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: Innocence On The Altar

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Winter Solstice

A tragedy of unfathomable proportions has seized our nation, if not the world, as we arrive at the threshold of a new era on this Solstice day. We are all charged to take this journey with lost, sacrificed innocence and correct the course of human affairs.

What could it mean that a psychotic young man kills his mother and then so many young children? I suggest that this young man concretized and acted out, in a delusional way, an archetypal motif of individuation. I further suggest that this misapplied motif must be addressed on a mass human level, as well as on an individual level, in each and every one of us.

Every human is challenged to transition from childhood to adulthood, from the egocentric entitled stage of immaturity to adult responsibility. This is the Hero’s Journey, filled with many challenges.

One of the greatest challenges of the Hero’s Journey is to defeat childish dependence on the mother. Though many myths depict this as slaying the dragon or defeating the wicked witch, the core of this battle lies within the individual. At some point in our lives we must all ask the same question: Can I take adult responsibility for my life or am I caught in my childish dependency and entitlement demands to be taken care of?

The hero’s task is to slay his own childish dependency—NOT HIS MOTHER, NOT THE CHILD! The hero’s task is to become the adult parent to himself, and set firm but loving boundaries around the child within who is taken forward into adult life—NOT KILLED OFF!

The archetypes worm through us all…

The Newtown tragedy has mobilized tremendous energy to address the gun laws in our country. Too long has a greedy industry been allowed to fill its entitled pockets under the guise of protection and the Second Amendment. The truth is, these policies have been dictated by immature adults, who refuse adult responsibility. It’s time for adult boundaries to be set around the demands of an industry allowed to function with no limitations, like out-of-control children playing with guns.

We approach a fiscal cliff with similar concerns. The greed of undisciplined children not wanting to part with their toys—some of their wealth—can no longer rule. We need adult leadership, adult responsibility in all paying their fair share.

New York and California are poised to approve fracking. Even these bluest of blue states are willing to cave to the greed of the energy industry. Would adults allow toxic poisons to be poured into their bodies? Are we really going to allow our precious Earth to be poisoned this way, for the sake of insatiable greed for more money, cheaper energy? We need adult control. Children’s entitlement in control cannot sustain our environment.

The Holocaust had to be answered in a firm commitment: the rebirth of the State of Israel. However, this resolution, despite its many transformations, is frozen in structures impervious to a necessary two state solution. Once again, we find a child’s entitlement in control of policy as construction plans for new settlements are being made on disputed lands, in the midst of peace negotiations no less! Where is the adult in the house?

Moslem insistence on ancient practice, guarded in warlike fierceness, must soften to allow for change and evolution. How can the feminine, the source of renewal and rebirth, be so restricted in the modern world? Nonetheless, when we see the outcome of casualness toward our instinctive animal selves in our modern world, even in such institutions as Penn State, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and most recently in the Jewish Orthodoxy, we have to question humanity’s management of its instinctive nature and appreciate the intensity of restriction in the Moslem religion to regulate it. Violence, however, begets violence. We must find a new path of reconciliation.

We must all face our darkness…

Humankind must face the power of the forces that inhabit the darkness of our souls. Each individual must take the journey through the underground of their own deep unconscious. The instinctive forces that tragically erupt daily around the world are active in each and every one of us. Newtown must be answered by a commitment to take the inward journey, to recapitulate the hidden truths of our souls and revamp our instinctive energies to flow safely and responsibly into this new era now upon us.

Innocence has been sacrificed on the altar of this Solstice. Our nation is plunged into the abyss of mourning, soulfully seeking its lost innocence. We must journey now into the darkness and face the truths that have stolen away our innocence. May those innocent ones be the beacons, the light bearers that show us the way as we journey into our darkness, lighting the way into a new era for all of us.

Wishing for Peace on Earth and extending good will to all,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Becoming Your Own Best Father

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Chuck’s father playing taps for FDR on the day of his death…the day the nation lost its father…

When father appears in dreams or active imagination, look beyond personal father; look to the rules, judgments, beliefs, and attitudes that inwardly dominate your personality. Though he may bear the image of personal father, we all have an inner father that is our own, separate and distinct from the father of our conception.

Ego self is the child of the father. It remains for the maturing ego to confront the father’s rule. This takes the form of discovering the beliefs, attitudes, and judgments that govern perceptions and rule behaviors. This process can be quite challenging as the edicts of the father may be quite contrary to how the ego views itself and wants to be in the world. The energy and sternness of the inner father may be quite a formidable force and young ego might feel itself quite incapable of taking charge.

Sometimes ego self elects to blindly be ruled by the constraints of the father. Sometimes ego self identifies and emboldens itself with the opinions of father, never daring to discover its own true nature. Sometimes ego self, like a young Nero, assumes the emperor’s throne, assuming power with childlike exuberance and entitlement, becoming a little self-indulgent tyrant. This immature grab for power refuses to encounter and discriminate the wisdom of the fathers before assuming control, an obvious recipe for disaster, like the burning of Rome that ended Nero’s reign. Ultimately, ego self must assume the journey of true self-discovery, the Hero’s Journey, or remain forever a child, governed by the commandments of the almighty father.

It’s true!

Kronos, King of the Titans, ruled the heavens without challenge, as he forced his wife Rhea, to deliver each of their children directly to him upon their births for his consumption. Finally, Rhea, fed up with him—no pun intended—cleverly substituted a stone which she gave to Kronos instead of her next baby who upon birth was named Zeus. Ultimately, Zeus defeated his father and a new era was allowed to be born. Here is the obvious lesson of ego self taking control and ousting the father so that new life may flourish unencumbered.

As the Mayan calendar comes to a close, we too find ourselves on the brink of a new era, where old judgments, attitudes, beliefs, and rules are giving way to a new order. The signs are everywhere. The demise of the old Republican party protecting unbridled greed is one sure sign, as is the truth of global warming coming to the fore, as we face what we humans have done to our planet. In addition, gay marriage is now the law in many states; a Black president has been reelected, his rule no longer an impulsive fluke of the electorate. A woman president is undoubtedly next. These are all outward changes to appropriately wresting power from the domineering father of old and establishing new guidelines for a healthy and fulfilling life.

The Hero’s Journey requires that we venture beyond the father’s reach, that is, go beyond the conventional wisdom we’ve internalized that dictates the conclusions of our mind. We must be ready to accept full responsibility for discovering and taking charge of the truth, inner and outer, becoming like Zeus and defeating Kronos within us. We must also be prepared to accept the shattering that catapults us from the comfortable confines of socialization and the known; the shattering that is inevitable if we are to disengage father from our beings. We are not who we think we are; our minds are not our own until we make them so.

We must take ownership of our inner father, and become like Zeus defeating his father’s vicious entitlement. Ultimately, what that means is that we must confront all the beliefs and attitudes that have comfortably ruled us and protected us from our deeper truths and the greater unknown, both within and without. We must face our own destinies as individuals on our own journeys to fulfillment.

A new inner father breeds contentment…

Only through taking the Hero’s journey now, at this most energetic juncture in our lifetimes, can we participate in the world renewal and transformation that is indeed imbued in the energy of 2012. It’s a personal thing as well as a global thing—one massive interdependent whole delivering itself from the anachronistic father, into a new era.

On time,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Energetic Ascension

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The Intent of Infinity…

Don Juan was clear: invite the intent of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico into your life and it will flow through you.

When Carlos Castaneda wrote The Wheel of Time, he was struck by the realization that a very ancient intent had methodically guided his 13 year apprenticeship in the shaman’s world. I recognize that since my early childhood, from the age of six when I lived in New Mexico, my life has unfolded under the influence of that same intent. Of course I did not know that at the time, nor am I anything special now, but I recognize that it flows through me nonetheless, advancing its evolutionary agenda: the advancement of human consciousness into its energetic dimensions. We are all energetic beings. When are we going to get that this is our true nature?

We have all heard about the “fiscal cliff.” In fact we are indeed on a cliff, though the “fiscal cliff” is a manufactured construction that distracts us from the real cliff and the real dangers we all face. Astrologer Len Wallick writes: Anybody who is conscious knows that Earth is already in crisis. Anybody who is practical knows that the crisis confronting our planet was brought on by human beings. We have mined the oceans to depletion, deforested nearly all of the land, and poisoned the air. Clearly some type of ascension is in order.

He goes on to say: Indications are that the only deliverance to be had will be what we provide for each other, which could lead to some amazing results if enough people accept that responsibility. *

That ascension, I believe, is in living life differently, as energetic beings, finally embracing and utilizing our greatest human potential. Energetic beings recognize that everything has life, that everything has equal value, and that everything is part of the same interdependent world of energy. From this place, the greed of selfhood über alles, the culprit behind our current cliff, is dismantled and we shift into balance.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico exposed the pursuit of self-importance as the energetic fixation that has led us to the cliff. In today’s world, technology has delivered us Facebook, twitter, etc., and although their value in advancing the ability to communicate and share information rapidly is undeniable, their very deep shadow is self-importance and it is indeed leading us to a cliff.

Facebook is now the alternative abstract universe that the bulk of the world lives in, email now an ancient relic. Walk down any street, drive on any road—the majority of eyes are cast downward, checking the latest notifications so readily delivering their energetic charges. New York City last weekend was the quietest I’ve experienced it in decades. People quietly read and text. Even phone messages or direct dialogue are becoming obsolete as staying connected all the time monopolizes the bulk of human energy. The energetic fixation on feeling worthy, valued, loved, and connected through electronic means has absorbed the lion’s share of humanity’s attention. This brand of self-importance distracts us from our evolutionary potential and positions us on the cliff. This is not interdependence, this is codependence centered around the needs of the self.

I am an energetic being…and so are you!

Family, tribe, possession, accumulation, specialness—are these not the attachments at the heart of the Middle East crisis, bringing the entire world to teeter on the brink of yet another cliff? As energetic beings, everyone and everything is family. Everything is equally interconnected, equally valuable. As an energetic being there is no possession, no accumulation—how could there be? Everything is as it is, in its place, part of an interconnected whole. As an energetic being there is nothing to attach to, for everything is constantly changing, flowing—through you and me, and through everyone and everything else too.

Attachment freezes the true nature of reality, and this is what brings us to the cliff. This is what has wrecked our planet and brought us to the global warming cliff, the climate change cliff. As energetic beings, we all share equally; we are the same energy coursing through the same interconnected whole. Mutual interdependence focuses on maintaining the necessary energetic balances that keep our world safe from falling off the cliff.

The intent of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico has moved through me to completely revision PTSD. As Jan pointed out in her blog** this week: PTSD is completely curable through the shamanic practice of recapitulation. I take no personal credit for this discovery. I am simply a vessel of this ancient intent moving through time, finding relevance in what I do. I’ve been available to accept it into my life and work and so it flows through me. In addition to the healing potential of recapitulation, the evolutionary imperative of the shaman’s intent—that all beings discover and utilize their energetic potential—is revealed and given credence as it is experienced and trusted in the unfolding of the recapitulation process.

Also, as Jan pointed out, the two of us have completely allowed our practice and our weekly messages to spread and evolve on the wings of energetic intent. What we need appears; what needs us finds us. That is where we live now, on an energetic plane. To get here is not a leap of faith, but an energetic leap that has already been taken by many others. This is the leap our world must make now too, ascension to life on the energetic plane, always within our midst.

Ancient healing intent…

This is the road to taking true responsibility, leading to a new way of living that supports and balances the interdependent coalition of all beings. As we free the vast pool of energy currently fixated on self-importance we are able to step back from the cliff and take stock of who we truly are, energetic beings, one and all.

Chuck

* You can read Astrologer Len Wallick’s full article here.

** You can read Jan’s most recent blog here.

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Chuck’s Place: Enthusiasm

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In the temple of calm enthusiasm with the big Buddha at The Buddhist Association of the United States in Carmel, New York.

We are in the time of enthusiasm—I Ching hexagram #16—where thunder, the arousing, awakens the receptive earth below. The leader awakens enthusiasm in those he leads. Obama rouses the populace to enthusiastically support change, an end to needless greed.

Guidance suggests that enthusiasm move along the line of least resistance, that is, movement based on truth and nature, as expressed in the Tao, and not on the cogitation of delusional ideas. In their hearts the people know the truth and can accept change in accord with it. In contrast, the people resist change that does not flow with the truth of the heart. We ask our leaders to lead in the truth, not in the delusion. We must ask the same of ourselves, as we lead ourselves through the decisions of our daily lives, always, but most especially in this time of enthusiasm.

From where do we receive our enthusiasm, our impetus to right action? We are baited constantly by enthusiastic offers of energetic spice, promising contentment and fulfillment: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, another cup of coffee, another romantic hit online, another glass of wine. When we take the bait and attach, we enter the tunnels of excitement and receive energetic spikes, the bounty of the entity gods, but nothing lasting.

The I Ching counsels retreating to the temple in the time of enthusiasm, offering prayer and music to the ancestors and the gods. In this manner, we experience sacred communion with God. With this connection we intuit the direction to be followed, as the arousing is felt from the true source, the SELF, God, the Atman in all of us.

The sacred temple of our time is found in our own practice—be it meditation, sacred music or dance, or perhaps even Facebook—as we traverse the path that eventually takes us to the bridge leading to our infinite selves. From this infinite place we see, we know, right action. We can rest and rejuvenate in the bliss of this calm unattached energy, energy that informs right action along the least line of resistance; action in harmony with and originating from the Tao.

Beware deluded enthusiasm, recognizable in erratic bipolar spikes of energy and restlessness. True enthusiasm comes in calm energy that finds the middle way.

Enthusiastically calm,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: The Dreamer Behind The Dream

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Gathering and deciphering the jewels…

I am deeply thankful to the dreamer behind the dream who leaves me with my last dream, closest to waking consciousness, that will guide me to clarity in making a most painful but necessary decision. In the movie Lincoln, Daniel Day Lewis’s physical representation of Lincoln leaves no doubt that he was crucified by the weight of his decisions. However right, we must all bear the pain of our decisions. Lincoln’s only solace, as a visionary acquiescing to his role in correcting the course of human affairs, was in knowing, at the deepest level, that his decisions were really not his at all, but were his own surrender to the dreamer behind the dream.

This morning, I pondered Einstein’s theory of relativity and the dreaming body, wondering if it was worthy of a blog. I opened William Buhlman’s book, Adventures Beyond the Body, at random. The dreamer behind the dream winked at me as the page I opened to had the heading: Einstein’s Dream! So, here it is. Now that was an easy decision!

Einstein proposed that time simply is relative. If we traveled in a spaceship at the speed of light for 40 earth years, we would actually only physically age several hours of earth time. Nonetheless, we will have had experiences of the equivalent of 40 earth years in those few hours. We will return young and refreshed, while earth and those upon it would have aged 40 years. This is what happens in our dreams every night.

As our physical body enters sleep, our dreaming body takes flight through universes of experiences—we are indeed multidimensional beings. In but a few minutes of earth time we will have traveled through years of dream experience. Years ago, I realized that if I tried to remember all my dreams in the night there was no time left in the day for anything else. My current intent in dreaming is to journey with awareness and bring back only the most important key elements. Every night presents new opportunities for journeys and discoveries.

Dreaming with awareness is the science of the 21st Century, though actually it’s just a rediscovery of ancient knowledge and practice. For instance, the ancient Hindus knew more about relativity than Einstein. The dreaming body, what the Hindus call the astral body, is actually capable of traveling beyond the speed of light, breaking Einstein’s cardinal rule that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. In an instant the dreaming body can project itself to the moon.

Often in dreaming, the dreamer behind the dream takes charge and sends us to waking consciousness with strange experiences and symbols, challenging us to crack the nut open for our answers to dense reality problems—that is, the problems of waking life. These strange jewels are the gifts accumulated through a night’s dreaming, as we travel through our life in other dimensions. They are meant to guide our decisions, which in turn will effect our greater interconnected whole being. In my dream, the dreamer behind the dream presented me with just the jewels I needed to make both my most challenging decision and the decision about what to write for this blog.

We discover through these journeys in dreaming that we are never alone, and some day, I’m quite certain, we will all meet face to face with the dreamer behind the dream of this infinite adventure. Until then, we are free to enjoy, discover, and explore infinity with abandon, every night, relatively free!

Intend to dream with awareness,
Chuck