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: Intent In A Dense World

Believe? Intend and then see what happens!

When we dream, our physically dense bodies lie dormant while our awareness takes flight in lighter energetic configurations, what the Shamans call our energy bodies. We learn, in dreaming, that movement is governed by intent. For instance, when we state the intents, “I fly now,” “clarity now,” “wake up now,” in our dreams, these intents immediately occur. They occur because we have called these intents. Commanding intent in dreaming controls the direction a dream will take.

In dreaming, we experience our awareness in an energy state of a higher vibration that is freed to move on the wings of intent. In contrast, the physical body and the physical world are energy states of much greater density, a lower vibrational world of solid objects. Our awareness, in the solid world, is weighed down by the denseness of objects and our physicality, and these are indeed spellbinding in their solidness. In the experience of this denseness, we forget that we are also energetic beings capable of creating our reality through intent.

A compacted world of solid objects or a world of energetic possibility?

Solid reality holds in check the imagination, a higher vibrational energy state that accesses intent. Solid reality prefers rationality and Newtonian physics to clearly define itself and its possibilities. Under its hegemony possibilities beyond the rational are deemed a waste of time, fanciful imaginings, or simply irrational meanderings of no value in a solid world.

However, the truth is that our solid world of objects is also a world of energy, however tightly compacted that energy may be in solid form. And in the world of energy, intent, not rationality, rules. In the world of energy, change happens through intent.

If you want to change your life, focus your intent very specifically on the changes you seek. The greatest obstacle to calling intent is not believing in its possibility; hence, arguing with oneself and others about the validity of doing it leads to interference with exercising intent. If it doesn’t seem rational we simply refuse to do it, or do it so halfheartedly that intent is given conflicting signals.

The Shamans suggest that we not engage in belief, but that we suspend judgment and act by stating our intent anyway. See what happens. That’s what I call a legitimate scientific experiment.

The second obstacle to calling intent is the expectation that it manifest immediately, as we intend it. My experience, in this dense world, is that intent may take a wiley, unexpected course as it works its way with the dense energy of this dimension. However, ultimately, the intent does manifest in this world of solid objects.

There are many States of Dreamin'

We can access intent more directly through the practices handed down by all spiritual traditions. Spirit traditions are practiced in the realm of the spirit—the higher vibrational energy states we visit in dreaming. When we pray—prayers from any tradition—we access intent. When we repeat ancient mantras, or newly created ones, we call intent. When we practice Magical Passes or martial art forms we access intent. As Jan points out, in her blog on Wednesday, The Miracle of Metaphysical Healing by Evelyn Monahan is filled with vehicles of intent and a process for achieving them.

State your intent, clearly, out loud. Repeat it, often. Don’t attach to the outcome. Suspend judgment. Just keep stating your intent, clearly and calmly, without attachment. See what happens.

Chuck

Chuck’s Place: 2πr & πr²

We were watching a movie. It was descending into utter futility, a decision to suicide. It wasn’t anxious feelings that made me walk away; it was the character’s decision to surrender to that state of possession. I left the room not to return to the movie, but it was too late, I was already overtaken by a dark paralyzing mood.

Boundaries of Self

That night I slept fitfully and was awoken at 2:30 a.m. with the image of a dark circle surrounded by a bright rim of light and two formulas: 2πr and πr². “This is a first,” I thought, “my unconscious instructing me to perform geometric operations.” 2πr is the formula for the circumference of a circle: multiply the radius by π then double it. My unconscious was telling me, in no uncertain terms, to clearly define the boundary of myself, the outer rim of the circle.

Additionally, πr² is the area of a circle, that which is inside the circle, the True Contents of the Self.

I had been infected by an energy outside the circle of myself that had generated a mood with negative thoughts. Those thoughts had sprung fears and worries and my body tightly clenched in response. My unconscious was instructing me to define what really was inside the circle of Me and to clearly define a boundary that differentiated I from Not I.

I performed these boundary-setting operations in practical terms, first via Tonglen breathing, breathing in the Not I with all its angst and tumult, and breathing out compassion and calm, as I released the energy of Not I.

I also engaged in the Recapitulation Sweeping Breath, breathing in the energy of I, breathing out and away from me the energy of Not I that had inadvertently found its way in and attached itself like a virus within the circle of Self.

Finally, I did the Life Saving Pass, a Magical Pass defining an energetic boundary around the Self. With arms at the sides and slightly away from the body, hands open and palms facing in, with legs firmly planted, I swung my upright torso from left then right as my hands traced a circle around me: 2πr.

I mindfully refused the machinations of the mind to attach to its wares of worries in the world beyond the boundaries of Self. Within a day, these practices restored the calm balance that I am generally able to summon and maintain as I navigate life.

I am reminded of an experience of many years ago. I was at a lecture about then-segregated South Africa, and had the opportunity to privately ask Laurens van der Post, Jung’s dear friend and biographer, about Jung’s strong conviction that a successful inner journey by one individual synchronistically changes the world. Van der Post emphatically confirmed Jung’s conviction, even after having just delivered a lecture about his concerns for his own disintegrating homeland, caught in the web of Apartheid. Perhaps it ultimately was the inner process of Nelson Mandela that really changed that world.

Infinite Self

When I reflect on the formulas I was given in the night, both insisted on the use of π. π is an infinite number that we paradoxically use to define a definite space: a complete and contained circle. A circle, like the self, can be firmly encased and rigidly defined, yet only by a number that goes on into infinity—a number that therefore incorporates everything.

My efforts to restore and rebalance the boundaries of my “self” ultimately incorporated the interconnectedness of everything. We are finite and infinite beings, separate and interconnected.

We need never doubt the value of taking up the challenge of our inner process. Our own resolution resonates throughout the hologram of our world, throughout infinity.

My mathematical messenger provided me the vehicles to shift the energy within the self, the Self, the Selves. We are energetic beings with awareness, uniquely different and yet the same.

Change the self, change the world—try it!

From the land of Pythagoras,

Chuck,

Chuck’s Place: Strengthening The Present-Adult-Parent Self

Meet present-adult-parent self

The present self is our conscious self, the self we have forged through the years of challenge of life thus far lived. The present self is an evolving self, a self that grows as it forms relationships with parts of the self that live outside of consciousness and as it integrates long forgotten or stored away parts of life experiences into consciousness. The present self also grows as it takes in knowledge and experience from the outside world that broadens its ability to navigate life.

The present self is therefore our most adult self, the most grown-up part of our self. This is also our true parent self, the self we trust to keep us safe and secure, and to make the myriad of decisions that guide our actions each day.

The present self is essential to recapitulation. When life events trigger the surfacing of traumatic material, it is the present self that must take up the challenge. Very often the triggered material is extremely emotionally charged, threatening to overtake our calm, our focus, and our ability to stay present and in control. When triggered, we might become overwhelmed by debilitating psychosomatic symptoms, like extreme pain. We might suddenly find ourselves outside our bodies, viewing life at a great distance. We might also become overwhelmed with nausea, dizziness, and the growing feeling of disintegration.

The ultimate goal in recapitulation is to fully relive an experience with the full presence and attunement of the present self. This ability to remain fully present through an experience that once overpowered and fragmented the psyche is a major step toward stripping the experience of its disruptive power and beginning a process of integration that eventually renders the experience emotionally neutral, becoming a significant but now non-disruptive fact of life lived.

During the recapitulation process, the present self becomes the parent we never had, the one that can hear and feel the complete truth without judgment, as we identify and release our myriad of feelings frozen in the memory. Our grown-up, adult self helps us sort through our confusions as we continue to unravel what really happened in the incident under experience.

The key to this healing process is not recovering lost memory. Memories will come of their own accord, either through triggers or intent. The most important factor in recapitulation is the ability and strength of the present self to stay present and receive the emotionally charged lost memory as it arrives. For this, we absolutely need our present self to be the adult, the parent we can trust to see us through the journey of recapitulation and recovery.

Centering

We strengthen the present self through mindful practice. Mindfulness asks us to gently and persistently practice centering and returning our awareness to our place of inner calm. That place is unique to each person. For some it may be in the heart center, for others in the feet, and for still others in the vibratory sounds in the ears. Some find that calm in their breathing, others in images of safe places or in mantras and prayer. Mindfulness practice asks that we train our awareness to increasingly find its way back to our calm center as we navigate through all the events of daily life, whether taking a shower, walking, driving, eating, working, sleeping, sitting alone or in company.

Constantly, but calmly and gently, we notice where our awareness has strayed. We acknowledge what it has landed on, and push nothing away, but neither do we attach or continue to freely associate. Instead, we gently return our awareness to our calm center and engage in calmness. And, in so doing, we strengthen our ability to find home base again and again.

By constantly anchoring in calmness we develop and strengthen the ability to stay present and observant, to feel but not be submerged when infinity decides its time to present us with a golden moment of recapitulation, asking us to retrieve and free another lost part of ourselves. Though dizziness, disorientation, and emotional tsunamis may ride in on its wake, our present-adult-parent self remains fully present and attuned, tracking the unfolding storm like a keen observer, seeing the fuller picture for the first time. The present self stands by the younger self, modeling the ability to bear the full intensity of the recapitulation experience, as the fears and anxieties that have held revelations in check are dismantled and the truth is revealed.

In full awareness, the present-adult-parent self, well trained for just this moment, listens and clarifies for the younger self all its confusions about what really happened and why. Clarity brings understanding, as shame and blame are replaced by acceptance of the massive challenge once encountered by the younger self. This is what happens during a recapitulation experience when the formerly frozen, split-off younger self is securely welcomed into the arms of the evolving present self, released now to enjoy a fuller, more complete life.

Mindfully view, listen and clarify

Mindful practice is an ongoing practice that is available to the present self at any moment of the day. We needn’t wait to set time aside to practice, though that kind of discipline is also valuable training. However, for all practical purposes, we can practice mindfully throughout the day by simply bringing our awareness to our calm center over and over again.

Each morning as we arise, we might pause and ground ourselves before we start our day. As we go about our morning ablutions, eat our breakfast, plan our agenda, go into our work day, make decisions, daydream, ruminate, obsess, we might suddenly become aware of where our awareness has strayed, gently acknowledge it, and invite it back into our calm center, even if only for a moment. This is mindful practice. Each time we do this throughout our day, we strengthen our present-adult-parent awareness. Eventually, seemingly without effort, we find it fully present and ready for its encounters with infinity, as it comes beckoning us into recapitulation and evolution, enticing us always toward greater wholeness.

From that calm center,

Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Thoughts about Shame

The gift of the movie Shame is the clear and brutal exposition of a path deeply hidden yet commonly taken, the path of sexual addiction.

At its heart, sexual addiction shares with all addictions the expropriation of an instinct, in this case the sexual instinct. Other addictions, such as food and chemical dependency, are more associated with the hunger instinct. Addiction numbs, soothes and keeps at bay the underlying challenges of self-knowledge, self-acceptance, integration, and true intimacy.

The sexual instinct, fully wrestled with and realized in maturity, brings in its wake bonding, union, love and new life. In addiction the sexual instinct is choked into compulsive release, offering little more than deepening alienation under the ever-present shadow of death.

Choked in shame!

The storyline of the movie gives us little history, but enough to know that life lived must be kept at bay, frozen and unprocessed. Human contact—seemingly at its most intimate in the sexual act—must be completely devoid of connection and feeling. Sex is completely severed from even a hint of love. The slightest hint of feeling renders the phallus flaccid, plunged into yet deeper shame.

And with shame comes the opportunity to be with the pain, to find the tearful circuits to emotional release, to begin to melt the frozen islands of fragmented self. But, as with all paths, sometimes the shock and pain of knowing the truth, and feeling it fully, sends us back into addictive behaviors and release, the wheel of groundhog days. Though this repetitive cycle appears to offer little resolution, in actuality, it allows us to engage in a truly instinctual/spiritual process, as we return to accrue more energy in the form of frustration and discontent, energy that one day will help us awaken and realize that we no longer need to stay on that wheel. We are fully prepared then to step beyond the path of shame into deeper connection and fulfillment.

The movie leaves us hanging, in an unresolved land with some painful truths revealed and many still deeply hidden. It leaves us uncomfortable, confronted with accepting the fact that we all face addiction of some sort in our lives, as well as some sort of shame.

Though addiction comes in many guises, at its core it nonetheless asks us to face the same things within ourselves as the protagonist in Shame is asked to face within himself: the uncomfortable truth.

Can we enter that land of truth? What do we stay addicted to that keeps us from not only facing our deepest pain but from going deeper into where it is instinctually guiding us? Can we allow ourselves to accept that in facing our truths we really will step onto a path of change? Can we bear the tension of that journey of change that seeks to lead us to true union?

Jan: Self-portrait at age 18—still asked by spirit to face truths in the light of day

Lift the veil of shame and see what’s beneath it. The ultimate realization is that we’re all on the same path; we’re all beings on our way to dying. Choosing addictions equals choosing attachments. How long do we really need to hold onto them? How long do we need to keep at bay the real truths of who we are, the truths of our lives lived and the truth of our lives yet to be lived? Can we stay open to our fullest potential—fulfillment in a life we can’t hold onto anyway? Because we do have to die.

The real question is: How do we want to live?

And the real crux of sex and love is: Can we allow ourselves to fully open to love in a life that will one day end? Can we join the spirit of love and fully merge with another human being? Can we love someone who may leave us and someone who surely is going to die? If love is spirit and sex is matter—which is transitory—can we allow ourselves to drop all addictions and attachments, and all our shame too, and truly merge the two?

Full union of spirit and matter is letting love in. There is no shame in that.

Chuck, with love and thanks for some expert editing by Jan.

Chuck’s Place: Crossing the Bryant Park Bridge

I awaken from a dream crossing and can’t wait to ask Jan if there is in fact, somewhere in Brooklyn, a bridge called the Bryant Park Bridge. “Does it exist?” I ask, as I tell her my dream of crossing into New York City on a bridge of this name. She smiles, reminding me of the main library at Bryant Park in the heart of Manhattan. And then I get it, my dream bridge was the crossing to true knowledge, only to be obtained by daring to pass beyond the massive stone lions guarding its entrance.

We are all challenged to pass by the lions at the gate of true knowledge at some point in our lives...

We cross the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge whenever we allow ourselves deeper knowing of our multifaceted selves. The lions at the gates of each facet of true knowledge generate the emotional fires we must encounter, the proving grounds we must traverse to reach the truth at the heart of ourselves. Bearing that emotional energy, those fires of intensity, absolutely requires that our adult selves, our present selves, be fully present and aware.

We have long prepared for this encounter with the lions at the gate, as we have managed life across the bridge, back in Brooklyn so to speak—as in my dream—for decades. As adults we may finally find ourselves ready and willing to step into the fires, to withstand the tension, to breathe and release its bottled energy. Eventually, as the smoke fully clears, we are able to recover all the jewels, the diamonds of self awaiting discovery and recovery in the ashes.

Sometimes those fires that we must face are the feelings that were dissociated, cut off and walled off at the direction of the higher self to protect a younger, fledgling self from the shock of innocence interrupted.

The fires are always burning, awaiting our attention...

Sometimes those fires are the actual emotions and physical torments endured and, again, stored at the direction of the higher self whose sole concern is survival in the moment. This higher self is perfectly capable of discerning the capacity of the growing self to integrate, to fully know its experiences, and continue to grow. But it also knows that some things must wait until later, until another decade perhaps, when an older self has gathered the stability and readiness to withstand and release the energy of bottled emotion, finally ready to recover the innocent jewel of a waiting self.

Sometimes the fires to be encountered are the fires of judgment, shame, and blame that cast the self into hiding. Here the mature self enters that darkened courtroom and stands firmly with the sentenced younger self and, bearing all the feelings evoked by the judgments, allows the full truths to be revealed in the light of day. Those old judgments, fully revealed and fully felt, eventually lose their energy. This is the way to suspending judgment.

In the end, life lived becomes just that: the full truths of a life lived. Then we are freed to meet the living self that has stood waiting behind it all, anxiously and tenderly awaiting the moment of new life, in the library of true knowledge on the other side of the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge. This self has waited patiently for this moment, to be finally received as a genuine facet of the true diamond self.

Who knows when the Bryant Park Bridge will appear?

We accrue new facets of our diamond selves each time we dare to cross the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge, the bridge that appears when the triggers and synchronicities come to lead us into fuller recapitulation of our true selves.

When that bridge does finally appear and beckon us to cross, it is telling us that we, as adults, are ready to pass through the lions proving ground and pick up the treasures of knowledge that lie waiting. That is, the knowledge of our true selves, ready now to enter into new life…on the other side of the bridge.

At the library,
Chuck