Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Light One Candle

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From the dimly lit living room... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
From the dimly lit living room…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I open my eyes. I know without looking that it’s time to get up. I pause to review the residue of the night’s journeys. Nothing pronounced.

It’s writing day. The Gods are clamoring as I cast my line into the pool of possibility. Jan and I sit in the dimly lit living room, around the glass table. Jan has a calling to light the candle, the one that lately doesn’t stay lit. I watch it struggle; it’s not going to make it. Jan gets another candle and ignites it from the dying flame. The light is strong and bright.

Slowly, dreams, readings, and world events begin to energize as we talk, to combat, to intertwine and finally, as we bear the tension, the synchronistic dance begins to reveal itself. I have my writing topic.

We step outside. It begins to rain. I realize that I’m being directed to go inward instead, to capture the choreography of this dance before the competing Gods of Light and Day steal the thunder of this revelation so recently come to me in the dimly lit living room.

Lao Tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching:

“Without going outside, you may know the whole world.
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.”

Look to the kingdom within, I say. Where is Assad within? Who is he? He is a shadow God. He has gassed his people. Who is the God that poisons us within? Is it a food? Is it a substance? Is it a belief? The toxicity is evident now. Consciousness cannot ignore it.

Assad is a God of destruction. He is a God of dissolution, of death. And yet, he is simply the dark side of God. All Gods come with two faces, one of light and one of darkness, just as we do.

We constellate the God we need to address our current challenge. We are challenged now to face the destructive God that has held reign within us. Can we acknowledge our collusion with that God? Unless we are outright psychotic, we must grant access to that which controls us, however powerless or unaware we conceive ourselves to be.

What are the reigning attitudes, judgments, and compensatory self-destructive behaviors that we give license to every day? What God do we allow to rule our lives?

President Obama emerges as the God of Light, poised to take on the God of Darkness, but the world protests! It’s not about assuming some fervent corrective attitude to stamp out the darkness. The world populace has awoken from its groundhog day of slumber. Jimmy Carter calls for a peace conference. Obama turns it over to Congress. A brighter candle is lit. Let’s shed new light on the process. Consciousness must take responsibility to weigh the forces at work, to discern the truth, to be led to right action.

Don't let the light go out! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Don’t let the light go out!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The God of Darkness, if we are indifferent, will be emboldened. Perhaps this is how we got here in the first place, our child selves feeling powerless, seeking relief and distraction. Clearly, if we allow our ego selves to be so dominated, we will be brought to our own destruction, even death. Perhaps there must be death and destruction of our current ego attitudes. New life always requires the sacrifice of old ways.

The righteousness of the God of Light must be challenged as well. 9/11 was, after all, the inevitable compensation for a world dominated by greed that rejected its own darkness. Eventually, the God of Darkness would need to exact revenge, level the playing field of the truth. That’s where we are today: 9/11—Take Two, with the possibility of consciousness—that faces all sides of the truth—trumping the old attack and root-out the evil “over there” approach with a new approach that takes responsibility for our own darkness.

Inwardly, our warrior selves must employ energy in bearing the tension of our psychic reality, giving way to changes that reflect the true needs of the Self. Each warrior that advances this cause within, synchronistically participates in the advance of consciousness to new frontiers without, with the opportunity for greater stability and new possibility on all fronts.

Don’t let the light go out,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: We Are The Change

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Change is constant... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Change is constant…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We are in the midst of great change. I see it all around me, in the people closest to me and in the world. No one has not changed in some way over the past few months, and even going further back, because change is constant. So, yes, we have all been changing for a long time. It is, however, most apparent right now.

Change comes to us in many ways, in many forms, in the apparent challenges we must face on a daily basis and in our not so apparent core issues. How we decide to react to change is what makes our journey what it is. Do we embrace change or do we hide from change? Do we go with gusto or do we hold ourselves back? Do we pretend it’s not happening, fearful of having to change, or do we seek it out, eager to get our lives going in a new direction?

The events of our lives, our dreams and our waking dreams, the things that happen to us, the signs and synchronicities that shape our experiences, come to guide us, to show us what we need to work on, how to go about it, and what direction we should take. We are constantly being shown who we are and who we have the potential to become. It’s in waking up to this bigger picture, to the oneness of it all, that we finally grasp that our journeys are orchestrated so that we may one day flow easily with the changes that come to greet us. For there is no denying that life is in constant flux and that our biggest challenge, our biggest anxiety-reducer, is to learn to flow with it.

Take nature for example, predictable in many ways—the seasons, the tides, the sun and the moon, the repetitive cycles of birth and death—yet within nature there are other factors that are unpredictable, constantly interweaving within and through the known, yet they are still part of what nature is all about. Storms and winds, earthquakes and volcanoes, are unpredictable. They can be expected at certain times and under certain conditions, but they do not necessarily adhere to a timetable, nor can they be controlled.

Our lives too are like this, our days laid out for us, but within our daily lives come the harbingers of change, the sudden shifts that can knock us off our feet or propel us to spread our wings.

Easier to look outside of us... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Easier to look outside of us…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It’s easy to look outside of ourselves and see how the rest of the world is doing. It’s easy to see where others are just not getting it right. But our real challenge is to turn inward, to stop focusing on others and pay attention to what is happening in our own nature, in our inner world. In so doing, we become partners to change rather than opponents to the changing nature of things. We become like the wind and the clouds, more easily flowing with what life brings us. We become more consciously aware of the nature of our personal lives.

We begin to see that as we learn to flow with our lives, our lives flow more easily with us. We are not so shaken up by the events in our lives, whether in our personal lives or what is happening in the world, for we see the bigger natural picture, the constantly changing picture. If this happens, then that happens, then something else will come as well, in an ever-unfolding series of events that help us to grow and understand life in ways we had never imagined we could or should.

My inner nature has been pushing me to more firmly ground myself in my spiritual practice, to keep taking it to new levels, going deeper and higher. At times I am more successful than at other times, but what I do notice is that every time I go into my sanctum, my space where I do yoga and meditation, it is easier and easier to tune out the world and tune into my inner world. My persistence is paying off.

Physically there is less resistance, and mentally there is less intrusion. My mind knows what I am asking it to do, and it stands aside. It knows that this is sacred time and that there will still be plenty of time for it later. In fact, for most of the day I fully accept its presence. “At this moment, nothing is more important,” I tell myself. It’s been established: Nothing, at this moment, is more important than this practice.

As we all face the tension of now, of what is happening in our world, as others make decisions that we may not agree with, we must turn inward and ask ourselves where we too are doing the same things to ourselves. What decisions are we making that are just not that good for our well being? It’s not someone else’s problem either, it’s a problem that we all must deal with personally, on an individual level. If we all dealt with universal issues on a personal level perhaps they would no longer arise in the world outside of us—there would be no reason.

Inner practice leads to great change... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Inner practice leads to great change…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Your inner nature may be pushing you in its own unique way. The first step in beginning a spiritual practice it to begin listening to what is being said and to begin looking around at what you are being shown. The eyes and ears are a sure means of exploring just what is being asked or shown. Then a real dialogue can begin.

Your spirit will always find a way to connect. You just have to be open. Watch how nature unfolds in your daily life, in the storms and gentle breezes both, in the turmoil and the calm. Life is leading you, naturally, in waking and dreaming.

In oneness,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: This Is The Most Important Moment

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Here is Jeanne’s message of guidance for this week:

Brighten your life with awareness... -Photo by Jan Ketchel
Brighten your life with awareness…
-Photo by Jan Ketchel

Upon stable legs carry yourself forward now, taking your next step with acquiescence. Without fear, let yourself be guided forward. You are going forward anyway.

Whether you go with fear or without fear, life will take you to your next challenge, your next plateau, your next stage of growth. In accepting your future as open and inviting rather than dark and frightening, as your most important moment in life, you will travel onward with robustness and steadiness. Your purpose will become what it should be: Your own growth and transformation.

Find those stable legs and take your next step. You are fully supported by all that life offers you. Find meaning everywhere. That is how to take your next steps with awareness.

Be happy that life comes each day. Greet it warmly. Invite it to flow within you with enthusiasm, tenderness, and love.

Love and be love. You are it!

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Inhabit New Habit

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Nature is on automatic pilot... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Nature is on automatic pilot…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Reasoning, or thinking, is a function of consciousness. The far greater share of our mental functioning operates on automatic pilot, in the vast realm of the unconscious mind.

Although we can consciously decide to breathe, to breathe deeper, to adjust the rhythm and length of a breath, the majority of breaths we will take in our lifetime will happen automatically, outside the purview of our conscious awareness.

Our unconscious is filled with billions of such preset programs that we all share and inherit from the evolutionary journey of our species. This was why Jung named the deepest level of the unconscious the “collective,” versus personal, as at the deepest level we all share in common the same preset programs to react and survive as living human beings.

The unconscious mind does not need to think through eons of experience in order to gain the precise knowledge of how to react to a given need or stimulus. I was once deeply wounded in the palm of my hand on a beach. I was alone. I passed out; that is, consciousness left. When it returned, I discovered my hand packed in sand, the bleeding completely stopped. I was good to go. The program to “dress” that wound lay dormant and ready in the unconscious. It was triggered to action upon contact with the stimulus of the wound as it pushed the ego out of the way and took care of business. This is the essence of instinct—inherited habits to address adaptive needs to ensure survival.

With the advent of consciousness, human beings have a new source of habit making. Utilizing our faculty of reasoning and learning, we introduce new patterns of behavior into our lives. When we learn to drive, for instance, we—with consciousness—repetitively practice a series of behaviors, such as learning to brake and drive with one foot, learning to turn the wheel, to park, and to stay in lanes with others going in the same direction. Once these tasks are consciously mastered, they slip into the realm of the unconscious, as habits that react on demand, as needed, when we drive. After awhile, driving starts to require minimal consciousness—in fact, we easily daydream while our unconscious reacts to all the stimuli we encounter as we safely take our journeys.

The unconscious is a habitual mind that reacts to needs and commands. This fact lies at the essence of hypnotic suggestion. Like the habit of driving that we ask the unconscious to perform when we enter our cars, the unconscious awaits orders constantly throughout the day. Hypnotists are aware of this part of the mind that responds to suggestion, and speak directly to it.

The truth is, we are all our own hypnotists. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico identified our inner hypnotist as the internal dialogue that incessantly barks orders at the unconscious mind, manifesting in how we see ourselves and construct our world. That internal dialogue may tell us that we are inadequate, unattractive, unfulfilled, undervalued, underserving, etc. Of course, it can also deliver other consistent messages that support a sense of worthiness and adequacy, but this is less common. We become so entranced by the habitual definitions of our internal dialogue that we construct a personality and sense of self according to its dictates. We become entrenched in a familiar definition of self that, however uncomfortable or unfulfilled it may be, persists because of the constant redundant messages and orders delivered by the incessant internal dialogue.

Ready to dive in and create some new waves? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ready to dive in and create some new waves?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico suggest that we interrupt this automatic flow of messages by canceling the internal dialogue and consciously delivering new suggestions, what they call intent. Intent is the mantra of a new, consciously delivered, command, bent on manifesting a new sense of self, as well as a new world.

When we coin a new intention—i.e., I am calm—and repeat it religiously, like a prayer, we are delivering new working orders, entering a new habit into our unconscious mind that will activate the programs associated with manifesting that intent. We must be religious in our practice—highly repetitive—if we are to push aside the old messages, the conflicting old messages of the reigning internal dialogue, which can only serve to confuse, that is, deliver mixed signals to the unconscious mind. And mixed messages, as we know, confound the manifestation of change.

We must be disciplined and persistent in our practice. Remember, it took a long time and a lot of practice to truly master the art of driving as a guaranteed habit. It is the same with manifesting and inhabiting a new habit. Perseverance and repetitive practice will, ultimately, manifest intent in new habit!

Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: To The Deeper Within

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One day we must all take off and head into the great unknown... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
One day we must all take off and head into the great unknown…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We must all take the hero’s journey. At some point in our lives it becomes imperative. When we stand on the threshold, about to take the first step into the unknown, we feel totally alone. No one has ever done what we are about to do. Our journey is our own to have, to experience, and to return from.

Perhaps our first journey is to leave our parents at the age of five and go off to school, to get on the school bus and return at the end of the day having had an experience that no one else has ever had. We must all do this at some point in our lives if we are to become mature, independent beings.

“Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss,” writes Joseph Campbell. And it’s true, we all have to leave the known, the easy comforts of a provided life and experience the discomforts of life on our own.

There are many stages of the hero’s journey. There is that first stage of leaving home, of going off to college or moving far from where we grew up, to begin anew, as youth chomping at the bit for our own experiences beyond the world of our parents. Many never take another hero’s journey after that. We settle into our lives, become complacent, disillusioned, perhaps angry at the world for not meeting us in the way we expected. Our spirit, however, never gives up. It comes knocking, constantly asking us to please get up and do something to change ourselves!

Sometimes the call of the spirit is finally answered later in life. The journey is taken up again, when other duties have been met, when our maturity allows us to shed some of what has held us back in the past, when we are finally ready. Others continue the hero’s journey unabated, letting something else besides the dictates of society and family tradition guide them on their way, those free-spirited ones who never seem to settle in one place for very long. Others constantly refuse the call, even late into life; even upon their death beds they do not heed the proddings of their spirit to experience the bliss of life.

There is another journey... to the Deeper Within... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There is another journey…
to the Deeper Within…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Besides the hero’s journey in the world, there is another kind of hero’s journey, the inner journey, the call of the spirit to encounter and experience the Deeper Within, as I like to call it. The journey into the Deeper Within is as frightening as taking that first step on the young hero’s journey, when leaving home for the first time and finding out what it means to be a fully responsible adult.

The Deeper Within calls to us throughout our lives. Calling and calling, it asks us to come closer, to hear what it has to tell us of the treasures and mysteries of the deeper self, like a deep well, the bottom of which is endless. The Deeper Within is where our true bliss lies, where our real transformation awaits. Once we heed this call, we are offered the opportunity to go on a journey that never ends.

To be ready to encounter and experience this Deeper Within we must allow ourselves to take the first part of the hero’s journey in the real world. We must leave home, grow up, create a life for ourselves on our own terms, as fully independent beings. We must gather experiences, learn what it means to face our fears and test our merits, to have gains and losses, to have love and to lose love, to build our egos and strengthen our spirits in a world that is often ignorant, disharmonious, and could care less.

Once we have had experiences in the real world, we might be ready to have experiences in the Deeper Within, where everything that we have learned from being in the outer world will be utilized and tested, proven to be useful or useless in our inner world. In the Deeper Within we will finally meet our spirit face to face, all that it encompasses, our light side and our dark side. We must be prepared for such encounters.

Our ego, strengthened by our life experiences, will prove its worth, showing us what we are really made of as we dive into the Deeper Within. The shamanic process of recapitulation is taking the hero’s journey into the Deeper Within. It entails facing what has controlled us and what has guided us, what has supplied us with our energy and what has drained us of our energy. Recapitulation is the hero’s journey to reconnecting with the spirit self. During recapitulation we surrender our ego to this spirit self, so that it may guide us to full transformation.

As we return to the real world from our hero’s journey through the Deeper Within, we must ease slowly back into society, quietly and humbly take our place again, transformed yet fully present. We return to life like a newborn, full of a new kind of knowledge that others cannot totally grasp. We return from taking the journey into the Deeper Within speaking a strange new language, having had visions and mystical encounters. We return with a new way of perceiving the world, with a new kind of awareness.

Complexities of the deeper self blissfully revealed upon taking the hero's journey... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Complexities of the deeper self blissfully revealed upon taking the hero’s journey…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Everything is now so clear to us, life explained on so many levels, death faced and found to be nothing more than this life extended, experienced in another state. We return with a new kind of sober fearlessness, with a new kind of detachment, and yet we feel and experience life with far greater love and compassion than previously possible. We emerge fully aware of our universal interconnectedness and our energetic connection to all living beings. Yes, we return with blissfulness coursing through us, having experienced bliss, having fully known what bliss really is.

Our new self wants everyone else to experience the bliss of life in this manner, to take the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within and transform too! But we learn soon enough that not everyone is ready. “I can’t read all that spiritual crap!” someone said to me the other day. I was not offended, nor did I feel sorry for the person. I simply acknowledged the journey that was being taken.

There are millions of kinds of journeys being taken simultaneously. Some people are here, others there. But the thing to remember is that we all had to start somewhere. We all had to take that first step into the unknown at some point, whether in a past life or in this life. At one time we all had to, and have to, take the first step on the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within too.

Wishing you all well, wherever you are on your hero’s journey. Keep going!
Jan

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR