Category Archives: Chuck’s Blog

Welcome to Chuck’s Place! This is where Chuck Ketchel, LCSW-R, expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Currently, Chuck posts an essay once a week, currently on Tuesdays, along the lines of inner work, psychotherapy, Jungian thought and analysis, shamanism, alchemy, politics, or any theme that makes itself known to him as the most important topic of the week. Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy page.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Interplay Of Black And White Magic Now

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Turn the moral compass to the higher power of love & the greater good of all…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

It has been suggested that the fall of Atlantis parallels the state of our current civilization. Plato introduced the story of Atlantis, crediting its origin and transmission as having been handed down from generations of ancient Egyptian priests.

Atlantis was a spiritually and technologically advanced civilization that lost its moral compass as it exercised its psychic powers in the form of black magic. In modern terms, black magic could be defined as the use of the subconscious mind for malevolent purposes.

The karma of such abuse of its powers was the total destruction and sinking of this island continent into the Atlantic Ocean around 10,500 BC. The modern psychic, Edgar Cayce, has confirmed the validity of the downfall of Atlantis.*

Judge Hatch, as channelled by Elsa Barker in 1916, observed that many old souls from Atlantis had incarnated back into human form and would continue to do so in our modern era, particularly in America where new spiritual ideas so quickly can take root. America is thus a major player in the karma and interplay of psychic powers exercised through both black and white magic.

Black and white magic are distinguished by the quality of the intent behind the suggestions one poses to the subconscious mind. Black magic refers to suggestions issuing from self-serving, narcissistic intent. White magic refers to suggestions in alignment with the purity of truth and love, directed to the greater good of all.

The power of suggestion, as applied to the subconscious mind, is the most influential psychic power of our time. The birth of autosuggestion in the early 20th century, from its older parentage in hypnotism, empowers any person to potentially heal themselves, to manifest in physical reality any changes they have imagined and desired from the subtle dimension of their mind, and to telepathically influence the subconscious mind of others.

What is known as distance healing, whether through healing prayer or directed healing intention for another, is actually the power of the mind to telepathically present a healing suggestion to the subconscious mind of a person in need. If the subconscious mind of the recipient is impressed by the suggestion, the desired healing may result. Ultimately, though we might have a healing intent for someone else, actual healing is a function of their own subconscious mind choosing to actualize the suggestion. Healers intend healing but we ultimately heal ourselves.

This is the same mechanism as in the placebo effect. If someone believes the suggestion that they will be healed by the ingestion of a pill, the subconscious mind may indeed generate the expected healing through its power to influence physical reality.

Our thoughts and beliefs are incessantly sending suggestions to both our own subconscious mind and that of others. What the world is presently experiencing is a plethora of negative, self-serving suggestions, the stuff of black magic. These have galvanized mass movements of genocide, displacement of peoples, appropriation of people’s property, and a worldview of hatred and self-interest toward all others.

The outcome for the advanced but self-serving civilization of Atlantis warns of similar consequences for our modern world. Fortunately, the advance of autosuggestion empowers every individual to utilize the power of white magic for the health and healing of our planet, and the human race as well.

For white magic to be effective, our intentions must be rooted in love. Love knows only one race, the human race. Love spares no one. Love loves all, even those who hate, pillage and kill. No one is excluded from love’s purview. When I think of those I’m most tempted to hate, my conscious mind states, “May they discover love for the greater good of all.” This is my intention for all burdened with the passion of hate.

Let not my emphasis upon love suggest that any soul should escape the justice, or karma, that must necessarily be meted out upon all for the choices they have made. How helpful could it possibly be for one to be spared the learning opportunity of feeling the effects or outcomes of the causes they have generated? But let the decision to not help someone come from love of the truth, as well as the intent to allow them their full opportunity to discover what they need to learn, without interference.

If we indulge hatred, we invite black magic, through the power of thought, to influence those who surround us in our interconnected family of One. Responsible use of our thoughts and feelings positively impacts the suggestions we impress upon the subconscious mind of our human race.

Foundational to the use of black and white magic is the power of the subconscious mind to change the world based upon the intention of the conscious mind. It is my intention that all humans will acquiesce to the truth of the heart in making their suggestions to the subconscious mind.

Never be discouraged. We simply have no control over how the subconscious chooses to realize our dreams. If we get angry or push too hard, we may find ourselves unwittingly tempted into the mood of black magic. Of course, this then gives us the opportunity to feel compassion for those who similarly struggle.

Exercise your psychic power of suggestion by keeping love, truth and the greater good of all in mind. Express your gratitude for this power and intend the patience needed to stay the course.

That’s white magic,
Chuck

*Whether the story of Atlantis is a myth or a fact does not alter the similarity to what is happening in our world now.

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Chuck’s Place: Learn To Love The Dweller On The Threshold

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Time to Love The Dweller…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

Mystical traditions appropriated from fiction the term, Dweller on the Threshold, to describe an inner psychological character who serves the role of initiator to deeper spiritual realization.

The Dweller is a psychological complex that is an amalgam of all of one’s fears and unresolved inner darkness at a personal level of present life, as well as the spiritual debts, or karma, one has accumulated from the soul’s journey through infinity.

The Dweller is a universal character that might appear as a powerful archetypal demon in a dream encounter. However, the Dweller is also quite uniquely fashioned to reflect that which is suppressed, repressed or unknown within the darkness of one’s personal unconscious, what Jung termed The Shadow. Nonetheless, the human race, as a single organism, bears its collective Shadow with its own guardian Dweller on the Threshold.

In order to grow, we must know thyself. In order to know thyself we must ultimately subdue the Dweller who tempts, taunts and exposes us to our darkest deeds, desires, habits, thoughts and primal impulses. To subdue the Dweller we must shine the light upon and accept the full truth of all we have hidden from, or all that has been hidden from us, behind the  door to the Shadow.

The Dweller might appear to be an evil entity, and in our encounters with it we might be tempted to act out our hidden compulsions, but full responsibility for all one’s actions resides within one’s conscious personality, named the ego. The Dweller is not responsible for the ego’s failure to grow. The Dweller indeed leads one into temptation, but one no longer faces temptation who has reconciled with the wholeness of who they are through inner shadow work.

Ultimately, the Dweller is entitled to deep gratitude and love for the service it performs in helping one to reach the maturity needed to open the door to higher spiritual enlightenment. Failure to love the Dweller is an attachment to hatred that bars entry to higher consciousness.

Though the Dweller often appears in dreams, it is most often met in the projections that unknowingly issue forth from our Shadow and take on mental and emotional life, as reflected in our daily interactions and relationships. Anyone or anything in waking life that gets us emotionally charged, for better or for worse, is a strong candidate for a potential showing of a character within ourselves.

Those we admire might reflect our unknown innate potential. To own that potential and develop it, rather than living it vicariously through another, is the shadow work of broadening one’s personality. To shine the light on one’s inner darkness rather than blame and hate its outer reflection, in the person of another, is the shadow work of accepting the unacceptable within the self. We are challenged to love, with equanimity, the best and worst of ourselves.

Self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-love are the key technologies required to effectively open the door to higher consciousness. As regards our projections, we are equally charged to love thy enemy as thyself. My enemy is indeed acting from the same venomous impulses buried in my own heart. I must own and love these impulses, and accept that the law of karma applies to all actions. With awareness, I can pay my dues and make my amends as I become able to somewhat look through the window of higher consciousness.

Behind the door of initiation to higher consciousness is our access to psychic powers, and the astral world with its greater access to the divine powers of the subconscious mind. As we, as individuals, must pass the tests of the Dweller to realize our soul’s potential, so the human race too is facing its own developmental challenge.

There are several Dwellers on the Threshold in positions of power throughout the world, currently, who are challenging the organism of humanity as a Whole Being to face the truth about itself. We are on the threshold of a major leap in human evolution, however, we are too weighed down by the burdens of our disowned Shadow to advance.

Our greatest challenge at present is to accept that we are in an accelerated period of major transition. The antics of the Dwellers mark this speed of transition.

Face the truth and have gratitude for all the Dwellers. They insist that we do our preparation by truly admitting the depths of our narcissism and by learning to love all beings, as necessary parts of our one human family. To love the Dweller is to love the self in its entirety, the ticket to higher consciousness.

Loving,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Transmogrifying Default Karmic Reactions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transmogrifying,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Fire From Within

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The transformational fire from within…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

In a dream, Jan was given valuable, museum-quality antiques. They were in a white box truck, parked by our orange barn. We were preparing to bring them to a climate controlled storage unit.

Suddenly, though the engine was turned off, sparks shot up from the engine and the truck exploded, destroying its contents completely. The fire trucks arrived, but all was lost. From an indifferent mindset, Jan wondered if insurance might cover the loss.

The fire was ignited by a spontaneous combustion from within the engine itself. Shamans from Carlos Castaneda’s lineage typically, or metaphorically, left this world, at death, through what they called the burning of the fire from within. As their physical body ignited into nothingness, their energy body, or soul, launched into infinity.

In the shaman’s world, this burning from within marked the culmination of the life of an impeccable warrior, one whom had risen above the dualism of this world and was fully prepared to continue the adventure of truth in the next plane of existence.

Our inner fire is generated by our mind’s intent. Though mind is invisible,  its thoughts, beliefs, emotions and karmic threads ignite the subconscious mind to transform our lives. It remains for our conscious ego to take command of and direct the subconscious mind to align with the truth of its High Self.

The white color of the truck that contained the antiques suggests purity, innocence and new beginnings. The orange color of the barn foreshadowed the unavoidable fire. These symbols suggest the alchemical operation of calcination where the substance, or prima materia one is seeking to transform, is broken down by fire, leaving behind a purified residue.

The prima materia of a human life is comprised of the karmic threads, desires, beliefs and emotions that bind and define one’s life and obscure access to resolution beyond the fray of the polarities, which dominate earthly life. This dream fire was not a fire of neglect. This fire was a necessary stage in the realization of an intent to grow.

The actual fire consumed the physical form of the treasured antiques, transforming them into spirit movement, as the gasses were released into the air. The risen spirits of these antiques were released from encasement in their solid matter to become active energy forces, made available to address the issues of now.

Antiques may be equated with ancient habits or beliefs that have shaped our attitudes and controlled our lives. Antiques might also reflect the values we admire and strive to live by. However, as antiques, these reflections of spirit remain outside of the self, possessed superficially as owned material objects. To bring them into life, we must take them on as parts of our own self, bringing them inward, reckoning with them, and allowing them to finally be calcined by the flames of our own inner fire, our desire for new life. No longer solid projections, their energy is liberated for other usage.

Tibetan meditation of the Bön Buddhism tradition asks us to neither suppress nor repress the inner fire of our triggers, with their powerful negative emotions. We are asked to remain with the thoughts, emotions and sensations in our mind and body, such as that which is contained in the white truck in Jan’s dream, with the goal of reaching compassion for self and other. Compassion, when reached, causes the energized emotion to fly off like a freed bird, leaving behind full acceptance and neutrality.

Compassion is achieved as we disengage from being possessed by the flame of blame and judgment of self and other. As we burn with the polarities that feed our inner fires, we learn to see all behaviors as part of All That Is. We recognize and own our shadow, as projected onto our neighbor. We now know that we share all the traits of our neighbors and are thus able, as Christ suggested, to “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. We become detached, compassionate beings.

As we enter the fiery month of Leo, in the midst of Mercury in Retrograde, our container is the Earth itself, stuck in the grip of a heat dome of smoldering negative emotions and actions. The threads of the karma of a holocaust are completing in the generation of another human holocaust. On a more comprehensive level, the karma of humankind’s predilection for materialism, with its ever-growing attempt to possess and enslave the Earth, is reaching its own karmic balance in the holocaust to all life on the planet. This manifestation of powerfully destructive forces is being brought to bear upon the antiquated pillars of a civilization that has controlled and defined us for centuries.

We are being shown that the progressive forces that might have been empowered to take us in a positive direction have been denied, because they too would likely become unwitting partners to the antiquated ways of yesteryear. Cosmic Karma is insisting upon a major conflagration of total breakdown before releasing the buds of new life. To arrive at this, it is time to rise above the prejudices of polarity into the clear view of Oneness. We are being delivered to the necessity of a new spiritual attitude to take us forward into new life.

I am convinced that this new spiritual attitude centers on our valuation of, and exercise of, the power of the subconscious mind. Our greatest powers, individually and collectively, are the suggestions we imagine and state, filled with the emotions and passions we deliver to the subconscious mind. Humankind is finding its way to the positive use of this inner power, largely because of the inevitable conflagration of the Earth itself by humankind, already underway, that will require inspired and responsible spiritual leadership to transcend.

The antiques of materialism and narrow rational thinking must now be calcined, as the Age of Aquarius ushers in the power of the imagination and advancing spirit to manifest and direct new life.

Jan’s dream ended with total detachment from the loss of the valuable antiques. Furthermore, there was no attachment to the thought of possible reimbursement from the loss.

We are entitled only to the reactions to our actions, our karmic threads. If incinerated antiques are transformed into money, or available energy, so be it, but no attachment to the outcome.

In the dream, all was purified and fully released to new life. This is the spiritual prize of submitting to the burning of the fire from within: Our purified non-dualistic selves become capable of delivering, to the subconscious mind, the suggestion for new life, led by truth.

In the fire,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Life Is Our Appointment With Knowledge

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Persist beyond the barriers…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

Thoughts of Carlos Castaneda recently came into my mind. Back in 1998, Deepak Chopra wrote of Carlos, on the jacket of his new book, The Active Side of Infinity: “Carlos Castaneda was one of the most profound and influential thinkers of this century. His insights paved the way for the future evolution of human consciousness. We are all deeply indebted to him.”

But with the publishing, in 2003, of Amy Wallace’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda, which revealed her experiences within his inner circle, the final nail was put into the coffin of Carlos ever again being considered a true man of knowledge, or worthy of any legitimate consideration. Instead he became categorized as a typical New Age guru who abused his disciples. I suspect that Carlos made sure that Amy Wallace wrote that book, which ensured he’d be all but forgotten. It shocked not only his followers but the world at large.

Comparable to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Naropa University, who also fell from grace, Carlos has been, at best, deemed a teacher who employed the cognitive dissonance of crazy wisdom. At worst, he’s been categorized as the greatest fictional trickster of the century, whose shenanigans  fooled an entire generation of spiritual seekers. Once branded the Godfather of the New Age, today Carlos Castaneda is essentially a forgotten, discredited man.

Having spent a significant part of my life immersed in his world, I view his current status and exit from this world as a masterful shamanic move, a stroke of genius. I say that because shaman’s recognize self-importance as the number one scourge of humankind, the most negative human characteristic that significantly waylays our ability to spiritually advance. Could the self-importance of world leadership, and the pursuit of likes on social media, which dominate the world at present, not be more validating of this truth?

Carlos wrote 12 books, leaving behind the fullness of his shamanic knowledge, should one be called to it. Yet, should anyone be so called, it would be for the knowledge alone, with no attachment to Castaneda himself. That was his great shamanic maneuver, to ensure that the knowledge be separated from him personally. His reputation aside, he succeeded in delivering his messages, and with no self-importance following him, he sealed the door behind him as he exited human form. How many of us can do our good deeds in the dark, never sharing the knowledge of them with anyone?

When we shed self-importance from our identity, we disconnect from needing to be fortified by the attention of outside energy. Untethered, at death, from the thoughts and feelings of those left behind in human form, our Spirit is completely freed to move deeper into the exploration of infinity. Becoming untethered to the need for outside validation, while still in this world, frees us to follow, impeccably, the intent of our own Spirit, NOW!

Such was the lesson I was taught when my first wife, Jeanne, left this world and I sought our reconnection between worlds, as per our pre-agreement. Ultimately, she informed me to take my attention off her so that she could fully focus her attention upon learning the parameters of her new body and her new world.

Of course, the ultimate irony is that she has talked to my wife, Jan, every day for well over 20 years, in her soul sister messages. Her channelings, however, are not burdened with personal attachment to me. What is delivered is what she deems relevant now, for everyone, from her perspective in infinity. The opportunity for me has been to step up to the refinement of impersonal love.

Both Carlos and Jeanne teach the value of completely losing self-importance through non-attachment; no need for the validation of likes and attention from others. Freed of this imprisonment, we can focus all our energy on the greater good of self, and all others as well, uncompromised by the need for personal recognition. Validation of facts by others is a helpful and a necessary compass as we navigate our spiritual journey, but validation for the sake of self-recognition alone is a path of ego, not a path of heart.

When infinity recently sent me the suggestion to write about Castaneda’s teachings, I pondered which of his books to choose. Ten minutes later someone told me they found a giveaway copy of Carlos’s 1974 book, Tales of Power. Following this synchronistic prompting, I reread the first chapter to see what spoke to me now.

When still in this world, Carlos cautioned us to not attach to the shamanic practices employed upon him during his apprenticeship, which he documented in his three earliest books. Yours is a different time and your journeys are colored by the circumstances of your new age, he said. His suggestion was for us to be guided by the intent of ancient knowledge but to assume full responsibility for formatting its essence into addressing the needs of our time.

The essence of the first chapter of Tales of Power is that we are all double beings, both rational beings, with a solid physical body, as well as lighter energetic beings, with a soul body. Life presents us daily with appointments to obtain knowledge of this true wholeness so that we might more fully realize our fullest potential, while still in human form.

Carlos quotes the Nagual, don Juan Matus: “The only thing we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The countermeasure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments.” (Tales of Power, p. 20.)

Those tricks issue from the rational ego mind, terrified of ego death as it encounters the immensity of, and the powers of, its greater Soul. How quickly ego judges and dismisses its encounters with its soul in the mysterious and often puzzling synchronicities and triggers of daily life.

Synchronicities are creations of the soul of the subconscious mind, offering the ego encounters with the greater knowledge of infinity. In such encounters the subconscious mind is truly manifesting the ego’s intent to evolve, yet the ego often misses its appointments with such knowledge by its counter-intent, which is to survive unscathed the sometimes ruinous demands of greater truth.

The challenge for the ego is to suspend its judgments and refine its reason, to include the parameters of the greater truths of the soul. Reason is essential to navigating infinity, but it must get beyond the stumbling blocks of a solid world that clings tightly to its materialist prejudice.

Triggers are guides from infinity that summon the ego to retrieve its soul through honest recapitulation of its personal history. Typically, the ego gets drawn into self-pity, as it wallows in the offenses committed upon it by others. It holds tightly to the entitlement of retribution before it can forgive. This is a fixation of energy on self-importance, a sidetracking of attention from true knowledge.

Alternatively, the ego can accept all its experiences in life as reflections of all that is. The task is not about forgiveness; there is nothing to forgive. There is only the full retrieval of all of one’s energy, in the full acceptance of one’s life. With this equanimous acceptance of all the acts of one’s life, one is elevated to the highest level of love for all that is.

The barriers that don Juan references, in the above quote, are largely the habitual patterns we live by, as housed in our subconscious mind. Whether they issue from personal history, genetic history, the soul’s intent for this life, or from our ego’s defenses, new habits can manifest, through the persistence of intent and the positive suggestions we consciously and persistently impress upon the subconscious mind.

Persist, persist, persist in lightness and utter calm, and keep those daily appointments with knowledge.

With calm persistence,
Chuck