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: The Shamanic Journey of Innocence

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We are beings who enter this world needing personal attachment in order for life to take root and grow. Failure to experience personal love and care at a basic level results in a failure to thrive, leading to death. Less fatal woundings with our primary attachments can severely compromise our ability to love and receive love throughout our lives.

The strange twist of personal love in this world is that, even under the best of circumstances, it is ultimately unsustainable. Everything personal comes to an end. Early in life we can be shielded from this fact through the veil of a world without death, however, like Siddhartha, someday, we all must stray beyond the walls of this illusion and confront the truth of impermanence.

To encounter impermanence is to brush up against the impersonal, the coldness of that which is not a person, that which is not of this personal world. Where we came from, before we came into this world, and where we will go, when we leave this world, is in the realm of the impersonal: beyond the person we are while in this world.

Reconciling our personal life in this world with both our impersonal underpinnings and ultimate destination, is the core challenge of life. Foundational to this challenge is the ability to give and receive love in full awareness of the personal and impersonal dimensions of our reality. So challenging is this task that many would prefer death itself to the vulnerability that full openness to love requires.

To love, we must access our pure innocence. This is the innocence that, in its infancy, entered this world with the blind trust that it would be welcomed and cherished. This early stage of innocence inevitably suffers the fall of disappointment. However, innocence, with its tenacious need for love, remains quite resilient. These early woundings in our personal lives are encounters with the impersonal, encounters that shake us out of our tender narcissistic shells.

Then may come more serious brushes with the impersonal: deep disappointment, neglect, loss, or downright abuse. Some of these encounters are brushes with pure evil, a cold predatory energy that mercilessly feasts upon innocence, completely smashing our shells of safety.

Under these crushing blows, and for pure survival, our innocence fragments and takes refuge deep within, seeking protection in the body. This is a wise strategy for survival, but a major freeze to the challenge of giving and receiving love.

Strangely though, it is the shattering of our secure personal world that pushes us into the non-personal dimension of reality. This shattering mimics all shamanic journeys, where ritualized woundings push the initiate beyond the personal into the infinite. These may be journeys beyond the body, or some form of dissociated experience. In traumatic experiences we dissociate to protect our precious innocence.

The resulting fragmentation, caused by dissociation, may be necessary to maintain for decades, as we plunge into life with our lost innocence buried beneath causes, careers, and relationships of discontent. We might even convince ourselves of our unique ability not to ever need love in this life.

Eventually, however, our triggers and seasons of discontent overwhelm us, as we are ushered to awaken to the fullness of our journeys already taken, as well as the need for completion in our continued journey. Thus we begin the recapitulation journey where we reconstruct and relive the full truth of our lives.

Recapitulation restores our connection to our lost innocence, as it is freed from old beliefs, confusions, and blame. The adult self, that we have accrued through our other journeys, is the traveling companion that helps our innocence withstand the full truth as it emerges during our recapitulation.

Our innocence matures through this process and is now challenged to reenter life from this new mature, knowing place. Here, innocence sheds its earliest illusions and needs for personal protection. Rejections, endings, and woundings no longer result in dissociation and a retreat from life as innocence has moved beyond the personal and embraces the full impersonality of life; the shamanic initiation complete.

From here, we are poised for fulfillment in this life. We can know that we have loved before; that we have completed many lives; and that we will leave this life and go into new life where everything will be different. We can love with total openness in human form, without needing to possess or hold onto anything. At this point, our innocence is open to experiencing the relativity of our personal life and equally open to the journey in infinity. Perhaps even open enough to experience that infinity now!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below. And don’t forget to check out our facebook page at: Riverwalker Press on facebook.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Lifting the Veil of Self-Blame

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What masquerades and torments as self-blame is often, underneath it all, the placeholder for painful truths we are not ready to assimilate. How does this work?

Trauma comes in many forms, but what makes all trauma, trauma, is the encounter with an experience we are unable to assimilate. By assimilate, I mean, able to take in—physically, cognitively, emotionally—the full breadth and truth of an experience regardless of how disruptive, intrusive, or devastating it might be.

When we are unable to assimilate part or whole of an experience we must store it within ourselves, in some form, until the day we are ready to fully assimilate, or recapitulate, the experience.

The storing of traumatic experience creates a fragmentation within the self because one part of the self can no longer communicate with, or know about, another part of the self. However, some form of inter-self communication can occur in a traumatized self, if the traumatized part wears a disguise that doesn’t reveal the truth hidden within, the real trauma.

Self-blame is often a disguised trauma. How does that work?

Self-blame implies “criminal” activity. This criminal part of the self is seen and felt as bad, abusive, unworthy, lazy, unlovable, or inadequate. On some level we hold onto self-hate and loathing, and blame ourselves for all the misery in our lives.

We then get caught in a cycle of old guilt and compensatory intentions and efforts to improve the self, to reform the criminal. Inevitably we fail, and around and around we go on this vicious wheel of suffering and redemption as our inner criminal resurfaces over and over again.

But, what if this blamed self is actually hidden trauma? After all, isn’t a trauma itself actually a “criminal” who invades our stable lives? Isn’t the trauma actually bad and abusive? Isn’t there an aggressive intensity inherent in trauma equivalent to the punitive energy of self-blame? Perhaps self-blame is the perfect placeholder for trauma and the unrecapitulated self.

In order to discover the true culprit behind the mask of self-blame, we must avail ourselves of Carlos Castaneda’s number one intent: Suspend judgment! Suspending judgment, in the context of lifting the veil of self-blame, means assuming a perspective of detached objectivity. We are looking to both understand the energetic function of self-blame in our lives, as well as discover the true nature of the experiences we have carried under the guise of self-blame.

As I pondered the energetic influences this past week, I consulted The I Ching. I received the answer of The Marrying Maiden, hexagram #54. This hexagram selects the role of the concubine to illustrate being selected to play a part, not for personal reasons, but because of the impersonal needs of others. How do we navigate being acted upon, as in the role of the concubine, simply because we are there and can fill a need of others, however inappropriate? If this is the objective truth of it, however distasteful and unacceptable that situation may be or feel, the truth is: it is impersonal.

Accepting the reality of the impersonal in our lives is a daunting challenge. To hold onto the truth of the impersonal and not change it back into the personal and self-blame, as a means of holding onto some degree of control, is what suspending judgment is all about.

Perhaps for decades we’ve needed to disguise the truth of abuse in self-hate. Can we now allow ourselves to know the real facts of that abuse? Can we now allow ourselves to encounter the truth of the impersonal forces that acted upon us, totally for their own needs? Can we face that we had no control and did not matter, in any sense?

In another example of impersonal experience: Can we take in that we were not loved, but that it was completely not personal—it was simply not our fault? Can we let go of our illusions of those we loved, and needed to preserve as loving people, in order to feel safe and cared for? Are we ready to take down the defenses that protect our wounded selves and release our true innocence, or do we need to hold onto the shield of badness and self-blame? Can we accept our lovableness, though others could not? Or, again, must we continue to protect ourselves with a cloak of unworthiness and self-blame?

Are we ready to release ourselves from the illusions of badness we repeatedly uphold through compulsive, self-destructive behavior patterns that falsely substantiate our sense of unworthiness? This is how that criminal wheel of suffering and redemption keeps spinning. Perhaps, for instance, we hold onto laziness as an ancient means of protecting parents who didn’t love us. In this example, we carry our laziness as a way to blame ourselves for our parents rejecting behavior. In other words, we deserve rejection because we are lazy. This keeps us from being confronted with the impersonal reality that they may just have been incapable of loving, and it was not our fault. Are we ready to face this truth, allow ourselves to break the criminal hold of self-destructive behavior and release the parents we’ve held onto for some kind of security? Can we release ourselves from this ancient flawed perspective and accept our lovability? Are we ready to be the adult self that suspends judgment and frees our innocence, seeing clearly, and releasing all who crushed our hopefulness and joy?

Are we ready to not flip self-blame into blame? If we attach to blaming others we remain bound to a new criminal. This is not about having to forgive. This is about being an adult and an innocent self, ready to open to life with a new found wholeness. With the truth revealed, the self is no longer bound by old ideas and fragmentations. The criminals, once needed to house unrecapitulated events, can be released.

Are we ready to come out of the shell of the blamed self and allow fresh air to touch our innocence? Lifting the veil of self-blame takes great courage and may take a lifetime, but it promises fulfillment in this life and opens the door to new worlds of possibility.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Who’s Yin and Who’s Yang? Whose Yin and Whose Yang?

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Vignette #1: Your Yang over My Yin

“What’s for dinner?”
“I haven’t really thought about it… maybe rice and some vegetables.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t seem very excited about that… what would you like? Would you prefer pasta?”
“That sounds great!”
“Okay.”

Vignette #2: My Yin over Your Yang

“I feel really calm and relaxed with you.”
“How ’bout we get naked?”
“That feels like such a disruption. I just wanted us to stay connected, go deeper into calm.”
“I was feeling for deeper connection as well.”
“I get that, but I’d have to get there… this feels so right now.”
“So, you don’t want that, it’s not natural… sounds like you’d be accommodating me. I certainly don’t want that.”
Silence.

In Vignette #1, Yin, the Receptive, awaits the impulse to action from Yang, the Creative. Once the Yang impulse is clearly defined, Yin springs to action and materializes the pasta. Though Yin had its own Yang idea, rice and vegetables, its dominant Yin nature pushed aside its own Yang impulse and fully embraced the outer Yang desire.

In Vignette #2, Yin was sinking deeply into its restful, restorative, dormant state. Yin invites outer Yang to join in still union. Yang suggests active union—creation. Yin calls upon its inner Yang to protect the legitimacy of still union. Outer Yang is defensive. It realizes that to acquiesce to Yin is the only possibility for union at this time.

Yin and Yang are the primal energies of this world. Yin is associated with water and earth, hence, energy in a denser form or simply solid energy. Yin energy is the substance of our material world: matter. Yin is the primal state of rest or stillness where energy is amassed and stored. In contrast, Yang is associated with fire and air. These elements lack substance. However, their influence creates definite movement. This is the ethereal, mental, spiritual activity that produces ideas, thoughts, designs, and actions. Yin, as the denser material energy, receives and gives form and substance to the impulse of Yang. If intent is Yang, then the physical realization of intent is Yin. In a deep state of Yin meditation, a Yang idea might be born.

We are all comprised of Yin and Yang energy. Often woman is associated with Yin and man with Yang. Men don’t produce eggs. Men have no womb. Men cannot hold and deliver life. But the tiny sperm that scratches the enormous egg is the impetus to action that the dormant egg awaits to begin the process of unfolding new life. This reality gives rise to the assignment of Yin and Yang to stereotyped sex roles. However, this is a misconception. For instance, all beings, male and female, require restoration and sleep to gather energy to live life. This is a Yin state that all partake in equally. Yang states of decision-making and creativity are equally utilized and necessary for both men and women.

To manifest (Yin) any thought (Yang) we must have energy. For water (Yin) to produce steam, energy, it must have fire (Yang) beneath it. If the fire is too weak Yin dominates and the water cannot boil to steam. If the fire is too great the water overflows the pot and puts out the fire, again, no energy produced. The only way to produce continuous energy is for these opposite elemental forces to be in balance, working together to produce the energy for life: the fire burning at a low, steady flame, the water simmering gently.

Balance, however, does not mean always being equally dominant. At night, the sun acquiesces to the moon. In the day, the moon acquiesces to the sun. Together, each taking the lead in succession, they create the deeper balance of our world—night and day.

We do well to assess the interplay of our inner Yin and Yang energy states. Often, we favor either Yin or Yang. Bringing these energies into internal balance is the key to outer relational success. You can be certain that your non-dominant primal energy state will show up in your choice of partner. If you choose a partner of similar dominance, something will be missing in your relationship. If you are Yin dominant you will be attracted to a Yang dominant partner and vice versa. This has nothing to do with your biological sex. Men and women may be dominated by either Yin or Yang energy.

Yin and Yang are mutually dependent. If we are favoring one state inwardly, we will seek to balance it out in outer relationship. This does not necessarily mean that we’ll find harmony in relationship. For instance, if we feverishly reject our inner Yin in favor of our inner Yang, we are certain to battle our Yin dominated partner. If we’ve had difficulty accessing our inner Yin or Yang, we are likely to become overly dependent on our partner who gives us a connection to our missing inner energy. Dependency often creates strife in relationship. As depicted in the opening vignette, we might easily dismiss our budding but inferior inner energy in favor of the whim of our dominant partner.

The first question to answer in relationship is: Who’s Yin and Who’s Yang? Knowing this, you can examine the patterns in your relationship that are driven by both the oppositional and complementary interaction of these energetic forces. From here, you can also answer the question: Whose Yin and Whose Yang might be dominating inside the self and outside in the relationship?Examining the Yin and Yang of relationship from an energetic standpoint, allows for a deeper understanding of self and other beyond blame. Yin and Yang are opposite sides of the same coin, inseparable and necessary in all life.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Midas Touch of Intent

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I intend a change. Midway through the night, I am suddenly awoken. Outside sounds abound around me. I am captive; they will not let me return to sleep. For hours they exhaust me. All I can do is breathe, breathe into deep relaxation.

The next day, I am present, but a step behind the action. My intuition, ordinarily my guiding light, is shut down. The world moves at its normal pace, but all I can do is watch it unfold as I fumble for words and meaning. I meet extraordinary challenges in the day. I notice an exhausted, detached calm.

The next night, I dream I am at the Grammys. I sit next to Bob Dylan. From his seat he delivers an acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement Award. He rambles on, monotone, almost incoherent, like he’s talking to himself. Someone from behind, with a long wooden pole, tries to poke Bob, to make him shut up. I protect him by deflecting the pole. He deserves respect.

In another dream, I’m in a large lake at night. I’m swimming. A huge oceanlike wave is approaching. I dive through it, only it doesn’t pass, it engulfs. I realize it’s a tidal wave. I’m now well beneath the surface. I do seem to be able to breathe. I’m not overwhelmed by fear, but it does feel like death is imminent.

More and different challenges appear the next day in waking life. Encounters coalesce around the theme central to my intent. It’s clear I am being softened, made malleable, as intent pulls me forward, pushing me to experience a much deeper level of groundedness and detachment.

The next night, in a dream, a Chinese man translates the soup choices on the menu at a restaurant. I choose the soup called: “A Light Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” Something has shifted; light can now pass through where once I was caught, between a rock and a hard place.

This series of events, which occurred in different states of my multidimensional self—dream body, physical body, social body—were all different ripples of the same intent, synchronistically related. This is the Midas Touch of Intent. Once the universe engages our intent, like Midas with his golden touch, intent turns everything in our path into gold; everything becomes the substance of our intent. You simply can’t get away from it. Everything, indeed, becomes meaningful and is tied to the intent of our intent.

On the first night, after I set my intent, intent awoke me and refused to allow me to sleep. It was as if the Sirens had me under their spell, all I could do was relax my body. This physical experience shut down my intuitive function and rendered me a therapist without vision. In the dream with Bob Dylan, I sought to protect the icon that deserved respect, but the truth is, it was time for new life: change. This is the time of revolution. The old kings must now die to usher in a new era. Jan informed me the next day that an Indie band from Canada called Arcade Fire, had won the Album of the Year Award at the Grammys. Like Bob Dylan, I too had to let go of the old self to make room for the new.

In the next dream, a tidal wave, like Noah’s flood, swept away the old and ushered in the new. There was nothing I could do but breathe and go with the flow, into the unknown. Finally, I experienced a new self, my intent realized, a new life, where once life was frozen between a rock and a hard place.

Jeanne cautions us to be careful of what we ask for when we set an intent. She suggests we be specific, but also be prepared, as the path intent chooses to realize our intent may not be as we expect. Midas might have been wise to choose a more careful intent so that he would have been able to eat his food, rather than have it all turn to gold when he touched it!

Intent will ripple through all the dimensions of the self. At first, the meaning of events may elude us; sometimes we are simply in the grip of the experience and need to allow ourselves to be led along. What choice do we really have, once we are in it?

Suspend judgment. Go with the flow. At some point you will arrive at the shore of a new self, intent realized, and marvel at the magical journey that brought you there.

Bon Voyage!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: 2012 is Now!

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“I am convinced that for man to survive now, his perception must change at its social base,” states don Juan Matus on page 3 in The Art of Dreaming. For don Juan this change, an evolution of consciousness, means that we must embrace the wholeness of our beings, a world of energy, the wavelength self I wrote about in last week’s blog.

Stanislav Grof points out in an interview with nonsoloanima TV that the end of the Mayan calendar at the winter solstice, December 21st next year, simply represents the end of a cycle of time. This cycle is the completion of the sun’s rotation around the solar system upon which the Mayan calendar is based. This completed cycle in galactic astrology results in an alignment that births a new era. However, all birth is preceded by labor. This labor can manifest as aggression, destruction, or violent revolution as new life struggles to be born. In addition, there must be a death, or ending to the old way of being, to bring forth new life. The question for mankind is whether this birthing process will result in the necessary evolution don Juan describes, or will the forces of resistance put an end to our human experiment.

Grof also points out that December 21, 2012 is but the apex of a bell curve. The changes of 2012 have been rapidly unfolding for decades. Undoubtedly, the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s followed by the psychedelics of the 1960s was the unleashing of the energy needed to move masses of humanity to shift into a deeper search for themselves, at more profound levels. In fact, for decades this mass shift in consciousness has launched a major revolution to bring down the solid precepts that have governed awareness for centuries.

Energetic mass movements, such as the Internet, are rapidly tearing down all attempts to maintain or create walls of illusion. Facebook, though I decry its dark side of self-importance and its exposure to the greedy marketing giants, can probably be credited with bringing down the government in Egypt as the energy of change was initially directed by postings on Facebook, telling people where to gather for the nonviolent revolution. The election of Obama, also largely orchestrated through digital wizardry, marked an earlier magical evolutionary advance of consciousness, materially realized.

The energy of 2012 has been advancing for decades and we are clearly near the climax of this struggle. Stepping, for a moment, out of time and viewing ourselves from a cosmic perspective, we are indeed living in a highly charged, agitated energetic time. The speed of change appears greater than our human ability to absorb and indeed this is probably true, hence, the pressure to evolve into out greater energetic selves. Whether this revolutionary energy is sufficient to push through the birth canal and bring forth this necessary transformation into new life is still an open question. The forces of resistance undermining change, so apparent in Obama’s presidency, are evident everywhere on the globe. We are not a world of individual countries and governments, despite those illusory walls. We are now an interconnected global economy where the special interests of the parasitic few are relentlessly seeking new ways to spin reality to hold onto power and control.

Bringing this challenge down to a very individual level, we do well to inventory the status of the power monger within ourselves: the inflated ego with its rationality über alles. Are we taking on the challenge of allowing ourselves to claim the fullness of our energetic beings? What is the status of our own inner revolution, our own transformational journey of rebirth? Are we allowing ourselves the opportunities to wake up in our dreams and explore our greater consciousness beyond the body, or does rationality still dismiss the possibility? Do we allow ourselves to go inward in meditation, or do we choose medication and/or materialism? Do we free our breath, or remain constricted in the rigid body armor of defense? Do we open up to the world of energy by engaging our intent, or do we remain frozen in doubt?

I say, Viva La Revolución! But remember, revolution starts at home, within the self, by embracing the depths of our energetic selves. The revolution of 2012 is now! Let’s all fight for that necessary change at our social base; let’s insure our survival as evolved energetic beings!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck