Soulbyte for Monday August 11, 2025

-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

Each new week arrives with its calendar of events, of duties, of must-doings. Take a look at what you have to do this coming week and remind yourself that you are no longer doing things in the old way. You have made a commitment to change and you know exactly what you need to do to continue along that path of change. Changing your mind is well under way, so keep up the good work!

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Friday August 8, 2025

-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

As mentioned at the beginning of this week, the first step in gaining the balance and the space you need to do your inner work is to take back your mind, your subconscious mind, by feeding it nurturing words, words of substance and balance, words of value and kindness, words of compassion and love. Fill your mind with mantras of words that have meaning for you, words that you can anchor in when the old words try to reenter your sphere. Speak them away with your new words of hope, love and healing.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Thursday August 7, 2025

-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

Keeping focused on self-growth and self-exploration is not self-centered activity. It’s actually for the betterment of all. However, do keep your commitments to others. Do pay your bills on time. Do keep your appointments and take care of what needs to be taken care of every day. Balance all of the busyness of life by giving yourself some personal time alone. Take a walk, sit awhile and meditate, find a place where you can be alone for even just a few moments to reassert your commitment to yourself. Ask for a good balance so that life and inner life each have their place, so that each is important and yet neither is overpowering the other. Balance is the key to staying connected to both worlds.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Wednesday August 6, 2025

-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

It’s not that hard to change, it just takes diligence and a strong commitment to self. There are no gurus out there that will be able to heal you, only you can do that. There are no saviors out there, only you can save yourself. With your heart set on change and a new and healthy lifestyle, take another step toward achieving your goals today. Restate your commitment and make a plan for how you will change today. What will you choose to do that will take you another step in the direction of your goal?

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Transmogrifying Default Karmic Reactions

Take me to the Oneness of it all…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

At the level of the physical body, karma is simple cause and effect. For instance, if, during dental work, a nerve is touched, pain is the default effect. I discovered, however, that pain is only one interpretation of energy, and so, during dental work, unaided by anesthesia, my mind interprets pain as a sensation that signals me to go deeper into calm. The typical karma of pain associated with dental work has transformed the once dreaded treatment chair into a place of deeply calming meditation.

The ability of breath guru, Wim Hof, to sit in an ice bath for nearly two hours is a very similar phenomenon. Wim visualizes an inner fire, which he then directs to different parts of his body to arrive at warmth rather than frozenness. The default karma of freezing, in response to lying in a tub of ice, is transformed into warmth and comfort by a strong mental impression delivered to, and manifested by, the subconscious mind.

These experiences validate that the threads of karma, which we have generated through beliefs and actions, can be fully transmogrified into positive outcomes. Typically, we manage the discomfort of karma through suppression or repression, which results in the physical body storing a charged experience by restricting the muscles or the breath. Many physical conditions we suffer with are karmic conditions, held in the body, restricting the free flow of our vital energy.

We can unravel these energetic knots through the conscious mind’s imagining, feeling and believing that its intent to heal is possible, as it delivers it to the subconscious mind, for manifestation. Of course, one’s suggestion must be directed toward the purest and highest good for self and other to truly balance out a karmic thread. Suggestions that merely silence a symptom, but don’t address it, actually continue to store it in the physical body with its original karma perhaps more remote, but remaining charged and intact.

Many spiritual practitioners, such as Buddhists, focus most of their days repeating positive suggestions such as loving kindness and compassion to constantly generate positive karma and release negative karma. Such a practice enables instinctive reactions, such as anger at a transgression by another, to be quickly transmuted at a higher energetic chakra, such as the heart center, into genuine compassion for a fellow flawed human being.

The instinct of the heart is to tell the absolute truth. The ultimate truth is that we all share in the oneness of everything. Such a genuine compassionate feeling unburdens one from mentally and physically carrying a charged karma of hatred. One’s vital energies flow freely and radiate a loving energy, to the benefit of self and the greater world.

Of course, if we are fearful of feeling and expressing our instinctual reactions, we must thoughtfully and creatively allow these primal karmic reactions, imprisoned by the body armor, to be safely expressed. Primal screams in the ocean or forest might serve such a need. However, as the energy lodged in these lower chakras is released, our vital kundalini energy moves up the spine to higher energetic chakras for spiritual processing. Our soul is released from the karma of negative emotions by the dissolving power of love and acceptance of All That Is at these higher subtle energy centers.

Though the conscious mind has the power to suggest, it has no power to direct the healing strategy that the subconscious mind will choose to employ. The expression, “let go and let God” is particularly relevant in this context. The conscious mind must have no attachment to the outcome; it must completely surrender control to the wisdom and way of the subconscious mind.

To transmute karma beyond the default effects of karma, the subconscious mind may take us through an energetic journey of squaring with memories we have avoided, or old habits we still cling to. The way of the subconscious mind may take much longer than we desire. We are challenged to remain positive, truly having faith in the power of the subconscious mind to manifest the intent we suggest.

As we master the challenges presented to us at various chakra centers, our energetic viewpoint is broadened widely as we approach the greater truth of our interconnected oneness with all things. From this position we are likely to accumulate mostly positive karma. Negative karma usually stems from stuckness in the polarity of the lower chakras that leaves us feeling offended, victimized and entitled.

Ultimately, we arrive at the awareness that there is nothing to forgive. We take full responsibility for all we have experienced in this life and  appreciate fully all those who have accompanied us on our journey, with equanimity. The karma of such a perspective is total freedom, particularly from old default karmic reactions.

Transmogrifying,
Chuck

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR