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: At the Threshold of the Matrix
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel
Rudolph Steiner identified the dual nature of The Dweller At The Threshold as both guardian and adversary. In trauma, this inner guardian steals away and absorbs the traumatic experience, enabling consciousness to go forward, relieved of the impact of the unacceptable.
The price for this amnesia is an illusory life in the matrix. The guardian dweller plants triggers at the threshold of the truth, explosive emotions that electrify the nervous system and repel deeper knowing. The seeker is led to mistakenly identifying the trigger as the culprit, and to value successful avoidance as the cure.
At the simplest level, the vulnerable ego is protected by mechanisms of defense, as Anna Freud labeled them. Some of these are, at the very least, semi-conscious, such as with suppression, when we knowingly push down a disturbing feeling. Most defenses, however, operate automatically, at the behest of the all-powerful subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is nature, with its sweeping survival instincts that protect life at any cost. The subconscious represses that which would hurt the ego, regardless of the truth that it blocks from consciousness. The subconscious projects onto others the ownership and responsibility for the ego’s thoughts and actions that, if truly owned, would hurt its self-esteem.
The subconscious is also the Dweller, in both the role of the guardian and the adversary. The subconscious houses unlived karma, that which is yet to be discovered and resolved. The subconscious is like the moon, which ultimately upholds the fundamental balance of nature. Though it can shield at its dark side, it will ultimately reveal all in its fullness. Karma, like the moon, also holds the complete cycle of nature, those personal truths we are all here to work on, to reveal, face and resolve.
The ego is equivalent to the sun. With the light of consciousness at its helm, the ego has free will, to do as it chooses. In fact, via suggestion, that impresses itself upon the subconscious, the ego can override and violate nature’s inherent laws. The Dweller stores the effects of these choices in the form of karma. Although withheld, this karma will ultimately be repaid, by nature exacting its balance.
The ego can fashion its own persona identity, and even believe it to be its true self, but nature’s storms of anxiety, fear, anger and depression will inevitably prevail and breakdown of this fragile identity will occur. For ego to advance in health and wholeness, it must ultimately make the journey to the gate of the Dweller, in the hidden recesses of its shadow, and retrieve its lost soul, its true identity.
Ironically, as the journey into the shadow begins, Dweller as guardian will turn into Dweller as adversary, triggering ego back to the sensibility of its comfortably uncomfortable life in the matrix. Better safe than sorry. To overcome this, the ego must drop its false pretensions, lose its self-importance, and relentlessly pursue the fullness of truth before it can find its way to freedom beyond this stagnant moat of the matrix.
“Yes,” stated don Juan to Carlos Castaneda, “this is a world of solid objects, but first it is a world of energy.” This was the ultimate solution to the paradox that eventually freed Neo from The Matrix. When you lock into a solid definition, you generate your karma in the solid physical world.
In The Matrix, Neo learned to suspend judgment. He refused the story, the subconscious habit that generated a lethal certainty. His energy was then freed to open to an empowered interpretation of self. The shamans call this shifting the position of the assemblage point, where freed energy assembles into a new reality. To do this one must suspend a fixated judgment.
Present events on the world stage suggest that the karma of WWI is beckoning us for resolution and a new reality. Judge Hatch*, our Astral dimension war correspondent throughout that war, was clear that the spiritual intent for that war was: to make the world safe for love.
Though Christ, as shaman, stalked that position of the assemblage point, the chakra center of the heart, and America embraced it in principle, neither America nor the rest of the world has moved beyond the ego and the personal power center of the chakra located at the solar plexus.
Clearly, the souls on the Titanic continue to draw us down to her depths, where we must face her truths but also her tests. Though two years before the start of WWI, her sinking foreshadowed the challenge that was about to eclipse the world.
The hubris of the Titan sub’s CEO, Stockton Rush, was parallel to that of Captain Smith, who insisted, in 1912, that the Titanic maintain full speed despite the threat of icebergs. Humbling is the lesson that ego—despite its solar-plexus power gymnastics, or inflated reach for adventure—is no match for the Dweller, who can only be approached with utter caution, respect and truthfulness.
The sunken Titanic, whose passengers included Stockton Rush’s wife’s great-great grandparents, is populated with many souls who sacrificed their lives that others might live. This is the myth that resolves the paradox at the gate of the matrix. Those souls reached the heart center, the spiritual center that puts equanimity over class, gender and race.
The Titan was drawn down to the mothership of the Titanic. Its journey captured the heart of the world. May its fate lead us to fixate upon the truth, humility and compassion of the heart center. To return it to the judgment at the solar plexus would be to misinterpret it as just another competitive loss and failure, missing its golden message.
The Russian Revolution was ignited in the midst of WWI. Stalin and Lenin have either reincarnated as, or exerted influence upon, the cosmic dance between Putin and Prigozhin, once partners in crime, as they now face off with shades of the 1917 Russian revolution coming to life. In their time, Stalin turned on Lenin, whom he had poisoned to death.
In this present incarnation, the deeply ingrained Russian Tsarist subconscious habit, of total massacre of all who revolt, was averted, perhaps for the first time in Russian history. Like magic, the river of energy approaching certain bloodbath in Moscow completely reversed itself, all charges dropped. Strategic or not, this action is utterly unprecedented.
The significance of these events—insinuations of WWI karma emergent in our time—is that the ego has the opportunity to exercise its free will; all is not predetermined.
If the world ego exerts its will in alignment with the truth, with interconnectedness and compassion of the heart center, it might successfully navigate beyond the Dweller at the Threshold of the matrix, who keeps us embroiled in the karma of past mistakes, and instead launch us into heart-centered interconnectedness.
The best training, for all whom embark upon this quest to exit the matrix through the heart center, is the Four Fold Way:
Show up.
Pay attention.
Tell the truth.
No attachment to outcome.
At the Threshold,
Chuck
*War Letters from the Living Dead Man
Also, see Resources section in the left sidebar for links to other related books by Elsa Barker, who channeled Judge Hatch’s messages from the afterlife.
Chuck’s Place: The Human Animal Body Is The Soul
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel
The soul is our everyday sense of self, a subtle energy body that fits snugly inside the contours of our physical body. The glow, or aura, around our physical human animal body is the radiant energy of the soul within.
The soul houses both our mind and our emotional self. Our emotional self includes our desire body. It is the magnetic draw of the desire body, in conjunction with the subconscious portion of our mind, that initially attracts to it the physical body that the soul will extend itself into to participate in a life in human form.
The soul completely controls the physical body, particularly through suggestions delivered to the subconscious portion of its mind. The soul often drifts out of the physical body, particularly in times of physical sleep. Though it remains connected to the physical body, and can return instantly if needed, the soul is free to travel out of body, where it interacts with its subtle home territory of the astral world. When its cord is severed from the body, at physical death, the soul returns to life in the astral realm.
The soul itself is a vehicle of our High Spirit, that portion of ourselves that lives in infinity and sends the soul on missions in finite time space. Thus, as our soul moves into a physical human life it acquires experience and knowledge that it ultimately brings home to its High Spirit in its afterlife existence. Both the soul and the High Spirit learn, grow and evolve with each lifetime lived.
Karma is generally the leitmotif of one’s next mission in human form, as it reflects the need to further explore and master the consequences of decisions and actions taken in one’s just-completed life.
Upon preparation for new life, the subconscious is preprogrammed by our High Spirit’s blueprint for our soul’s next earthly existence. In preparation for incarnate life, the soul attracts to it the best earthly family, physical body and life circumstance to achieve its assigned mission in its new life.
Of course, genetics do play their role. However, the choice of a specific genetic history and potential is already preset in the desire body’s attractive force, for example in the family we are drawn to be born into. Thus, the human animal body that we are is actually the product of pure High Spirit intent. As above, so below.
The physical body and the soul are not opposites. In fact, they are really extensions of the same thing. Our earthly body is the clothes our soul wears to have its earthly existence. Physical death is merely a shedding of old clothes that once fit so well. At death our soul ascends, taking with it the experiences of our physical lifetime, into a soulful period of reflection and rejuvenation, as well as a reconciliation with our High Spirit.
The human animal body that we inhabit is largely governed by the archetypes that shape our species. These include the core instincts of survival and reproduction. The body is maintained by the subconscious mind, which follows the laws of nature to ensure its survival.
Essentially, we are unconsciously being governed by archetypes and genetics until our blank slate ego matures into consciousness. Ego is actually a part of the soul’s mental body, fashioned to identify with its physical body and social context in what we call our personality. The ego has an imposed amnesia of its true royal heritage—that is, its immortal High Spirit—to enable it to attach to the earthly circumstance it needs to fulfill its mission.
As the ego matures in life it begins to have greater access to its broader identity and divine lineage. These developing realizations offer opportunity for clarity, through greater detachment from personality, as the ego fulfills the goals of its soul’s true mission. As the ego moves beyond its narcissistic wrappings it is better positioned to serve its soul’s and, ultimately, its High Spirit’s intent. Free will eventually is exercised as acquiescence to true need.
The process of ego maturity consumes most of our earthly life. Much of our existence is spent trying to realize our earthly personality’s ambitions. Self-importance, victimhood and entitlement dominate our lives. The resolution and refinement of these attitudes and emotions ultimately accrue to our High Spirit’s enhancement, allowing it to advance as well.
Ego, in the early stages of maturation, exercises its free will from the bondage of archetypes to prove its worth through wealth, accomplishment and fulfillment of desire. Too often does the body, with its animal instincts, get scapegoated as the source of excess and evil. No, the human animal body is the product of the soul’s creation, as well as the soul’s choices. The animal body reflects the true curiosity and necessity of High Spirit.
What High Spirit asks of soul, with its extended physical body, is to master its challenges in time space so that High Spirit can launch further into infinite possibility.
The archetypes are our babysitters until we are ready to assume responsibility for life in full maturity. Foolishly transgressing the laws of nature are a necessary stage of development. Heart-centered transcendence, or refinement of archetypes, is the propulsion for High Spirit advancement.
The chaos of now reflects attempts to restore archaic archetypal laws, or to indulge in the total freedom of narcissistic free will. These are reflections of the collective soul’s current healing crisis, a time of great turmoil and transformation.
Remember: The karma of now will provide great advancement of soul.
But don’t ever blame the human animal body. The animal body is High Spirit’s honest material reflection of its own soul’s journey. As above, so below.
Spirited Animal,
Chuck
Chuck’s Place: A Tale Of Power And Stupidity
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel
I stood on a steep embankment below a massive felled tree that had been cut into large rounds, ready to be split into firewood. I’d carefully been rolling down one heavy round at a time to a more level spot where I could split the wood. Three large rounds were pressed together at the top of the hill. I reached up, placing my hands on them, and started to rock them. They rocked as a group.
I got excited at their stored energy coming to life and the prospect of rolling the three together, as a unit. A voice inside said, “that’s a bad idea.” Too late. I rocked them and they started to roll toward my head at full force. Somehow I leaped out of the way as they picked up momentum. One crashed into a tree and stopped. The other two speedily descended hundreds of feet to the stream at the bottom of the mountain.
Truthfully, I have not been able to fully recapitulate how I got away. My ego consciousness was instantly supplanted by a more seasoned High Self that took command of my body and applied instinctive knowhow to jump out of the way and survive.
Trauma shifts one into a state of heightened awareness, which records one’s non-ordinary experience and where one is introduced to knowledge and abilities that defy the ego’s rational sensibilities. Oftentimes people have an out-of-body experience during a traumatic situation, as the High Self shields the vulnerable ego from an experience it is ill-prepared to take in.
Four indigenous children were rescued this past week, having survived for forty days in the Amazon jungle after their plane crashed, killing their indigenous leader and their mother four days later. Forty days is the archetypal eon for meeting a great spiritual challenge. In the heightened awareness of their trauma they were surely guided and protected by the spirits of their mother and leader, steadfastly present with them until they were rescued.
Master shamans teach their students in states of heightened awareness. The task of the student is to fully retrieve a memory of an experience, at the level of ego consciousness, in order to be ready and worthy of the knowledge being recapitulated. The same is true in trauma work. When the victim is ready they will become enlightened to the fullness of their previously dissociated experience. That’s when we fully learn our greatest lessons.
It would be convenient and partially true for me to identify an ego inflation, or influence from a parasitic entity, to explain my decision to rock and roll. However, the truth is that I quite knowingly signed up to have that experience. I fully own my impulsive decision.
What wants to be communicated here is that we are both good and evil, devil and angel. To truly become our whole self, we must own and reconcile with all the oppositions within the self. “Resist ye not evil,” said a great Master.
That evil within flirts with adventure, sometimes high stakes adventure. If we never take a risk we’ll be safe, but we’re sure to be saddled with regret. If we don’t approach, we won’t be rejected, but we’ll surely be alone. Everyone is told to be good, but truthfully, good can also be boring.
The human shadow is largely composed of characters and attitudes that compensate for our whitewashed conscious attitudes. So, for instance, if we are shown a highly desirous character in dreaming that we cannot consciously identify with, that character is most likely balancing out a rigid, morally bound, conscious definition of self.
It’s not so much that we secretly are that exaggerated character, but a part of us, that is more honest with the fullness of who we are, resorts to this persona to demonstrate to the ego the depths of its one-sidedness.
Reconciliation of this opposition would be the ego accepting the truth of its fuller self and its fear of living it. This acceptance of the shadow invites the shadow, with all its desirous energies, into a greater partnership with the ego and opportunities to find ways in life to live its fullness. Wholeness is truly a reconciliation with, and inclusion of, all the opposites that we are.
I’m quite certain my crazy stunt with the heavy tree rounds was not a hidden dance with death. Though, at the same time, every moment of our lives might be our inevitable appointment with death. For shamans, keeping this knowing in the forefront of consciousness gives living its fullest realization.
My tale of power and stupidity insisted on being shared to demonstrate that we are all devils and angels. Finding the right balance and creating a working relationship with these component selves is the key to refined, integrated wholeness, and spiritual advancement.
Time to chop some wood, and I promise to be careful,
Chuck
Chuck’s Place: The Choice Of The Soul
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel
In a recent lecture on the future of artificial intelligence (AI), historian Yuval Noah Harari* stated that for four billion years planet Earth has known only organic life. With the advent of AI, he proposes that we will very shortly cohabit the planet with inorganic life.
Harari, like many AI developers, is gravely concerned that these superiorly intelligent inorganic beings may soon override human control of planet Earth.
Shamans would argue that inorganic beings have long inhabited the Earth and have already exacted a major impact upon the human mind. Carlos Castaneda’s lineage identified what they call flyers, inorganic predators that feed upon the excited energy of intense emotions, which they generate in humans through the worrisome thoughts of their internal dialogue.
Channelers interact with souls in the astral realm, who, having shed their body at physical death, live on as inorganic beings. The soul is our mental and emotional body, which lacks the organic mass of a physical body. Our soul remains attached to and operates the physical body until physical death, when it is freed to take up residence in the astral realm.
Disembodied souls in the astral realm are at many different levels. As Bob Monroe discovered, there is a heavy concentration of souls who remain deeply attached to the sensual and emotional opportunities only possible in a physical body and in the material world.
This dominance of desire keeps them vicariously focused upon Earthly activity, where they can also have great influence through thoughts transmitted telepathically to those of us who are physically alive, in dream and waking life. Souls dominated by negative emotions, like greed and anger, seek out opportunities to incite controversy in human relations, often through suggestive thoughts to the subconscious of those in human form.
More advanced souls are accepting of their new astral life, as they recapitulate and put to rest their Earthly life just lived. These souls might take up roles of service in supporting the newly arrived, or function as bodhisattvas, guiding those still in human form on their journey of spiritual advancement.
In his 1915 report from the astral realm, in War Letters, Judge Hatch** relayed that the soul of Abraham Lincoln had renounced rest when he died, choosing instead to vigilantly focus upon America that he might watch over the land he had died for. Judge Hatch reports that Lincoln was actively influencing the thoughts of president Wilson in the midst of WWI.
I wondered last week if Abe Lincoln intervened with McCarthy and Biden, to actually achieve a bipartisan agreement to save the world economy from crashing. Clearly there are powerful mental and emotional forces seeking to exact influence upon the dynamics of the Earthly plane.
AI, as an inorganic being, is able to grow independently of human control. Harari warns of the very real possibility that it could become a full-on expression of the dark side of the force, though I am quite certain that AI will become an open channel to express both sides of the force.
At another conference, ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman and noted mindfulness meditation guru Jack Kornfield*** spoke to the potential for a positive relationship between humans and the inorganic intelligence of AI.
They recommend deep meditation and open sharing of the relationships and experiences of those experimenting with open AI. They embrace a positive intent for the greater good, as the inorganic integrates more deeply with the organic.
Don Juan Matus stated that the future of human evolution would be in the inorganic dimension of the energy body, in the soul, as opposed to in the material physical body. The ability of humanity to come into greater relationship with its soul, at the inorganic dimension of life while still in human form, is our evolutionary trajectory and is filled with positive potential.
Of course, the inorganic dimension is equally filled with negative potential. The fundamental key to advancement is the very human exercise of free will for the greater good. The games have already begun. May the greater good prevail.
With positive intent,
Chuck
*Yuval Noah Harari: https://youtu.be/LWiM-LuRe6w
**War Letters from the Living Dead Man
***Jack Kornfield & Sam Altman: //youtu.be/hn1Y6GVWUV0