanalytic discretion in agreeing to let me share this suggests I identify her as “Beyonce”) called in a frantic state, near panic. “I feel like I’m going to pass out!” she said.

We immediately guided her to calm breathing, shifting her away from the dark forecast issuing forth from her mind that sought to define her physical symptoms as lethal. As she stabilized we reviewed recent dietary decisions which, quite frankly, were remarkably healthy.

We went on to review the pace of recent events as she and her partner have been overwhelmed by customer demand for their recently launched business. In fact, it suddenly dawned on her that what had directly precipitated her acute sensation of “passing out” was a new customer call for service. She and her partner had determined the night before that they were simply too overwhelmed; they needed to say no to new business for awhile.

The customer’s call had stirred the dilemma: “Can I say no to new business?” The call had also stirred the archetypal wisdom of her body to deliver its answer to the request in no uncertain terms. As we reflected, we determined that her body—the matter part of her being—was giving its answer to the customer’s request directly, saying loudly and clearly: “I’m shutting down! Over and out!”

And yet, how many of us would really listen to such sage wisdom from body central? How many of us would secretly be rationalizing from the mental plane: “This is great, more business, more money, great success!” How long would it take to arrive at some dietary glitch to explain away the dizziness and persist with the current plan to meet all demand in the service of financial reward!

“Beyonce’s” dilemma reflects the dominance of spirit over matter that plagues the macrocosm of our world as reflected in the psychology of our Commander-in-chief. His psychology is marked by a supreme alienation of spirit from nature. The guiding principal, beyond its narcissistic wrappings, is the spirit of financial success at all costs, regardless of its impact on the physical body or Mother Nature, the physical body of the earth itself. And Mother Nature, as is increasingly evident, is responding with her feedback to this spirit imperative.

Fortunately, “Beyonce” took heed of the imbalance in her mind/body relationship and intends to change the course of business to bring greater harmony to her mind/body partnership. Unfortunately for our Commander-in-chief, he appears all the more driven to deepen his spirit intent: “More, more, more!!!”

Though “Beyonce” may be restored to fit-to-serve shape, she will likely be challenged again and again to go to the heart and ask the question: “What is the truly right decision?” The spirit at the helm of the mental plane at present is so focused on self and survival that it blots out the needs of the body, the needs of others, and the needs of Mother Earth, our ultimate home base for survival while in human form.

The mental status of our Commander-in-chief poses a grave riddle to all of us: “Who is responsible for the imbalance that has thrown our world into peril?” The silver lining to the true answer to this question is self-empowerment. We all have the power to elect the best Commander-in-chief within ourselves and in so doing change the world.

Intending to be fit to serve,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Video Poker

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About a month ago I was introduced to a book entitled Heaven is for Healing by Joseph Gallenberger, a clinical psychologist and trainer at The Monroe Institute. The book details his healing process, including OBEs and channelings, following the death of his brother, Peter, who committed suicide in Las Vegas in 1991.

Shadowland anyone?

Very familiar with the OBE work of pioneer out-of-body explorer Robert Monroe, founder of The Monroe Institute, and having used Hemi-sync products from the Institute for many years, I had nonetheless never come across Joseph Gallenberger.

I purchased his book and was fascinated by his experiences, which paralleled many of my own, particularly his OBE explorations and the channelings he’d received, messages delivered in a language style very similar to those Jan receives from Jeanne.

Jan became interested in him too and discovered that he’d written another book, Inner Vegas, where he describes using psychic abilities to win big in Las Vegas, often playing video poker. Jan’s inner imp bought that book, which set the stage for a reconsideration of our basic values and became the basis for a whole new adventure.

I’ve never allowed myself to invest in the Stock Market, despite a pretty keen intuition of where money can be made, because to do so would have forced me to be indifferent to the impact that demanding high profits has upon the earth. I also never wanted to have my attention monopolized by constant tracking of world events and their impact on the markets.

The notion, however, of video poker, where you test your skill against a machine, seems like a cleaner opportunity to open to abundance. Interesting proposition: you invest your skill and money; you might be very successful, you might lose, fair and square. No one is harmed or tricked in your attempt to win big!

A gambling experience is one I shunned all my life as well. It seemed like a foolish waste of money. However, after reading Joseph Gallenberger, plans quickly germinated to go to a casino to try our skills, something neither of us had ever done before.

Suddenly, Stephen Paddock, a multimillionaire, highly successful at video poker, massacred 58 people and injured hundreds of others from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel in Las Vegas. No motive has been ascertained.

On the surface his life circumstances, at age 64, would appear to be the flowering of the American Dream: successful in business, multimillionaire, freed to fully enjoy the luxury and pleasures of gambling at video poker, well known and well attended to in the top casinos.

How were Jan and I to understand the flow of synchronicities appearing in our lives around video poker just as we were about to set off on an adventure into casino land? Clearly this man, Stephen Paddock, had fully indulged in the opportunities of amassing abundance in the material plane. Why would he choose to end his life with such horrific carnage?

My speculation, as a psychotherapist, is that he misread an inner call to open up to his spirit. He had spent his whole life concentrated on the material plane to the total neglect of his spirit. I suspect, by way of compensation, that he harbored a psychotic voice that instructed him to kill off his materialistic, fun loving side. From his vantage point high above the casinos he likely projected his materialistic side onto a fun loving concert audience. From this “spirit” vantage point he killed off the material side of many, including himself.

Indeed, to open to the spiritual plane one must be willing to tame the material side of oneself. Unfortunately many suicides have resulted from a misreading of this inner command, which really says “time to kill off obsession with the material,” NOT “time to kill the physical self or others.”

Last week someone sent me an article entitled Jung and the Trumpian Shadow* by Alexander Blum. The gist of this essay pinpoints Trump as embodying America’s projected, disavowed shadow. This shadow part of the self is far more instinctual and conservative, focused on self needs and wants.

The American persona and spiritual ideal of altruistic values, progressive in its inclusiveness of all diversity and care for the deepest needs of the world, is countered by a hidden, self-centered preoccupation and entitlement that feels held back from speaking and living its true mind. Trump singlehandedly is living out this unacknowledged side of the American psyche. The real problem is the conflict of the evolved mind of modernity with its instinctual core. The tragedy in Las Vegas is an expression of the clash of these Titans.

In fact, if we could erase the bizarre behavior of that Sunday night in Las Vegas, many Americans would have seen Stephen Paddock as a shining example of their own unlived shadow side. To the contrary Stephen Paddock emerged as the darkest example of the shadow unleashed, wreaking utter destruction.

The dilemma we all must face is that if we don’t acknowledge, live out, and assume responsibility for our shadow/materialistic side, we will manifest people who will completely act it out for us, abusing with lethal power. On the other hand, we can open up to our deepest earthly impulses and with consciousness (spirit) and responsibility live a whole and fulfilled life.

With full knowledge of this backdrop of world events, Jan and I took it upon ourselves to have a conscious adventure in shadowland. Perhaps the imp will write about it sometime!

Play responsibly,

Chuck

*Read Jung and the Trumpian Shadow by Alexander Blum here

A Blog by Chuck Ketchel, LCSW-R

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Passion vs Reason

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Reason lacks passion, passion lacks reason. Reason issues from the light of consciousness. Passion hails from the many moods of the moon.

Reason at the center, like the brain, surrounded by passion…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The coolness of reason separates itself from the chaos and passion of nature. Reason seeks to create and impose order. Passion issues from the instincts of the body, from which it emotionally imposes its will.

Reason cuts off passion at the throat where rising emotions seek to overpower the brain, the home base of reason. We call this a tight or sore throat, psychologically it is dissociation.

Passion cuts off reason in the belly and the bowels, refusing to digest the will of reason. We experience this physically as indigestion and IBS, psychologically as anxiety.

Reason is associated with the brain, the engine of abstraction, the organ of our body least associated with nature and feeling. Reason is responsible for the creation of our technological world, as well as the order we create in civilization. Reason is considered our highest evolutionary achievement.

Passion, associated with instincts, imbues emotion with cascades of numinous energy. The delight of eating, the ecstasy of sex, the blood thirst of war, the agony and ecstasy of parenthood are all endowed with the passion of instinct.

For centuries reason has grown in power; frankly, to the point of god status. Reason is antithetical to belief and the irrational, to the unprovable, so that though modern humans might still affiliate with religious traditions outwardly, the individual and collective compass for life is still reason.

Within the individual the conflict between reason and passion results either in depression, where passion is lost, or compulsion, where passion overtakes reason’s restraints.

The conflict between passion and reason in our collective world is currently being expressed through the breakthrough of a passionate leader who creates fire and fury wherever he turns.

For many, this powerful emergence provides the relief and release of long suppressed passionate emotions. What has amazed the rest of the world is how unreasonable this passionate leader can be and yet be so dearly cherished by so many.

The real lesson here is how disastrous it is to neglect passionate instinct. Eventually it will break through, with a vengeance. And reason is no match for its wrathful coming to power, which can go so far as to bring us to the brink of destruction. Take note reason: Suppress passion and risk an orgy of destruction.

This is not a Trump diatribe. Trump embodies a pagan energy that invites and incites passionate expression. C. G. Jung identified a similar breakthrough into the collective German psyche in the 1930s as the restless wandering pagan god of storm and wind, Wotan, who unleashed the passion and frenzy responsible for the atrocities committed during World War II.

Though leaders must be held accountable for their actions, it is equally true that the latent readiness in the populace to respond to passionate incitement reflects a burgeoning readiness to erupt.

What is constellated in America is a resurgence of a suppressed passionate energy at war with reason. And reason still believes that logic trumps passion. Time and time again Trump teaches us how easy it is to dismiss reason, simply by calling it bad, so bad.

Without entering into the argument for the need for regime change, I cut to the real crux of the problem: the reconciliation of reason and passion.

The technology of Christianity that sought to control the passion of sexuality was compensated for by the overarching shadow of its disowned sexual instinct emerging in sexual abuse, which haunts many religious institutions. What is suppressed will find its way out somehow, often in a most exaggerated, destructive way.

The technology of reason that once governed our political process and national identity is succumbing to hair-trigger instinctual rule. Clearly we need a new technology of balance.

To contine to project badness outside of ourselves is an archaic technology certain to end in destruction. To impose the technology of reason over passion results in, and will continue to result in, a stalemate and an escalation of tensions. To simply bury statues is like burying the pagan gods—beware the revenge of Wotan.

As is my proclivity, I turn to the individual, as the hologram of the world, to truly solve the issue. Passions must be lived, somehow. If reason is to remain in charge of life, it must honor and live alongside its passionate partner, consciously allowing the irrational to renew its connection to nature. This is a task for every individual to solve within themselves, and within their relationships, if we are to achieve a new  balance in the world.

Passion hates limitation, but so does reason. Perhaps if reason can agree to limits, passion will comfortably acquiesce to limits too. Imagine these two opposites in harmony. Wouldn’t that be something?

If our country can come together and collectively enjoy reason and passion facing off in a solar eclipse, surely we can bear the tension of this standoff within ourselves and find our way to higher consciousness.

The old technology to go to war within and without to relieve the tension of reason vs. passion needn’t be our fallback solution. We are ready for new evolutionary possibilities. Explore them within the self, advance the world.

Reasonably passionate,

Chuck