#498 Chuck’s Place: Preparing for Enlightenment

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences!

According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, when we die, our consciousness separates from the body to take its journey through a series of bardos where it must face challenges that will determine its future evolution. The most desirable outcome right after death is to become enlightened, to be able to hold onto the true nature of reality as our consciousness encounters the light. This requires a willingness to let go of all one has cherished and attached to in this life, accepting the utter irrelevance of all that seemed so relevant but a moment ago, fully shedding ego attachments and ego itself, acquiescing instead to the full truth and nature of reality without a spin. In The Book of Us Jeanne describes her experience of this moment as follows: “I took off like a shot, a loud rush, an explosion out of my body, as fast as I could ever imagine, not wanting or needing to stay any longer, aware that it wasn’t ever going to be the same, that that life on earth was done, that the new life wanted to begin. I died as I was born, rushing into the world, out of one into the next, not missing anything as I went, not wanting anything, except to get where I was going so I could see what it was like there.”

According to the Buddhists, if one is not ready to relinquish attachment to this world at the beginning of the journey after death, then the potential for enlightenment is lost for this round; one reenters the spinning of consciousness, as the mind starts to project its wants and fears, leading to attachments and the re-crystallization of consciousness as we prepare to reincarnate in this world. Jeanne’s description of her awareness, moments after death, reflects the necessary detachment to transcend reincarnation and continue to evolve beyond this world. Buddhists spend their lives preparing their consciousness for this moment of decision, to have the clarity to choose enlightenment. This is what the shamans call, embarking upon the definitive journey of awareness.

In the West, we spend most of our lives and technology manifesting a world of eternal youth; almost no attention is paid to what really matters: our moment of death. Compared to the Buddhists, stated bluntly, our spiritual maturity is somewhere in the stone age. Not that I suggest that we sell our homes and dedicate our lives to saving Tibet. Even the Dalai Lama appreciates that the Tibetan diaspora is part of an evolution of an interdependent one-world that must integrate the findings and awareness of its formerly isolated parts to advance in maturity. How does this ancient wisdom apply to our modern world? How can we use this knowledge to better prepare ourselves to greet our deaths?

The Buddhist knowledge of the encounters that consciousness faces upon dying elucidates the core projective nature of the mind and the challenge to not attach to its familiar comforts and fears. Jeanne describes her experience of this encounter as follows: “There is a great gate, wide and high, majestic, the entrance into the unknown, the unknowable, which few choose. There is another path, and another gate also, which many choose because it is the way where everything is seen and explained and there is little to challenge. The other gate is expansive and opens up other worlds and other possibilities.” Here Jeanne is describing the choice one is faced with upon dying. Do we choose the evolutionary gate, which sends our consciousness on an evolutionary journey into the unknown or do we cling to the known and familiar, allowing the mind to project and place us back in a familiar world? Understanding that the reality we currently live in is but a spin of this projective mind that has crystallized into the solid world we live in affords us an opportunity to practice making choices that reflect the true nature of reality while still in this world. This practice prepares us to choose the less chosen gate when we embark on our definitive journey at death.

We have discussed many faces of projection over the past several weeks. Refusing the compelling projective spin we are daily drawn to by withdrawing our projections and owning the true nature of our personal reality offers an ongoing practice of preparation for the moment of death. Through this process we exercise the choice of “enlightenment” in our daily lives over the comforts of our minds’ projective illusions. Ultimately, this is the practice of detachment: choosing to not attach to the spinning illusions constantly conjured by the projective mind. Take worry, for example. Worry is nothing other than the spinning of empty imaginings by the mind manifesting its fears in a series of imagined stories. If we attach to the story we are then tormented, and we suffer, as our energy is depleted and we stay entrenched in illusion. Practice instead, staying in the moment. How do you stay in the moment? Focus on your heart center. Is your equilibrium being rocked through reaction to the mind’s conjuring? Focus also on the synchronicities of the moment. What are the signs suggesting? Is there true cause for concern or, again, are you being duped by the restless conjuring mind? Refuse the products of worry, state the intent: don’t attach! Focus awareness on what actually presents in the moment, meet it fully, then relinquish it, equally as fully, as you prepare your awareness to greet oncoming time and what comes next. These practices strengthen fluidity and non-attachment, which prepare us for our moment of death and decision.

As always, I am open to discussion or comment. Should anyone wish to write, I can be reached via email at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com

Until we meet again,
Chuck

#497 A Jolt is Needed

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Do you have guidance for us today?

Continue to watch your own energy as we go into this time of shift and reflection. Use your mirrors of self-reflection to determine how your personal energy should be used outside of you. As you take back your energy from areas in your life that no longer need, deserve, or require your attention, determine, with utter honesty and truth, how best to utilize it for self-growth. Though this time upon that earth pushes for participation, and though many issues come to the foreground as they struggle to remain prominent, do not falter in your quest for wholeness, for that is your main goal.

Though your lives are busy, your outer world demanding, and your inner world often distant and removed from that outer reality, so must you maintain the link between inner self and progress on your evolution, no matter what comes from outside to tempt you or push you away from your mirror of self-reflection.

Your mirror of self-reflection is your main guide right now. It offers the only clear picture of what you must deal with. It speaks the truth, though your ears may not want to hear; your eyes do not lie. Your ears may be covered and spoken truths appear as muffled, unclear sounds, easily ignored, but you must acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with your eyes. Your eyes see the truths being reflected, revealed, and repeatedly pointed out as your major areas of interest, the issues needing attention. This you cannot deny, and this you must not push from you, or you will get into trouble.

This is a good warning to present to you, My Dear Ones. I know you like my kindness and concern to be gentle, but every now and then a jolt is a good approach, and now is such a time. So I will state it very plainly: if you do not pay attention to what you are seeing, and I use that word to mean seeing with your eyes, but also with your inner knowing, you may end up in a place of difficulty that will take a long time to dig your self out of. (During the channeling this appeared, visually, to be a physical dilemma, possibly health related, but it could also be mental or emotional stagnation manifesting in a physical manner.)

Clarity of seeing is a gift and it is offered so that you may take swift action. Your clarity may reveal any number of things, but it is not to be feared. It may jolt you, but action taken now will place you far ahead of where you now stand. If looking in the reflective mirror has become painful for you, I suggest that you must confront the painful truth, accept its solid and honest approach, and take action to remedy and resolve the issues that are being presented. Only in action, in acceptance, and in truthful self-concern and self-guidance, will your life change drastically for the better.

This is a time of action, even as you are pulled to ignore, once again, the truths of the self. This is a time of fighting through the old ways of ignoring, pretending, and covering the truths being pointed out, reflected daily in your mirror of self discovery, self guidance, and self love. It is where you will first see the real you reflected, the new you, the awakened you.

Allow the self to push forward now. Jolt the self forward to a new place. You are aided in your growth, even as you are accompanied into your places of old. You are never alone.

It will be nice to see you on the other side of the current mirror of reflection, the new you looking back at the utter grandeur of the new evolving self who is unafraid, open to the adventures of life as yet unrevealed.

What is your mirror showing you? What is the jolt that is coming to wake you up? This is the next shift that you have been expecting, and how you deal with it is very important. Good Luck!

#496 Your Energy Usage

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Do you have a message of guidance for us today?

Some determination needs to be made now as to what you will accept as part of your life. It is time to seriously consider how you wish to use your energy, determining what is most important to focus your attention on, based on what you receive in return, for to use your energy slovenly is not a good idea.

It is time to allow the self to study the attachments in your lives and the energy drains, to decide why and how you are going to use your energy now, and in the future. Your underlying premise must be that you only have a certain amount of energy, and most of that energy must be used to promote spiritual health, for that is most important now.

I suggest that an assessment of energy usage is now called for, an honest look at your life from the energetic point of view, determining how and where you are spending, wasting, or best utilizing your allotted energy. Present your selves with the honest truth that you only have a certain amount of personal energy. Some of may have more than others because you have already begun a concerted effort to retain it for the self, having learned to withdraw it from outside attachments and utilize it for the work on the self. This is a good beginning because only in the true work on the self will your energy become available for better usage outside of you as well. As you turn to your inner work, you will regain much of your lost and spilled energy and re-ignite your own coffer of fuel.

First, you must take an assessment of how you use your energy, as I have said.

Secondly, it is important to fully understand why you use it in the manner that you do. Why are you so attached to certain people, behaviors, habits, and outward seeking pleasures and fulfillments?

Thirdly, you must take time to consider what it will mean to the self, and others, if you decide to withdraw much of your attention from where it is now attached. Are you asking others to become more responsible for themselves by withdrawing your focus from then and turning it back upon the self? If so, this is a very good action to take!

Fourth, you must determine where all of your own inner aspects are in regards to your energy usage now and, again, as you reserve your energy for your self. Where is your adult self, your inner child, your big baby, your anima, your animus, your controlling self, your allowing self? Where is your most useful self and where is your most reluctant self?

As you shift your attention from outward focus to inner focus, deciding that you wish to reserve your energy for the work on the self now, you will experience a shift. This shift will be quite noticeable. You will have outer reaction of the self and of others, but your inner structures will also shift.

You may find that certain aspects of the self, previously ignored or even unknown, may come forth asking for recognition and attention. You may find that your inner world is much more demanding than your outer world. You may discover that your outer self is not quite ready to turn from outer expenditure of energy, no matter how depleting it is. You may have a period of scrambling as you experience a shift and a reconnection to the self, causing a power outage of some significance, as you determine what it really means to reclaim your own energy.

Lastly, I suggest that the reason you would want to do such a thing as reclaim your own energy is that as you age upon that earth, you may begin to experience a depletion of energy, a physical and mental tiredness or drain. You may experience this as an abrupt loss or as a gradual loss, but I suggest that, in some manner, you will discover that it is noticeable and perhaps even more significant than that. In fact, a noticeable loss of energy may be the ultimate reason you seek to reclaim your energy from others and from outer attractions and attentions.

A withdrawing of your energy from outside of you, no matter your age, is a good practice to begin cultivating. In the long run, you will be glad that you have cultivated skills of inner work in order to maintain and have available vital energy to carry you forward. Your main focus in doing so is to learn as much about the self as possible, all the parts of the self, but also all the possibilities of the self as you return your energy to the self.

It is important to keep in mind that your life is full of opportunities to grow and to evolve. With your inner work focused on such growth and evolution, open to a changing self, so will you require energy to keep moving forward. With energy focused inwardly so will you gain enough clarity to eventually know how best to use it outside of you.

Take time now, during this changing time, to offer the self an opportunity to flow with the changes offered, by reclaiming your personal energy and utilizing it for further study of the true self, the honest self, the pure and innocent self, who may feel that your attention has gone too far astray. Time to return to the self!

#495 Create Your Own Impetus

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Do you have a message for us today?

My Dear Ones, it is not within my power to do more than guide you. Although my words may offer incentive, so is it up to each of you to take action on your own behalf. Today I urge inner contemplation around your greatest issues of fear, reluctance, and denial of the need for change. Now is the changing time. It is a synchronistically and energetically aligned changing time. It is a vital and valuable time, energetically speaking, for inner growth, but no matter how often or how much emphasis I put on this fact, it will not aid you if you do not accept your responsibility in participating for the good of self.

Even as you elect to confront your basic reasons for sluggishness in taking action, so also realize that others in your life are being confronted with this same aspect in themselves. There may be great desire for change, yet has the impetus for action not arrived. I urge you to create your own impetus now based on what you know about your self, about your situation, your desires, and your deepest needs. Your impetus must come from your inner spirit’s yearning for recognition and your acceptance of it as your new partner in your life. This requires a new love and appreciation of the self.

A compassionate and yet unrelentingly focused self must now come forth in order to procure you a place in this energetic time of prosperity for the human race. You are all being given the opportunity to engage in this changing time. You are all being asked to participate in a global outreach that will have the possibility to shift the way that the human race lives and acts towards every being upon that earth.

But such a sweeping proposition of real change will not happen if you, each individual, does not make a commitment to change the self. How can you aid in the global energy of change if you have not dealt with your own inner energy? How can you understand global compassion if you have not processed what compassion of self means? How can you propose to others that they change if you have not asked the self to change first?

Each one of you must engage in change in order for greater change to occur in the world. Ask the self to face the fears that block your own energy from true emergence. Ask the self to wrestle with the problems that keep you caught in your old habits. Ask the self to truly participate in a new life now.

I know you are all good people with solid values founded in goodness, compassion, kindness, love, and many more fine qualities. But I urge you to consider your fears as your biggest blocks to growth, for they keep you from your true potential.

Do not be afraid of what awaits you as you confront these fears, for it is but life; life on many levels; life as energy; life as eternal, and life as impetus for further growth. Perhaps that is all you need to get you started on your true journey, simply the prospect of the energy of life, ready and waiting for you to tap into it!

NOTE: We were, very generously, given tickets to hear the Dalai Lama speak yesterday at Town Hall Theatre in New York City in a dialogue with Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland. One of the topics he stressed dealt with the idea of oneness as being the answer to addressing many of the problems in today’s world. As he pointed out, there can no longer be a we and a they in the world; there can only be a we, and that the world is too interconnected for us to be so divided. If we begin to think of us all as one then we can begin to understand and live compassionately. I think in Jeanne’s message today she is asking us to address our divided self, the we and they aspects that keep us from our true self, and to learn compassion for these interconnected aspects of self. Then we can bring what we have learned into the world outside of us. -Jan

#494 Chuck’s Place: Codependency-Tending the Self

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! As I pondered various possible topics this morning, it was Jan who suggested to me that I explore the dynamic of the projected self and codependency. I was struck by the suggestion that all projections result in codependent relationships, a fact I hadn’t contemplated before. Thank you, Jan!

The term codependency has stood the test of time, at least by modern standards, still finding relevancy and usage after twenty plus years. A product of the alcoholism field, the term codependency was coined to describe an addictive disorder in its own right, which manifested in people attached to an alcoholic. The essence of this addiction was an obsession to control the behavior of the alcoholic. Since that time this dynamic of codependency has been broadened to include attachment to all types of dysfunctional people whether they be alcoholic, chemically dependent, rageaholic, workaholic, sexaholic, physically abusive, etc,.

Building upon the dynamic of projection, which we have explored from many angles in past weeks, we can now study the relationship of projection to codependency. All projection creates a codependent relationship. Broadly speaking, when we project we are placing a vital part of ourselves onto another person. This happens, of course, quite outside the province of consciousness: we don’t choose to project, it happens, something within the psyche elects to, literally, give away a part of ourselves to another. By this action the very boundary of who we are is extended to include another person, though we remain totally unaware of this extended aspect of self. What an incredibly vulnerable position this puts us in. How can we be certain when that person goes into the world, beyond our reach, that we will be okay? This can be the source of overwhelming fear and anxiety as the threat of loss of self is imminent. This is codependency in action.

The compulsion to track and control the other, our projected self, is paramount to ensuring our safety. Perhaps we have projected the mother within us. We may have been burdened with a conflicted early parental relationship with our own mother, which has resulted in a failure of our internal emotional regulation system to function positively as we struggle to self nurture, self soothe, or feel basic worthiness. This can make it incredibly difficult to be alone. In a desperate search to emotionally stabilize we unconsciously project mother onto another. Since our internal mother image is conflictual, our projected other will reflect these same characteristics. For instance, we will be drawn to an ambivalent, alternately withholding critical person who holds out the promise of loving us. We desperately seek to transform this other into a loving mother to solve our inner conflict so we can become capable of self love. We remain hopelessly bound to serving the needs of our projected mother, which is our attempt to control the other and get them to love us. If our projected mother is an abusive lover, we strive relentlessly to prove our worthiness by making things perfect, to achieve vindication and deeply hoped for acknowledgment. When we fail and are abused, no matter how brutally, we are driven to remain loyal to our projected other, after all, it is a vital part of our self.

Hence, codependency reflects the mandatory need to tend the needs of the self, the projected self. There is no other option. To not do so is to risk loss of self. This is so threatening that in its extreme can lead to murder, in defense of the self. This is the case where abusive, controlling men, for example, who have projected their inner anima onto their partner, could actually be driven to kill their partner, rather than allow that part of themselves to roam freely in the world, disconnected from themselves. In a strange way, death seems the safer solution, as no one else can then touch this vital part of the self; this is ultimate control.

On a more hopeful note, when consciousness recognizes that the desperately sought after other is actually a projected part of the self, perhaps after countless rounds of repetitive dysfunctional relationships, it will become possible to inwardly bring home the gold and transform the conflicted part of the self through the process of recapitulation. This is when we stop trying to change the other and instead turn to changing ourselves. This is a monumental step forward in maturity. Thus begins the true process of tending the self, beyond codependency.

As always, I am open to discussion or comment. Should anyone wish to write, I can be reached via email at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR