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Chuck’s Place: Harmonizing The Group Soul Of Now

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Loving harmony in the group soul…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

I define the group soul of now to be the collective soul of all individual souls currently extant in human form on planet Earth. We are the brain center of the Earth, afforded the free will to impact greatly the fate of this planet.

Of course, Mother Nature, the subconscious powerhouse of our group soul, also has us experience the true karma of our decisions. Optimally, our collective will would harmonize with the greater good for all.

Currently, the group soul of our world is in a process of extreme  polarization. Conventional wisdom would have these opposing forces come together to reconcile differences in a process of communication, understanding and compromise.

However, such desired union is not yet prepared for, as the warring elements are convinced that success can only be obtained through the total conquest of opposition. For a harmonious union of opposites to occur at the level of the group soul, we must first discover and reconcile with the opposites within ourselves.

If we don’t know ourselves at the depths of our own inner opposites, we are sure to fall prey to the power of projection, where the problem of opposites is resolved through rejecting our neighbor, our projected, forsaken inner opposite.

Nonetheless, we can take advantage of discovering ourselves through the projections that so powerfully, emotionally seize us. For instance, I might notice myself angered at what I see as a highly manipulative, passive-aggressive move by another person. My anger, if I am paying attention, tells me immediately to look within.

As I do my mental inventory, I might discover my own ego power drive that does not like to lose. And with this insight, I shine a light upon the hologram of self, which reveals to me that in the as without of my projections is also the so within of my own psyche.

My ability to identify the true source of my anger, my own power drive, brings me into greater acceptance of my apparent opponent, as I can now see myself in the other. This does not resolve this inner opposition, but it does truly bring it home to roost.

Self acceptance of the unacceptable within makes it more acceptable to acknowledge that everything we are is the same in everyone else. Wisdom comes in knowing how to live those opposites, as in when and where it is best for them to be lived in our lives.

The more we are able to see ourselves in every attitude that comes at us the more we no longer need to be personally offended by the behaviors of others that we ourselves are quite capable of committing, if only in our fantasies. Fantasizing hating our neighbor is quite a potent form of polarization, within and without.

Anger and hatred issue from the solar plexus chakra, the home of our personal power. Inevitably, from this center we find ourselves in a competitive mode with others. The ability to reach the heart center chakra, the place of compassion, allows us to raise our vibration to the higher level of love, truth and wisdom, which lifts us out of the throes of competition.

The heart center also connects us to the wisdom and guidance of the High Self, that which assures us that there are benevolent forces beyond the ego that are in alignment with the greater good, letting us know that we can let go of the need to control, and be in harmony with the greater good of the group soul.

If we are to truly harmonize with the group soul for the greater good of all, we must innerly disarm from overt or covert hostility. When truly detached we are able to shift our energetic posture from yang to yin.

Yin is a magnetic state that attracts people in a positive way because they can feel that they are energetically being accepted, regardless of their views. A yang state, which is assertive, is, of course, equally appropriate at times. This set of opposites, yin and yang, represent a supreme example of opposites, able to express their individuality when appropriate and join in union—the essence of creation—when appropriate.

All efforts to harmonize the opposites within one’s individual soul are powerful contributions to the group soul of now, as it finds its way to the harmony of the greater good of all.

Harmonizing,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Existential Encounter And Free Will

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The many shades of will…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

In 1966, Puerto Rican psychiatrist Efren Ramirez, my first therapist and mentor, captured the heart and imagination of New York City when he introduced his singularly unique treatment approach, based on existential principles, as a method to tackle the drug addiction problem ravaging the city.

The fabled success of his addiction treatment programs in Puerto Rico prompted Mayor John Lindsay to offer him carte blanche support to replicate this success in New York.  As a result, Therapeutic Community treatment programs (TCs) soon sprang up throughout the five boroughs of New York City.

Efren’s treatment approach, called The Concept, utilized existential encounter to awaken, within the addict, knowledge of the absolute power of their choices in determining their reality.

Rollo May, noted existential psychiatrist and author, pointed out that, for Ramirez, emphasis on diagnosis, etiology and prognosis actually obstructs and weakens the patient’s ability to gain full access to, and assume responsibility for, the central power of choice in determining the outcome of their lives. (Existential Psychology, 1969 edition)

The ability to assume full responsibility for one’s choices requires existential confrontation with one’s behaviors and attitudes, which brings to consciousness the choices one is already making, though largely at an unconscious level.

Through the enlightenment gained by one’s encounter with the feedback received from others, one becomes fully aware of how one blindly exercises one’s free will in one’s attitudes and behaviors. With this heightened awareness, one’s free will can be more judiciously exercised to the benefit of one’s life.

A generation before, from the heart of the holocaust, existential psychiatrist Victor Frankl observed and experienced that the single most important variable that determined whether one would survive or die in a death camp was the attitude one chose to assume while interned in the most terrifying, horrific and dehumanizing conditions imaginable.

The exercise of will to choose a positive attitude in the midst of a death camp could literally save one’s life. Furthermore, no one and nothing could take away an individual’s free exercise of imagination and will.

Carolyn Elliot, in her recent book, Existential Kink, takes one down the rabbit hole of one’s inner shadow to discover, own, and radically accept one’s unconscious yet willful collusion with the consciously rejected behaviors and habits active in the hidden recesses of one’s shadow.

Elliot stresses that “having is wanting” and that one must accept this in order to encourage one’s existential encounter with the many shades of will active in one’s being. This fuller acceptance of the polarities within the self frees the will to make choices that accommodate the wholeness of self.

The shamans of ancient Mexico sought to galvanize the will to be fully, mindfully present each day by shocking the ego with an existential encounter with death as an advisor.

Stating, each morning, “I am a being who is going to die” awakens the will to a heightened level of unified presence in each moment, as it chooses its attitudes and behaviors throughout the day. This intent of the will treats each moment with an equanimity that is fully prepared to seamlessly transition from this life in full consciousness as well.

Will is the creator of personal reality. Existential encounter with the fullness of self frees the will to responsibly exercise its power from the vantage point of total presence in the current moment. The intent of the will is then materialized through the suggestions one delivers to the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is the Mother of creation.
The subconscious mind stores the journey of the soul through all of its  history.
The subconscious mind has total control over the functioning, sensations  and health of the body.
The subconscious mind is the home of the instincts.
The subconscious mind has the knowhow and materials to manifest anything suggested to it.

As powerful as the subconscious is, it is still pure Yin. Yin is completely receptive, the feminine principle/anima, and capable of creating anything, but requires a suggestion to begin operations. Yang, her partner, the masculine principle/animus, is the Will.

Will is the active side of infinity, whose task it is to activate his partner’s creative process via suggestion. With their creative energies in sync, anything is possible. Every one of us is a combination of this divine couple and have the ability to both activate and create.

With consciousness raised through existential encounter, the will is freed to truly transcend the self-deceptive suggestions often made to the subconscious mind that keep one frozen in habitual disappointment.

Will, freed to suggest to the subconscious full healing of self and world, is indeed the necessary and adventurous order of our day.

Heal the self, heal the world,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Belief Is Destiny

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Owning beliefs from all quarters…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Belief is a mental, not physical, process. We could say that belief, in its insubstantial state, is a spirit, comparable to thought. In fact, we could define belief as a fixed, determined thought whose spirit energy arranges perception and physical matter to conform to its expectations.

Spirit is our active Mars/Yang energy, the energy of intent that engages our Yin/Venus energy, the energy of attraction, to manifest our spirit beliefs. Beliefs become the seedlings of the events of our lives via intent and the law of attraction. All beliefs become true in their ability to attract the very gross matter circumstances that substantiate their validity.

Our subconscious mind is the home of our Yin energy. All of our spirit beliefs are endowed with our Yin energy in our subconscious minds to attract and manifest most of the events of our lives. Indeed, some untoward events passively happen to us, independent of our intent, yet even these apparently random happenings might reflect a deeper intent being housed at an unconscious level.

For example, a conscious intent for change and new life might be thwarted by a blocking belief at an unconscious level that far prefers the security of the status quo. In this case, blocking beliefs override, or, at the very least, weaken, the spirit of desired change.

Karma could be defined as our inherited belief state. Our astrological birth chart is the blueprint for the manifestation of the core beliefs we have accumulated from the various milestones of our infinite journey.

The moment and circumstances of our birth reflect the intent of our high Spirit, in concert with the cosmic Yin energy of the universe, to reflect our previously accumulated level of karmic development in a life on Earth, which offers us the opportunity to deepen our knowledge and advance ourselves to a new level of karmic clarity, challenge, and release.

Individuation can be defined as discovering and squaring with all the opposing beliefs we house in our unconscious karmic warehouse. Typically, we define ourselves at the level of ego consciousness. For the sake of consistency, the ego defends against knowing or owning alien thoughts and feelings dystonic to its working definition of self. It likes to stay in its comfort zone.

As a consequence, much of who we are is suppressed in the shadow dimension of our unconscious, or is simply kept from ever emerging from the deepest transpersonal levels of the collective unconscious. The current renaissance of psychedelic therapy reflects the impetus to force open the knowing and experience of these hidden levels of being.

Although transpersonal exploration is the wave of our evolutionary times, we must be careful to realize that we are here, in the gross matter form we inhabit, to fully live and solve the karmic riddle of the personal sphinx we came here to advance. To be overly seduced by spirit encounters and communion with mythical beings and archetypes can be the ultimate distraction from our core, grounded Earthly mission.

If we can suspend judgment toward our own beliefs, as well as the beliefs of others, we are freed to more deeply enter their vortex and discover their etiology. For instance, an adult’s inner child’s belief that it is responsible for the abusive treatment it received can be understood as issuing both from its young narcissistic, cognitive developmental level, as well as the defensive action of its instinct for self-preservation.

If we can blame ourselves for the shattering behavior of others, we can protect those who harm us, for we may need them in order to survive. As well, if we are to blame, we can maintain control over the world, believing we are the cause of everything that happens to us. However, if we respect our inner child’s belief by confronting it, feeling it, and interacting with it, the child might crack the nut of its fixated belief, freeing itself to experience new life with its adult self.

Therefore, what we believe is indeed our destiny. Destiny means we MUST live it, at least in some form. If we refuse to know about it, it will need to continually reappear in gross matter, or physical life circumstances, to give us new opportunities to crack the nut. This is our true karma, to crack the nut of what we are truly up against now, in this life.

However, if we are willing to suffer the fullness of our beliefs by owning and getting to know them on a deeply inner level, without having to act them out to get to know them, we can truly free ourselves from their limitations and journey into new life in our infinite journey.

Refining destiny,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Into that Good Night

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Unity & Equanimity

In the light of day the solid world appears safely discernible. As darkness approaches the discernible melds into blackness. Anxious anticipation and fear replace confidence and security, as that which awaits in the darkness draws near.

“Go to the light” is the guidance of spiritual traditions. We turn on the lights to dominate the night, to safely traverse night’s feared demons. Home security systems promise protection from real or imagined demonic projections upon the darkness.

But what is the truth of those inner demonic projections, so frequently veiling the truth of the night? Jung appropriately named that disowned portion of the psyche, that which lives in the shadow. For Freud, the personal portion of the shadow was the sequestered human animal, whose sexual and aggressive politically incorrect impulses were relegated to wish fulfillment dreams.

Jung extended the reach of the shadow into all the unknown dimensions of self. Just the venture of letting go of ego control in the journey of sleep is a leap of faith. Who can guarantee that a night’s sleep will deliver them into life in a new day?

Dream is a natural entry point into the subtle spirit realm. As the body sleeps, the spirit naively launches into journeys in infinity. Will it safely return? Will its cord to the physical body remain intact?

What encounters will the spirit face beyond Freud’s wish fulfillments or repressed sins? Beyond the personal lies the collective, replete with entities unsettled and seeking. How will spirit handle these encounters? Will it be drawn into heavens of delight, or into hells of terror? These are the challenges of the journey of the dark night of the soul.

Beyond the collective lies the transpersonal, the light of the high SOUL. But the truth is that high SOUL is the Yin/Yang of white and black. In blackness is latent spirit. In light is spirit manifest. The light of the manifest requires shadow. Without contrast there is nonexistence.

To seek the safety of the light without owning one’s contrasting shadow ill prepares one for one’s true spiritual journey. One must reckon with and explore the fullness of one’s unknown self to avoid the trap of negative projection upon blackness, and the false security of clinging to the one-sidedness of the light.

All beings are black and white. To achieve the lightness of being needed for true ascension we must reconcile with, own, and treasure this wholeness. Without the darkness of the unknown our heaven in infinity would terminate in boredom. Without the light of consciousness to navigate the darkness we’d surely lose our way.

Inextricably united, may black and white journey in oneness into that good night.

Intending integrated wholeness,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Soulmate 101

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For many, the search for their missing half is their primary mission in life. Though reflected in physical instinct, this drive actually issues forth from the spiritual plane, as the search for one’s soulmate. But what is a soulmate?

The one and only…
– Art by Jan Ketchel © 2017

Plato suggested that humans were originally androgynous, composed of a male and female head and body bonded together as one. When the Olympians came to power, Zeus, concerned with curtailing the human’s growing power, had them separated into two bodies, male and female. Thus, rather than rival the gods, the primary task of the human became finding their missing halves.

Indeed, the obsession, if not downright compulsion, to restore one’s wholeness, through bonding with another person, is an apt description of a primary focus of human life on earth. Notice, however, the underlying narcissistic foundation of this pursuit. To search for one’s soulmate is to search for one’s missing self. The object of the search is me not you. You are a mirror of but not my soulmate. This fundamental narcissistic truth is at the heart of many a relationship problem.

In fact, we are attracted to another through the unconscious projection of our missing other half onto the personality and physical body of another person. But how does this happen? Let’s start with the definition of soul.

What really is a soul? The Tibetan, as channeled by Alice Bailey in A Treatise on White Magic, states: “Soul… is neither spirit nor matter, but the relationship between them… the soul is the mediator of this duality.”

What, then, is spirit and what is matter?

What is spirit? Spirit is the blueprint of that which is to be born or built. Jung called spirits archetypes; designs or laws that create order and meaning. Spirits lack substance, but they exert power. Spirits have what we might call a magnetic or attractive force that draws matter to them, to give life and substance to their designs.

What is matter? Matter is dense energy. What gives matter its hardness, its material form, is energy tightly bundled together. All matter, from rocks to humans, represents different spirit designs that attracts matter to them to form all things physical.

What is the soul’s mediating relationship with spirit and matter? First of all, let me suggest that though spirit and matter are opposites, as one is invisible and the other quite visible, they are in fact different sides of the same thing. Spirit is the animating force of all things in nature: It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, and that swing is the spirit in the physical thing. A physical thing without spirit is a corpse, dead or alive. On the other hand, a spirit lacking matter is unrealized on the physical plane.

The role of the soul in human form is to oversee spirit’s unfolding in manifested—physical—form. On a most primal level, our soul, through the subconscious, directs the intricate workings of the physical body to coordinate with our spirit design for the day: wakeup, eliminate, eat, digest, dress, and drive toward our intended goal. The soul is charged with mediating our primal relationship with our physical body to remain healthy, balanced, and capable of manifesting our spirit intent.

At the psychological, or spiritual dimension, the soul mediates our spirit’s longing for itself in matter. The root of desire is this attractive force of spirit seeking appropriate matter to realize itself, or to manifest as a physical reality. To accomplish this, soul uses the psychological mechanism of projection.

Projection is the unconscious language of the soul. The soul seeks out a physical reflection of its spirit’s intent by projecting its spirit’s image upon something or someone in the physical world, attracting us to it.

Rather than interpret this projection as a form of communication, most humans take the bait and concretize the projection. “I must have that person or thing; only they will make me whole!” Even with total conscious awareness of the projection, we are overwhelmingly emotionally drawn to this other person or thing. Attraction and desire are the active energies the soul uses as tools of mediation to bring us into fuller knowledge and realization of our whole selves.

The journey of the soul toward its spirit/matter fulfillment is the comedy and tragedy of human life errors. Inevitably—frequently through disappointment—we are led to what we need in order to take responsibility for the full realization of our selves. Rather than try to control the people who reflect our soul’s projections, let us own our inner spirit seeking to materialize within our selves.

We demand the attention, love and care of our cherished other, but do we realize these same qualities in our relationship with our own physical bodies and spiritual aspirations? Are we simply leaving it to the other to provide fulfillment of ourselves? Can we learn the secret language of the soul—projection—and take full responsibility to realize the self? Can we finally realize true love of another through the lifting of the veils of our entitled projections from the actual other?

Once we retrieve our true soulmate—our inner wholeness—we are equipped to meet the other as they truly are. Gone are the compulsions of need. We are simply two separate souls sharing…

Soulfully,

Chuck