Chuck’s Place: News For The New Year

Keeping the light alive…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Our blogs will venture into new arenas in 2017. My usual blog, Chuck’s Place, will continue to explore psychological, physical, and social interplays and synchronicities at individual and world levels. Jan and I will occasionally publish a blog on relationships, which we are affectionately naming The Monogamy Dialogues. Finally, I will be adding a new blog entitled Guidance From The Shamanic Line, which will address suggestions to those of our readers who are shamanically inclined and looking for guidance on an energetic dimension.

On that note, I offer this New Year’s suggestion: watch the new Netflix series, The OA. This series is like the shamanic Theater of Infinity, filled to the brim with jolts to the socialization system that keeps us in bondage. Outwardly, the world is rapidly moving into an extraordinary time of bondage with the forces of truth and light held in check. Powerlessness, however, opens up portals of extraordinary discovery. This is what the shamans call shifts of the assemblage point and discovering of the energy body.

In The OA the insinuation of the magical passes of Carlos Castaneda’s Tensegrity is blatant. The extraordinary sense of physical and emotional wellbeing achieved through rigorous practice, as well as a means to accessing the energy body, is beautifully captured. The value of the Petty Tyrant, the victimizer, as the one who forces the captives to lose their self-importance and become impeccable warriors in their intent is clearly outlined. Finally, the collective energy accessed through the magical passes to heal and overpower the dark side is strongly hinted at. These are evolutionary tools in a time of great planetary shift.

Of course, The OA is fiction, but what is fiction anyway but truth reimagined. If it grabs you, it may hold some truths to be discovered. The OA captures truths that are inherent in the human body, simply waiting to be accessed. These are not cognitive truths; these are experiential, energetic truths. And everyone must discover all truth for themselves.

The OA is intense, only go there is you are shamanically inclined. There are many roads to freedom. This is one of powerful adventure, no different from the most shattering of recapitulation journeys. In fact, it’s what the show clearly demonstrates, a recapitulation journey of outstanding impact.

Finally, we all look forward to the publication of Jan’s fourth book in the Recapitulation Diaries series, Place of No Pity, due in late February.

A Happy and Peaceful New Year to all,

Chuck

Soulbyte for Tuesday January 3, 2017

True contentment will only be found within the self. Something placed there long ago that you’ve forgotten about seeks to connect with you, your secret self, your true self who has the answers to all your yearnings. It is in going within, rather than going without, that your true purpose will be discovered. And once you’ve found it you will never feel lost, discontented, or uneasy again, for you will be at peace. Is it not time to take that journey, the journey to peace within? Is that not what you really seek?

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Monday January 2, 2017

As a New Year begins, call a ceasefire on the inner battles, the outer turmoils, the unrelenting pounding of the old thoughts, the persistent waging of war against the self. Turn your cheek and walk toward the quiet contemplative life on the other side of the moon where only peace rages and the only fight is to find enough quiet time so that you may practice sitting in stillness with empty mind and quiet heart, with the intention of becoming a being at one with all things, within and without. In quiet contemplation, walk anew in the sun’s light and make peace at every step. You can do it, for the path of peace begins within!

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Initiation

Rites of initiation are painful transformations…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Initiation is instinct. Instinct is nature. Nature is the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is the greater part of all that we are that we don’t know about.

We are born of egg and seed, the program of who we are set at conception. Nature provides initiation to reshape us at our necessary transitions in life, those important moments that are necessary to completely fulfill who we are.

Jung pointed out that our conscious attitude has the choice to submit to fulfilling who we are. On the other hand, if we choose incorrectly the collective unconscious will confront us, first in dream, next in neurosis and, ultimately, if we miss those calls, in the events we encounter in our lives, which will be fashioned to enforce our initiation.

Ancient tribes were closest to nature’s imperative. The great transition from childhood to adulthood was required by all through participation in initiations of severe torture and deep mystery to enact a shedding of the immature child self and the solid formation of a mature adult self capable of taking proper care of self and other.

Our modern world has long lost its connection to and respect for “primitive” initiation rites. On a global scale the results of this lost connection are evident in the puer aeternus leaders caught in the immaturity of their preadolescent sex and power games.

As a world, we are increasingly engulfed in a world of addiction. Ultimately, addiction is preadolescent fixation on dependency and power and, at the same time, an attempt to challenge the self to transform by going too far. Sometimes that leap is fatal. Sometimes it leads to consequences that awaken spiritual transformation and transition into adulthood.

One thing is certain, though we may refuse the call to initiation it will find us in some form in this modern world of ours. Our leaders are definitely creating the conditions for worldwide transformation right now, though they have no idea what nature has in store for them.

As individuals, if we search the truth that resides within us we will identify the initiations we are ourselves in the midst of. If we can join our intent with nature’s intent to become who we truly our, we free ourselves from the victim mentality that rages against the harshness of our initiation and solidify into the mature adult beings we truly are meant to become, marching toward fulfillment at last.

No easy road to freedom,

Chuck

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR