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: Spiritus Contra Spiritum

Compelled to seek the numinous…

We are beings compelled to experience our wholeness. It’s intriguing to me how the shaman’s world, the Christian world, and the world in general covet substance—spirits—as the vehicle to parting the veils to divine wholeness. Substances are trickster spirits who would just as soon consume our life energy as let us pass through those veils. The history of AA captures the modern dance with spirits, the struggle with the ravages of spirit, and the eventual solution to lifting those elusive veils, revealing a possible path to wholeness.

Like an orphaned son seeking connection with his long lost biological father, Bill W. wrote to Carl Jung in 1961 to acknowledge him for his seminal role in the conception of AA. The crux of Jung’s input had been his suggestion in the 1930s to his alcoholic patient, Rowland H., that he seek a spiritual cure for his alcoholism.

Rowland H. took Jung’s advice to heart and went out and had a religious experience in an evangelical movement that was sweeping Europe at the time, which released him from the compulsion to drink. Rowland H’s experience was transmitted to Bill W., who at a very low point in his own active alcoholism, cried out to God in desperation and surrender.

“Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light,” he wrote in Pass It On. “I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. Every joy I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy—I was conscious of nothing else for a time.”

“Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain,” he goes on. “I stood upon its summit, where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clean strength, it blew right through me. Then came the blazing thought ‘You are a free man.’ I know not at all how long I remained in this state, but finally the light and the ecstasy subsided. I again saw the wall of my room. As I became more quiet, a great peace stole over me, and this was accompanied by a sensation difficult to describe. I became acutely conscious of a Presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.’ “

Bill W. never took another drink, and AA was born.

Consumed by the ravages…

Jung replied to Bill W’s letter in 1961, shortly before he died. Speaking of Rowland H., in the letter transcribed into Pass It On, Jung states: “His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.”

“How could one formulate such an insight in a language that is not misunderstood in our days?” Jung continued.

Jung knew that the medieval language around God had lost its value to serve the spiritual needs of modern humanity. Jung himself had experienced a profound vision in 1887 at the age of twelve.

“I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky,” he writes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. “God sits on His golden throne, high above the world—and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder.”

Jung had come from a long line of Protestant preachers, but found himself utterly bored when his father was teaching him the catechism in preparation for his Confirmation.

In Volume 9, Part 1 of his Collected Works, Jung writes: “The catechism bored me unspeakably. One day I was turning over the pages of my little book, in the hope of finding something interesting, when my eye fell on the paragraphs about the Trinity. This interested me at once, and I waited impatiently for the lessons to get to that section. But when the longed-for lesson arrived, my father said: “We’ll skip this bit; I can’t make head or tail of it myself.” With that my last hope was laid in the grave. I admired my father’s honesty, but this did not alter the fact that from then on all talk of religion bored me to death.”

“Our intellect,” he continued, “has achieved the most tremendous things, but in the meantime our spiritual dwelling has fallen into disrepair.”

By the time Jung treated Rowland H., he had already taken his own numinous, spiritual journey into a living encounter with the collective unconscious, which he’d documented in his journals, recently published as the Red Book. Through his own experiences, Jung discovered that true healing could only be achieved through a deep, living encounter—a numinous experience—within the depths of the self, the God within/without.

A new means of experience…

Jung ended his letter to Bill W. by pointing out that, “Alcohol in Latin is spiritus, and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.”

Alcohol is a spirit, what the shamans would call an entity. Entities are spirits that serve as gateways to the spirit world. The Christian Mass offers wine as the gateway to an ecstatic union with God in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Don Juan used hallucinogenic drugs called Allies to enable Carlos Castaneda to discover his deepest potential beyond the safeguards of the rational mind. However, as Jung clearly understood, such spirit entities that offer access to the deeper self, to union with God in this manner, always exact a price—spiritum—literally, the ravages of the spirit. And that is at the heart of addiction, getting caught in the ravages of the spirit.

It’s obvious that Jung proposed seeking a new means of intoxication of the spirit over imbibing of intoxicating spirits, suggesting that only a true union with God—spirit—could defeat addiction. Carlos Castaneda similarly warned about using drugs, having had personal experiences of the price exacted by the Allies—spiritum, as Jung points out. Castaneda suggested recapitulation and dreaming as the gateways to infinity. Jung developed active imagination and individuation as similar pathways to wholeness. AA developed the Twelve Steps as the Tao of wholeness. Different paths, same dictum, spiritus contra spiritum.

In spirit,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Unconventional

Is our world really solid?

How critical it is to develop habits to understand and manage the world. In fact, how critical it is to form the habit of the self. Without a routine definition of who we are we have no grounding, no solid vantage point from which to function as an independent being in the world.

Much effort is spent in childrearing, socializing children into good habits. Judgments stream in from all corners of the adult world to shape the attention and behavior of children into discreet, acceptable patterns. The shamans suggest that this socialization is sheer magic, as it bundles a world of energy into a world of solid objects via mass consensus and conditioning. Shamans don’t contest the validity of a world of solid objects; however, they do point out that that solid world is only one among many worlds that exist and that we have access to.

Throughout history, shamans, out-of-body explorers, and religious mystics have all travelled into worlds of different energetic configurations than this solid one we call home, returning with wondrous and valuable artifacts. Consider the tablets of Moses or the twelve steps of AA, artifacts from energetic contact with other worlds. These are but two examples of the boon from shamanic journeys already taken, gifts offered to a solid world out of balance and seeking guidance.

As we deepen our dance into 2012, we encounter an energetic intent established in the remote past and very much upheld in the present, promising major shift, radical shift, critical to the survival of this solid world that is currently spinning toward evolutionary advance.

We must deepen our journeys into ourselves…

Don Juan Matus predicted that our very survival as a world would require that we deepen our connection to it and ourselves, going beyond its current energetic fixation—that of a world of solid objects. In other words, we must journey deeper into our energetic potential to enrich and rebalance our present world.

This is where we stand now, as we find ourselves between two polarized but parallel conventions promising to hold us together and lead us forward to safety. The true evolutionary path, however, lies in the unconventional. Only through stepping beyond the lines of the conventional—the solid, the rational—does the mystic discover what is truly necessary for evolutionary advance.

In recapitulation, we break ranks with the rational and the conventional, turning to an energetic intent that leads us through the experiences of a lifetime, stored energetically in the body or in some ethereal cloud that knows all. Recapitulation suspends the rational and leads to wholeness, to healing through daring to embark on an energetic/physical journey.

How do we access the ethereal worlds that hold the answers? We must change our habits and dare to enter the realm of the unconventional. For energy to be freed for the journey, it must be harnessed from our world of solid habits. We are a world of distinct habits, individually and collectively. All our energy is funneled into creating and upholding this world. There is no energy left to go beyond it unless we release ourselves from our habits, those that are blatantly obvious and those that we keep hidden.

If we don’t do everything we always do every day, we will free our energy and step into a different world. It’s really that simple.

Dare to try something different…

Breaking the habits of the self opens the self to new possibilities. The initial encounters beyond the conventional might be truly terrifying, encounters with the shadow self, as Jung called it, where we meet the first layer of the onion that keeps hidden all that lies in the darkness of the self. Once reconciled, we are freed to journey deeper into the energetic layers of the onion, into worlds beyond the familiar that offer to teach and guide us safely through the realizations of the intent for evolutionary shift that we are currently experiencing in this year of 2012.

This journey is well underway. We are all in it, individually and collectively. The further we spin into the unconventional the shakier it gets, but the more we learn and discover, the steadier becomes the ride. Fasten your seat belts!

Evolution demands that we reconfigure our energy. The fossil fuels of yesteryear are now the death of our survival. We can no longer turn to the dinosaurs. We must learn to harness greater energetic sources, free from the heavens, be they the sun or the winds or found in the energetic depths of our inner truths. We must dare to enter the unconventional.

Breaking through,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: The Wall

There comes a time…

In one form or another, at one time or another, we must encounter a wall, a limit that says we can travel no further as we are.

At one extreme that wall might be an actual wall, an ending, such as an involuntary crash into the finiteness of death, when we are required to leave the lifelong companionship of our physical bodies to travel onward, transformed, as purely energetic beings. At the other extreme is the volitional imposition of a wall, a container that houses the masses of energetic needs and impulses within us. Through bearing the heat of this voluntary containment we activate a process that leads to transformation. In the end, when we are finally released from that containment, we are a whole being, energetically alive in a new way.

One example of volitional containment is Jan’s favorite process: recapitulation. Recapitulation is willed introversion. Introversion imposes a wall around the inner self as the opus of transformation is undertaken. In extraversion we look to the world—our relationships, teachers, jobs, communities, and government, etc.—to be the container and the opus of our change. In introversion we withdraw our expectations for change from the outer world—the buck stops here—and go within the walls of the self.

Part of the challenge of undertaking willed introversion is contending with the compulsive, energetic pull of needs projected onto objects in the world. Those objects glow with the glimmer of gold, as the unknown self projects itself outward onto people, places, and things that we are drawn to consume, possess, love, hate, merge with, and control in the world.

In willed introversion we acknowledge the projective nature of our very alive but very hidden inner selves. The inner self, hiding in the dark, seeks desperately to be known and lived through attaching to the objects that seize us in our extraverted worldly lives. These objects are symbols that mirror the unknown parts of our inner selves.

In willed introversion we withdraw our living of this inner self out in the world and instead contain and interact with it inwardly, learning to know, love, and integrate our unknown self. In willed introversion we view our compulsive and addictive impulses as the symbolic language of our inner truths. We choose not to concretize those impulses in the world by attaching to substance or person. We choose instead to go inward and interact with the energetic source that is being activated.

Strange characters may appear…

For instance, during recapitulation, we may notice a compelling, attractive, repulsive, anxious fearful, or disorienting reaction to a person or event in the outer world. Rather than energetically attach outwardly, we willfully go inward and ask to be shown the source of the energetic excitation. Often we are led to images, characters, dreams, and memories that lead us into unknown, forgotten, or split off parts of ourselves that are desperately seeking attention, reconciliation, and new life.

Even our bodies may manifest sensations or pain that may reflect communications from our unknown selves. While of course we must always medically rule out physical challenges, exploring the body as a symbolic object of projective communication might lead into a deep discovery of the unknown self. It doesn’t hurt to ask, to talk to the body.

If we don’t construct a wall, if we don’t accept containment, we cannot achieve the self-knowing that allows for real transformation and genuine extraverted fulfillment freed of projection. Without containment, we find ourselves wandering aimlessly from room to room, seeking our projected gold in a vast and endless consuming world, never realizing that the pot of gold is waiting not beyond the rainbow, but within the confines of the self.

Sending greetings from inside the wall,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Maturing Innocence

In a dream, I notice that a young boy is missing. I race to the parking lot. I see him in a car with other young boys, the car about to drive off, being taken into who knows what. I notice Mitt Romney in the passenger seat; I don’t see the driver. I reach in and grab the stolen boy.

What are we so afraid of?

In America, the home alarm industry is a totally Mormon-dominated industry. Each summer cadres of young Mormon men, schooled in public relations during a year of service, converge upon America. Knocking door to door, they sell the safety of home alarm systems, home security that promises to protect us from the darkness, the blackness of the night and all that lies lurking to invade our sense of safety.

Akin/Ryan, the likely driver of the car in my dream, promises to protect life, “the innocent,” even the products of “legitimate rape.” These are the images, the themes, the platforms, boldly advanced lately to protect America from its own darkness, the outbreaks in Aurora, et al.

Ultra-protection is the proposed answer to the blackening of America, projected onto the blackness of Obama, the “socialist foreigner” who threatens the security and purity, the whiteness of America.

The blatant shadow of this platform is a witch hunt, the degradation of the feminine, and the legitimization of violence on all levels and against all peoples. Romney the Mormon, as in my dream, takes the passenger seat, leaving the country in the hands of the extremists, and anything goes in the service of protection while the truly innocent are taken to their slaughter.

Shattering is unavoidable...

The truth is that the wounding of our childhood innocence is developmentally unavoidable. We arrive in this world creatures of need, seeking and longing for nurturance and love to enable us to grow. A child looks at the world with the innocent eyes of surprise, wonder, joy, and expectation. From early on there are many disappointments. An indifferent, absent, or simply overtired parent is bound to not get it right, at least some of the time. The child will experience disappointment, disillusionment, sadness, frustration, and withdrawal, as the world does not meet its innocent calling.

Rejected innocence curls up in shame. Repeated rejections harden the shell of shame. Traumatic violations of innocence—intrusions into the body and soul of the innocent—dramatically dissociate innocence into even deeper and more impenetrable protective covering.

This protection of innocence is critical but must be time-limited, because life without innocence is life without life. A high-powered home security system only offers an illusion of safety, for it merely separates us from the darkness that already resides within, reflecting the energy of frustrated, unlived life.

Furthermore, buried, encapsulated innocence is innocence awaiting the completion of a transformational ritual. For innocence to continue to be present at all stages of life it needs to transform. Shattered innocence is the beginning of every shamanic journey, but for the journey to be completed, it must be recapitulated and brought into life, allowed to mature with us. Recapitulation offers the completion of that journey to fully retrieve innocence. As all the protections and illusions of protection are removed, innocence merges and becomes fully available for real life.

Real life in the real world must include facing the predatory reality of life. It’s not about being protected from it. Life is loving and fulfilling, as well as deeply disappointing and shattering. The goal is to live our innocence in the fullness of reality.

In recapitulation, we stay fully present with the shattering impact of assaults to our innocence. We bear the full emotional and physical tension and pain of crushed innocence. We don’t dissociate; we don’t leave our bodies. We stay whole and fully present with our innocence as it suffers. In this way we retrieve our innocence, and once joined we are freed to bring it back into life more knowing, more pliable, more able to flow with the world as it truly is. We become inseparable partners with our lost innocence, fully transformed, mature, alive, and open to life in the now.

Innocence matured...

The shamanic journey of recapitulation is the ritual journey of completion into our blackness, into our night’s soul where we face the full truths of our trials in this world, however horrid. At journey’s completion we emerge integrated beings of light and dark combined, in balance, our retrieved innocence nicely matured, open-hearted and wise.

May we, as individuals and as a nation, take the journey into our darkness, however shattering, and move forward as an integrated whole. The days of safety through segregated security systems left with apartheid. Let’s retrieve not regress.

Chuck

Chuck’s Place: The Benefits Of Early Recapitulation

Detachment is a different view…

Those who have returned from near-death experiences report that upon leaving their bodies and entering into an out-of-body state, their entire lives flash before them in a single instant. Every nook and cranny of life lived is relived and reviewed. This is the ultimate recapitulation experience that we will all encounter, an essential component of transitioning from this life to the next.

The Buddhists are particularly cognizant of this experience at death and spend a lifetime honing skills of detachment so they will not get caught in the trappings of fear, regret, or longing for life lived in this world. Lack of preparation for this encounter upon dying is a major karmic variable for future incarnations, according to Buddhist tradition, as one’s future life is influenced by enduring attachment or non-resolution of life lived in this world as one travels through this moment of recapitulation.

Though the Buddhists spend a lifetime preparing for recapitulation at the moment of death, within Carlos Castaneda’s lineage, shamans discovered that recapitulation could be consciously and volitionally performed while still in this world. These shamans discovered that by recapitulating before dying we not only enhance our options upon death, but vastly change our experience of life in this world. Through beginning an early recapitulation we are afforded the opportunity to make ourselves whole, and with our full energy available to us now, achieve fulfillment in this life.

As a clinician, I returned from my journey into the shamanic world of Carlos Castaneda with the knowledge that recapitulation was a tool for total healing. Regardless of the shattering impact of the most horrific trauma, recapitulation enables us to retrieve our fragmented selves and energies, as well as disentangle ourselves from the binding energies of others that have compromised our growth and fuller potential in this life.

Recapitulation is an inevitability. We will all recapitulate our lives when we die. If we can’t face and know the full truth of who we are and the life we’ve lived now, will we be able to do that at the moment of death? Will we be so overcome with fear, regret, and longing that we will have to return to relive it all again?

Excavating and sculpting the self…

The shaman’s gift of early recapitulation offers us the opportunity for deep fulfillment in this life, as well as the evolutionary advantage to advance beyond reincarnation upon completion of life in this world. Furthermore, recapitulation is a magical pass. Magical passes have been performed for centuries in the shaman’s world. Magical passes are imbued with the intent of all those shamans, and anyone who undertakes a recapitulation is supported by the vastly helpful intent set by those shamans.

Here is an excerpt from Jan’s upcoming book, On the Edge of the Abyss, the second year of her recapitulation series in which she experiences this intent: “It’s eerily apparent that no matter what arises in the unfolding of this process, in which Chuck and I are but a small part, there is a sense of everything fitting together. We both remarked on that yesterday, as if we had been thinking the same thoughts. In some way, my dreams always show me where to go next—deeper truths revealed while my conscious self is out of the way—while the memories come in such a way as to suggest that everything is orchestrated. And I sense that whatever or whoever is helping me is worried about my energy. I sense that it wants to keep me whole and safe, deeply caring that I arrive at a place of total healing.”

When we recapitulate we must encounter the full truthful impact of life lived. How could it be otherwise? If we skip over that, we haven’t truly retrieved and mastered our real selves and our real experiences. However, we must keep in mind that we are protected and guided by a power greater than ourselves, by the ancient intent of recapitulation. That intent is that we fully revamp our lives, that we fully sculpt our energetic selves, and that we fully release all the burdens of extraneous energies formerly bound to the experiences of the unknown self. With this now fully-known and energetically-replenished self in charge, we are freed to live life to the fullest and to fully love the life we are living.

Chuck