Tag Archives: wholeness

A Day in a Life: In The Circle

Tao is everywhere, in everything... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Tao is everywhere, in everything…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Tao is circular. Tao is wholeness. Tao is returning always to Tao. But Tao is also instinctual, knowing when to leave the circle, when to step outside the self and interact in the world. Nature is Tao, but nature is sometimes violent, yet it is still Tao. In Tao, in nature, everything returns to balance and harmony after the necessary aggressive deed is done.

To be in the Tao is to learn to flow, but also to be alert. If we were hermits, living in a cave far from others, our daily lives would be quite different from the lives of people living in a busy metropolis. But even so, we would have to remain alert to what was going on around us. We would have to be in harmony with nature. Our existence would be dependent upon and pretty much ruled by our environment, yet we might not have to ever be aggressive in the way that worldly people often have to be aggressive.

Sometimes, Chuck and I have what we call “monastery days.” On such days, we stay calm. We stay in our house, on our property, or perhaps we take a quiet walk around the neighborhood. We eat simply. We meditate, read, and go inward. We stay in the Tao. We use such days to contrast the busyness of life, giving ourselves respite, as we sit at the center of the circle of Tao.

I used to be a runner. Not only did I run for exercise, but I tended to run all the time; up the stairs, down the stairs, to my car, from my car. I’d do everything at a fast pace, trotting along. I had a lot of energy, but I was also running from a lot of stuff back then too. Now I don’t do that as much. Sometimes when we walk, Chuck will put his hand on my arm. I know this means “slow down.” And then I notice that I was going too fast, right out of the Tao of the day, out of the Tao of us.

When I walk alone, I tend to walk faster than we do as a couple, but I know this is okay. When I am alone, I’m in my own Tao and it’s different from the Tao of Chuck and Jan as a couple. But being a couple means being flexible, not being overpowering or overpowered, but finding what works between the opposites, the middle ground—a great opportunity to practice what it means to be in Tao! It can be a struggle, but in the give and take of relationship one learns the lessons of give and take in all relationships, whether they are inner or outer.

Sometimes, as a couple, we are very calm and sometimes we are not. Sometimes, as a solo journeyer, I am very calm too, but I usually try to flow with where I am. I’ve worked hard to be aware of the energy around me, to read it and be in it. As I ask myself to be in the Tao of the day, I go within and check on where I am. I feel my own Tao and try to align it with the outer Tao, try to stay in synch. It can be another challenge, but it’s also another lesson in relationship, relationship to the world, other, and to self. Sometimes it’s appropriate to be in the calm Tao, sometimes it can get you in trouble if the Tao around you is moving at a hearty pace.

We can’t really separate ourselves. Even on our monastery days, Chuck and I know that we might be interrupted. It’s rare that we do not have something outside needing us, but we allow and flow with what comes. Our circle is sacred, but there is compassion and understanding in that circle, there is awareness of other, of world. To be in Tao is to be appropriate at all times.

The Tao of Me Sweater designed by me, knitted by Fanny on her machine, circa 1977 - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The Tao of Me
Sweater designed by me, knitted by Fanny on her machine, circa 1977
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Back in my twenties, I had a friend in Sweden who bought a knitting machine. It was a long contraption that she could string four different colors of yarn into and knit with. She made mittens, hats, scarves and sweaters and sold them at various boutiques and outdoor markets. Even though she knitted on a machine—cutting knitting time down to a minimum, considerably upping her production—her goods still had a handmade quality to them. She loved to knit by hand, but she needed to make a living, and so she chose to go outside of her normal world and become a little more commercial. It required an aggressive move on her part, but it worked. She ended up with a very successful business.

We shared a large studio together with five other artists of various skill sets, artisans, performers, and illustrators and painters alike, all of us doing our thing, commercial or otherwise. We existed for several years quite harmoniously in a bustling environment, all of us successful. It was very Tao. The energy of the time, of the people, of the place we inhabited all came together in alignment. But the perfect Tao of that time came to an end. At the same time that I decided to return to America, the lease was up. The landlord wanted the space for himself. Other people in the group had other opportunities coming in, offers to move on too. The knitter became a massage therapist. The signs were there that we could not hold together anymore.

That too is being in the Tao, knowing when it is time to disassemble, time to shift, time to move on, time to move deeper into the circle of self, or deeper into the Tao of the outer world. Tao is knowing when it is time to let go and then following through and actually letting go. Tao is never stagnant.

When we are young, the outer world is our learning environment. We must leave our secure world of family, our dependent childhood and the comforts of the known, and go into the outer Tao. We must experience the wholeness of Tao if we are to become whole ourselves. We must walk hand in hand with others and discover what it means to give and to take, in all the many different situations and relationships that we encounter as we go through life.

Even in our traumatic experiences we are learning something important about life and Tao. If Tao is everything then Tao is sadness, violence, hatred, anger, abuse, pettiness, ignorance, and meanness too. If we are to return to the circle of Tao from which we all come, we must bring our recapitulated, fully assimilated experiences with us, for they are part of our wholeness and they too belong in our Tao of Self. Tao of Self means having no secrets, every part acceptable.

As we go inward, our experiences of having been outward are our greatest guides. If we do not know what we carry in our “inner” world then we will never be in Tao. Likewise, if we do not know the “outer” world and how it works we will never be in Tao either. Our first job is to prepare ourselves for life, secondly to live fully in the Tao of who we are in the world, and thirdly to bring all of our experiences inward, creating a whole self. Then we are ready to sit in the center of the circle of Tao. Then, like the hermit in his cave, our relationship to Tao will be harmonious with nature, because we have fully understood it.

The I Ching offers us guidance in how to live in the Tao...
The I Ching offers us guidance in how to live in the Tao…

As we do our inner work and gradually allow ourselves to evolve, we enter into the wholeness of ever-evolving Tao, into the nature of all things in balance but in constant flux as well. If we can learn to be flexible—as Chuck asks me to be whenever he silently puts his hand on my arm, signaling that I am not in “our” Tao—we soon find that it’s easier to be flexible all the time. Tao is flexibility.

Tao is everything, and so we are always in it. But it’s up to each of us to become consciously aware of it, of how we are in relationship to it, to other, to our work, to our dreams. Our dreams are already there, waiting in the circle of Tao for us to find them.

Greetings from the Tao of me,
Jan

Chuck’s Place: Hero & Hydra

Hydra..guarding the gate... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Hydra..guarding the gate…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In Greek mythology the Hydra is a nine-headed serpent that guards the entrance to the Underworld beneath Lake Lerna. In modern terms, the Underworld is the deep unconscious psyche, home of the powerful energies that fund our lives with the “rapture of being alive in our bodies.” *

As the myth goes, it took the hero Hercules to slay the Hydra and gain access to the magical, mystical, and awesome energies of the Underworld. In our own lives, we too must access our Hero selves in order to slay the worthy opponent that ferociously guards the gateway to our own magical inner treasures.

Ironically, the Hero and the Hydra are fraternal twins, two sides of the same being, the being of our Ego self. The Ego self was birthed at the moment of decision to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, as another myth portrays it, which led to expulsion from the Garden, the garden of blissful wholeness with nature. Like all children, the Ego, with consciousness and autonomy, must leave the womb of unconscious wholeness and go out and establish itself in the world, separate and distinct from the wholeness of its unconscious origin. To accomplish this, the Ego must break ranks with its deep unconscious nature and become a rational, controlled being, while simultaneously installing the Hydra with all its deadly defenses—projection, denial, repression, resistance, etc.—to defend it from the energies and controls of nature’s instincts.

The Hydra is the greedy, sensually-driven part of the Ego self, the child in us who wants it all. The Hydra is also the power-driven competitor in us who thrives on attention. The Hydra is the frightened child in us who shuns life in self-hate and self-pity. The Hydra is the stoic in us who denies our needs. The Hydra is the defender in us, the repressor, suppressor, who guards the gate to the Underworld and shields us from the truths of our recapitulations, keeping them safely stored just beyond the door to the Underworld. The Hydra is neither good nor bad. It’s the house we’ve constructed to manage our lives. We all need defenses to stem the tidal waves of fear, abandonment, dissolution, and all manner of traumatic events.

Once the Ego has gained a foothold in the world, it desperately seeks its wholeness, that is, access to the deep energies that inspire and electrify life in human form. At this point, the Ego twins are pitted against each other. The Hero seeks to win individuation, that is, union with its alienated, deeper self, in fact, also with the Hydra. This is the moment when the Hero must go to battle, slaying through to everything that has been stored away beyond the entryway to the unconscious, safely protected from memory by the ferocious Hydra. The Hero must face and subdue the Hydra on its journey to adulthood, for its wholeness requires knowing and unification with all the truths of life, as well as the truths of the primal energies that flow just beyond the entryway to the Underworld, in the darkness of the mythological Lake Lerner.

Two-Headed Hydra in the clouds... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Two-Headed Hydra in the clouds…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The Hydra, in its stead, has the task of testing the worthiness of the Hero, proving the Hero’s readiness to undertake the journey into the Underworld and reunite with the powerful energies in the darkness below. The Hero may initiate the journey by undertaking therapy, recapitulation, or some form of initiation or night sea journey into the unknown.

The Hydra is a mighty opponent, a worthy guardian at the door of the deeper self, throwing all the sensual delights at the Hero—food, drink, diet, pleasure, denial of pleasure, etc.—to waylay the journey. If one head is cut off, two heads appear in its stead. In this manner, the Hydra presents distractions, projections, crises, and must dos to snarl and challenge the Hero’s intent—entitlements, resentments, sleepiness, and sloth—in cycles of groundhog days that deplete the Hero’s energy and defeat the Hero’s resolve to complete the journey.

Only if the Hero succeeds in defeating all the Hydra’s heads will the Hydra grant access through the gate, to a Hero proven worthy of feeling the full impact of stored traumas and the numinous reward of the energies of the deeper self. Only with the defeat of the Hydra is the Hero truly ready to join with its wholeness, truly ready to funnel the deepest of energies into rapturous life.

And so, ultimately, these fraternal ego twins—Hero and Hydra—must become necessary partners in our quest for wholeness. May we honor them both for the roles they play in serving to launch us into fulfillment.

On the battlefield,
Chuck

* Quote from Joseph Campbell.

Chuck’s Place: You Are Your Wholeness

A moment of bliss... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
A moment of bliss…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

“What we’re really seeking is…the rapture of being alive in our bodies…” -Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth *

This quote comes from the man who said, “Follow your bliss.” He directs us to the essence of our human pursuit, to experience energetic vibrance and conscious awareness in our physical bodies. That feeling state of bliss is composed of physical sensation, emotion, and cognition.

This is an in-person experience, the full realization of aliveness in physical form, though it might be experienced in consort with another.

I recently encountered a provocative poem by Sharon Olds that captures the essence of this state of unprojected bliss, in other words, the state in which one takes full ownership of his or her own internal human experience.

Here is the poem, Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds:

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health—just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time
.

Though unstated, this poem, for me, points to the highest love: love without illusion, full embracement and celebration of life within the confines of the self. Of course, our humanness requires that we partake of the sensuous other, that we find deep connection and sharing, reveling and revealing, in another. But at the deepest level we must respect the truth of the separateness of all others, and take up the full realization of our own individual being while in our human form.

The kissing tree... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The kissing tree…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

This experience of exhilaration in aliveness leads ultimately to feelings of calmness and contentedness, in concert with the awe of aliveness as it pulses through our veins and warms our hearts. This full experience of aliveness is our wholeness that so frequently gets projected outwardly—in being with, having or loving another. This is the trickster nature of our world. It’s really a world of projection where our missingness is reflected all around us, outside of us. How can we help but be compulsively drawn to consume our projected wholeness in some form?!

And pursue we must! It’s imperative that we fully experience our wholeness! But once we’ve burned through the disappointments of unrequited illusive wholeness projections, we are freed to fully embrace our untethered energetic wholeness within ourselves. At first, we might experience this in short spurts, while taking a brief walk in nature or in an encounter with the moon where the euphoria of aliveness waxes through our beings—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

At some point, we might discover the exhilaration of our aliveness in attenuated calm, in every moment, in every encounter—complete wholeness achieved. Ironically, that wholeness in self is, in fact, the most loving interconnected experience with all—no boundaries to love or self.

Intending aliveness,
Chuck

* This quote opened and closed a weekend workshop that I attended with Robert Miller on addiction and feeling states. This blog is, in part, inspired by his message that addiction is our seeking of the rapture of being alive in our bodies. I am in gratitude to him for his work.

A Day in a Life: Evolving Recapitulation

I really am in the final throes of editing my next book in The Recapitulation Diaries series: The Edge of the Abyss. For this week’s blog I post another excerpt, as I am conserving my time for editing. As the recapitulation proceeded I constantly discovered just how my inner process was leading me to learn what I needed to learn about myself. Guided by the intent of the process of recapitulation itself—its intent set long ago by the Shamans of Ancient Mexico—I was swept up in that intent, for better or worse, married to it. Though I often felt that I had married a monster, at other times I knew I had married a prince. In the end I discovered that I had been married to myself all along—if that makes any sense! I don’t believe this excerpt needs the same kind of warning as some of the others that I’ve posted. It’s really just about gaining valuable insight about the journey of life and moving forward with renewed intent.

"Look what I bring!" my child self says... Bottle art by Haldis. Photo by Jan Ketchel
“Look what I bring!” my child self says… Bottle art by Haldis. Photo by Jan Ketchel

From February 6, 2003: My son, sick with the flu and a 103° temperature, sleeps in today. I get my daughter off to school and contemplate what I woke up thinking about earlier this morning: shame, and the child inside me who continues to carry it around like a heavy boulder. I’m pretty sure the adult self let it go a long time ago, but the child self sneaks into the adult world at times still bearing this heavy burden. She plunks it down in front of me and says: “See! It’s still here.”

As I peer at this big boulder of shame that she drags around, I suddenly experience complete separateness from this child self, and with utter clarity I understand that she is the one who so tightly rolls into that fetal position every night. Clutching all the pain and shame, she’s still very much alive, residing somewhere deep inside me, while I—the adult—have gone on into life. I’ve grown up and done a lot of adult things, distancing myself from her as much as possible in order to do so. Now, I clearly understand that I went on so I could one day return to this moment, so that I could one day be in the position I’m in right now, intent upon rescuing the child self still inside me and, in so doing, rescue myself.

Until today, I’ve had such a difficult time seeing and believing myself to actually be more than one being, fearful of what it might mean about me, perhaps that I’m crazier than I thought. But only in acknowledging that I am many beings simultaneously will I be able to embrace the crystal clear insight that right now, in this moment, hits me: fragmentation is a valuable skill!

In one aspect of fragmentation, my fully present adult self is able to step outside the memories and from her perspective carefully and sensitively guide my child self. I see this as an evolving aspect of the recapitulation. I realize that in so doing I’m finally able to reciprocate what my child self once so protectively did, as she fragmented, repressing the memories in the process, so I could grow up. I’ve simply not been in a position to fully embrace this insight until now, but it’s very clear that fragmentation is an important tool that has a valid place in the healing process.

"I can do this now," my adult self says... Photo and painted bottle art by Jan Ketchel
“I can do this now,” my adult self says… Photo and painted bottle art by Jan Ketchel

As I continue to hone the use of this skill, I imagine that all of my parts will eventually merge. As my adult self joins forces with my fragmented child selves—my sixteen little girl selves—and grants them each an opportunity to express themselves, they will no longer be alienated parts, separate from the whole. Once each part has told her tale and been fully acknowledged for both her pain and her bravery, another part will link into this healing process, another part offered the way home. Clarity and wholeness will eventually come, as new ideas and new perceptions about life in general and the past in particular are accepted and assimilated too.

It’s really the job of the adult self now to make all this happen, to introduce the guidelines, for only she has the wherewithal and the stamina to take on this monumental task. It’s what I’ve been preparing for. She must nurture and prepare each of the fragmented selves now too, make them welcome, and fully assimilate them into the inner circle of the new self. It can’t happen without a strong adult presence, a loving, respectful, and compassionate self. That kind of maturity is key to this whole process.

Thanks for reading!
Jan

Chuck’s Place: Spiritus Contra Spiritum

Compelled to seek the numinous…

We are beings compelled to experience our wholeness. It’s intriguing to me how the shaman’s world, the Christian world, and the world in general covet substance—spirits—as the vehicle to parting the veils to divine wholeness. Substances are trickster spirits who would just as soon consume our life energy as let us pass through those veils. The history of AA captures the modern dance with spirits, the struggle with the ravages of spirit, and the eventual solution to lifting those elusive veils, revealing a possible path to wholeness.

Like an orphaned son seeking connection with his long lost biological father, Bill W. wrote to Carl Jung in 1961 to acknowledge him for his seminal role in the conception of AA. The crux of Jung’s input had been his suggestion in the 1930s to his alcoholic patient, Rowland H., that he seek a spiritual cure for his alcoholism.

Rowland H. took Jung’s advice to heart and went out and had a religious experience in an evangelical movement that was sweeping Europe at the time, which released him from the compulsion to drink. Rowland H’s experience was transmitted to Bill W., who at a very low point in his own active alcoholism, cried out to God in desperation and surrender.

“Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light,” he wrote in Pass It On. “I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. Every joy I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy—I was conscious of nothing else for a time.”

“Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain,” he goes on. “I stood upon its summit, where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clean strength, it blew right through me. Then came the blazing thought ‘You are a free man.’ I know not at all how long I remained in this state, but finally the light and the ecstasy subsided. I again saw the wall of my room. As I became more quiet, a great peace stole over me, and this was accompanied by a sensation difficult to describe. I became acutely conscious of a Presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.’ “

Bill W. never took another drink, and AA was born.

Consumed by the ravages…

Jung replied to Bill W’s letter in 1961, shortly before he died. Speaking of Rowland H., in the letter transcribed into Pass It On, Jung states: “His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.”

“How could one formulate such an insight in a language that is not misunderstood in our days?” Jung continued.

Jung knew that the medieval language around God had lost its value to serve the spiritual needs of modern humanity. Jung himself had experienced a profound vision in 1887 at the age of twelve.

“I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky,” he writes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. “God sits on His golden throne, high above the world—and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder.”

Jung had come from a long line of Protestant preachers, but found himself utterly bored when his father was teaching him the catechism in preparation for his Confirmation.

In Volume 9, Part 1 of his Collected Works, Jung writes: “The catechism bored me unspeakably. One day I was turning over the pages of my little book, in the hope of finding something interesting, when my eye fell on the paragraphs about the Trinity. This interested me at once, and I waited impatiently for the lessons to get to that section. But when the longed-for lesson arrived, my father said: “We’ll skip this bit; I can’t make head or tail of it myself.” With that my last hope was laid in the grave. I admired my father’s honesty, but this did not alter the fact that from then on all talk of religion bored me to death.”

“Our intellect,” he continued, “has achieved the most tremendous things, but in the meantime our spiritual dwelling has fallen into disrepair.”

By the time Jung treated Rowland H., he had already taken his own numinous, spiritual journey into a living encounter with the collective unconscious, which he’d documented in his journals, recently published as the Red Book. Through his own experiences, Jung discovered that true healing could only be achieved through a deep, living encounter—a numinous experience—within the depths of the self, the God within/without.

A new means of experience…

Jung ended his letter to Bill W. by pointing out that, “Alcohol in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.”

Alcohol is a spirit, what the shamans would call an entity. Entities are spirits that serve as gateways to the spirit world. The Christian Mass offers wine as the gateway to an ecstatic union with God in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Don Juan used hallucinogenic drugs called Allies to enable Carlos Castaneda to discover his deepest potential beyond the safeguards of the rational mind. However, as Jung clearly understood, such spirit entities that offer access to the deeper self, to union with God in this manner, always exact a price—spiritum—literally, the ravages of the spirit. And that is at the heart of addiction, getting caught in the ravages of the spirit.

It’s obvious that Jung proposed seeking a new means of intoxication of the spirit over imbibing of intoxicating spirits, suggesting that only a true union with God—spirit—could defeat addiction. Carlos Castaneda similarly warned about using drugs, having had personal experiences of the price exacted by the Allies—spiritum, as Jung points out. Castaneda suggested recapitulation and dreaming as the gateways to infinity. Jung developed active imagination and individuation as similar pathways to wholeness. AA developed the Twelve Steps as the Tao of wholeness. Different paths, same dictum, spiritus contra spiritum.

In spirit,
Chuck