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: At The Gate Of The Failed Sorcerers

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The gift of gargoyles is that they come in all shapes and sizes, ugly and beautiful... Photo by Jan Ketchel
The gift of gargoyles is that they come in all shapes and sizes, ugly and beautiful… Photo by Jan Ketchel

At a lecture in a Pasadena bookstore in 1992, Taisha Abelar, a sorcerer in the same lineage as Carlos Castaneda, spoke of the graveyard of the failed sorcerers as the second gate of dreaming that Carlos wrote about in The Art of Dreaming. Dreaming, in the shaman’s world, is the act of gaining awareness, training with intent to hold onto that awareness no matter what world one enters.

This graveyard of failed sorcerers is a kind of shaman’s limbo, filled with journeyers who couldn’t release their attachment to this world upon dying. Those failed sorcerers continue to feed upon life in this world as the ghosts and vampires that both fascinate and terrify the living. Energetically, these inorganic beings continue to experience life in this world through the emotional roller coaster they induce in those who interact with them.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, through interaction with these inorganic beings, were able to venture deeper into the layers of the onion—into worlds of awareness beyond normal perception. But many were also destroyed by attachment to the “gifts” offered by these failed sorcerers.

Prominent among these gifts peddled by these inorganic beings are a variety of elixirs of immortality that allow those in human form to partake in the nectar of infinity. These elixirs come in a variety of flavors, such as the sweet perfume of timeless romance, the passion and dreams of alcohol, the soothing nursery of opiates and food, the adventures of psychedelics, the rush of possibility in the bet, the excitement of “more” material possessions, or the rapture of power.

These elixirs of immortality quickly transform into habitual bondage. That which once thrilled becomes the source of sustenance to merely maintain life. The thrill thrills less or is altogether gone, but the dependence on the habit takes center stage to life—freedom exchanged for dependence.

The failed sorcerers at the second gate of dreaming are gargoyles—guardians of deeper knowledge. To pass by the gate we must partake of the treats they offer. We all must interact with these sorcerers; stoicism is nothing but a dry drunk addicted to the self-importance of refusal and resentment. In one form or another we must all take our sensual journeys in this world. We are humans after all—why else would we be here! The challenge, however, is attachment. Can we let go when it’s time to move on, or will we insist on the addiction of MORE?

That is the trial of addiction, the refusal to move on when it’s time to leave. That’s the dilemma of the failed sorcerers parked at the second gate of dreaming—their refusal to relinquish attachment to life in this world and move on, yet a refusal as well to fully reincarnate. They are stuck with one eye looking forward, the other backward. It’s wanting the best of both worlds. They hold onto this world through their addiction to our energy, which in turn is caught in addiction to the elixirs they offer.

Nonetheless, these gatekeepers must allow those ready to refuse belabored attachment—addiction to their array of elixirs—to travel beyond their gate into the next layer of dreaming awareness. If we partake in the elixirs of life in this world and refuse MORE we advance. This is sobriety.

The truth of Buddha is that he represents the Atman in all of us... Photo by Jan Ketchel
The truth of Buddha is that he represents the Atman in all of us… Photo by Jan Ketchel

True freedom lies in sobriety. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico observed that humans who refuse the bait of self-importance change their energy state and the gatekeepers let them pass. Ultimately, self-importance is the trapping of addiction. Partaking on an ongoing basis of the nectars of immortality is treating oneself as if one were a god. Somewhere it was once written: Thou shalt not have false gods before me. The energy state of addiction is an inflated state of self-importance, a false god.

The ancient Hindus maintain that Brahman, the Atman, God, is indeed within everything. However, to be one with that true God is to peel away the layers of the onion, the trappings and wrappings of illusion. Illusions are the false gods, the elixirs peddled by the failed sorcerers.

The energy needed to find total freedom, union with Atman—the energy the failed sorcerers don’t touch—is sobriety. Sobriety is grounded energy that stays aligned with truth and fact on its path to divine union. This is the shaman’s path—sobriety.

Intending beyond the gate,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Life Beyond Judgment

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Can we suspend judgment and be open to what comes? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Can we suspend judgment and be open to what comes? – Photo by Jan Ketchel

A first. Jan emailed me her proposed blog for this week, an excerpt from her forthcoming book, The Edge of the Abyss. I say “a first” because generally Jan writes and publishes her blogs before I even know what they’re about. She rarely knows herself until she sits down to type.

As I read her proposal, I cringed protectively. I was concerned that the description of reality she was sharing would be too potentially triggering for those who might read it. It’s incredible writing, with deep value for those who choose to read the book, but I felt it needed to be wrapped in the protective warnings her books offer.

This protective cringing occurred the week before when Jan had published another excerpt from her book—I cringed for the same reason. And once we had discussed my concerns, Jan put a warning on the blog and on our Facebook post regarding the potential for triggers to those who are doing deep work in confronting their own traumatic events. And so perhaps there was a part of Jan that uncharacteristically decided to pass this new blog by me before electing to publish. Her own attachment to her personal experiences at this point is gone, her only concern now is to help people, to show them the way to freedom.

I’m reminded of Taisha Abelar’s cohorts* having to stop her from bringing her two inorganic being friends to an evening lecture at Omega in 1995. They were concerned about the potentially shattering impact that this broader encounter with reality might cause the members of the audience—a visitation from the fourth dimension, a dimension generally hidden behind the veils of the third eye. Taisha merely said, “Oh, really?” She hadn’t even considered the possibility, so used was she to their presence in her own life.

When I expressed my concern to Jan, she immediately agreed. Like Taisha, she simply hadn’t considered this concern, so deeply detached personally she finds herself from the world that once froze her in traumatic ice. Things that once horrified her no longer phase her. She matter-of-factly discusses them and moves on, no triggers.

When Carlos Castaneda advised that we suspend judgment to journey into the true nature of reality, into life beyond judgment, he was taking us deeply into accepting what is, freed from the parameters of what we find acceptable. Only in learning how to suspend judgment will our experiences in the world of true reality have deeper meaning and value. Recapitulation opens the door to fully knowing and accepting what was, however horrific, freeing the self to fully be able to encounter reality without the cushion or necessity of veils. Such was Taisha’s experience; such is Jan’s experience.

Someday spring will come... Photo by Jan Ketchel
Someday spring will come… Photo by Jan Ketchel

Most importantly, however, is that we consciously decide to take the recapitulation journey. As Jan pointed out in her alternative blog this week: When we are ready we will know more fully what we need to know. Perhaps it won’t be this spring or this life, but spring will come, and new life will blossom.

As we discussed Jan’s proposed blog we decided to throw a coin, to let the coin decide. And so we asked infinity whether or not Jan’s first blog should be presented. “NO!” came the response. And so, without attachment, Jan acquiesced and went on to write something else.

The decision to read or not read Jan’s next book is a decision that people will have to make for themselves, in full awareness of the disclosure of the depth of truth to be encountered in its pages. The long awaited book arrives in a few weeks!

Suspending judgment,
Chuck

* Taisha Abelar and her cohorts Carol Tiggs and Florinda Donner Grau were the apprentices, along with Carlos Castaneda, of don Juan Matus.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Mastery Within, Advancement Without

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When anger is present it supersedes all else... Photo by Jan Ketchel
When anger is present it supersedes all else… Photo by Jan Ketchel

Anger is an emotion rooted in our deeply instinctive selves. Anger has protected our survival through eons of evolutionary growth and rests at the foundation of our human form. Our ability to restrain and supplant the automatic defense of anger, with reason, is the hallmark accomplishment of civilization: a civilized mind.

We know the deleterious effects of anger and its variants—jealousy, greed, negativity, resentment—upon the endocrine glands, respiration, digestion, and the central nervous system. We know the psychic effects of sustained anger and negativity in depression, dissociation, and bipolar disorders.

We especially know the horrific evil unleashed upon innocence when the rational mind teams up with anger to manipulate, groom, and abuse. This potential malevolent partnership inside human beings is capable of perpetrating atrocities unheard of in the purely instinctive animal kingdom.

We cannot eradicate anger anymore than we can eradicate evil. However, if we are to change ourselves and our world, a focus on positive attitudes can shift the color of mood that our deep unconscious pumps through us. The result of positive thought is that we physically experience calmer energy inside us and we are actively calmer outwardly as well.

The unconscious is not a thinking mind; it is a reactive mind. Our thinking mind can decide on an attitude and we can focus that attitude on the body. When I say “calm” and focus on a muscle it relaxes. If I didn’t focus on it, the muscle would not automatically relax. The same goes for the unconscious.

Enough cannot be said about the power of positive thinking. However, to arrive at truly effective positive thinking we must be a united self, providing our instinctive self with a clear, cohesive set of instructions in the form of soothing neuro-transmitted commands.

Taking what I need... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Taking what I need… – Photo by Jan Ketchel

The truth is, we are fragmented beings frequently working in opposition to a single intent. Our young child self might say, “I need.” The self burned for needing might say, “No, you will get hurt if you need.” The adolescent self might cry out in disgust, “Here’s what’s gonna be: we don’t need anyone, we’ll just take what we want.” Or the defiant teenage self might say, “We don’t need.” The adult might say, “I’m just going to be what they want me to be, this way I’ll get what I need.”

It should be evident that this multiplicity of self can generate an insanity within, as Jeanne pointed out in Monday’s message. This crossfire of attitudes from different parts of the self instructs the unconscious to release different protective angry emotions, directed inwardly and outwardly.

Drawing attention inwardly in recapitulation we identify the satellite selves of the self, appreciate their varying needs, and bring them into the fold of a unified self. Through the recollection of dispersed energy we become a “unified whole,” as the Shamans of Ancient Mexico see it.

Unified wholeness and calmness will come... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Unified wholeness and calmness will come… – Photo by Jan Ketchel

In the process of becoming a unified whole, we must encounter all the selves within and we must accept, express, and release all the emotional energy of our past selves, be it anger or otherwise. This is loving acceptance and total integration of all that we are, all that we have been. With acceptance comes release of the anger once needed to protect, deny, keep separate, and avoid all that was not ready to be known and lived. With acceptance, love supersedes anger, and life moves forward in an ever-deepening quest for wholeness.

With this unity of self, under the auspices of spirit, or the higher self, a clear cohesive message is delivered to the unconscious that rejuvenates the body and mind to give and receive love. This tripartite unity of self—instinctive body self, reasoning mind, and spirit—is then freed to evolve and manifest in healthy proportion resulting in mastery within, advancement without.

Life’s a journey after all,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Within Without

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Chuck’s blog is ready today so we are publishing it ahead of schedule. Jan’s blog will appear later in the week.

We go within to untangle the tangled web of our lives lived... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We go within to untangle the tangled web of our lives lived… – Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we are in this world we are in it for a physical reason. There may be other reasons, but we cannot escape the primary truth that we are physical beings that require sustenance and attachment to the world around us to survive and grow. Failures in attachment at the most basic level can be fatal in what’s called “Failure To Thrive” Syndrome (FTT).

Though most humans pass through the first challenge of survival, the subsequent journey to adulthood is fraught with significant challenges as the molding of a solid physical and emotional self is prepared in order to enter and thrive in the unfolding challenges of independence and adulthood. In fact, much of the first half of life is spent trying to successfully navigate adult challenges with a fragile foundation of security.

Regardless of whether our foundations were secure and loving or filled with abuse and neglect, we are all confronted, by midlife, with the growing awareness of the universal equalizer: death. And with that awareness we are confronted with the meaning of life, the meaning of being born into a physical world. Why am I here?

And when we take up the Grail of that question we begin our spiritual journey, our inward journey. We turn, as Jeanne’s message on Monday suggests: Within. Jeanne speaks of building a relationship with the higher self within. This requires that we draw in our mental activity that has appropriately attached to the sensate world for many years. Regardless of success or failure in that physical world, it is time to turn inward and take up the next challenge of why: why am I here? It is time to open to the resources latent within that have waited all these years for attention so that we may be guided to fulfillment and illumination.

To persist in spending energy on the physical world for answers, at this stage, results in confusion and loss of purpose. The Bhagavad-Gita states:

Thinking about sense-objects
Will attach you to sense-objects;
Grow attached, and you become addicted;
Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger;
Be angry, and you confuse your mind;
Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience;
Forget experience, you lose discrimination;
Lose discrimination, and you miss life’s only purpose.

The inner journey begins with a full recapitulation of the journey thus far taken. We must first settle with the truth of what has happened in this life. The inner higher self will sprinkle plenty of guidance along the path—calm and illuminating moments—as you take that inner journey, guiding and supporting you with dreams, visions, synchronicities, channelings, etc.

The completion of our lives in this physical realm is likely to require that we indeed reengage our extroverted focus, our sensual life, as beings in this world. However, return to that world after recapitulation is no longer a journey of craving but one of loving completion, the completion of the journey within without.

Journeying within and without,
Chuck

Note: Quote from the Bhagavad-Gita by Swami Prabhavananda; page 49; copyright 1944.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Rite of Spring

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Today we post Chuck’s blog. Jan’s blog will appear on Friday this week.

Will spring ever come? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Will spring ever come? – Photo by Jan Ketchel

As I write, millions of Hindus celebrate the festival of Kumbh Mela at the mythical river Ganges. The Tibetans have just celebrated their New Year, the year of the water snake, on the day the Pope resigned. Fat Tuesday, the height of Carnival, lands on the day of President Obama’s State of the Union address. Today, Ash Wednesday, ushers in Lent, forty days of sacrifice—carne denied—before nature ushers in the Rite of Spring.

The juxtaposition of these human traditions built upon the deepest cycle of nature—the end of winter—reveals the exceptional tumult and uncertainty of our time. Will spring ever come, will life survive this most tenuous time of year? A Pope resigning, an unheard of event, is a strong testament to our time of fragility and rapid change, and the need for new governance to lead us forward. The King is dead, long life the King!

On Monday of this week, I turned to the I Ching for reflection on the extraordinary synchronicities of these archetypal events. I offer its guidance as I received it: I threw hexagram #64, Before Completion, with moving lines in the first, second, and fifth places. The resulting future of this hexagram is hexagram #25, Innocence.

Before Completion is the time of very early spring, the time we are in now. The image is that of the fox crossing the semi-frozen surface of a lake. How wisely will that fox cross so as to not accidentally fall through a crack in the ice?

Hexagram #64 is the final hexagram in the I Ching, the Book of Changes. It ushers in the beginning of a new cycle, the time of year we are in now. It is the time of new governance that we are now in as well. It’s the time of planetary transition, at the deepest level, that we are also now in. The question is, as the earth enters its new cycle, how wise will we humans be as we cross the thin ice? How well will we fare?

The two elements that comprise hexagram #64 are fire above and water below. These elements are opposites and they are moving away from each other. Something must happen to bring these elements into a harmonious relationship. Our human country and human world suffer this same opposition now, a great division. Will we find a way to reconciliation and the fostering of new life?

The first moving line states that the fox is too hasty; it gets wet. The I Ching suggests that we are quite vulnerable to get it wrong; to move too hastily is to form a less than perfect union. Restraint is suggested to avoid failure and humiliation.

In the second line, the fox exercises its brakes and does not cross the thin ice. Patience, to accrue the inner strength that together with firm intent will provide the right vehicle to cross the lake, is the guidance here.

The six in the fifth place is the ruler of the hexagram. Victory is achieved. Steadfastness leads to a superior personality that crosses the ice successfully. And with this, the potent, medicinal, nourishing sprouts of spring break through the surface to support new life.

The hexagram of Innocence guides the practice outlined in these moving lines. The essence of innocence is the alignment of ego with spirit self. When ego acts in the service of spirit it is restored to its innocence. This is not a return to the unconscious innocence of the Garden. This is evolved innocence, consciousness that acquiesces to the truth of the spirit.

Last night we witnessed opposition—fire and water, Democrat and Republican—as presented in hexagram #64 in real time, as the archetypal drama of excess, sacrifice, death and the hope for new life played out before us. Mardi Gras closed on the heels of death, Ash Wednesday, as Guy Fawkes—the giant straw man, in the guise of Christopher Dorner—was burned in the arms of Big Bear, CA. The TV networks struggled to decide which reality to display as President Obama simultaneously, in his State of the Union address, spoke of a realignment of governance to face the truths of a planet in peril. He spoke of global warming, energy that doesn’t pollute, and greed tempered to provide a fair wage. These are the sacrifices spoken about in the I Ching under innocence, where the ego—the governing body of the self and of humankind—acquiesces to the truth of the spirit. And Obama stood there before the opposites of fire and water to bring these two opposing forces into fruitful alignment and the hope of a new spring and sustainable life.

Will we take the advice of the I Ching, so in alignment with now? Do we have the humility of a Pope who retires his ego, recognizing that he can no longer hear the spirit and properly serve the people? Can we of the human race surrender our collective ego as the fathering principle of this planet, and acquiesce to the truth of spirit as our Rite of Spring? With a hopeful outlook, the Book of Changes comes to a close and simultaneously enters a new cycle of life. Let’s see what happens.

In anticipation,
Chuck