Tag Archives: Yang

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Turning Point

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No Pipeline!

On Sunday, The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project that threatened the sanctity of life on Roberts Mountain, was cancelled by its sponsoring companies. The impact of the coronavirus creating a world energy glut laid bare the truth that the cost of fracking and transporting natural gas via the pipeline was a financial absurdity. Even the recent Supreme Court decision to remove all regulatory roadblocks to the pipeline could not justify this 8 billion dollar project to its investors.

In our joy, Jan and I clearly realized that the world is now in the time of the Turning Point, hexagram number 24 in the I Ching. The corporate  decision was announced between thunderstorms. The Turning Point is composed of thunder beneath the Earth. Five Yin lines rest upon a Yang line at the bottom of the hexagram. The energy of new life is stirring in the Earth, and the heart. The Turning Point is the first substantial sign of long-awaited change; may it be handled with care. Here are the I Ching’s cautionary guidelines, interpreted from and with my personal insights:

Nine in the first place: To stray from the truth of the heart in small digressions is natural, however, be sure to turn around before a habit is formed. If one is enlightened of one’s illusion, shift position and embrace the truth. No shame is attached to abandoning that which does not serve the high Soul or the common good.

Six in the second place: Here the ego is encouraged to quietly subordinate itself to the truth of the heart, the intent of the high Soul. “Quiet”, writes Aurobindo (Powers Within, p. 120), “is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance.” Ego is deeply calm when it acts upon its true vocation, the intent of its high Soul. Meditative practice that masters the automatic reactions of the autonomic nervous system can support this relationship.

Six in the third place: Here we encounter the Sisyphus of constantly doing that which I would not. These are the reversals of good resolutions brought on by the desire body’s influence upon a receptive ego. Ultimately, this is not a disaster; one simply will have to do it over again until one gets it right.

Six in the fourth place: Stay connected to your inner truth. We are surrounded by contrary views and the opinions of others. The power of true connection with one’s high Soul is the only friend one will ever need. There is no need to prove anything to anyone, proof rests in the knowing heart.

Six in the fifth place: Assume responsibility for manifesting your high Soul’s intent for your life. This requires deep self examination and honesty on the part of the ego. Admitting and relinquishing one’s attachment to illusions frees tremendous energy for one’s true mission, the intent of the high Soul.

Six at the top: Beware of blind obstinacy, it leads to misfortune. Refusal to answer the call of the high Soul ensnares one in an ever-deepening rift from right action; a slippery slope into the abyss. Mortality has its limits.

In summary, the time of the Turning Point is most auspicious. The underlying burst of energy to initiate change has arrived. However, as the guidance emphasizes, much effort in shaping needed change rests in the hands of the ego, which must first and foremost wrestle with its humanness.

Humanness is often governed by the inherent archetypes, the ruling parents. We are all children of those archetypes, charged with transcending their governance through arriving at right action, rooted in the truth of the heart center.

Nature is providing us with the thunder, let’s use it wisely.

At the Turning Point,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Limiting Limiting Beliefs

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Beliefs originate in the mind. The mind is the outermost wrapping of the spiritual plane in human beings. In Hindu science the spiritual plane has many increasingly subtle dimensions or sheaths.

We all agree that the sun rises every morning, but what else are we missing…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Using the Hindu analogy, we can compare the familiar mind that we call the ego to a rocket booster of a spaceship, which propels the spaceship, but as it rises higher in the atmosphere sheds itself of the outer layers or sheaths surrounding its core. Hence, when we depart from this world at death, on our definitive journey into infinity, we will shed the outer wrapping, the ego mind we operated with in this world, and open to the more subtle, spiritual dimensions at our core. At this point we will become fully energetic beings, no longer sporting the outer casings of the human form. This is the energetic body from which Jeanne communicates her wisdom to Jan in daily Soulbytes.

The ego and higher levels of spiritual agency represent the Yang or  thought dimension of human existence. The body and all material manifestations in the world represent the Yin or material dimension of human existence.

Ideas, thoughts, beliefs, or intents are all non-substantial possibilities issuing from the spiritual dimension that require physical substance to become what we might call real, substantial, or manifested. Thus, spirit Yang lacking union with material Yin is simply a hot air possibility lacking substance.

Limitations are the necessary boundaries that birth a spirit into substantial reality. Thus, if I have an image in my mind it exists only as a spirit entity, a potential lacking substance. If I then draw and color the idea on paper, my spirit and physical selves have united to create a definite impression. Yang and Yin are conjoined in the process of creative manifestation.

For a Yang impulse to become real it must accept the limiting containment of physical reality. Without limits we don’t exist in a substantial, time and space, way. An idea lacking written or verbal expression is just a roaming, floating thought, a seed seeking earth to germinate in and become real.

Limiting beliefs are the basic building blocks of our world. If we did not collectively agree to believe similar things we could not manifest such a cohesive reality, i.e., the world as we know it. From a shamanic perspective all worlds are consensus realities. Consensus, meaning shared beliefs, is the intent that congeals matter into a specific world.

By exercising the shamanic technology of intent we can shift the world we live in, literally, into a new consensus reality or, put differently, into a whole new world. However, that new world also requires a new set of limiting beliefs to achieve the consistency necessary to become a substantial reality.

If I pick up my metal spoon and it suddenly bends in half my belief in the solidity of the world may be greatly assaulted, sending me into quite a spin. Fortunately, the very powerful belief that the world is rational might quickly reassert itself, providing probable explanations for the bent spoon that can then shore up the shaky assault to my sanity!

Of course, as much as we enjoy the calmness of a predictable world, well-constructed by limiting beliefs, the downside of limitation is limitation. Many more options of experience and manifestation may be available to us that might much more fully allow us to experience both our spiritual and material potential; things that we simply can’t access, as the guardians of our sanity that maintain the consistency of the world as we have known it vigorously encourage us not to stray beyond the boundaries of our limiting beliefs.

It really is a profound consideration to stray beyond the boundaries of rationality, which is currently (though greatly challenged by world events this past year) the major building block of human stability. In general, mental health has been predicated upon the security of a predictable world constructed by agreed upon limiting beliefs. Nonetheless, often at the spirit’s insistence to open to possibilities beyond the known, or as a matter of material necessity, we are compelled to take new spiritual/physical adventures beyond the known dimensions into the deeper interior of our fuller selves.

In fact, one thing is clear about the present state of reality in the world: the limiting beliefs that have defined the world at the highest levels are currently crumbling in full public view. Rather than calming and solidifying the basic tenets of our consensus reality, our leaders function like tricksters shifting gears with pure abandon.

The deeper reason for this dissolution is that our world is in the midst of major transformation. Fear not the transitory extreme new worlds we are confronted with daily; they are untenable as they do not support the deepest needs of our world as it undergoes its very deep and necessary transformation.

We are being pushed into a world that opens us up to our greater energetic potential, a world which greatly expands the limiting beliefs that have so long defined what we believe and experience as reality. This new world of greater entrée into our energetic potential  frees us from the limiting beliefs of fixation on materialism as the source for fulfillment. The technology of that limiting belief has clearly exhausted the planet and, despite its current escalation, has little future.

The  new technology of a metaphysical world, a world of energy beyond strict rationality, utilizes psychic powers, intent, inter-dimensional exploration and the experience of love as its guiding limiting beliefs. This is a far more stable and exciting consensus reality in the making. That is the New Frontier we are privileged to participate in beyond the boredom, frustration, depression, and hardship of this tumultuous time of transition.

The limits of that New Frontier are the kind of limiting beliefs I can sign up for!!!

To our greater energetic potential,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Sexual Abuse and The New New Deal

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What’s missing? Relatedness!
-Art by Jan Ketchel

Poised as we are for the juggernaut of The New New Deal we are simultaneously treated to the greatest exposure of aberrant male sexual behavior the world has ever known.

The New Deal was really Eleanor Roosevelt’s baby, the caring, warmly related mother who insured the health and well being of her progeny. The New New Deal is the return of Kronos, Zeus’s father, who ate all his offspring, except Zeus, to insure his unimpeded rule.

The seeming contradiction of these synchronistic events, the rise of divisive egotism and the downfall of the abuser, deserves careful scrutiny. What both events share in common is the absence of  relatedness.

Human relatedness is born of the feminine in both women and men. The feminine underscores the interconnectedness of all life: wholeness. The feminine is eros, the glue that congeals a relationship, a family, a nation, a world.

In its purest form the masculine is pneuma, the imperceptible breath of wind that shows its effect by breaking up clusters of coagulated debris upon a lake, for instance, home to ecosystems in transition. In this image the masculine can be seen as aggressive, though I think more accurately as active. In its purest form the masculine is the active principle, yang, that spreads its seed far and wide creating ever new permutations of life.

This dispersion, however gentle the breeze may be, is destructive to what is. The dismantling of the social welfare caring state marks a radical breakdown of the inclusiveness and maternal supports that have served as the governing principles of the world for many decades.

The takedown of sexually abusive male icons and idols is its own dismantling of the status quo, largely fueled by the active yang energy in women. All are being emboldened by the bright light of consciousness to shine the light on hidden truths that have allowed an unrelated sexual instinct, housed in the dark recesses of the human shadow, to dominate with impunity.

What is currently lacking in both The New New Deal and our modern inquisition into abuse is the feminine principle of yin, relatedness. Perhaps it was time for a world restructuring. Perhaps care for all was becoming too inclusive, but clearly a push to completely shift resource into the hands of the least in need is missing something essential.

Similarly, to destroy careers without trial, to lump all male sexual behavior into the same category is lacking in a feminine relatedness that can feel its way to the differentiated truths in these many abusive vignettes revealed daily.

The truth is that any sexual contact that is not related, meaning not mutually agreed upon and desired by each person, is an abuse of human power.  A purely instinctual sexual encounter that lacks any real human connection, if  mutually agreed upon, is not abuse. However, the quality of such an unrelated encounter is not fully human, as it lacks the inclusion of the highest human potential, the ability to love. Sex without love is not related. The deepest human challenge is to reconcile animal and spirit in true union.

As we move forward from the disintegrative stage of our current world transformation we do well to realize that both action and connection are the yang and yin of our world. All new deals, wherever they may lead, require an equal participation and inclusion of both masculine and feminine principles.

Sexual abuse, as well as the New New Deal, reflects a preponderance of yang and a paucity of yin. Structures that lack balance will have limited life.

May we find our way to love,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Yin & The Right Yang

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Yin, poised for the right Yang... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Yin, poised for the right Yang…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Yin is primal, magnetic energy. Yin is earth that awaits impregnation, the primal plan that ignites creation of all life. Once yin receives its yang, it manifests all physical life. Yin is the total stuff, the material of creation. Yang provides the blueprint, the idea, the spirit. Yin brings it to life.

In truth, yin does most of the work. But we are beings in bodies; material life is the essence of this incarnation. The mind—ego, consciousness, spirit—is inextricably yoked to its yin. No action can happen without an intention. The question is, from what yang does yin find its mate? Whose thought, whose knowing is directing the show?

Yin is the egg that needs to be ignited to move into life. Yin is a bundle of energy, but without its yang it remains inert, potential energy awaiting its cause. In this magnetic state of deep longing, yin is vulnerable to becoming entranced by yang with all its spirit sparks. Yin can become bedazzled by the thoughts and ideas of may different yangs.

For instance: I rest, I’m unmotivated, undirected. Thoughts come: “You should be productive.” “You should read.” “No,” says another idea, “you must rest, it’s the day of rest.” Still another states: “You deserve a nice comfort food.” Thought offerings abound.

Perhaps I’ll give up the inner struggle and magnetically draw guidance of another. “You tell me how to find meaning in this day.” Or better yet, “You become the meaning of my day.” Let us enjoy the day as a unit, having the unit fill in the meaning of life.

Inner work, inner wholeness actually require self-impregnation, that is, fertilizing our actions with the spirit of our deepest selves. In practical terms this means all actions emanating to fulfill our deepest truths. And there is no program for this. All programs are prepackaged yangs, not the yang that springs uniquely to meet the truth of the present moment.

And perhaps the deepest truth might actually be to eat the comfort food in this moment. There are no rules greater than the truth in this moment. Only the purest of yang can provide that truth, so yin must be discerning, foregoing trance, foregoing false prophets, waiting with patience for the right yang to spring with certainty from the knowing of the heart.

For yin, merging with knowing of the heart is divine union with its one true yang.

Chuck