A warrior knows that every aspect of the self must be confronted and so a warrior does not shirk this duty. A warrior returns to clear out that which must go so that retreat may be complete, without strings, and without regrets. A warrior knows when it is time to leave, when something is done, and then a warrior turns and walks away in a new direction, never to return.
Lessons in a Life: Face, Resolve & Release
In 2003, while in the process of a shamanic recapitulation, which I have written extensively about in my books as well as my blogs, I discovered something important. I knew that change would not happen, not even consciously-willed change, such as adopting new habits, if I didn’t completely rid myself of the root cause of my problems.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
As a practicing hypnotist I became well aware of this. A hypnotist cannot change anyone or anything. A hypnotist only makes suggestions as to how change may come about, but real change only comes from within. Too many times people look for a “quick fix,” but the truth is there are no quick fixes. Yes, there are plenty of techniques for achieving calmness and steadiness, techniques that provide relaxing effects, but longterm change requires patience and deep work on the self.
My discovery—that change can only happen if the root cause is eradicated—is not new, but when I discovered it for myself I felt as if I HAD discovered it. This is a phenomenon of deep inner work, as we tread into the territory of ancient knowledge where that which has not yet been revealed is revealed, as if for the very first time.
Anyone doing deep work has the opportunity to discover such phenomena, in a personally meaningful and pertinent way, making such experiences strikingly unique and helpful. Such phenomenal discoveries, if taken seriously and acted upon, have the possibility to become the great catalysts they portend to be, leading to real and lasting change.
During the recent Mercury Retrograde, which I know many people experienced in very potent ways, I entered the whirlwind of its energy too and barely had time to pause for breath. Confrontational circumstances arose repeatedly, old issues were revisited, changes occurred, and I was given the opportunity to discover a lot of things. How far have I really come? The lessons of this most recent Mercury retrograde were many. It was a good time for all of us to test what we’ve done with our lives and to perhaps discover that we really have changed and we will continue to change because we’re ready to do so.
In 2003, as I was recapitulating my childhood and discovering the root cause of all that plagued me then, Mercury was also retrograde, four times that year. For most of that year I simultaneously and repeatedly faced my deepest core issue: fear. I was afraid of everything, I discovered.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
My challenge then was to face and release myself from the clutches of all-pervasive fear, completely eradicating it from my being, for I knew that to embrace any idea of change without that complete eradication was just a cover up, another avoidant behavior, many of which I was very skilled at. How could I truly change if I refused to change myself at the deepest level, if I continued to ignore that core issue? I knew that the intent to change, by itself, no matter how strong, wasn’t going to have any effect without complete and conscious eradication of what really controlled me.
I knew that eradication of the fear would also provide room for change. If I was no longer consumed by fear, I’d have energy for other things. To aid in that process, I envisioned making space inside my body. The absence of fear, I envisioned, would create enough room in my physical body to allow for the change I so desired. Until the fear was gone I was just pushing it around inside me, restocking it, re-encapsulating it in some other body part, not getting rid of it as I should. I also knew that if I continued that habit I would never be free of the pain that plagued my physical body.
Once I became aware of the reason for the fear, I could deal with it. At the time, I wondered: How can you tackle something you don’t know about? I knew I had to continue the deep work of recapitulation, the technique that was proving to be the answer to all my questions, if I was to discover the remaining mysteries of myself and my past. It was the path to knowing myself on the deepest level.
So, as I dove deeper into the recapitulation process and deeper into my inner world, my inner self, and my past, the deeper mysteries of who I was and what controlled me became very clear. At the time, I also knew that I had to find a new way to tackle the fear; not in the old way of holding it in and avoiding or running from it, but by facing it, getting the truth of it, and letting it release, without restriction, to flow out of my body once and for all.
It was the final stage of my shamanic recapitulation, to let go of everything that I held inside me, thinking that I needed it or that it served a purpose. I discovered that fear had no real purpose, it was just an old habit, and that it had a sneaky way of holding me back from fully living. Once I faced, resolved and released the many faces of fear, I advanced into a new reality and new life. In addition, the phenomenal discoveries that punctuated my deep inner work during my recapitulation have never ceased to visit, enlighten, and inspire me.
Everything comes in its own time; what we need and what we are ready for is revealed at the right time. I learned that during my recapitulation too; as difficult as many of my memories were to face, I truly was ready to confront and resolve them so that I could eradicate the fear that I had been bound in my entire life, that had me physically bound in pain and inertia. I discovered that fear was nothing more than a habit, that it only really existed because I was attached to it. Like worry, it was just another entity not worthy of my attention.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Our core issues come to challenge us. What frightens or bothers us generally will show up during times of change, whether change that we instigate or change forced upon us.
As we change and move forward in life, we are able to look back with the kind of clarity that a Mercury Retrograde brings, along with its dizzying energy of confrontation and recapitulation, so that we can come out of it having moved along to a new level on our journeys. As we turn back to look at the distance we’ve come, we notice that we really have changed, perhaps in small ways, perhaps in greater ways, but changed we are nonetheless!
In support,
Jan
NOTE: Chuck wrote about a similar process a few weeks ago in his blog entitled: Face, Feel & Absorb
Soulbyte for Friday June 12, 2015
Get in tune with your spirit! Without extremes sail through all your days with sound mind and sound heart, attuned to that which is right and good for all beings. Find your balance and equilibrium inside and out. Without these things to keep you harmonious and humming along, life’s ups and downs may prove too difficult and your journey may become weary and full of woe.
You do have a certain amount of control and choice. Choose your temperament each day. Decide who you will be. In tune with the greater good, the higher intent of your spirit? Or out of tune, scrambling to make sense of the disharmony you have created?
Attitude, approach, and alignment are all in your control. The decision to get in tune with your spirit is also your choice. You CAN create a harmonious life for yourself. It’s up to you. What do you really want out of life? If you hum yourself a nice melody at each day’s dawning it might just get you humming along nicely for all of your days!
Soulbyte for Thursday June 11, 2015
A warrior knows that opportunities for change are constant, and so a warrior does not sit around and wait for change to happen. Rather than be surprised by change a warrior prepares every day for the inevitable. And when the inevitable comes a warrior is ready to act because a warrior knows that to refuse would be foolhardy.
A warrior does not act impulsively but considers every move, for a warrior knows that choice matters. A warrior is proactive, for a warrior knows that the unfolding of events in life occur so that life’s path may be a growing path, a path leading always toward the inevitable. A warrior greets the inevitable with vigor and awareness, for a warrior also knows that there is no such thing as the “inevitable,” or a mistake. All is as it should be.
A warrior accepts that everything that comes arrives at the perfect time, and so a warrior is never overcome by the changes that life brings, but embraces them and uses them for advancement. A warrior is a warrior after all!
Chuck’s Place: Modesty
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
When Jeanne and I lived in Jamaica, back in ’79, our dear and modest spear-fisherman friend, Baba, introduced us to his favorite brew: fish head soup. He explained, quite simply, that in observing fish on his many voyages into the ocean he noticed that it was always the head that led. To him it was common sense to nourish oneself from the most intelligent part of the fish. Though I was never able to actually eat the brains and eyes myself, I never forgot his simple wisdom.
Elmer Green suggests that humankind is the neocortex of the Earth, the brain, now responsible for leadership of the planet. It all began with the awakening of consciousness and the power to choose, outside Eden’s garden. Since then, humankind has, with both delight and greed, manipulated the matter of Gaia, the fruit of the Earth, in both wondrous and bizarre ways. As the brain of this planet, our leadership is still in its infancy, less intelligent than the advanced wisdom of the lowly fish that does not defy the laws of nature to its own peril.
Humanity, in its inflation, dissociated from its true responsibility to lead the planet in a healthy way, floats in greed and self-righteousness while the planet suffers great imbalance. If humanity is the cortex then the rest of the planet is the limbic system, nature in its most primitive, which is clearly unleashing its own instinctive offensive in an effort to reeducate its cortex as to the needs of the whole interdependent planet.
The utter pervasiveness of rampant sexual abuse throughout the planet in its most sacred institutions—family, government and spiritual houses—is, at its core, flagrant evidence of humanity’s disowned instinctive nature, a rabid wolf preying upon the innocent. Humanity, which has collectively disowned its animal nature, is subject to the ravages of that animal, who, abandoned in the darkness without guidance and care, becomes the Minotaur in the labyrinth of the human subconscious that psychopathically consumes its visitors.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sexual instinct is not the culprit; it’s the diseased human psyche that views itself a superior mental being, without any recognition of its fundamental animal self, that is the culprit. The disowned animal self, left in the darkness without acknowledgement, connection, and guidance, is indeed a ferocious, predatory creature.
We see another sign of the reaction of disregarded nature in ISIS, the current threat to civilization in the Middle East. Isis, in another context, is actually the Egyptian Goddess of Rebirth and a powerful symbol of empowered femininity. Such an archetypal goddess of nature has now unleashed her fury in a storm of violence to decapitate modern civilization. Gaia herself is unleashing earthquakes, volcanoes, and devastating environmental changes that are delivering severe blows to humankind’s mental disregard of her needs.
We are indeed in the midst of major transition. Meanwhile, humankind is challenged to make an evolutionary leap beyond greed to interdependence, wherein lies its only hope of survival. When I ask the I Ching how best to transit through this turbulent time of transformation, I am given hexagram #15: Modesty.
In Modesty, the mountain finds itself beneath the Earth. The mountain, at its summit, is the place of the spirit’s facsimile ruler on earth, the ego, whose job it is to dispense blessings downward; that is, to bring spirit into the body. The Earth is the lowest spiritual place, hence to position the mountain beneath the earth is an extreme image of modesty or humility.
To be modest, the ego must be utterly humble, abandon its greedy or separatist alienated causes and serve the true needs of the body, of humanity, and Gaia at large. “It is the law of heaven to make fullness empty and to make full what is modest…” states the I Ching.
As Gaia, Isis, disowned instincts, and talking heads tear apart that which has governed, a truly modest ego dedicated to compassionately serving the true needs of the full self, and the world, will be filled with all it needs, with abundance, to distribute as truly needed in our rapidly evolving world.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
The storms now upon us will tear down that which clings to its fullness and make full that which is empty. Modesty is the ticket to life in our radically transforming world. It is both the individual and world ego corrective.
May we become the modest cortex that, in its emptiness, is filled with the golden light of enlightenment that ushers in our reformed world. And may we not have to eat fish heads to get there!
In all modesty,
Chuck