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.
Although Chuck is energetically unavailable this week, here is something to ponder, written by Marcus Aurelius, who lived from 121-180 A.D.
Invite quiet retreat...
Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within such thoughts that by going into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest.
Excerpted from Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated by George Long, p. 22.
Life in this world is a hero’s journey for all living beings. We arrive here in utter need and dependence, and must all become heroes, forging our way to security and independence.
Traumatized children are catapulted ahead on their journeys to adulthood, forced into autonomy long before their childhood needs for safety and nurturance have been met. They must stalk a position well beyond their years and, like all heroes, they must brave the uncertainty and overwhelming odds of a deeply predatory, competitive world.
Under ideal circumstances, the hero initiates the heroic journey at an appropriate age, well prepared, with a deep well of inner security to be drawn upon as challenges arise. Young traumatized heroes, on the other hand, are thrust prematurely onto their journeys, without choice and the resource of confidence. To the contrary, their inner world is filled with the demons of terror and emptiness, as each encounter with the world is met with trepidation, vigilance and, often, paralyzing anxiety. The heroic journey of such young traumatized heroes consists mainly of survival; carefully reading and dodging the dangers of the outer world, and holding together inwardly against the threat of dissolution.
Such young heroes construct a false adult persona, tailored to assure survival. This persona may be quite pleasing to the outside world, a being eager to turn to and care for the needs of others, the listener everyone seeks out. This persona might exude modesty and calm self-assuredness, or carefully hide in the shadows, never seen, never picked; the classmate never noticed in a graduating class. Regardless of outer demeanor and presentation, traumatized heroes inwardly harbor deep shame, anxiety, and inferiority; feeling punished and undeserving of a place in the world. They feel no true ownership of accomplishments or the aire of confidence they might exude; it’s all about survival and holding together.
Just hanging on...
As young heroes move into actual adulthood, they often accrue the necessary skills to secure a home and career in the world. Deeply practiced in the skills of survival, they have learned how to succeed, though inwardly this success offers little safety or comfort, as anxiety, fear, and the ever-present danger of dissolution remain forever present. In addition, genuine fun, satisfaction, and relaxation seem dangerous activities—to be avoided at all costs—however longed for, as the hero remains ever-cognizant of the unpredictability of danger in the world.
As young heroes move deeper into the cycle of life, something within the self signals that it is time for the hero to take up the challenge of reconciliation with the past, as traumatized material stored for decades begins to trickle to the surface of dream and consciousness, or is triggered by resonant events in the outside world. The hero self, what I call the present self, is now called upon to take up the challenge of discovering and recovering its true nature in the process of recapitulation, by reliving the past and retrieving all lost parts of the self.
As traumatized young heroes, many experiences had to be stored away and forgotten for the sake of survival. Many needs and feelings had to be abandoned. Embedded as they were in early trauma, too dangerous to cultivate in the war zone of trauma, too confusing to understand at such a young age, these experiences and needs had to be sacrificed. A contract had to be drawn to delay their processing until well into the future, when the seed of life had matured into a more stable tree.
The present self must remember, as it opens to this most unnerving challenge of recapitulation, that it is a hero—granted an incomplete hero—but the hero that has brought life forward to this point of transition and transformation. The present self has all it needs to take the journey of recapitulation, uncharted and unfamiliar though that journey may be. The hero is called when it is called because something in nature, something in spirit, recognizes that it’s time for the young hero to finally claim its full inheritance, awaiting retrieval in the trials of recapitulation.
Setting off...
Trust nature; trust spirit, in the timing of the call. You have all you need. Form a partnership with the recapitulation process and know that help will be provided, but must be asked for—always a challenge for young heroes.
Trust the call to adventure. Trust the hero and its ability to fully take the adventure through the fragmented land of recapitulation and emerge out the other side of time, in the land of wholeness and calm, a fully reclaimed hero at last.
If we face it squarely, the fate of the world today hinges on the balance of who can raise the most campaign finance funds to better entrance the electorate in its favor. It’s truly a sporting event; the competitive driver dominating America, and consequently the world. How dissociated could this daily dynamic be from the true needs and true reality of the precariousness of the world’s survival? What kind of mentality seeks the brink of destruction to gain the competitive advantage?
We are all in the grip of the predator...
When the shamans say we are completely at the mercy of “the foreign installation,” this is what they are talking about. A world mentality in the grip of a predator. That predator cares only for its own gluttonous appetite. It cares nothing for the true needs of the human animal, the human race, the human planet. All it seeks is more gluttony, more to feed its own insatiable appetite, and we are all collectively and personally held in its grip.
We see this collective reality nanosecond by nanosecond in our rapidly communicating world wide web—a web expressing its own gluttonous desire for more; more speed, more rapid response—far outpacing the human nervous system, compromising our human biological balance. The hunger for more and for new is insatiable. But is it truly human? Where is the human in this? Answer: The human is held in the predator’s grip.
In Carlos Castaneda’s journey in infinity, he encountered a young girl caught in the predator’s grip. His heart went out to her and he gave all of his energy trying to free her. The predator had wisely tricked him, found his weak spot, drained him of his energy, and now held Carlos Castaneda in his grip as well.
Who is that young girl that so captivated Castaneda? She is us, all of us, our human self held in bondage by the predators’ mind, that foreign installation that the shamans speak of. Last week I illustrated this dynamic in Barking Meditation. The predator’s mind is the mind that spins the drama, spins our emotions, and drains our vital energy. We are all prey to the machinations of what the Buddhists call the monkey mind, another name for the foreign installation, that doesn’t give a hoot about our true needs or the true reality of our human animal. It’s no different than the daily world spin we are fed to agitate us, hypnotize us, and funnel our energy and funds in this or that direction.
We are all victims—even Chuck could not avoid the predatory poison ivy! *
How do we defeat this predator? How do we free ourselves? Here are some hints:
1. Mindfulness Meditation. Learn to take awareness away from the predatory mind, refuse its tales of worry and woe. Keep awareness present on now, on the body, on the truth of the heart, on what is truly real.
2. Suspend Judgment. The predatory mind’s greatest hook is judgment: Good or Bad. It structures our lives, our feelings, and our actions around judging ourselves as good, bad, worthy, unworthy, lovable, unlovable, lucky, unlucky, etc., etc. Once the judgments set in, they generate the feelings that stir up our energy, which gets sucked from us throughout the day and throughout our lives.
No judgment! No blame! Only facts and truth matter! Facts and truth generate right action and freedom. Judgment binds us in its sticky web, a web from which we may never escape.
3. We Are All Victims. Accept that we are all, in our true humanness, victims of the predator’s grip. We are all the innocent young girl of Carlos Castaneda’s journey. But let’s learn from Castaneda’s mistake. If we allow ourselves to be consumed by the sadness, despondency, and hopelessness of the little girl in her captive state, we, like Castaneda, will lose all our energy and be rendered helpless victims, caught eternally in the predator’s grip.
4. Use Our Awareness. We must acknowledge the truth of our bondage, but guard our energy to free ourselves. We do have awareness, an awareness that the predator goes after but can’t fully consume. However weakened, however impoverished we become, we must garner our awareness to not attach to the machinations of the mind and all its false apocalypses. Instead, we must use our awareness to calm ourselves in mindfulness and instead engage in Awe: awe of the majesty of pure being. This is a path to freedom.
We must use our awareness to free ourselves from judgment to arrive at truth and right action. We must avoid identifying with the desperation of our captivated selves. We, as beings of awareness, are the beacons of hope, our one advantage over the predator. Let us not squander our energy on self-pity. Identifying with the true pain of the victim is not freeing, it’s draining. Acting on behalf of the truth of our victim state, through a process like recapitulation, is the road to freedom.
Keep Practicing...
In conclusion, mindfulness and suspending judgment are the weapons to truly freeing our innocence. Facing the truth of our bondage, with awareness, and taking action on our own behalf allows us to finally take back our true humanness from the gluttonous grip of the predator.
To free our innocence and reach a state of awe, to finally experience the majesty of pure being, takes practice. Practice often, now and every day. Forgive the self of everything.
Rescue is imminent!
Stalking beyond the predator’s grip,
Chuck
* See also Jan’s recent blog re: poison ivy as mindfulness practice!
It’s 10:30 p.m. A dog barks incessantly. “What dog is it?” I wonder. “Whose dog is it? Who would allow their dog to carry on for so long?” I return my awareness to my tiredness and the dog’s barking fades into the sounds of the night.
It’s 1:00 a.m. The dog is still barking. Someone must have gone away, left their dog outside. The dog is frightened, helpless, terrified of the night, terrified in abandonment. Perhaps I should go and find the dog, find out its situation, reassure it. Perhaps I need to rescue this poor dog in need. I’m sad. The image of the shivering victim dog is haunting.
I breathe. Thoughts tell me I have an obligation to care for, to take responsibility for, this trapped, scared, frightened animal. I notice my thoughts and my feelings. I return my awareness to my tiredness. The barking is absorbed into the sounds of the night.
Now it’s 3:00 a.m. The dog barks on, without pause, an incessant, monotonous bark. Someone must be hurt. Its owners. Perhaps they’ve died. This is a loyal dog. This is Lassie calling for, demanding, help. Those barks may be a deep cry for needed attention, for someone in need. How can I possibly not respond?
I’m anxious, worried, sad. What kind of person would close their eyes to such need, such tragedy? What kind of person puts their own needs and comforts above the suffering around them? Shouldn’t I do something?
I breathe, releasing the mobilizing energy that accompanies my thoughts. The sounds of the night, deafening, once again absorb the barking.
It’s 4:00 a.m. Same rhythm, same intensity of barking. I isolate the barking cry of what must be a dog being punished by being left outside. It must be an owner that has an idea about training his dog. It’s necessary to give a dog firm consequences. Perhaps it soiled in the house or chewed the couch. A righteous owner is teaching the dog a lesson, I surmise. It will never forget this lesson for disobedience. This owner has cut off any feeling for this frightened dog in pain. This owner is proud of its ability to be firm and consistent. I’m angry at this owner. But then I find compassion, reminded of my own ignorance, once having humiliated a dog, feeling it necessary in training. I remember my father training a dog of my youth in the same manner. It’s what men do, cut off feeling, do the necessary deed.
My body is tense. I breathe. I release the tension. My awareness melts once again into the sounds of the night.
It’s 5:00 a.m. We sit and drink our coffee. We ponder the barking dog, still active as we sip. Jan suggests that it’s the sheep dog at the sheep farm down the road, protecting its flock from the coyotes that roam at night. I hadn’t considered that possibility.
I ponder my journey through the night, the sleep I lost and found. I notice my heart. Calm, unstirred. I turn to my spirit. No impetus to act. It’s my mind that has conjured the horrors of the night. The mind, with its thoughts, seeking to stir agitated feelings, draining my energy, commanding my awareness.
The shamans call the mind the foreign installation, an entity that feeds on worry and agitation, an entity that conjures and projects without substance. In the night, I noticed its wonderings, but never fully took the bait. The feelings stirred were never true messages from the heart. They were feelings triggered by projections of the mind, not feelings triggered by my real perceiving self.
The shamans teach that we are perceivers, that is our true nature. We perceive—we know—with our whole being. Then we know what’s truly there and we can act with certainty. The mind, on the other hand, has become a symbiotic appendage that has gained ascendancy over our perceiving being, draining us of our energy, of our perceptual certainty.
Last night, as I drove up the hill to my home, I encountered the young female fox that roams the neighborhood. I stopped. She stopped. Head moving side to side, sniffing, perceiving, she showed no interest in spending energy on connecting with me. She knew immediately that I wasn’t a threat. She perceived rightly, her energy being spent only on what was real and necessary. My own perceiving self, I’ve learned—like the fox—will alert me when it’s truly time to act, when there is a real danger at hand, a real concern.
My Barking Meditation Teacher
After the night of the barking dog, I left for work early. I drove slowly past the homes of the suspects of the night. I doubted that I’d see anything, but asked the universe to please reveal the source of the mystery. My last pause was in front of the farmhouse of the sheep farm. I sat. Nothing. Then suddenly, the large white sheep dog appeared by the side of the house. Staring at me, it barked the now familiar bark. I continued to sit and stare. It started to advance toward me, ready to chase me off, perceiving me as a threat. It was time to leave.
Jan was right. It was a guardian dog, with unrelenting persistence, protecting its flock from predators. As I drove off, I thanked it for my nightlong training in mindful meditation.
It was a Friday night. I put on some old Melanie albums. Jan and I sat and drank a glass of soon-to-be “leftover wine.”
Earlier that day, Jan was perusing the local news and events when she suddenly called to me. “Melanie is playing in Woodstock tomorrow night!” she said. “Do you want to go?”
“Only if we can sit very close and in the center,” I replied.
We checked the seating charts and there were indeed two seats, front and center, in the second row. Boom, we bought the tickets. We were going to see Melanie at an intimate 250 seat venue.
I’m not a nostalgist. I am drawn to music that is alive now. When I listen to old Melanie songs I feel the extreme purity of innocence seeking connection that she always embodied. This Grand Dame of the Woodstock Music Festival so captured the energy of rejuvenation of the time, of freedom, clarity, and the simplicity of love, so that every time I listen to her music it’s like opening a Gran Reserva 1969. I am never disappointed.
Melanie opened the set with “Beautiful People.” Her voice was a little shaky, seemed a bit strained, barely warmed up. I wondered, rather nervously for a moment, if she had become a glass of leftover wine. But in no time she began to open her heart and speak from her innocence. Her voice warmed and she took us on her deepening journey into new songs of love and innocence.
Melanie: Still singing, still relevant...
Like a shaman, in sweet playfulness, she reminded us that we are all beings who are going to die. She laughed and said, “Look, I wouldn’t have designed it that way, but it’s how it is.”
She appreciated the sweetness of youth, but valued our evolving selves in maturity as well. I was reminded of my blog on sexual maturity as she spoke, each stage of life offering its own unique fulfillments, if we can allow ourselves to enjoy each and every moment of the ride.
Standing transfixed on the stage, gazing off into another dimension, she sang about angels watching over us. Her husband of 45 years, who had recently died had left a note in their hotel room, addressed to her and her son, letting them know that “Angels are always with you.” And then he dropped Melanie off at Whole Foods in Framingham MA while he went off to Best Buy, something about his cell phone, telling her he would pick her up later, but he never returned. She turned his final communication into a song and when she sang it, he was there, watching over us.
And then the Tao of Melanie truly revealed itself in Smile. She spoke and sang in vintage form of the power of the smile; so simple, so down to earth, so practical, so available to everyone. Change the self, change the world, in this moment, by stalking a smile. SMILE! :)
She spoke of Amma, the Hugging Saint of India, soon herself to come to the Bearsville Theatre. For years she’s resisted “getting the hug.” Perhaps out of shyness or doubt, but finally she got “the hug.” And she was blown away! “That woman is connected to the source,” she said. “Get the hug! Get the hug!” And with that, I determined to get the hug.
My purple tie-dyed LP!
After the concert I stalked being a fan. I’ve never waited for an autograph, but there we were, on line.
Before the concert had started, I had purchased her new CD. As I waited on line after the concert, I thought, “No, all my Melanie albums are on LP, vinyl, and frankly that’s how I most enjoy listening to music.” So, I cashed in my CD for her limited-edition, purple, tie-dyed LP for $50—the realization of a lifelong dream for Melanie, as she had always wanted to have an album that was a color other than black. Now I shared the dream and became the proud owner of one of the 300 limited-edition, purple, tie-dyed LPs!
As she signed the LP, Jan commented to her, “You’re not so shy anymore.”
“Well, not on stage,” she replied, “but in my personal life I still am.”
And then I told her I didn’t have my camera to get a picture with her, but asked, “Could I give you a hug?” She hesitated only briefly and then said, “Sure.” And with that, I got the hug!
That woman is connected to the source!
Smile,
Chuck
NOTE: The new purple tie-dyed album Ever Since You Never Heard of Me is only available through Melanie’s website or at her concerts. The CD is available through iTunes and there are a few songs not on the LP and vice versa, so they are different, the CD cut in 2010 the LP 2012. Here is a link to her website. Also listen to Melanie sing Smile with her fans in this fun YouTube video in the Netherlands.
