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 Place: The Way Of The Tao Of Now

The Tao of Divine Wholeness…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

The phrase “being in the Tao” suggests that one’s thoughts and actions are best fitted to, and in greatest harmony with, the needs of the whole. However, thoughts and actions that poorly address the needs of the whole are nonetheless in the Tao, as the Tao is wholeness and wholeness includes everything.

America just expressed a powerful wave of action in reaction to its governance. Although America is a democracy, with separation of church and state, at a deep archetypal level citizens project onto their president the role of hierophant, or spiritual leader, imbuing him with a divine numinous presence.

The current president has fulfilled this spiritual role through assuming the role of trickster, completely defying all dignified expectations and blatantly exposing and embodying the shadow of America in his daily doings, both day and night.

The impact upon the American psyche of this leadership was to have it brush up against a latent psychosis. The challenge was for the individual to wake up from its trance and take responsibility for the direction of its personal life and that of the country.

It truly could be argued that the president went to such extraordinarily bizarre behaviors to shake people to disidentify with their spell upon him and to assume conscious control of their destiny. This would represent him as truly being in the Tao in the most necessary sense. But regardless of whether it is actually that, or the Tao of extremism, it is the way of the Tao of now.

At the level of the individual, the hierophant is operative in the relationship within the divine triune self of father, mother and child.

From the inner divine father issues the beliefs and deepest desires that impregnate the mother, the subconscious mind, that brings to physical life the child of its intent.

The inner divine father, to best be in the Tao in his suggestions, must own and settle with his shadow. The shadow is a trickster that will live out all of our hidden doubts, desires and resistances, whereby diluting the potency of our stated intentions. The trickster will confound our lives with distractions and obsessions that seize our vital energy yet offer us a glimpse at our hidden selves. This is the opportunity to wakeup.

The inner divine mother will manifest that which is most potent within our beliefs. Mother may indeed know better, but her role is to create, in the most auspicious way. The best way of being in the Tao with the inner mother is to be sure that the suggestions she receives issue from what is truly needed. Once assured, retire doubt and quietly hold the knowing that it is done.

The inner divine child is best in the Tao when it maintains its innocence and remembers where it came from, its divine parentage. As the president reflects, there can be great temptation for the inner child to deify itself alone, setting the stage for cataclysmic extremism in the Tao.

With gratitude for all the gifts we are given, both within and reflected without, that wake us up to our own divine power and responsibility.

Being in the Tao of now,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Learning To Love The Subconscious Mind

Feeling the Love…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

The subconscious mind is our inner partner that links us with the unfathomable depths and resources of our greater being. Learning to love the subconscious mind is like building any soulful relationship. We begin by getting to know who our partner truly is and how best to communicate with them.

The subconscious is, first and foremost, a receptive mind. In contrast to the conscious thinking mind, the subconscious mind operates primarily through feeling. What we truly believe is what most impresses the subconscious mind. And belief, though it may appear to be the product of a logical process, is primarily governed  by what we feel to be true.

This is the secret to the placebo effect, which demonstrates, par excellence, the impact of a strong belief upon the subconscious mind and its consequent effect upon the physical body. If one truly believes in the efficacy of a pill, even if it might actually be a powerless sugar pill, the subconscious mind can produce its believed effect upon the body.

The subconscious mind can literally create what appears to be a miracle, but it operates primarily from the true feeling it receives from the conscious mind. If we truly believe, all things are on the table of possibility.

This is why Neville Goddard emphasizes the exercise of the imagination by the conscious mind to cross the threshold to welcomed suggestion by the receptive subconscious mind. When we can truly imagine our intention fully realized, and felt in our imagination, we open the door to the influence of powerful belief.

Imagination is far greater than mere passive fantasy. To imagine ourselves truly living in the life of our desire realized, we must cross the bridge to actually feeling ourselves living in that reality. To accomplish this, we must truly believe in the possibility.

The subconscious may not think, but it is acutely aware of our true feelings and responds to ambivalent beliefs with inaction. Essentially, this is its way of returning to the sender of suggestions, the conscious mind, the task of reaching a definitive belief, which it will then gladly receive and take action upon.

The subconscious mind does not judge the suggestions it receives. Judging is a function of consciousness, which it does not possess. The conscious mind is fully charged with the responsibility for its beliefs.

The subconscious will act upon any belief powerfully felt, for better or for worse. It remains for the conscious mind to assume the integrity to autosuggest to the subconscious for the greater good of self, and other. The conscious mind expresses love for the subconscious mind by respecting its power to create and acting from the place of right action.

We build a loving relationship with the subconscious through a fervent gratitude practice. Gratitude is an expressive feeling. The subconscious is impressed by genuine feeling.

The subconscious records every experience sensed in our lives.The conscious mind, with its limited memory capacity, relies heavily upon the subconscious to produce the right words to express a thought or gain access to a long buried memory. Every time I ask for a name, regardless of a delay in response, I express deep gratitude for the gift of word or memory delivered to me.

The subconscious has a perfect internal clock. Most nights, I tell my subconscious the exact time I wish to wake up. Without fail I am awoken at the time requested. I immediately express deep gratitude for that support. I point out that my belief in the subconscious to be able to complete this task is total. When we truly believe something is possible, the subconscious responds.

The subconscious is our most powerful partner in this life, with capabilities greater than AI because it has access to all of human history and knowledge, far transcending what has been recorded.

Furthermore, we can develop a truly loving relationship with this partner, but we must be accepting of who it is and how it operates. The practices of feeling, imagination and gratitude are central to this loving relationship.

I close with one final practice in relationship building with the subconscious: Patience. The subconscious has its own wisdom for the how and when of the suggestions it accepts to manifest. Respect that autonomy, and know that that which has been felt and believed will be born physically into your life, sometime, somehow.

I Am Gratitude,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Love In The Time Of Retrograde

A Time for Reflection and Revisioning…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

We are seriously into the final occurrence of a Mercury retrograde for 2026, which spans from 10/24 through 11/13. During a retrograde the planet Mercury gives the appearance of moving backwards, generating a glitch in the normal orderly flow of life.

Astrologically, Mercury is the ruler of the domain of communication, hence, expect all kinds of communication mishaps with people, as well as with the machines of communication.

Retrograde is also a a time of retros, throwbacks into issues from prior times, most especially the disheartening experience of feeling stuck by lifelong limiting beliefs. The danger lurks to get swallowed up in negative thoughts, and consequent feelings, of deep failure.

On the bright side, these sudden glitches in time may afford a different perspective as we suddenly awaken from the sleep of our habitual self with a start. In such a moment, we may gain an insight or experience, a new feeling that frees us from the reigning view of our habitual self.

If, in this moment of enlightenment, we claim ourselves to now be the change we desire, closing the door to the habitual conception of our life, we enter into the energy of infinity and timelessness. It is here that we have the opportunity to reshape our living experience into what we truly desire. Embracing the forbidden of the habitual self is the immaculate conception of the desired self. 

Perhaps we have been focused arduously at manifesting a core desire and feel befuddled by setbacks to old defeatist habits. It may help to achieve an objective perspective, which acknowledges that this is a time of retrograde, for all. It’s simply not personal.

What is personal is what we are being shown, the unfinished business that has secretly been undermining the best of our suggestions to our subconscious mind. For instance, if behind it all, we still harbor a belief of unworthiness, or undeservedness, this retrograde might shine a bright light upon this tucked away shadow.

The law of creation is quite clear. What we currently believe ourselves to be is the state of our being. We simply can’t be that which we can’t conceive ourselves to be.

This awareness enables us to move beyond the defense of defeatism by imagining, in a deep way, living in the world of our desire, fully manifested. The key is to deeply feel the self fully realized as the person in the circumstance we truly desire. If we can sustainedly feel it in our imagination, we’ve made room for it in the physical actuality of our being. For once something is imagined, it exists, in some form.

The key is to allow the subconscious its own time and means to further our dream into waking life. The gift of retrograde is to illuminate blockages and focus the imagination on the task of truly becoming receptive to what we desire by allowing ourselves to become it, in a truly impassioned way.

This is a positive path to obtaining the holy grail of our life, by defeating the old guard of protectionism of the heart. If we can truly feel our deepest desire realized in our imagination, we are already there, living it within, as it finds its way without.

Love in the time of retrograde is gratitude for all  the gifts we are given. We must pay our dues to the tao of everything. Seasons of retrograde, however challenging, are course corrections, which if heeded, hold the karma of ultimate success.

If we face, and live, our revealed truths, regardless of our necessary bouts with failure, and love ourselves for our ability to do so, we are graced.

Loving all the glitches in time,
Chuck 

Chuck’s Place: Words And Imagination Are The Ways To Intent

Activate in Words & Imagination…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

When we sleep our energy is largely passive as we enter a restful restorative mode. When we are awake our energy is mobilized for directed action.

Infinity reflects these same two modes. Passivity is its state of absolute oneness, what spiritual traditions call simply the consciousness of I AM, devoid of any specific definition, as it encompasses everything.

The active side of infinity molds that state of undifferentiated wholeness into a specific definition. I AM becomes I Am That. In this mode infinity assumes a definite form, which can be said to be the child of its original oneness.

The child is of the substance of its parent oneness but loses its experience of oneness as it has become a definite, limited mortal being in human form.

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby called coming into human form as a separate personality an error because of this illusion of separateness, generated by the birth and identity of the human ego.

For Quimby, the mistaken beliefs of the ego largely generate disease. For him, healing requires ego to restore itself through contact with its underlying oneness, at the substrate of all beings.

For Quimby, that underlying oneness, like the subconscious mind, is capable of creating any state of being, based on truth or error. It imposes no judgment upon the conscious mind’s intentions; it manifests whatever suggestions it receives. It remains for ego consciousness to learn from the consequences of its beliefs.

Carl Jung explained this curiosity of divinity as a quality of God, which is dependent on humankind for its own growth through the experiences of human existence. For Jung, God’s passive state of oneness needs to create separateness in order to know the infinite parts of its inherent oneness.

From this perspective, God, as original oneness, becomes lived by humans, allowing its infinite creative powers to be exercised in human form at the complete control of the human ego.

All human dramas, good or bad, are parts of the oneness of God. From Jung’s perspective, God, through humans, grows as it discovers the karma, or outcomes of various possibilities played out in human life.

This active side of infinity begins with the speaking of the word: “In the beginning was the Word.”

In the shaman’s world, the word is the summoning of intent. Our thoughts and beliefs summon the subconscious mind to gather the energy of intent, to then manifest in physical form, that which is called for.

Following the personally vetted guidance of Thomson Jay Hudson, I recommend stating, redundantly, a healing intent to attract the subconscious mind to exercise its powers of manifestation.

Redundancy is like repetitive prayer that simply blocks out undermining doubt by filling all available space with stated intent. As one achieves positive outcomes with this method, ego confidence expands with it and resistance naturally diminishes.

Neville Goddard introduced the use of imagination to stalk, as the shamans would say, the living experience of one’s intent as already fulfilled.

The shifting of total attention to the imaginative experience of a desire already fulfilled transcends the current fixation of consciousness upon a limited reality generated by the physical senses.

In this alternative imagined reality, the imagination generates the scene of fulfillment accompanied by the heightened emotions of the lived fantasy, even including a subtler experience of physical sensations accompanying the unfolding drama. Jung called this process active imagination.

The effect of such an imaginative exercise is to seed the subconscious mind with a very powerful suggestion to gather physical life to be physically lived to the fullest.

As always, as the guidance goes: “Ask and you shall receive.” However, as previously stated, be very thoughtful what you ask for, as no divine force will check your power, but karma will.

If our intentions are for other than the greater good, we will have to suffer the consequences of our actions. That’s how we all learn.

As well, life in human form is a terminal affair. There are limits to what may be achieved in the time and space of a human lifetime and, ultimately, the human form must acquiesce to change, despite its underlying infinite beingness. Life, in some new form, will go on.

Finally, though exercising both our words and our imagination to summon intent, we have no control over the ways of the subconscious mind. The trail ahead and the time taken for manifestation is literally out of our hands.

Best practice: Simply let go to the subconscious mind.

In word and imagination,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: The Truth About Virgin Birth

Create from Within…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

The word virgin implies something completely pure, untouched and unexploited. However, purity is not necessarily about morality. Purity means not being infiltrated and controlled by foreign elements.

When we define virgin birth, the emphasis is upon a creation that is wholly parented by parts of the self, namely by the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind.

Whether we are aware of it or not, what the conscious mind thinks, believes, feels and imagines forms the suggestions that we deliver to the subconscious mind, the mind that manifests the physical circumstances of our lives.

The fact that this divine capability to create exists within the human mind is the truth of the power of the virgin birth. We are the sole creators of our lives; we need no outside influence to create our lives.

The imperative of the spiritual guidance highlighted in a virgin birth is for us to become fully aware of our inner generative powers and to assume full responsibility for the life we create.

The conscious mind has the ability to exercise its awareness through thinking, reflecting, weighing options, making decisions and choosing actions. Outside thoughts and knowledge may be quite helpful to us as we discern what is truly right for us.

However, the conclusion of this discernment must be fully owned by the conscious mind and must not represent the will of outside influence seeking to manipulate and commandeer the mind of another.

When we fully own our beliefs, they will result in virgin suggestions to the subconscious mind that manifest physical circumstances in alignment with our truth.

The subconscious mind has the agency to receive these intentions from the conscious mind and magically embody them with physical reality.

The subconscious mind is heavily influenced by the intensity of feeling that accompanies a desire from the conscious mind. The subconscious mind is also heavily influenced by the quality of relationship that we, meaning the conscious mind, have with it.

I know, for instance, that my subconscious mind has not forgotten one moment from our life together. When I am consciously at a loss to remember a name, place or event, I request the subconscious mind to refresh my memory. Every time it responds, I shower it with gratitude—Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I then feel its glowing appreciation.

If I receive a quick healing for a physical concern, I similarly express deep joy and gratitude that my request has been granted. I trust the path that the subconscious mind follows, however circuitous, to accomplish any request, reflecting my growing belief and confidence in its healing powers.

The subconscious mind is not interested in an argument, but it does appreciate definiteness. It can rise to any occasion. It loves the imagination, especially a drama that is heartfelt.

The subconscious mind has all the magical ability to create but it refuses to take responsibility for deciding what is right. Right or wrong, it will manifest our dominant thoughts and beliefs. Morality is not for the subconscious mind to decide.

This is why a virgin birth is so critical. The conscious mind must examine its deepest beliefs. Are they really ours? Are they owned by the conscious mind? Or are they the internalized views, the legacy of a heavily socialized childhood? Are they actually our own genuine thoughts? Or are they outside suggestions, targeting our senses and conscious minds, seeking us to manifest what serves them?

Powerful thoughts and beliefs will impregnate the subconscious mind, wherever they come from, if the conscious mind consciously or unconsciously becomes entranced by them. The subconscious mind insists that the conscious mind suffer this discernment. After all, the subconscious is doing all the work of creation!

Virgin birth is completely an inside job. Make sure all your suggestions are completely refined and truly owned. Arrive at the place of no doubt and pass that blueprint for life onto the subconscious mind for manifestation. Relax in the knowing that thy will is done.

No doubt,
Chuck