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: Life Flows Without Judgment

Leave a comment

Life is a flow of energy. Judgment is a freeze frame of that flow of energy—an attempt to understand and value it—but clearly, judgment is not life. Life flows; judgment is static.

Life flows... and flutters...

Don Juan Matus pointed out that human beings are perceivers, perceivers of the flow of life energy. He hypothesized that human beings went on to become judgers because it was an efficient way to manage the challenging dimension of life energy. Don Juan believed that the ability to quickly interpret and categorize energy in solid form gave our ancestors an advantage in defending themselves.

We can experience this today by simply walking in the road. We might see a flutter of movement in the distance. We then quickly judge that movement to be a skunk or possibly a rabid raccoon. With this in mind we plan our approach. Funny how many treacherous leaves and fallen pieces of bark I’ve encountered as I’ve approached these flutters in the distance—the dangerous jungle of the street I live on!

Carl Jung, like don Juan, agreed that human beings are perceivers who perceive through the functions of sensation and intuition. Don Juan would likely call these functions organs of direct knowledge—knowledge obtained independently of the mind.

For Jung, the ego, or the mind, develops the discriminatory functions of thinking and feeling to decide what things are and what value they have. These are the freeze frame functions of judgment, the solid interpretations of energy that don Juan spoke about. With judgment we create exhaustive categories of what life is, how it works, and also assign all this knowledge a place in our lives.

In the modern world, the judgment functions and their host, the mind, have become so dominant that the channels to direct knowledge are lost, devalued, and even ridiculed.

How often do we ask our bodies directly what they need using our innate sensation function? More likely we must research the latest study or be told by a professional what our bodies need. How did our ancestors ever know what to eat before we had science and Science Diet!

Intuition is vision into that which can’t be seen—a direct tapping into the flow of life energy. Intuition completely bypasses the mind. The rational, judging mind has little use for intuition, as it only deals with solid facts—the freeze frames of life’s flow of energy.

What I observe is that life continues to flow regardless of how we judge it. Life is, forever and anew, approaching us with both challenge and support. Challenge may come in the form of loss and deep trauma and support may come in the synchronicities of guidance and encouragement, presented in signs all around us.

Most of the time, life energy is moving us along in the most amazing ways. Unfortunately, because we are dominated by the judging functions of the mind, we miss the magic always active in our personal lives.

I constantly notice how bogged down we become in feeling bad about ourselves. We miss how the daily events of our lives unfold in such a meaningful and helpful way. Even more amazing is how we are continuously supported in our growth and evolution, in spite of the negative judgments we daily place upon ourselves.

Life continues to both challenge and support us regardless of how brutally we judge ourselves or how low our self-esteem. The real problem is not in our flow of energy but in our judgments. Often our judgments are so fixated that they refuse to take in the reality of the life we are actually living. Our judgments generate a negative interpretation regardless of the facts.

It seems as if we fear that if we truly accept ourselves as acceptable to life, we will invite the wrath of some higher power to level us. The fact is that bad things happen to good people and bad people alike. Life happens as it will. Energy will flow regardless of our judgments.

Judgment has no control over life. Judgment does, however, have control over what we allow ourselves to see and know about the lives we are actually living. Judgment is the ultimate spin-doctor.

If you judge yourself to be bad or a failure today, life will still bring you supportive energy tomorrow. Life is deaf to judgment. The real question is whether you will be able to be aware of the wonder of the day and the amazing gifts being offered. All that judgment does is fog the screen, but beyond the fog life continues to both challenge and embrace without judgment.

Can you suspend judgment and show up for the real show? And, even if you can’t allow yourself to get too close to the real show yet, life continues to challenge and embrace you anyway. The truth is, you are wanted by life to live and explore fully. It’s why it brought you here, as the eyes and soul of ever-evolving infinity.

Without judgment,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Nothing But Fluff

Leave a comment

I sat this morning editing the final version of Jan’s soon to be published The Recapitulation Diaries—Year One: The Man in the Woods. I encounter this dream. With Jan’s permission I include that dream here followed by her reflection upon awakening.

Talking heads

October 21, 2001
“I dream a strange dream about a bodiless head that rides on a small electronic platform that looks something like a large gray plastic model of an aircraft carrier. The features on the face are hard and set, metallic looking, the eyes glaring. I’ve stumbled into a large empty apartment building, unaware of its presence and apparently I’ve disturbed it while wandering around in this vast space. The head on the platform bolts out from underneath a pile of debris where it has lived for a long time and skims along the floor, the face mean and angry. It pursues me around the empty building for some unknown reason. Eventually I turn and attack it and the head falls off the platform. It crashes to the floor and explodes. I’m surprised to see that it’s no more than a pile of fluff, nothing but bits of paper and plastic.”

“In the morning I wake exhausted, tired of feeling so empty, so hollow. The crazy head chasing me doesn’t make me feel any better, but it does make me think that perhaps the praying mantis picking at my head [an earlier dream] was trying to alert me to something besides just the memories. Perhaps I’m not supposed to go after the head, not just supposed to dig through my head for the memories, after all. The head doesn’t really hold anything inside, as this dream shows; it’s just a lot of stuffing. Where do I look then? Where do I go for the memories if not into my head, into my brain, to the place where memories are supposedly stored?” [End of excerpt from book.]

Moments after reading this I opened Carlos Castaneda’s The Wheel of Time, in anticipation of writing my weekly blog, to the following:

“The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue.” — p. 117

Jan’s dream and subsequent reflection illustrate that the mind, the home of the internal dialogue is merely fluff. The internal dialogue upholds the world that we all agree upon, with the consequence being, the creation of a consensus reality. To create a world is indeed a magical act, however, the truth is that it’s just an interpretation of energy spun by the internal dialogue.

Internally, Jan had upheld a world through an internal dialogue that created a story about her past that did not represent the truth of her experience in childhood. She was at a stage in her recapitulation where she needed to free herself of her mind. In order to do this, she had to confront her fear, which had allowed her internal dialogue to spin reality to protect her from painful truth. By confronting her fear and shattering her mind she was soon to free-fall into deeper truth. To discover these truths, as she reflects in this excerpt, she had to go outside the mind and allow her body to reveal the truth unfiltered by the mind. As Carlos points out: the passageway opens once the internal dialogue is silenced.

What keeps us attached to the internal dialogue is fear. We must be willing to confront our fears to get to deeper truth. Confronting the fear does not mean that the fear goes away. What it does mean, however, is that we insist upon pursuing the truth regardless of the fear. Fear continues to be present but it doesn’t stop the journey.

In recapitulation we intend to learn the truth. We don’t attach to the internal dialogue but go directly to the body for a full accounting of life lived.

The mind is a wonderful thing to lose,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Give Generously to Those Below

Leave a comment

Returning from vacation, I consult the I Ching for a picture of Now.

Collapse is imminent!

I receive the image of a house whose walls can no longer carry the weight of the roof, now on the verge of collapse.

In a dream, I’m stuck beneath the streets of New York City in a narrow crawl space. I look around at the thick wooden beams and wonder at the weight of what is above, the buildings, the restaurants, the parties taking place, all the people dancing. How long can those beams support it all?

The country is galvanized around raising the debt “ceiling.” From all sides there is fear of imminent collapse.

The I Ching counsels shoring up the walls of the house to avoid collapse by giving generously to those below. In the context of a nation, this means to take care of the real needs of the masses, the true backbone of the country.

Ironically, the Tea Party Republicans are agents of change here, bringing attention to the fragility of the economic structure. As with the “ceiling” structure of an overburdened roof, continuing to raise the debt “ceiling” will lead to inevitable collapse.

In the recent past, the Republicans had no problem raising that ceiling five times under President Bush and seventeen times under Reagan. Suddenly though, they’ve elevated it to a monumental crisis under President Obama. Despite the hypocrisy and thinly veiled overt ploy to bring down Obama at all costs, even if it means bringing down the nation itself, the bottom line is: the more you raise the ceiling, the greater you weaken the structure. That is, unless you strengthen the supporting walls.

The Republican strategy is to strengthen the walls by stripping the social supports to the masses while greedily filling the coffers of the wealthy. The slogan is: No raised taxes on the wealthy at any cost!

The I Ching clearly states that this strategy will lead to definite collapse. Synchronistically, we see this illustrated by the tumbling Murdoch empire built upon total greed and corruption. Unless the structure of the nation shifts to truly caring for the needs of the common citizen, the nation will collapse as we see reflected all around the world in the revolutions of the Arab spring.

On a personal level, we are challenged to assess the stability of our own psychic structures. Inwardly, the “roof” of our personality is the ego, built upon the supporting walls of our instinctive selves and the deep well of our spirit selves.

Is the roof of our personality, our ego self, giving generously to the needs of our instinctive self, our body, and to our spirit self, the foundational reason for our current life in this world?

Is our ego in alignment with our spiritual purpose? Is our ego properly nourishing our body as well as caring for the physical environment we inhabit in this world? Is our ego insisting on remaining in the wrong relationship out of fear of loss, abandonment, and aloneness? Does our ego control others overtly or covertly to serve its own agenda? Is the ego willing to face the truths of life lived or does it remain in illusion, inflation or deflation, or comfortably numb in addiction?

If our ego is off on its own greedy agenda, accumulating more and more for itself, overburdening the roof while neglecting the supporting walls of the house, that structure is in imminent danger of collapse; collapse of the personality into depression, or even psychosis.

Inwardly, giving generously to those below requires the ego to serve the deepest needs of the self. The ego, in this alignment with the self, is in no danger of collapse. To the contrary, it is likely to find itself in the place of abundance, generously and gratefully supported by the wellspring of life.

Doing masonry work,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Just Passing Through—With Awareness

Leave a comment

“Do the sweeping breath Jan,” I suggested as we stared out at the ocean. “This is the last time we will ever be here. Take it in and release it.”

There is so much to this world, more than we can possibly experience in a lifetime. Better to be fully present, soaking it in and releasing it as we move along.

Only the energetic flow remains.

When we first arrived at the beach, we went to Edgar Cayce’s Atlantic University. We walked through the meditation gardens brimming with energy. We slowly walked the labyrinth in the heat of the noonday sun. Finally we sat in the coolness of the meditation room overlooking the sea, immediately drawn into the vortex of energy present in that room from all the beings who had preceded us.

Sometimes we are so moved by the beauty around us, drawn to the energy, that we immediately want to bottle it, to hold onto it. Before we left the beach I felt drawn to return to that meditation room, but it was time to leave, never to return.

We moved on to our cabin on the mountain. The moment we arrived we wanted another night, another attempt to bottle life. I called Chuck, the proprietor.

“Sorry Chuck,” he replied warmly, “I’d love to accommodate you, but it was just booked this morning.”

I knew, in that moment, that we were being reminded that we are beings who are going to die. Our stay here is but a limited engagement, no bargaining for more time. The message: Be fully present, fill your cup of experience to the brim, but don’t try to bottle life.

As I write these words, the sound of infinity—a thousand cicadas—wakes up. They announce: “Wake up! Take the journey NOW. Infinity is NOW!”

Before we arrived on the mountain we spent a night at a hot spring only to find a beautiful dead moth lying by the hot spring of life. When we came to our lovely cabin here on the mountain another beautiful moth lay dead on the floor by the jacuzzi. When we set out to hike the mountain we were greeted by the fallen wings of two luna moths resting on the trail, an energetic stream of movement. Signs of infinity: moths in repose and the energetic springs of life side by side. These are reminders to stay alert, remain aware, take nothing for granted, soak it in, release it and accept that we are just passing through.

With deep affection, I hold you in my awareness as I move along through infinite moments of awareness.

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Discovering Intent

Leave a comment

Long ago, I was drawn to the adventures, practices and cognitive world of the Seers of Ancient Mexico. The energetic wave of that once closed world was reformatting to be of relevance to a new era as ushered in by the published works of Carlos Castaneda in the 1960s. The value of the tools from that ancient world are critical as we navigate our now rapidly changing world.

I have little use for words such as trust or belief unless they are based upon personal experience that supports them. At heart, I am a scientist. I cannot know something unless I know it through actual experience. Nonetheless, as Carlos Castaneda suggested in his thirtieth anniversary commentary in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, our intellectual allegiance—what I would call resonance—sets off powerful undercurrents that effect a transformation in our perception and experience of life.

In simpler terms, concepts, even words themselves, can energetically transform us, but we must discover this for ourselves. What generally inhibits this transforming experience is the allegiances we bear based on our socialization.

If our socialization tells us that it is irrational to believe that stating our intent will lead to a major change, we simply won’t do it. In fact, we might instead spend our energy vigorously defending the absurdity of such a practice. From my own experience, however, I know that stating an intent is the most powerful tool of change.

When someone approaches me, in my formal role as an agent of change, we explore their intent to heal or change. I explain that that intent will manifest. It is not my intuitive powers that will guide the journey; my role is to track the energy of that intent. Intent is the guide.

Often my initial task is to ask my client to suspend judgement and experiment with this working hypothesis: everything they need they have within. Intent is now steering the process. Let’s gather the data and, like true scientists, see what happens.

The data comes in the form of synchronicities, dreams, encounters of everyday life, intuitions, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, long forgotten experiences, etc. Everything is potentially meaningful; all is gathered and examined.

What we discover, over and over, is that intent is indeed an intelligent force that leads to its fulfillment. We cannot predetermine the course that journey will take; our challenge is to track it and stay on its unfolding trail unencumbered by doubt and worry.

Intent has proven to be the most valuable tool to effect deep healing and transformation. So simple, so accessible, but requiring of a truly scientific attitude of experimentation to discover: INTENT!

Calling intent,
Chuck