#618 Chuck’s Place: Carl, Carlos, Charles & Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

I was named Charles at birth after my maternal grandfather, a powerful man of boundless energy and spirit. Charles was a successful banker, a self-made and self-educated man, a staunch Republican and capitalist. His energy and spirit live on in me but, from my earliest memories, I firmly rejected the heaviness and adultness of his name, Charles. I softened it to Chuck and have insisted upon that name to this day. What hasn’t escaped me, however, is the synchronicity of my adult life being driven by the discoveries and practices of two other “Charleses,” Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda.

I was introduced to their works in my teenage years and they have never ceased to guide and inform my adult life. The intent of my life is truth. These two men shared that intent and paved the way for others to discover their own deepest truths. Recently, a reader told me that my writing was starting to lose her, as it favored too much the description of shamanic practices. This coincided with my opening Jung’s The Red Book, realizing that it was time to delve deeper into his journey. What I have come to realize is that my role in this life seems to be the integration of Carl and Carlos.

I remember a dear friend and prominent Jungian analyst once telling me that he had read Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming and found it to be “worthless, total nonsense.” At that time I was already deeply immersed in the shamanic practices being offered by Carlos in Tensegrity workshops and was experiencing powerful new truths. This was not an intellectual affair nor was it the trickery of a charismatic shadow leader. This was personal experience, deep inner experience.

Today, as I pick up The Red Book, where Jung’s inner process is finally revealed, upon which the foundation of modern psychology rests, what we discover is a man talking to his soul, and, his soul talking back! This is not an intellectual affair nor a psychotic process, but a true journey of knowledge rooted in deep personal experience. This journey required “guts of steel,” as don Juan stated to Carlos, as the requirement for taking the shamanic journey to become “a man of knowledge.” Truly, Jung took the shamanic journey.

For me, the shamanic world and depth psychology are parallel paths to self-knowledge and evolution, each offering valuable tools for the journey. Yesterday, in Message # 617, Jeanne and Jan spoke of channeling and noted the similarity of guidance offered by many channeled entities. For those who channel, their lives are transformed by the guidance they are challenged to integrate, a true journey into another world. What we discover in Jung’s The Red Book is his own transformation, effected by his own channeled encounters with entities who proposed knowledge that he was compelled to explore and ultimately integrate into his understanding of the nature of reality. As we sat and watched the film Tuning In, I couldn’t help but note the entities use of “Jungian words,” such as shadow, synchronicity, and archetype. These were all concepts that emerged from Jung’s conversations with his soul.

Equally, the channelers speak of our ability to experience infinity, now. This is the shamanic journey, the tools of which require finding one’s energy body, fully achievable through the techniques that Carlos passed along in Magical Passes and that Carl introduced in the process of active imagination. Both Carl and Carlos insisted that real knowledge can only be achieved through a personal experiential process.

True to my namesakes, I engage in an experiential process and attempt to make accessible the valuable tools of both Carl and Carlos, in taking the inner journey. This inner journey is the most meaningful process anyone can undertake, as stressed by the channelers in Tuning In, in Jeanne’s messages, and by the expression of Jung’s inner work in The Red Book and by the works of Carlos Castaneda. If I were to characterize my synthesis of this week’s synchronicities, I would put it like this: Tuning In to The Red Book is The Art of Dreaming.

I close this blog with one final synchronicity. I open The Red Book to this quote on page 233:

I am weary, my soul, my wandering has lasted too long, my search for myself outside of myself. Now I have gone through events and find you behind all of them. For I made discoveries on my erring through events, humanity, and the world. I found men. And you, my soul, I found again, first in images within men and then you yourself. I found you where I least expected you. You climbed out of a dark shaft.”

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

#617 Tuning In

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Last night, Chuck and I watched a movie called, Tuning In, about the fascinating process of six channelers, how they first began to channel, where it has taken them, and the messages they receive. Each of them channels an entity that speaks on the same evolutionary track as you. I totally recognize their processes and the decision to commit to doing the work they have been assigned. The entities they channel are: Kryon, Torah, Tobias, the Pleiadian Collective, Bashar, and Chief Joseph. I have heard of one or two of these entities, though I have not engrossed myself in any one else’s process for fear of being influenced. However, I found the movie extremely helpful, as I struggle almost daily with how to better utilize the skills I have nurtured, while at the same time I am confronted with the skepticism of the world I decided to leave behind as I embarked on this journey with you. I am as fully committed to our process as each one of these people is to their own and I am open to the further unfolding of it.

Both Chuck and I wonder if you know of these other entities that I mention. Are they part of your group, the same group that you speak of as attempting to awaken us?

Yes, My Dear. Those of you upon that earth who have dared to accept the messages you receive as meaningful and necessary are channeling the same energy. My group, as I call it, is many thousands of us. In fact, My Dear Readers, there is someone in my group awaiting connection with each of you upon that earth, someone who will allow your own innate abilities to awaken and guide you to awareness of all entities as energy.

This group that I am but a small part of has the same intent, the greater intent of evolution, to push those of you now upon that earth to go beyond the world you now are attached to so that you may understand the greater magic and mystery of life. Life is energy and as such it has the ability to manifest in any way, shape, or form; as worlds, as felt vibration, thoughts, realizations; as well as whatever form is necessary in order to awaken those of you upon that earth to the far greater sense of what energy truly means.

To awaken you, attempts are being made daily but, as you know, it takes quite a lot of trust before success is achieved. To become an open channel one must truly clear the path by doing deep inner work. I cannot stress this enough, for otherwise will too many things interfere. Even as you struggle daily, My Dear Jan, with how to use this gift, so are there many others who do not trust their inner process nor feel it to be acceptable in the world you inhabit.

Yes, I know. For me, I did really have to leave an old world behind. It took years of continually daring myself to step through doors that appeared, combating fears, judgments, prejudices, and any number of constructs that are taken for granted until I confronted them as mere ghosts standing in the way. An awakening is a process. Do you envision more people being able to take the journey? Chuck and I work with people every day who experience connection with energy, but they, like us, are also fully engrossed in living in this world with the worries, responsibilities, and needs of this life. How do we stay connected to our innate abilities so these abilities can evolve too, even while we live our lives?

To answer your first question, yes, I do envision a greater awakening. This is the intent of my group and you are aware that intent by its very nature is a powerful force in the universe. Intent carries purpose, and the power of intent exists by itself alone; it is energy in action and cannot be denied, diminished, or dismissed. Energy exists. Intent exists as a product of energy; the two are synonymous with each other.

That being said, the challenge becomes accepting a process, a personal process of awakening. This is not a simple stroke of enlightenment, though it may appear to hit like a jolt. It is, in fact, a lifelong process. As you know, Jan, your own process has been evolving and unfolding since the day you were born, and I mean this literally. If all beings upon that earth could accept the truth that they are on a spiritual evolutionary journey and that they are energy beings first and foremost, capable of all that such a being entails, it would greatly aid the awakening process.

Many upon that earth, in fact most people, have the ability to recall their child self as an innocent being, full of wonder for the world while at the same time confronted with the challenges of it.

Funny that you should mention this! I was just going to ask about this, as it too was mentioned in the film.

Along the way the innocent self has become less real, buried, often forgotten, though it has not departed or died. It remains always alive, a pilot light flickering deep inside each of you, holding a steady connection to where you have come from and where you have the possibility to go next.

Each one of you has the flame of spiritual connection. The inner process of self-investigation and self-destruction, if you will, allows you to access that flame. You know from your own personal work on the self, Jan, that your life has changed greatly since you began to dare your self to wade into the darkness that had permeated your existence. In your self-exploration you remained committed to the search for the inner flame. At each step along the way, as you continued to forge through the tunnel of darkness that flame burned ever brighter, with resonance, calling you to continue creeping toward it, until you had fully reconnected with its bright energy.

Yes, this is true!

This is the process that must be accepted. It must be contained, within the confines of the self, for it is only within the self that the true challenges and blockages will be found. These are the real confrontations that life offers so that you may evolve. The outer world continually reflects the true challenges that reside within the self. I cannot stress enough that true evolution can only be achieved by stripping bare the darkness within, taking down the curtains that block you from the true meaning of life as energy, the truth of all beings as one, and the truth of all life as being energetically aligned. It does not matter what you look like, how you act, what you think, believe, or do in that life, or how you perceive others. Underneath all the presentations, judgments, attitudes, and belief systems, you are all the same energy.

Yes, in the film they speak of this and the fact that there are no victims, that life is like a play. We are all acting out our lives and when the play is done we walk off the stage, as actors, take off our costumes and make-up, leave our play, our drama, behind us and go off to have a drink together, toasting a job well done. Chuck and I like the analogy of the world we live in as being played out that way. And when we are done with life we are absolved of everything, for it was chosen, necessary, and evolutionary; there is no sin and there are no victims in the greater sense, if everything is the same energy.

Yes, I agree, for you have all chosen the life you now live, but for evolutionary reasons, and each life you live is part of that process, a process of learning. You would not be here today, doing this work, My Dear Jan and Chuck, had you not learned a few lessons along the way. Those of you who now reside upon that earth are at a great advantage, for you have already learned the lessons necessary to evolve.

Yes, you have spoken of this often before and this was also mentioned in the film. This is why we saw so much similarity with your mission. In the film, they too mentioned that we are at a point where we have already done it all, that we have the opportunity to do something else now, to shift. I see the planet wearing out as part of this awakening. Perhaps we humans have used up its resources because it is time for us to move on, though we, being human, like to be comfortable in the known and are afraid to take the leap forward.

The world, the earth itself, will continue in its own fashion, with its own intent to evolve aided by the energy that offers it what it needs. You must allow your awareness to spread beyond the self to a greater awareness of the energy of all things. Energy is present in all things, human and otherwise. The intent to evolve exists in all things, in what you can see and what you cannot see.

All things in existence upon that earth are in a unique position to shift from intense scrutiny of that which is outside the self to that which is inside. The human being is the one most capable of causing this shift to become a reality. The human being is asked to go back to the innocent knowing self, to trust the knowledge that lies beneath the constructs of the world you see so clearly, the world that has been so cleanly picked apart, studied so intensely for so many centuries. However, you all carry within you the true wisdom of the centuries and this is what is being pushed upon you now, this awareness is knocking at your door. Though it may frighten the heck out of you, do you dare to answer it, to open the door, even though you know that, if you do, your world as you know it will greatly change and you will too? Are you ready to take the leap and truly discover why you are there, where you are going, and why?

These are the questions that must be posed each day as you ask the inner self to stop fighting the truths that are constantly being posed. Can you hold onto the fact that you are all one, that you are all energy, equal, the same, and that you chose to live that life you now live, that you are only a victim if you wish to be, for your life is totally in your hands?

I invite you all to take the journey that will open the door to finding your own channel, your own connection with the one who speaks most clearly to you. It is quite an experience, and once you have it you will not be able to walk away from it. Once you reconnect with your own innate innocence and wisdom you will not be able to desert it again. You will want to plunge into your darkness, for there will be no other reason to live. The only reason, you will discover, is to fully find your energy self. This is all you need in order to evolve, and it is only through this connection that you will truly do so.

Thank you, Jeanne. That was great, but I have to stop now.

NOTE: I have added the film, Tuning In, to our Store under the movies category, for your convenience, in case you are interested in exploring it further. -Jan

#616 Transition is Inevitable

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
I am a little late with our channeling today due to a winter storm in the Northeast. We had to get out early to shovel and plow the snow that had accumulated during the night. Today is a special day, the day you died in Heiden, Switzerland eight years ago. We honor you by continuing to be open to the new you, the evolved you, and the guidance you offer us. What message do you have for all of your readers on this day?

Do not look with sorrow at the ability of life to transform, but look upon it as evolutionarily proper and right. Know that all must pass from that life. All will be confronted with the instant of transition. Though it may come in many forms, through many circumstances and many different chains of events, so is it the goal of every being upon that earth to eventually pass from that life into new life.

You know that I proselytize only about this new life. I do not make judgments about your process upon that earth, but only seek to remind you all that transition is inevitable. How you elect to transition is a personal issue that no one else can really be decisive about. You alone are responsible for your awareness at the moment of most importance. In order to train your awareness I offer you much advice but, as always, it is up to you to work upon the issues of the self in order to evolve and maintain awareness at all times.

I suggest that you study your guidance and the signs you receive for the greater, deeper truth in them. Keep in mind that you too will transition into energy one day. Your challenge is to determine how you are being guided and what you are really being shown. Your assessment of the guidance you receive may keep you bound to comfortable interpretations so that you continue to feel good about your life, your decisions, and your actions. However, I suggest that you look at the guidance and signs that come to you from an uncomfortable perspective, rather than a comforting one. Most likely, that which makes you uncomfortable is a truer message of guidance.

Guidance comes to challenge. If you were not on a path of growth, the guidance and signs you receive would not be challenging you. They would merely keep you in a place of unchanging complacency, and you would not grow or evolve in any aspect of your life. I understand that it is quite nice to receive signs of assent and acknowledgment that you are indeed taking the right path, but look also at the challenge that rides atop each right action and each new step.

Your journey is continual. It never ends. Look not for guidance to show you how to arrive some place or to be done with your life and your challenges, but look for your guidance to show you where to go next, what to learn now, and the greater meaning of your existence.

In offering you this advice on how to read the signs in your life, I offer you a key issue on a path of growth, that of properly assessing the guidance you are given. The guidance that comes to you is rather pushy. It desires you to not only notice it, but also to take it into your life and work it. It asks you to find what your next challenge is, rather than simply find your same old comforts.

Often guidance is present to comfort you, but it will most likely be only a momentary comfort as the ego self, the big baby self, and the desiring self feel loved, protected, and attended to in whatever way you wish to interpret. However, the greater reason for guidance is to push you to evolve, to become a new person upon that earth, to fulfill your life’s purpose, to discover your spirit’s reason for living that life, and to offer you all the challenges you need to discover the answers to these personal problems that you are so inflicted and gifted with.

Though I passed from that life on this day many years ago, I do not sorrow for the life I departed from. I have pursued an evolutionary path and my connection to those of you upon that earth, my dearest ones and the many who have found resonance with my words, remains steadfastly connected to a mission of evolutionary growth.

In conclusion, I always advise that you enjoy your life, accepting the signs and the guidance you receive, in whatever form or shape it appears, knowing that it is asking something greater of you, something evolutionary. It is up to you to figure that out in the context of your personal life. But be assured that if you ask for another sign to guide you, it will arrive. Be also sure to seek its challenges rather than its comforts, for that is what it expects of you as an evolutionary spirit.

#615 A Day of Alchemy

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What guidance do you offer us today?

It is time now to take everything you have learned, everything you know about the self, everything you know about energy, about spirit, and about how you personally operate and sit quietly surrounded by this knowledge. It is time to be plainly frank with the self first and foremost, then to acknowledge your faults but also your brightnesses and your most precious assets. It is time to sit in balance and make some concrete decisions, based not on what the outer world expects of you, but based on the truths of the self.

Today is a day of consolidation and of taking self-knowledge to a new level. You have all the ingredients you need to bake a delicious cake. You have gathered the finest of components, perfected your techniques, and longed for the time to come when you would use what you have gathered. If we stick to a metaphor of baking a cake, then today is the day to finally surround your self with all of the ingredients you have so diligently and carefully collected and begin to assemble them. It is time to begin the process of constructing the cake, knowing full well that you have done your work of preparation. You have determined what kind of cake you wish to bake and you are perfectly contented to calmly and quietly go about the process of mixing the ingredients in a new format.

This is a day of alchemy, a day of contentment mixed with desire for change based on truths you have revealed to the self, gained by dissolution and deconstruction of the self so that new energy may result. Begin with the basic ingredients of self in order to begin a new alchemical process, using only the finest ingredients, learned, culled, and perfected by your hard work on the self.

This is a new day, and to begin each day as an opportunity for new growth and new life is an essential ingredient in alchemy. Each day offers the opportunity for purity to become the most important aspect of who you are and how you elect to conduct your self and grow. Purity in intent, in action, and in every step of your daily process offers you the opportunity to really change.

Each and every one of you, My Dear Readers, is asked to change each day when you wake up in the morning and begin a new day. Each day is a new opportunity to evolve. Today, look at what you have prepared in order to accept your assignment to keep going, to truly live upon that earth. Look closely at the ingredients in your life, at the recipe you have chosen for your own alchemical process to proceed.

Are your ingredients as pure as possible? Are your motives equally pure? Are your intentions pure? Are your techniques honed and ready to be utilized? Are your circumstances ready for the great cake baking alchemical process to take place? Are you ready to put together your new life and truly ready to watch it grow? As you begin the process of assembling your new life each day, keep in mind that you are responsible for your creation, for each step in the process, for baking the life you desire, and for being responsible for the outcome because this is your life.

Consolidate the self to a point of purity in all things. Find the basic truths of the self, the purest ingredients of self, and begin to accept that in order to evolve further some action on your part must be taken. An alchemical process, a process of transformation, like a cake being put together, baked, and tended is really what life is all about. You can use any metaphor you like if you do not like my cake baking metaphor, but I contend that the process is going to be the same. In order for life to truly evolve you must become the catalyst in your life, become the baker, become the person of action who knows that everything you need is present in your life to take the next step.

What are you waiting for? Look forward to the process as much as you look forward to the result, for it is in the process that you will learn much more about the self and truly grow.

#614 Chuck’s Place: Love Lessons

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

December ninth marks the eighth anniversary of Jeanne’s transition into the fullness of her energy body, in infinity. I have never wavered in my emotional reaction to her death, though I feel deeply the sadness of our children who lost their earthly mother before they themselves reached adulthood. I still find deep contentment at having successfully guarded Jeanne’s intent in this world up to her final decision of when to leave. Since then I have allowed myself to participate in an evolutionary journey of love beyond the personal.

I am most thankful, though not surprised, that Jeanne found a way to turn her attention back to this world, as we had intended, if at all possible. After her death, as she united with the fullness of her lives and loves through many journeys in this world, she chose to open the channel back to our journey together and share her ongoing lessons in infinity. Sometimes I am simply spellbound at her ability to still mother her children. Today, I reflect upon my experiences of, and personal transformation through, these lessons.

I love; I love deeply, but I am no longer attached to the specialness or the possessiveness of love. Had I not learned this lesson the door to a continued relationship with the evolved Jeanne would have remained closed. This is the challenge of death. If we cling to the specialness of what we had we can’t go forward in an evolving relationship.

My family now is far more comprehensive. It is the family of energy, with no special distinctions, no special advantages. I travel with those with whom there is resonance and connection because it is energetically right, not for reasons of self-interest. I have learned, over time, to clarify and understand and not dismiss non-resonant energy, to respect its purpose in our energetic family. The energy I flow with is of an evolutionary bend, as if the head of a fish is the resonant energy, while all energy is included in the body of the fish. The rear of the fish is as significant as the head. It is evident that many in the world today are resonant with this evolutionary energy that seeks a dramatic shift.

I live a life of evolutionary change. I totally trust energy. In my career I seek no advantage. I push not to make connections, to market, to manipulate, to survive and prosper through winning or being special. I will not enter any agreements of self-promotion. I trust that my intent to be aligned with evolutionary energy will provide. This has been proven in the signs and guidance I have received and the decisions I have made based on my reading of these synchronicities. I constantly refuse the urging of the old ways to take advantage. I am certain that our next global state of evolution transcends markets, consumers, accumulation, and unfair advantage. For me, it’s all energy; reading it and acting in the right alignment versus reading it to get rich. What this boils down to is decision making that is right, not decision making that seeks only personal gain, turning a blind eye to the needs of the whole.

We are all interconnected. In order for there to be global advancement, self-interest must expand to include the greater self, the world. The old paradigm of Us against Them is so played out. I must admit, though my love for Obama is deep, and I wanted it to be different, the truth is, this old story was putting the cadets to sleep this week as Obama spoke at West Point. Why couldn’t Obama have watched Joan Baez on PBS’s American Masters series before he made his decision? Joan, the Quaker, walked with Martin Luther King in deeply resonant non-violent revolutionary energy. Obama is the maturation of that energetic dream. Why more troops and CIA drones? We are back in the old boring story of the good and the evil ones, completely separate entities.

The new paradigm truly acknowledges the interconnectedness of all things. If there are terrorists, and there are, then we are connected and part of that terrorism. It is not a separate entity. We are acting in such a way as to create terrorism as a necessary balance, letting the tail lead the fish. We cannot separate ourselves and simply drone out the terrorist extreme. In fact, the more we attempt to obliterate it, the more tenacious we invite its extremist counter reaction.

Can we be courageous enough to reflect upon why the world has come to need terrorists? Can we look inside our own inner truths and see our own deep attachment to self-advantage, self-interest, self-accumulation, and self-comfort at the expense of, and exploitation of, others? Competition is a vital energetic reality but, honestly, when have we ever really played fair? Terrorism both reflects and matches unfair play. If we can embrace a policy of fair play that truly respects the whole fish, we dismantle the compensatory need for terrorism. The real enemy is quite personal. In my view, we all need to examine which self interest we truly serve: our personal wants and desires, those of our immediate family, or those of the greater family of all interconnected energy? To balance that energy and move it forward in a new way now is our evolutionary challenge of survival for this world. The head of the fish must consider the whole fish as it navigates now, or the tail will continue to spin us out of control in its own effort to awaken the head to the needs of the whole.

These are some of the love lessons I have learned as I continue my journey with the evolving Jeanne.

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR