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: Resentment

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A pragmatic guide…

“Resentment is an emotionally debilitating condition that, when unresolved, can have a variety of negative results on the person experiencing it…” –Wikipedia

“It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while.” –The Big Book/Alcoholics Anonymous p.66

Resentment is an intense stored anger that is re-experienced every time the person or circumstance that is causally linked to the offending event is triggered or remembered. Resentment binds our essential energy as it tyrannizes the central nervous system with a frustrated unrelenting cry of anguish. Resentment victimizes the felt victim in an avalanche of self pity. This fixation on self and self pity, for the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, was the number one reason human beings do not realize their full spiritual or, as they would say, energetic potential.

Like the Hindus, who hold that the Atman (The Eternal One—The Source—God) lies deeply embedded in the center of the physical body inside the hard-crusted shell of the ego, those shamans realize that the obsession with ego self as the only self, as the almighty self, must be broken open to truly discover and release our spirit potential. Those shamans purposefully put themselves under the thumb of horrific tyrants to learn to break open their attachment to ego self, manifested in self pity and its resentments, or perish defending it. For them, a ruthless obliteration of obsession with the ego self, with feelings of entitlement or resentment, was the only hope of releasing spirit energy and reaching total freedom, or enlightenment.

What lies at the center?

The Big Book, “the bible” of AA, asks its practitioners, in step 4 of this modern shamanic healing art, to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves in a process that parallels the shamanic practice of recapitulation:

“We took stock honestly… Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.

Resentment is the “number one” offender… From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry. In most cases it was found that our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships (including sex) were hurt or threatened. So we were sore. We were burned up.” –The Big Book pp. 64-65

The founders of AA realized that alcohol was the ultimate petty tyrant for alcoholics that freely fed the delusion of ego self as the all-important almighty one, displacing the true spirit self. Under the brutal tutelage of this petty tyrant, alcoholics are led to a systematic destruction of the ego self, as the meaningful accomplishments and relationships of a lifetime are burned up as the almighty ego self maintains its hegemony. The alcoholic must break its attachment to ego self and self pity to be released from its superior lethal delusions evoked by spirit alcohol. In recovery, the ego self is broken open and humbled to surrender to the leadership of true spirit self, the higher power, and is thus saved from its delusional demise. The pathway to ego surrender is the dismantling of its attachments to self importance.

What do we find in the dismantling?

The Big Book pragmatically instructs in the dismantling of self pity: “We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how?

This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves: “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him?” –The Big Book pp. 66-67

This technique takes us to the teachings of the Buddha of Compassion that all human beings are struggling beings—like ourselves. Rather than be offended, release the self and “offender” alike with compassionate energy. This doesn’t mean we have to be friends, for truly we can only really be connected to those traveling at similar speeds as ourselves, but we needn’t disdain the journeys of others that have disrupted or intersected with our own. This is the shaman’s appreciation of tyrants: No, they are not our friends, but they teach us to shed our complacency with self pity so that we may resume, full force, our egoless spirit journeys through infinity.

The Big Book goes on to instruct: “Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight.” -p. 67

The fire is within…

In this example, taking responsibility of our faults is fully owned, releasing the self from the burden of projected self truths. Once fully acknowledged, resentment is burned up and fully released in humble self-acceptance. Released resentment is the fuel that launches spiritual evolution, the stuff of recovery in AA and the stuff of infinite journeys in the shaman’s world.

Let us approach the stored energies of resentments to set us free, in a thorough 4th step in AA or in a thorough recapitulation, completing our shamanic journey in this world or in the shamanic world—or both!

Chuck

NOTE: I find AA and The Big Book—its lineage stemming back to the nagual psychiatrist Carl Jung—to be a most valuable, pragmatic guide to healing and spiritual evolution, in the same class as Magical Passes, the pragmatic guide to healing and spiritual evolution from the Shamans of Ancient Mexico.

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Chuck’s Place: I’m Sorry For Your Loss

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I practice detachment…

Early Wednesday morning, as we sat and sipped our morning coffee, I remarked to Jan: “I wish I could say, had the election gone the other way, that I would have felt equally relaxed this morning.” But the truth is, I wouldn’t be, and so I engage this truth as an opportunity to practice detachment.

I think of Sixto Rodriguez,* plodding through life with equal reaction to lost stardom or hard labor, giving most of his money away; money and fame simply not relevant to his deeper fulfillment. He teaches that all outcomes are equal: simply live fully, impeccably, and without attachments.

As my models from Carlos Castaneda’s lineage always state: “I am a being who is going to die.” This awareness takes us beyond this life to the death that awaits equally in every moment, presenting the ultimate relativity of the world we find ourselves so deeply attached to. We are beings in eternal transition, in eternal flux.

Carlos once talked about the roles we choose to play in this world, urging us to play them to the fullest. Today he might have pointed to a Todd Akin and rather than judge him, he might have said: “Okay, be it—be the best, the most outlandish conservative you can be—be impeccable in playing out your chosen role; leave no stone unturned; hold nothing back!”

In an ultimate sense, Carlos, like Sixto, pointed to the illusory, transitory world we find ourselves in, that will, like

“Worn-out garments
[be] shed by the body:
[as] Worn-out bodies
Are shed by the dweller
Within the body. (-from the Bhagavad Gita)

And the dweller beyond the illusion of the body is the Atman, the eternal one inside all of us. Embracing the Atman, we release ourselves from attachment to the illusion, and can then play to the fullest, with sheer abandon and delight, the role we’ve chosen to live in this life. Don Juan suggests, however, that that role truly be a path of heart.

I am deeply appreciative of the Republicans—so deeply spirited—who so blatantly expressed themselves with such abandon. Only the full revelation of their heartfelt agenda could mobilize the conscience of a nation to reflect deeply and decide which path of heart the majority would take to responsibly lead this world into the future.

This is indeed a momentous 2012 decision, and humanity chose its course. There will be many more choices and challenges ahead, but a higher level of consciousness has risen above the sedating mass hypnosis of billionaire money. People discovered the truths of their own hearts and waited to vote, despite the obstacles.

And so, for those who lost—I’m sorry for your loss—and I’m deeply appreciative of the necessary role you played so vigorously in advancing all of us, an integrated whole, into a future of real possibility, beyond the Mayan calendar end. We have advanced, consensually agreeing to further this dream on solid ground.

Chuck

* Sixto Rodriguez refers to the man presented in the movie Searching for Sugar Man, previously mentioned here and here.

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Chuck’s Place: Breathe!

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Drum life’s breath…

The mind and the breath are inseparable. Control the breath; control the mind.

Slow, full breath creates calm. The fullness of deep, calm breathing releases the staleness and constriction of anger and fear. Racing thoughts dissolve as attention shifts to the breath.

Breathe! Breathe with awareness. Begin by simply directing consciousness to the breath. Notice the breath. No pressure, no expectation, no judgment, just awareness placed on breathing naturally, as it happens.

Next, decide to accompany the breath on drums—that is, count out the beats of an in-breath, as well as its accompanying out-breath. Bring the beats into equality; same count in as out. Always count along.

Ask the breath to deepen into the abdomen. If the body isn’t ready to go there that’s fine. However far it goes is enough. After some time the body may invite a deeper breath, naturally, as it relaxes and opens to more.

Perhaps as the breath goes even deeper, filling and fully relaxing the abdominal region, it moves higher into the chest and upper chest, filling the body to a count of eight. Holding the breath for a few counts before slowly releasing to exhalation, from the abdomen up to the chest on a count of eight beats, allows for deepening relaxation and calm. Perhaps the breath might repeat this process several times, always with awareness of inhaling and counting and exhaling and counting slowly, maintaining a sense of the filling and emptying of the belly and lungs. Notice the calming of the mind as it is led by the calmness of the breath flowing in the body.

Frequent repetitions of conscious breathing sink into the unconscious, creating a reformulated program for deeper breathing, uprooting old habits of vigilance, fear, or anger, habituated in the body in younger years under other circumstances.

Conscious breathing, accompanied by counting of each beat, sinks into the subconscious as a new habit of calm, naturally canceling out unsolicited thoughts that reactively register unwanted feeling states in the body.

Breathe in life!

Conscious breathing changes the mind and the body by grounding us in the present in calm. From calm we are strengthened in our ability to weather the true storms from within and without. From calm we dispel the illusions that have held our body and mind in check. From calm we resume our interrupted journey, returning back to nature, flowing in the calm river of infinity.

Just breathing,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Coyote In Broad Daylight

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Today, we switch things around and publish Chuck’s blog. Jan’s blog, which normally appears on Wednesdays, will be published this Friday instead.

What is that?

En route to errands, Jan asks: “Did you bring the DVDs for return?” I hadn’t. It was time to turn around, a familiar theme for us these days, as in the past few weeks we have noticed a propensity for making the same trip twice in a day, something always needing a redo. And actually there were two DVDs to return, though we had only watched one. “What is the unseen story?” I ponder, not wanting to get caught in frustration or be disheartened by this unnecessary waste of time, and so I stalk a different attitude as we turn around and slowly drive back home.

“What will we see that we wouldn’t have seen had we not had occasion to retrace our steps? What will we be shown?” I wonder.

Within seconds my questions are answered. Off to the right, deep in a field, I notice what appears to be a German shepherd on its own, standing alertly, sniffing the air. We turn the corner and pull to the side of the road. The animal slowly makes its way towards us, an unmistakable coyote, low to the ground, long bushy tail, triangular face. Barely breathing, we watch as it prances out of the field and cautiously crosses the road right in front of us. What a thrill! But what does it mean?

Coyote is a night hunter. What brings it so boldly into daylight for all to see? Coyote is trickster, a shapeshifter, who teaches folly and wisdom. We are tricked where we are fools, yet through facing our folly honestly we acquire wisdom.

In earnest, I watch the third presidential debate between Obama and Romney. Suddenly, I get it; shapeshifting coyote trickster stands before us in the bright light of scrutiny. Romney has become Obama, adopting nearly all his positions, many of which he disputed but a week ago. Romney has transformed into calm statesman, touting the wisdom of WORLD PEACE!

It’s shapeshifter!

This shapeshifter actually transforms into a being who in a non-lucid moment doesn’t seem all that bad, actually appearing presidential! Oh what fools we mortals be!

After watching the debate, I am awakened twice in the night by dreams that seize me with fear. In each dream, a psychopathic killer seizes power and is unstoppable. In the morning my waking mood is tense, worried. Not wanting to attach to fear, I penetrate the dreams and the synchronicities of now. Now awake, I clearly see the trickster, come in my dreams to play me, letting me in on the folly of where we are now poised in our world. If we fall for the fool we will eventually get to wisdom, but how rough, how necessary, will that journey be?

Presidents and presidential races attract our projections because they concern our destinies in this world. As well, like kings imbued with divine right, they mirror our inner relations to our own higher powers. As mirrors we must ask ourselves: Are we allowing ourselves to make decisions and take actions in our lives based on our deepest truths, or on foolish illusions we sell ourselves in order to live a safe and complacent life?

The fool will always indulge our weaknesses, but are we willing to out the fool who caters to our inner greed and avoidance of truth? If we refuse inner truth, we certainly will delude ourselves with outer fool, who caters similarly to our greed and fears. We cannot really expect more from our leaders than we do of ourselves. Do we stay mesmerized by the coyote within or the one that walks amongst us in broad daylight? Or do we awaken and heed its warning: Nothing is hidden; it’s right in front of us!

What really matters, the truth, or what we want to believe? Either way, we are led ultimately to wisdom. But the journeys will be very different.

With Coyote,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Person-in-Situation

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Stuck…Frozen in time

Person-in-situation is a phrase coined by one of Social Work’s greatest contributors, Florence Hollis, in her 1964 book Casework: A Psychosocial Theory. Person-in-situation captures the interconnected nature of reality. To know reality is to know the full mosaic of person-in-situation. Figure removed from ground cannot be known in entirety; the picture is incomplete. Deprived of context, we are clueless.

In recapitulation, we relive the full context of our experiences in situations from the past. Full context includes the experience of our physical body, as well as that of our energy body. Frequently, in traumatic experiences, these two bodies separate. While the physical body absorbs the physical sensations of an experience the energy body watches the experience from a detached vantage point, above and beyond the physical body. In addition to the physical and energy bodies, the emotions and cognitive perspectives of person-in-situation are critical components of the experience being recapitulated. Finally, all the characteristics of the environment in-situation, most especially the words and behaviors of all the characters in the experience, must be included to fully return to and fully relive a moment frozen in time.

Too often we remain stuck, unable to fully free ourselves from a frozen moment from the past because some component of the experience eludes our direct retrieval. That component remains present in our current lives—often symptomatically—either in the body or in a distorted belief or perception of self or reality, but its true meaning remains incomprehensible until we can place it in the mosaic of the past where it really belongs.

Carlos Castaneda suggested that we suspend judgment to deepen our experience and direct knowledge of reality. When we recapitulate it is often judgment that bars our full access to the truth. Judgments we make about ourselves, judgments we have internalized, block our full access to the truths of person-in-situation. Judgment holds us in check. If we deem ourselves bad or scandalous because of the actual experiences we have had, those experiences cannot be fully known and released. Instead, they become energetic powerhouses that emotionally and cognitively control our identity and freedom to be in the world.

In the 3-hour-long extended version of the movie Margaret, currently available only on DVD, a sixteen-year-old girl engages the attention of a bus driver who drives through a red light, hitting and killing a pedestrian in the cross walk. So begins a story of person-in-situation. As the movie progresses we must constantly ask ourselves: What is the true reality of this experience in-situation? Where does responsibility lie? What is the process of recovering all the fragments of an experience? What judgments preclude resolution of this traumatic event?

What is reality?

The release of this movie was delayed for four years because the director fought to deliver the full mosaic of the story. Modern sensibility allots 90 minutes as the maximum story time for consumption in the digital age. The trouble is, edited reality becomes just that, a quickly formatted, judged story that condenses and skips over the full mosaic of person-in-situation, i.e.: Reality.

In Margaret, we are treated to the challenge of finding resolution amidst a field of judgments. And just as in this movie, we too, in every experience of our lives, are responsible for the fact that we are a person-in-situation. This true and actual fact cannot be separated from our personal history. If we want to fully know ourselves, we must let ourselves know the full truth of our experiences, unedited by judgment.

When we allow ourselves to take in the full unedited person-in-situations of our lives, our experiences can be fully digested, completed, and released. Resolution de-powers the myths we have had to carry about ourselves, myths that secretly code edited fragments of truth, myths that have awaited debunking, for the time when we could allow ourselves to fully recapitulate.

Experience, once recapitulated, recycles energy previously frozen in the past, revitalizing it and allowing it to proceed deeper into life, deeper into reality. We emerge from the recapitulation as a whole person-in-situation, ready to fully live in the true reality of every moment.

Person-in-situation,
Chuck

NOTE: I highly recommend watching Margaret. The version I am referring to is only available on DVD, released in July of this year, and not the film version released into theaters. The iTunes version is not the same version either, so if you look for it be sure to get the extend version, 3 hours long, released in July 2012. Here is a Wikipedia link to information about the movie.