Chuck's Blog

#667 Chuck’s Place: The Foreign Installation

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There is a preponderance of energy this week, pushing upward through the hardness, the murkiness, the silt, the nigredo of the earth, traveling its path to new life, to flowering in the brightness and warmth of the sun. This energy that bursts forth is nature itself, our deepest roots, and our conscious challenge is to harness and channel it safely into life. For this we need the sacred containment of our awareness and our physical bodies peacefully brooding, like the hen upon the egg, awaiting maturation and readiness for life. The major protagonist to this containment is the mind, what the shamans call the foreign installation.

When shamans view the human body in energetic terms they see swirling energy at different centers within the body, with one exception. In the head they see an energy that moves horizontally, in a rapid back and forth motion. For shamans, this energetic pattern is alien to the body; hence, they have named it the foreign installation. Many people recognize and experience this foreign energetic presence in the form of obsessive thinking, which bounces back and forth in the brain or gets stuck in a thinking loop with no exit, often experienced at 3 AM, initiating hours of senseless perseverative activity, allowing for no further sleep.

The goal of all meditative practices is to eliminate this obsessive quality of the mind, to free it up for concentrated thought or emptiness, and to be able to clearly channel the intent of the higher self. Shamans call this coveted state inner silence. In inner silence the internal dialogue is eliminated and the channel is opened to direct knowledge.

Buddha, as he sat beneath the bodhi tree, discovered that direct knowledge or enlightenment was achieved through the practice of remaining still while the conjuring mind presented intense scenarios that beckoned emotional attachment. This is the 3 AM scenario. Buddha was able to not fall for these enticements to engage his energy in illusory concerns. He was able to not grasp at these scenes; grasping, in the Buddhist sense is attachment, which engages and drains the energy and life force in empty imaginings, in illusory reality.

Like Buddha, we are all confronted with countless concerns through the incessant sales pitches of the foreign installation, the ultimate salesman vying for our energetic attachment through worry and obsessive thinking, gateways to illusory living at every moment of the day. How can we resist such a pervasive onslaught! Christ, like Buddha beneath the bodhi tree, instructs us in this dilemma in his own encounter with the tree, the cross, where he achieves his own stillness and ultimate enlightenment. If we understand dying for “the sins of mankind” as a metaphor for achieving non-attachment to the conjurings of the internal dialogue, Christ demonstrates how challenging it is to not attach, literally being nailed to a cross to maintain stillness amidst the pulls of this world. In Greek mythology, Odysseus binds himself to the mast of his ship, his own sturdy tree, to avoid the fateful lure of the conjuring Sirens. And who are these modern Sirens? They are Worry about those we love. They are Fears of illness, of ruin, of death, an endless sea of possibilities; empty imaginings, sensuous enticements, presented in living color upon the inner screen of the foreign installation, beckoning attachment.

The lessons we glean from heroes such as Buddha, Christ, and Odysseus are:

1. to remain aware that the conjurings of the foreign installation are all illusions seeking to trap our awareness, drain our energy, and engage us in false reality;

2. to remain still, like the tree; don’t budge; don’t attach; don’t worry or fear. Though you cannot control the incessant presentation of illusory sales pitches, you can choose not to give them your attention;

3. to exercise great restraint, as the conjurer is masterful, the offerings are plentiful, enticing, and terrifying.

I suggest the practice of shifting awareness back to the body, our own sturdy tree in this life, and placing our intent upon softening, going deeper and deeper into energetic calmness and stillness, regardless of how loud the band of the conjurer plays its songs. Keep bringing awareness back to the body, going deeper and deeper into the stillness.

The shamans do say that, eventually, the foreign installation leaves, if it is persistently provided no energetic sustenance through our attachment to its enticements. The key though, is perseverance without attachment to the outcome. Sometimes the foreign installation goes dormant for a while, producing a true sense of accomplishment. Beware though of attaching to this. This is one of its traps, as it awaits that moment of success to return with a vengeance, entrapping us in defeatism and a return to the dominance of the incessant illusory world conjured by the internal dialogue. Do the practice with no attachment to the outcome!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Self-Hypnosis for Change

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All hypnosis is self-hypnosis is a phrase commonly uttered among hypnotists. And what does that mean, you might ask, because, if that is true, why do we need hypnotists at all? In truth, we have been hypnotized our whole lives and continue to be so by the things that are presented to us from outside of ourselves, often quite blatantly, but also from inside our own psyches, perhaps in unawareness. From our earliest years, we learn about life from our families, teachers, and our social and religious circumstances. As we grow and enter the world we are increasingly bombarded with new information presented to us by the “experts,” such as in the media, in politics, in marketing, in the medical community, the drug companies, the food companies, by important figures in our lives, etc., essentially by anyone telling us, repeatedly, that something is true. And, in fact, the simple act of repetitively internalizing thoughts about ourselves implants beliefs that we are a certain way, so that, eventually, we take on the task of living out these beliefs, whether they are true or not. A skilled hypnotist, to contrast, knows exactly what new words, used in the right manner, can break through the old beliefs and truisms about the self, bypassing the long ago embedded ideas and the protective layers of ego that hold so tightly to those old beliefs, to implant new ideas deeply in the psyche so that change can happen. It is also true that even the most skilled of hypnotists will not succeed in truly hypnotizing someone if the ego is not ready and willing to participate in the process. Thus it is true that all hypnosis is, in fact, self-hypnosis, because the entire self must be involved in the decision to change. The ego must be ready to allow the deeper self to access new information that may bring about a true shift in habits, in behaviors, in beliefs, allowing for a new self to be fully embraced.

The reason I am bringing this up is that in her message on Monday, regarding a process of going into a deep part of the self to reach a place of shift, Jeanne is really outlining a process of self-hypnosis. In fact, my channeling process is a practice of self-hypnosis, of going into trance, a hypnotic state, and allowing my ego to back off while I access a place beyond myself. That being said, meditation could also be termed self-hypnosis. When I had finished with the channeling on Monday, which I do with pen in hand, and was typing it up on the website, it dawned on me that Jeanne was actually offering quite a nice step-by-step practice of doing self-hypnosis. And the key to learning anything is practice. The things we learned as children were taught to us over and over again. We learned to walk, to speak, to read, to write, etc. by doing them repeatedly. In order to become a good artist, to be able to draw and paint what I was actually seeing or imagining in the way that I wanted to express it, no matter how naturally talented, I had to practice and learn by doing repeatedly. It is the same thing with learning to play a musical instrument or play a sport, or even learn to drive. To do anything well, to reach a sense of accomplishment we must practice, and it is the same thing with self-hypnosis. In order to truly change, we must practice repeating our new truths, by asking for shift to happen, by constantly giving ourselves a new view, and by offering ourselves a new perspective. If we wish to achieve change we must participate in making it happen.

The four steps that Jeanne offered begins with the practice of saying a mantra, of repeating something over and over again, reminding ourselves that this is important to us, that we want this. This is doing self-hypnosis. By repeating an affirmation, a prayer, an intent over and over again, we are doing self-hypnosis. This practice allows us to enter a new state of awareness, to go into trance, however light, so that we can take the next step, which Jeanne outlines as breathing innerly and allowing ourselves to feel our energy as a calm pool. She then asks us, in the third step, to go deeper into trance and into self-hypnosis and look at ourselves from outside of our normal means of viewing. She asks us to change our perspective, which is one of the main tools that a hypnotist uses, offering, through acceptable, personal suggestion, the means of seeing what we have been missing about ourselves, something that we have not allowed integration into our conscious awareness. She then asks us, in the fourth step, to take a look at how we have been affected by the outer world all our lives, to see even that world from this detached new perspective and gain clarity on just how the things we believed about ourselves may not really be compatible with our inner truths or our inner energy. Have we been compromising our energy in order to uphold an outer world that we do not truly believe is right for us? Have we been playing a game, simply because it was the only game that we knew? Are we caught in the outer energy because we are not aware that we have our own energy inside of us that has very personal ideas of what we should be doing with our energy, and with our lives?

In offering this four-step process Jeanne is offering us a practice of self-hypnosis so that we can be our own catalysts to change, without having to wait for the world outside of us to force us into having to accept a shift. We are offered the opportunity to do it on our own terms, with our own full participation, ego and psyche in gentle alignment. If we practice these steps of self-hypnosis as Jeanne outlines them, eventually we can affect change within, simply by the fact that we are intending change. By our practice of these steps, by repeatedly introducing new outlooks, new views of ourselves, both innerly and outerly, we offer ourselves new energy, based on truth and resonance of inner spirit. As short and subtle as these visits to our inner energy are, eventually we will be ready to take longer and deeper visits, offering ourselves the opportunity to envision and enact even greater changes.

Any new idea we wish to offer the self can be introduced in the manner that Jeanne outlines. If we wish to be better at something, more focused, if we wish to lose weight, eat right, sleep better, change a habit, be happier, be more daring, be loving, be aware, etc., —for ourselves or others— we can use these steps, beginning with simply stating our new intent in the mantra of step number one. By going through the process Jeanne offers us, by looking carefully, gently and compassionately at ourselves, and by sticking with the practice for as long as it takes to achieve change, without giving up for all the old reasons and by allowing the ego to sit idly by, we can truly change. We can achieve what we desire. And, in alignment with spirit, you might be surprised at what you discover about the self that you did not understand or even know about before you began the process. Try it and see what happens!

I am reminded that even before I knew anything about hypnosis or even thought about becoming a hypnotist I certainly utilized a lot of self-hypnosis, not because I knew what it was, but because it was such a natural habit, one that we all do all the time. That might be another thing to notice. How often do you hypnotize yourself each day? You might be surprised that it really is quite often.

Enjoy the nice spring weather! And keep practicing!
Love,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#666 Take a Personal Energy Day

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Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today is the ides of March and to quote Shakespeare in Julius Caesar: “Beware the ides of March.” I have always felt this to be a high energy day and today is no exception. Sometimes it has felt like a day of dangerous energy and other times, like today, it feels like if you could tap into the energy that you could really use it as a catalyst and go far. I am writing this early in the morning. It is still dark and quiet outside; even the birds have not begun to stir. What would you like to talk about today, Jeanne, this energy that I feel? Or is there something else that you feel will be helpful to your many readers as we begin this new day and this new week?

Do not forget, as you go about your day and get involved in the progression of life upon that earth that you are absolutely available to not only feel the energy outside of you, but to tap into it as well. Today, I speak of this ability in relationship to the energy outside of you, felt so deeply inside of you; though even this may not be noticed as you, My Many Readers, jump into a new busy workweek.

It is possible, with a little anchoring, to redirect your attention throughout your day to how you are feeling inside the self. And by this, I mean deeply inside the self. For this is where you have the ability to notice, to perceive, and even to utilize the energy that is indeed quite available for your use, that is quite helpful and that, if you can tap into it, may reveal just what you need to know at this time in your life.

This is a time of shift, as Jan perceives, but this is also a time of dubious energy, for shift comes in many forms. Shift can come in tidal waves that overtake and swallow one up in unwanted energy. Shift can come in soft and gentle breezes that stir the unconscious awake and assert that prospects are good. Shift can come during sleep so that you wake up feeling different yet unaware of how such a change occurred, for your conscious self did slumber through the time of shift.

Shift can also come when you least expect it and when you are only half prepared for it. Consider, however, that no matter how shift occurs, and in what form it comes to you, that you are ready for it, though you may protest quite heartily at such an idea. I will always contend that you are indeed ready for what comes to you, for what happens to you without your controls and desires coming into play. For you pull toward you, energetically, exactly what you need so that your life will proceed in a direction of growth and awakening.

Whether or not you want to wake up, though, is truly up to you. You are the only one who can decide whether or not you are going to perceive the events in your life as meaningful awakenings. And then, you are the only one in your life who makes the choice to accept these awakenings as either happy challenges or as devastating calamities. You may see them as both good and dangerously necessary events, or you may see them as bad occurrences yet as most precipitous and meaningful as well. How you accept what comes to you in your life will largely depend on where you are, how much inner work you have done, and what you have been able to hold onto as you have learned about the self, the journey you are on, and about how energy works.

I suggest that a special day of contemplation of energy is not a bad thing. A special day of listening to the inner self is not a bad thing. A special day of really allowing the self to feel the energy and find out what it personally means in your own life, at this moment in time, is not at all a bad thing to do. Today, for instance, or really any day this week would be energetically appropriate for such a task. Choose a day this week and set it aside as your personal energy day. Take a personal day, and this does not need to be a day away from your normal activities, but a day of personal intent nonetheless. A day of personal intent would look something like this:

1. You wake up and ascribe a mantra to the self, i.e.: “Today is my day of personal intent to feel the energy,” or something like that. This will be your reminder, to say throughout the day, as you go about your daily routines. You can say this as little as three times or as often as six, but do not obsess about it. Simply use it to remind yourself that you are electing to re-anchor in your feelings on this day.

2. And what will you do with yourself once you have anchored? You will calm yourself for a moment with some calming breaths —perhaps heart-centered breathing— and you will allow yourself to feel the energy that is pulsing through you, through your physical body. Describe this energy to yourself, and then take another breath and go deeper into your inner energy, and describe again those deeper feelings. Do this to three or more levels, each time going deeper, depending on how much time you can take out of your day. You may only have time to touch briefly inside the energy of the self, or you may have time to go very deep. Be assured that just the act of doing this inner check with the self will offer a shift in your treatment of the self, in your perspectives, in your feelings, and in your perception of what you are really feeling. Say that you are feeling rushed and a little stressed, but as you breathe and go deeper into the self you may find a pool of inner calm energy quite different from what you have been experiencing. Each time you drop back into that calm pool you will take a little more of that calmness out into your world with you, and this will allow you to actually experience your outer world differently.

3. The next part of the process of this personal intent to feel the inner energy of self is to take a look at your outer world from this inner place, to really see it from this deeper perspective, to look with detachment, impersonal detachment, as if it were not your world at all, but someone else’s entirely. From this impersonal perspective you may see something differently. You may even see your whole world as quite a scene, quite a play, and you may gain insight and reconciliation of issues that you have not before been able to gain clarity on.

4. As you allow yourself the pleasure of removal from your world, as you do this technique of energy removal from your outer world into your inner world, your next step is to notice just how the outer energy has been affecting your inner energy. Are you in synch with the outer energy, flowing quite easily with it? Or are you struggling with it, fighting it, or overwhelmed by it? Notice what is happening. This is a very important point to become aware of. How is your inner energy reacting to the outer energy? You may notice what is going on and feel it quite easily, or you may only feel it lightly. You may feel that your circumstances do not allow you to notice this interaction, but I contend that in momentary calm you will be able to discern how you have been reacting to the energy outside of you. If you find this difficult to figure out, take that as your answer, that you have been reacting obliviously, and that is the truth of your attention to how the outer energy affects you. And so be it.

And now you are ready to learn something about the self through this little exercise. You are ready to learn how very subtly, or even how abruptly, your personal energy is affected each day by the energy outside of you. Assume, as Jan states, that today is a high energy day. Are you going to allow it to take over and send you off on a wild goose chase, simply because if offers such wild opportunity? Or are you going to tap into its energy in a meaningful way, by studying it, balancing it with your inner place of energy, and use it to further your self on your journey, both inner and outer. Good energy is good to tap into, but with practicing how best to use it in your awakening process is a very good way to use it meaningfully.

So, a day of personal intent to use the energy to gain a new perspective in order to grow is not a bad idea at all! By studying this process within the self, by working with it, you will gain the ability to automatically tune into the energy outside of you, ascertain how it personally feels and how to personally use it. You will gain inner balance and outer balance and clarity of inner self and outer energy, so that stability may be achieved.

Growth will happen, progress will happen, change will happen, and a new perspective will be gained as you learn to utilize the energy that comes from without on such a day and such a week as this. For in this assessment that Jan makes, she is feeling the energy of change. Now comes the hard part. How is she, and how are you, going to tap into it for good personal use?

Intend it, feel it, step back and gain perspective, and then balance with it; and know that you can always do this simply by reestablishing your intent to do so. Enjoy the process!

Chuck's Blog

#665 Chuck’s Place: Black Gold

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When challenged with the question, “Why so much focus on alchemy in your writing, Chuck?” my truthful response is: Carl Jung, that Master Shaman, spent decades of his life unearthing and sifting through the rich black earth of this ancient system to empower us to decipher the gold in our thoroughly modern dreams. Modern Alchemy 101: sift through the nigredo, the blackness in your dreams, and you will find your gold. Before I elucidate on a dream from last night that Jan is allowing me to “expose,” I first need to discuss a homework assignment I was given this week.

A client, who was reading an early blog I had written on blackness, America Chooses the Black Doll, assigned me to read Playing in the Dark, Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of tackling Ms. Morrison, I assure you, she is as dense and playful in her writing as Jung is when writing on alchemy. In this work, she makes a compelling argument for the need to shed light upon the cultural context of blackness in America, to fully realize its unconscious influence upon all American authorship.

Morrison reflects upon Marie Cardinal’s autobiography, The Words to Say It, where Cardinal describes her initiation into madness, triggered in the midst of a jazz improvisation at a Louis Armstrong concert. Morrison questions the automatic, uncontested assumptions of this encounter with blackness and the onset of madness. Morrison draws attention to the automatic acceptance of these things —black people—black music—mental chaos—madness— as being associatively linked and the unconscious projection of them into American literature.

Taking it beyond literature, I would argue that we are absolutely stymied in America by this dilemma. Is there not a very strong attempt to play upon this automatic unconscious assumption with blackness by associating Obama with madness, as the devil incarnate? If we don’t shed light upon these projections we become a country paralyzed by apocalyptic fear.

The issue here is to separate the ancient symbol of blackness from its projection onto people of color. The contrasting symbols of white and black, day and night, light and dark, visible and invisible, yin and yang, are so ancient that they long precede awareness of race. These symbols exist in the depths of the collective unconscious and present themselves in dreams, impervious to political and social correctness. It remains for the conscious individual to decipher the true meaning and personal relevance of these symbols in dreams. Blackness, or the nigredo as the alchemists named it, symbolizes unknown material; black is in the dark, where things are unseen and therefore unknown. In order to arrive at the highest value, always considered to be gold, one must go into the unknown, the darkness of the self and redeem that which lies there, either because it has been rejected or because it has, more significantly, yet to be discovered. The nigredo, in this context, is that which lies in the darkness. The nigredo is universal to all races because all people have parts of themselves hidden in the dark and, similarly, because it is unknown, it is equally unsettling for all races. Racism is a collective attempt to escape this inner tension of reckoning with one’s unknown self, the nigredo, by ridding oneself of its threat, by assigning it to and projecting it upon another race, and maintaining power over that race to keep one’s fears in check.

One can hardly escape the current obvious, unabashedly, in-your-face attempt to seduce white America into avoiding facing the truth of what lies hidden in its own darkness by projecting its nigredo upon Obama and ridding itself of its own curse. Toni Morrison is right to draw such attention to the archetypal implications of blackness being automatically and unchallengingly projected upon human beings. The symbol is not the object. The symbol in the dream is ancient, archetypal, and personally relevant. Own it, and take the personal journey with it. We use Jan’s dream to illustrate this.

In her own words: I am standing on 42nd Street outside Grand Central Terminal in New York City talking to a woman who says she has just won the Lottery, a winning of several million dollars. “So, I didn’t win?” I ask. “Oh well, I guess it just wasn’t my turn.” And with that I turn and walk into the cavernous main hall of Grand Central Terminal where the vast space is lined with row upon row of black toilets, with no lids. The toilets are packed tightly together and there are perhaps fifty or so rows of them interspersed with black metal folding chairs. I have to go to the bathroom, “a crap,” so I begin walking up and down the aisles of toilets looking for a place where I can comfortably sit down and do what I have to do, but there is absolutely no privacy here. People are sitting on some of the toilets and I can hear farting and peeing sounds. They are reading, smoking, and talking to others sitting next to them or opposite them, as if it were nothing unusual, but I just can’t allow myself to be so exposed. I think up all kinds of reasons why I should not just sit down on a toilet like everyone else, such as: There is no privacy here! There are too many men sitting in this row! How can that woman sit there like that! Don’t people have any sense of privacy? This is too intimate! Finally, I decide that I will “just hold it” and, upon deciding this, I walk out of the terminal. As soon as I walk outside I get into a car with Chuck and our daughter Erica, who in the dream is a happy and bubbly thirteen year old. I am driving. We travel into the countryside over winding, hilly snow and ice covered roads. People are driving way too fast for the conditions and several times I have to make some quick maneuvers so we don’t have collisions. Erica is very impressed with my driving skills but even so we are eventually forced off the road by an oncoming Cadillac that sideswipes the driver’s side mirror and sends us hurtling into a snow bank. We exit the car, leaving it stranded in the snow, grab three round flying saucer sleds from the trunk and begin walking up a steep ice and snow-covered road. We arrive at the top of the hill and decide to sled down the other side, but the snow is so wet and sticky that we are unable to slide down without getting stuck repeatedly, so we abandon our flying saucers and walk the rest of the way. At the bottom of the hill, Erica points to a blurry picture of a nutcracker painted on the road —like a logo of the nutcracker from the ballet The Nutcracker Suite— barely visible beneath the thick ice that is covering the road. As we continue walking along, I see that a railroad bridge crosses over the road far ahead and that there is a railroad station off to the left. “Look, a train station!” I say with great relief. “We are taking that train!” Chuck says, firmly. As we get closer I see that the station name is Warwarsing. I joke repeatedly into Chuck’s ear, saying that we are in “War-Washing! War-Washing! Get it? We are in WAR-WASHING!” I know that we can take the train back to Grand Central Terminal, and as we walk into the station to buy our tickets I wake up.

Jan does not win the lottery, i.e. the gold! No, you have to work for it. The work begins at Grand Central—an allusion to a directive from the SELF. “Grand” suggests something greater than the ego; “Central” shows it to be at the center of the personality. Grand Central is also the meeting place of many old tried and true paths. Evidently the SELF is directing Jan into a scene that captures many people’s worst nightmare in dreams, a vast public unisex restroom without partitions. The nigredo is identified by the black toilets, the black chairs, and, obviously, that which is concealed inside the body! The nigredo points to that which is unknown or concealed, and requires work. The work here means exposing oneself to the truth of that which is unsettling and unknown. The dream is placing obvious emphasis on EXPOSURE. The SELF wants the nigredo exposed, not discretely flushed away. Jan balks at this request, choosing instead to take her own heroic journey, symbolized by the accompaniment of the innocent, bubbly, youthful Erica, avoiding the blackness and going off into the white snow.

As it turns out, all of Jan’s efforts at transcendence in pure whiteness fail, including the flying saucers—an inflated attempt to win her wholeness, symbolized by the round saucer that flies. The nutcracker, beneath the ice, is a reminder that the real nut has yet to be cracked. Ultimately, we end up at the Warwarsing station, where I, representing Jan’s inner masculine guide, as animus, insist we take the train back to Grand Central. The WAR symbolizes taking on the tension of exposure within the self, encountering internalized judgments, inhibitions, unacceptable facts, etc., symbolized by all the characters hanging around the terminal in this dream. The WASHING symbolizes separating out the elements of nigredo, sifting through “the crap” and discovering that which has been hidden. In this dream, the path to be taken is an ancient one leading back to Grand Central. An inflationary avoidance, however heroic, could not achieve reconciliation.

Thank you, Jan, for fulfilling your dream’s request: exposure to the world! Through this act Jan owns her own nigredo, which becomes the source of acquiring her own gold through facing her own inner truth. I hope that this dream illustrates the symbolic meaning of blackness with its golden potential, which is the alchemical process, obviously relevant in understanding the dream of a modern person. Additionally, along with Toni Morrison, I hope that this article furthers an appreciation for the archetypal symbol of blackness, in all its richness, that must be differentiated from unconscious projections onto outer objects.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: The Shadow Lurks

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I seem to do a lot of my inner work in dreaming. It has always been this way. My psyche seems to like to work on issues of importance while my mind sleeps and luckily, more often than not, especially if I intend it, I wake up with good dream recall. I have also discovered that if I present a dreaming intent my psyche readily obliges, giving me just what I need. Over the past few weeks I have made some decisions, one of which, as you know, was to change my name to my married name. This is not as easy at it may sound. Any woman who has faced this prospect upon marriage knows this. Suddenly, a well-known identity is challenged and the big question of “Who am I?” arises. During my recent process of making this life changing decision I had the following dream.

I am having a funeral for Jan Hughes. I am burying her in a field on a hill, under the spreading limbs of a tall tree. As the funeral progresses I have an inner dialogue with this “old Jan,” as she is lowered into the grave, as dirt is thrown onto the casket, and as she is put to rest. I tell her that I am not abandoning her, that I am not rejecting her, but that she has done her life’s work and it is time for her to recede while a new me takes over. I am thankful for the life we had together. I thank her for accompanying me this far and for taking me on my recapitulation journey. I tell her this as her grave is covered, as a headstone is put in place, and as I walk away and leave her buried under the tree, knowing that something is not quite resolved, but I am not sure what it is yet. Even so, every day, in the dream, as I pass by the spot on the hill where she is buried I see her headstone and know that I have made the right decision.

Three days later, I have another dream related to the same theme. In this dream I am approached by a woman who I recognize from my past. When I knew her I was in awe of her and admired her for many reasons. She was beautiful. She wore her hair in a short pixie cut and I once cut my hair like hers, wanting to be like her. She was tall, not exceedingly thin, and she had perfect posture and moved with definite grace, totally in her body, while I am short and in the past tended to hunch my shoulders more than I do now, totally not in my body. She carried herself with such confidence and seemed totally relaxed with who she was, both in her work and in her personal life. In the dream, she is old, her hair is longer and very scraggly, thin, hanging in her face, her expression is withdrawn and dark, her eyes sunken and haunted looking, her skin wrinkled and her cheeks, once so plump and rosy, are cavernous. She comes very close to me and peering into my face says in a harsh whisper: “I love you. I have always loved you. I want to be with you. I want to be your lover forever. Don’t leave me.”

“Oh, yes,” I say, “I remember you came to me in a dream once before and told me the same thing, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she says, “but you wouldn’t pay attention.”

“But I’m married now,” I say. She looks devastated when I say this and I am not sure what to do with her. She looks sad, sick, lifeless, and I feel her love for me as well as her pain at being rejected. I don’t want to make her feel any worse, but I can’t figure out what to say to her. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I say, referring to her desire to love me forever. And at that she disappears and I wake up.

As I write down this dream upon awakening, I begin to see this woman as my shadow. She tells me that she loves me and is asking me to integrate her. She is my extraverted self whom I have kept hidden for so long, unloved and uncared for, as I have lived most of my life as an introvert. I chose the life of a freelance artist and writer so that I did not have to be in the world or interact in the world, except minimally. She is asking me to take her as my lover, to give her life, to be what I once projected onto her and in so doing restore her beauty. It is my personal challenge, in this life, to be extraverted. I know this. I am totally at ease in introversion, in doing inner work, it is all I have ever done, but being in the world is and always has been my challenge.

It is interesting to note here that I did recently bump into this woman from my past, several months ago, and I was struck by how much she had changed. She did in fact look quite haggard. Her hair was longer and rather thin and, I thought, rather unattractive compared to the way she looked with a shorter cut. She looked almost unhealthy, whereas ten or so years ago when I last saw her she looked beautifully ageless, with that amazing posture and self-assured presence. When I saw her recently I felt that we had almost exchanged personas. She looked the way I did ten years ago, before I did my recapitulation, before my real inner work started. Now I have long thick flowing almost white hair, I am softer and more glowing, and my hunched shoulders are pulling back, my posture exhibiting more self-confidence, and my haunted look is gone.

When she comes to me in the dream, this woman from the past is asking me to embrace her as she is now. The last time she came in a dream, I rejected her, and she mentions it. I was not ready at that time, but now I am. She, the shadow, wants me to love the old self now, to embrace the woman I have buried, but also to not reject her. I must not only love what this woman, this shadow once represented and what I projected onto her, but I must also love what she now carries, the old me. And I must do so without feeling sorry for her, but fully embrace her with compassion and love for our unfolding journey together, in real life and in dreaming life. And I must also accept her admiration of me, as I have changed and evolved, for that would complete the picture. As I take back the long ago projection, and love all these parts of myself, I am accepting the challenge.

This is the kind of stuff that the psyche presents to us, whether in dreams, in daily life, or in what happens to us. We are always, in some way, presented with our issues; in problems that arise and in the people we meet and interact with. When we are ready to make some changes and move on, embracing our evolving selves, we are given the opportunity to integrate, to take back our projections, and to embrace the totality of who we are and who we have the potential to still become. I guess I would just like to stress that, in looking to the workings of the psyche, I was able to see how these two dreams were meaningful in my own process of change, and how, as I looked deeper, I was presented with what really lurked below the surface, asking for resolution.

Even though I feel like I have done nothing but deep inner work for the past ten years, I am still being challenged to keep doing it, to go deeper and deeper, into my own shadows. You never know what or who might be lurking there!

Until next time, may your dreams take you where you need to go!
Love,
Jan

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR