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: Faith As Creator

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Have faith in your suggestions…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Shamans call faith unbending intent. To have total belief, confidence and trust in one’s intent brings it to life. However, without faith, dreams are stillborn.

Christ stated that even he, a great healer, was unable to heal someone who lacked the faith that they could be healed. In this case, not believing it’s possible to be healed becomes one’s inevitable manifested intent.

At an elemental level, quantum physics demonstrates the role of human thought upon physical manifestation. In the famous double-slit experiment, a light is shone through two openings. When unobserved the produced result is a wavelike pattern. Under human observation the same experiment creates a particle pattern. Human thought impacts matter.

Modern consciousness is burdened with a rational bias that dismisses outright a suggestion that does not conform to logic. Rather than adhere to a more scientific stance that holds that anything is possible, until proven otherwise, the tendency is to attach to a blocking belief and dismiss further consideration or experimentation with a possibility deemed to be not rationally possible.

The well-worn adviso, don’t attach to the outcome, or the shamanic dictum, suspend judgment, frees the energy of creation and allows it to run its intended course unimpeded by constricting beliefs. Though we can imagine our intent, and call it forth with words, we need to completely surrender to an aloof, detached tracking of the course that creation will take, accepting the time it will take to manifest.

Our intent is like karma; once established it must be realized. Suppressed intent eventually surfaces. The world is currently grappling with political leaders, attitudes, and issues dating back to WWII. The collective unconscious demands new resolution of perennial conflicts that interfere with achieving a sustainable peace. The world’s collective consciousness must refine its conflicting intent and have total faith in the possibility of peace.

At an individual level, we may hold blocking beliefs in the habitual depths of our personal psyche. Spontaneous comments like: “I’m not worthy; that can’t happen for me,” or “That’s not possible,” might surface from one’s internal dialogue.

Don’t fight with such thoughts. Fighting is attaching, a reinforcer of blocking belief. Alternatively, use the intrusive thought as a trigger to remind oneself that anything is possible, and then restate your intent.

Intent, like hypnotic suggestion is a direct appeal to the subconscious mind, the true mother of creation. Realize, however, that all intent is not necessarily healthy intent nor in alignment with your soul’s true mission in this life. Negative intent, delivered with strong faith, may manifest just as often as positive suggestions. We all must deal with the karmic consequences of our choices and actions.

Doubt can be a blessing to consciousness. It can spur one to refine the appropriateness of one’s intent. The nagual, don Juan Matus, advised that one have a romance with knowledge, engaging thinking and doubt before forming an intent. However, once one has arrived at the appropriate intent, embrace that intent with total faith, with unrelenting, unbending intent.

Some intent may not be fully realized at the human life stage if the timing conflicts with our deepest soul’s intent. In this case, the fuller maturation and completion of the intent will be realized in a future form. Though destiny in human form is unavoidable, this does not void the fact that anything is possible, and that ultimately everything is possible.

Ancillary practices are part of unbending intent. An intent for healing, for instance, is best supported by healthful practices that reflect one’s absolute faith in their ability to fully heal. Attention to deep care and rejuvenation of the body embodies one’s intent to heal, with a powerful suggestion to the subconscious mind. Mental practices that tone the nerves, and transmit calm, deepen the conscious mind’s channel to the receptive subconscious mind.

Find your faith in possibility. And with focused, patient knowing, load your suggestion on the wings of intent. See what happens.

In good faith,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Golden Opportunity Of Now

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The Golden Opportunity to use intent for the greater good is now…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Life in a physical body upon the Earth, at this phase of eternity, is largely governed by autosuggestions emanating from our instinctive nature. Though consciousness is awakening to its power to intend and create its physical reality, it remains largely controlled by hidden, limiting autosuggestions. 

Autosuggestions can originate from both conscious and subconscious intent. The ego, employing its thinking mind, can decide upon an innovative change that it then perseveringly suggests to its workhorse subconscious mind to manufacture in material reality. This is an example of a conscious intent derived from inductive, or creative, thinking and presented to the subconscious mind for materialization.

The subconscious mind does not employ the inductive reasoning of ego consciousness. With inductive reasoning the ego can think and create outside the box. Though I have stated repeatedly that the subconscious does not think, this is in fact not completely accurate. The subconscious thinks deductively.

Essentially, the subconscious treats the suggestion it embraces as absolute fact and engages all of its energy to manufacture and prove this commanding suggestion via associations generated from its access to the vast storehouse of human evolutionary history. Thus, the subconscious makes a suggested truth become a physical truth.

Although the conscious mind, particularly through perseverance, can attract the subconscious mind to embrace and manufacture its suggestions, the subconscious mind is mostly drawn to suggestions presented to it by our genetic code, our evolutionary history and, most prominently, our instincts, which have insured the survival of the human race.

If the conscious mind imagines it will be attacked in some way, fear might overtake one’s mental, emotional, and physical state. Confronted with actual danger, the subconscious mind will likely embrace and act upon instructions suggested to it by one’s self-preservation instinct, which can result in the calm clarity and superhuman strength needed to defend one’s self. In this case, the subconscious abandons the suggestion of consciousness, to remain fearful, in favor of the empowered instinctual suggestion to survive.

This overtaking of the ego by autosuggestion from the instinct for self-preservation is favorable in this instance, as it can save a life. However, a family history of a particular disease, rooted in one’s genetic code, might pose the suggestion to the subconscious to automatically activate this latent possibility of disease. This situation may be further complicated by a reigning blocking belief in science, which states that consciousness alone cannot alter physical reality.  Consequently, the ego is sheepishly lulled to concur with the disease suggestion of its genetic code, thereby forfeiting its potential ability to create another reality.

To be sure, not all physical conditions can be altered by conscious suggestion. Some programs, such as the inevitable death of the human body, derive from programs that may be delayed but ultimately cannot be overcome.

But clearly, evolution advanced us from the total domination of our animal instinctual mind, to allow for free will and change, because of the creative power of consciousness to alter physical reality and thereby enhance its potential for survival. This is evolutionary innovation via intent versus via natural selection. The golden opportunity of now is to fully embrace and exercise this creative power of mind for the greater good of all.

Advanced disembodied souls, whom have turned their attention to informing and guiding those of us still physically embodied, have shared consistently that life beyond the human body is primarily controlled by the soul’s mental capacity to imagine. Imagination is the currency of nonphysical reality, where one is freed to live in a reality of one’s own mental construction.

This creative activity allows a soul to generate familiar environments, populated with kindred souls, enabling the completion of incomplete residual dreams from one’s prior sojourn in physical life. Completion, at this phase of eternity, enables one to progress ultimately into the more expanded dream of one’s soul group.

This refinement of creative imaginative power, beyond physical life, though largely dormant while living in a physical body, is nonetheless a latent power capable of being activated while in physical life. The shamans of ancient Mexico instruct us to suspend the prejudice of materialism and unrelentingly intend the change we seek. With intent we can awaken the spirit from its slumber in materialist malaise.

To support this awakening, the shamans also recommend that we throw out a line and hook to our future  disembodied soul state, and to the prolific potential of this creative facility, stalking it now. By stalking, the shamans mean embodying the full knowing and exercise of intent as the prime creative power in life. To consciously master it in this life is the ultimate intent.

Trust the power of the Spirit. Trust the power of consciousness to change the self and to change the world.

As we live through the destruction of this Fall season of Earth’s life and face the inevitable changes ahead, let us, without fear or doubt, imagine and create, with intent, a new world that reflects the greater good for all.

Without attachment to the outcome, know it will be done. This is the golden opportunity of now.

Imagine,
Chuck 

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Chuck’s Place: The Greatest Love Affair Of All

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The subconscious becoming conscious…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The ultimate love affair, in Hindu cosmology, the union of Shakti and Shiva, takes place within the human body. Shakti, in her energetic form, as Kundalini, rests in the coccyx, at the base of the human spine. Kundalini is the divine manifesting substance and force  of all creation. Shiva, the God of pure consciousness, resides at the crown of the human head.

These divine consorts, situated at the opposite poles of the spinal column, are also oppositely charged. Shakti is negative and Shiva is positive. The resulting magnetic force of attraction of these opposites draws this divine couple irresistibly toward the goal of union.

The union of Shakti and Shiva is the union of Spirit, which is consciousness, and Matter, which is the creative energy of all material manifestation. The progeny of their union is the  world we live in. This dynamic union and creation is expressed in Judeo-Christian cosmology in John’s Gospel, “in the beginning was the word (Spirit consciousness) and the word was made flesh (Matter).”

Upon awakening early one morning, I was contemplating Shakti and Shiva’s relationship when Jan abruptly woke from a dream. She told me she had just been in India, where a very tall ladder that had pointed vertically into the heavens was brought down and positioned horizontally, both balanced and secure, across several buildings.

Jan reflected that the roof is the highest spiritual point of a building that is grounded in the earth. The message of the dream: the spiritual journey that is needed now is not a vertical rise, out-of-body into the heavens, but instead a horizontal in-body journey, as one traverses the challenges of their human life, with all its relationships upon the Earth.

These challenges are neatly laid out in Hindu science, as the path that Kundalini traverses through the chakras, or subtle energy power stations along the spine, en route to Shiva. Actually, each chakra entails its own horizontal journey, which requires mastery as we move toward greater fulfillment in life.

The base of the spine center asks us to find grounding, safety and security. The genital region introduces us to sexual and creative energy, which entail their own developmental processes. The solar plexus introduces us to I, as ego, and the mastery of personal power. The heart introduces us to our connection to our Spirit and deepest truth. The throat is about finding our voice. The third eye brings forth intuition. As Kundalini reaches Shiva, at the crown, consciousness unites and becomes one with all creation. In a human life, the fulfillment of this state is experienced as we relax increasingly deeper into ever-widening equanimous love.

The duality of Shakti and Shiva is also expressed in the two minds of the human psyche: the subconscious mind and the ego.

The subconscious, Shakti, is feminine in its receptivity to suggestions. The subconscious has access to all knowledge and creative possibility, as well as the substance to birth new life, but, without union with the novel suggestions of consciousness, is governed by instinctual programs and habits.

The ego, Shiva, is identified with life in the physical body and is the seat of consciousness. Regardless of gender, ego is masculine in its active thinking capabilities. It is the seat of free will and decision making.

The human ego has many developmental challenges it must master, similar to those identified with the chakras. Ego must establish safety and grounding; be introduced to and master sexuality and its animal self, as well as exercise its own capacity to intend creation; become autonomous and have the power of self-assertion; develop humility and acquiescence to truth and its High Spirit Self; use its voice; see beyond its narcissistic shell; and, ultimately, become one with everything.

The subconscious faces no developmental challenges because the subconscious is completely fluid, it can be anything. In contrast to the ego, the subconscious is attached to no identity; it simply responds to the suggestion it entertains at the current moment.

The challenge in human development is for ego to be in the correct relationship with the subconscious mind. Essentially, the ego is the creator, issuing forth the word or image of intent, whose suggestion fertilizes the subconscious, which then galvanizes its substance to manifest new life. The subconscious, in all of us, is the true mother of creation.

If ego does not master safety, it suggests danger to the subconscious, which then manifests an anxious, vigilant personality. If ego suggests inadequacy, the subconscious may manifest a tightened voice. If ego suggests superiority, the subconscious may manifest a pompous, condescending posture and attitude. If ego suggests entitlement to the subconscious, it may manifest a tendency to violate boundaries.

If, on the other hand, the ego aligns with and suggests the truth, the subconscious will open the eye to greater truth and perception. If the ego suggests true love to the subconscious, it activates an energy that draws to us resonant energy. If ego suggests it stay in alignment with its Spirit’s purpose, the subconscious will synchronistically manifest that yellow brick road.

The guidance here is to remain quite protective of the suggestions one both exposes oneself to, as well as personally presents to, the subconscious mind. We live in a time where highly suggestive messages are bombarding both our thinking and subconscious minds at an unprecedented rate, largely due to our attachment to devices, the self-importance of dings, and well-coordinated efforts to infiltrate and influence our subconscious minds.

At the most evolved level, the relationship between ego and subconscious is equivalent to the love affair between Shakti and Shiva. Ego, acting from the insinuation of its Spirt, joining with the magic of the subconscious, is truly the greatest love affair of all. May we all participate in birthing that dream.

With consciousness and infinite possibility,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Always Find The Positive In The Negative

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Finding the positive in the negative…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Most of what we are is either inherited or molded by our formative social experience, essentially, what we brought in with us into this life and how we were greeted when we arrived. The force of these influences can make a strong argument that the course of a human life is predetermined or mechanistically determined.

Nonetheless, as noted existential thinkers and authors Victor Frankl and Edith Eger have demonstrated: Regardless of circumstances beyond our control, we always retain the free will to choose the attitude we will take toward our reality. And attitudes, it turns out, are powerful suggestions that we, as creators, present to our subconscious minds that can completely shift the reality that we live in.

Some of those inherent programs, however, are so powerful that they simply cannot be overridden, like the one the shamans of Ancient Mexico emphasize: We are beings who are going to die. Ironically, this is the one inherent program that human beings refuse to acknowledge and, in fact, spend most of their lives living as though it will never come true!

Of course, the argument immediately arises that to focus on the inevitability of death is morbidly negative and casts too depressive a shadow over opening up to the fullness of life. So what could possibly be the positive side of death?

Death advises us that our time in human form is limited. This impact of limitation allows for a legitimate scientific experiment in the living of a human life. Science insists upon a beginning and an ending to assess the truth and full knowing of something. The awareness of inevitable death keeps us positively on track to discover and test the core hypothesis of our lives. But what is our core hypothesis?

Carl Jung would identify that hypothesis as one of individuation, which entails successfully bringing into realized wholeness the unique combination of opposing parts that we are. Frederick Myers, from his advanced perspective in infinity, would identify that hypothesis as an incarnating soul’s mission, assigned by its Spirit, to answer a question through the trajectory of a human life, which ultimately allows one’s soul group to further refine and thus to advance on its ever-unfolding journey in infinity.

Wholeness must include light and shadow. Individuation is the ability to accept, with equanimity, all parts of self and all parts of the world. Buddha, during his enlightenment, remained utterly calm, as he saw the illusory and transitory nature of all forms. Carlos Castaneda suggested that, as one discovers the specific role one has been assigned in this life, one suspend judgment and live and appreciate it to the fullest, whether it emphasizes the light or the dark side.

The power players on the current world stage are truly playing their parts to perfection, both those who reflect the light and those who blatantly reflect evil. The collective individuation challenge  of our time is well represented, with worthy opponents whose interplay is critical to advancement of the soul group of planet Earth’s dream.

Closer to home, we all struggle with these opposing forces within ourselves. We all contend with genetic consequences, which both limit and promote our physical structure, health, and attractiveness. If we can see these effects, no matter how undesirable, as critical factors to our individual and soul group’s need to master, we can embrace the positive side of the negative.

At the level of the psyche, we all deal with forces that can be extremely critical, deprecating and incessantly negative, generating depressed mood states and compulsive behaviors. If we can understand the necessity of these negative forces in our journey of mastery, we can see the positive value of these petty tyrants to help us emerge from the captivity of self pity.

Self pity shapes our vital flowing energy into a rigid negative form that completely clouds the positive potential latent in the present challenge. It’s a dream where many of the stone steps of a narrow circular stairway are missing, as we feel hopelessly barred from ascent to higher ground. Our energy is fully spent on body armor, condemning our innocence and unlived self to the isolation of solitary confinement.

The shamans of ancient Mexico always included powerful petty tyrants in their lives to help them stare down the imprisoning bars of self pity. Being challenged by ruthless petty tyrants frees our energy from the confinement of defending our hurt selves, allowing it to be deployed in focused action in full conformity to what is needed to master the tyrant’s labyrinth.

To achieve this mastery we cannot afford to spend an ounce of energy on being offended. Here, the petty tyrants of this world offer us the greatest opportunity to break through the narcissistic shell of self pity and entitlement.

The success of individuation in the limits of a human life is the achievement of acceptance; complete acceptance for every experience and character one has ever encountered, as well as complete acceptance of one’s self.

The fruit of this acceptance is an even more refined purity of love. And that refined love is what fulfills our lives and advances our soul group another rung on the infinite ladder of love.

Always find the positive in the negative; it’s the truly soulful thing to do,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Stepping Up The Infinite Ladder Of Love

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Plant your love wherever you go…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

I, like all of us, have been challenged in this life to ascend another rung on the infinite ladder of love. I call that ladder infinite because love forever broadens as it rises to embrace the infinitude of all.

The challenge of reopening to love, once you’ve experienced love, as we all have, regardless of its level of fulfillment, is to grow that love forward. Love can only build upon the plateau of love you have already accrued.

We accrue love in many of our relationships in life, be they with humans, animals or trees. Letting go of a physical relationship can never erase the fact of that love, regardless of its ending in the materiality of this plane of life.

If you are to love again, you must include all the love you have ever experienced as the foundation for new love. However, that growing love must be separated from attachment to the nostalgic familiarity of forms and habits already lived. Love cannot grow if it remains tethered to a past life. And yes, one can have many lives in one physical life.

A sense of undying loyalty to a relationship that has physically ended binds love’s evolution and hinders maturity into new life. Successful mourning ultimately frees everyone to continue their journey into new possibilities. Allowing oneself to be vulnerable in a new encounter, while knowing through experience the disappointments of failures or missed opportunities in love, is a major growth point.

Jeanne and I had a contract in our earthly marriage that insisted we never impede each other’s growth. As our wedding song honestly stated, “our love will grow for all we know.” Vows simply do not guarantee that love will grow. If it’s not right, love insists you set each other free. It’s the truly loving thing to do.

We launched that contract to new levels when Jeanne left this world. She has since been an impeccable warrior; and she has almost completely refused to grant me a moment of familiar connection to our once-treasured earthly existence.

Our love grows now on the premise that we independently assume total  responsibility for our lives and exercise total freedom in the different planes of existence that we currently reside upon. For Jeanne, that is life in the formless plane; for myself, it remains the continued life in physical form.

Of course, I must admit that Jeanne is a magical trickster, whose maneuvers upon the earthly plane have offered me enormous growth opportunities. But these gifts always come with the insistence that I assume total responsibility for the decision to live and realize the possibility in the seed of the offering. Our loved ones in infinity often challenge us to evolve in ways we’d prefer to avoid.

Jeanne was instrumental to the possibility that I might grow love forward in my relationship with Jan. To achieve this, I needed to fully embrace the love I’d accrued with Jeanne but then totally take it into new frontiers with Jan, completely detached from Jeanne in a personal sense. Yet that growing love is fully given to all, as we mature into beings who love with equanimity.

Jeanne, Jan and I are fully aware that we are part of the same soul group, whose goal—similar to the goals of all soul groups—is for all its members to fully master their individual challenges so that their group, as a whole, can ascend the infinite ladder of love.

Ultimately, there is only one soul group, the soul group of infinite Oneness. Ultimately, all soul groups will merge into that Oneness. An analogy would be the human body, which consists of countless soul groups, such as the soul groups of the liver, the heart, the kidneys, etc. All these distinct organ soul groups ultimately merge into the oneness of a human body.

I would venture to assert that all lives that currently reside upon this Earth plane are members of the same soul group. Yes, I concede that within that group are smaller more intimately connected groups, but we are all extant at this time to both challenge and support each other to advance the Earth dream we all reside in, to rise another rung on the infinite ladder of love. Clearly, to love is the only way to keep that dream alive.

Each of us have the opportunity to ascend the infinite ladder of love in this life. It begins with releasing attachment to the past life of our family  of origin. While cherishing its memory and foundation in love, we allow all the members of our nuclear soul group family to shed their previous forms, as they grow their individual lives forward, whether it be upon a plane of form or a plane of formlessness.

Perhaps most significantly, we must allow our evolving selves to molt, to shed the skins of completed life, in the form of attachment to old ideas of self, and to be fully present to new possibility, as we bring life and love to the unlived sides of our soul’s potential.

To love the many lives of self through the developmental stages of this life, as well as all the people with whom we’ve shared those lives, while at the same time releasing all to their new lives, is the foundation to build new love upon, as we take another step upon the infinite ladder of love.

Love is all around you,
Come on and let it grow,

Chuck