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: Facing Oncoming Time & Recapitulation

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In his book The Art of Navigation Felix Wolf shares the following anecdote from Carlos Castaneda.

“The Nagual always maintained that the average man traveled through life in the caboose, always looking back, always keenly aware of his personal history, his experiences, and his identity as an accumulation of the past. It was one of his favorite analogies. A warrior who wants to become a man of knowledge, however, has to turn around and face life as it unfolds in front of him. Instead of facing receding time he has to face oncoming time, as he put it. Life in the caboose versus life in the engine.” (From page 60. *)

Isn’t the shamanic practice of recapitulation in fact living in the past, the exact opposite of facing oncoming time? Is there not a contradiction here? Doesn’t recapitulation strap us firmly to a seat in the caboose with a view out the back window, at life that has already passed us by? What about total presence in the NOW, the coveted goal Carlos describes as being seated in the engine, directly perceiving oncoming time, engaging life to the fullest? To answer these questions and resolve this seeming paradox we must first explore what it takes to truly live life in the moment.

Both the seers of ancient Mexico and the Buddhists place a premium on reaching a state of inner silence to become mindful, fully aware and present in the NOW. Toward that end Buddhist masters prescribe the practice of meditation where we learn to quiet our restless hearts and become keen observers of all that presents. The molding of this observing self that allows life to be known directly, without the interference of the thinking, judging mind, prepares us to be innocently present in the moment, freed of the cogitations of the mind that interprets versus lives in the moment. Achieving detachment from the ceaseless internal dialogue of the mind is certainly a major component of mindfulness. Like the Buddhists, the seers of ancient Mexico employ their own active meditation practice of magical passes to achieve this coveted state.

Another major component of mindfulness is access to a fully integrated self. How can we be fully present if parts of who we are remain fragmented, unknown and tucked away in the luggage compartment of the self? Furthermore, the legacy of our hidden baggage is the burden it places on life in the present. For instance, if we carry deep wounds of loss, abandonment, negligence, and violation, we will surely be limited in opening to all that life invites us to in the present moment. Recapitulation is the shamanic practice that frees us from these limitations and fully unites the self to be present in the NOW.

In recapitulation we allow ourselves to be taken on a train ride to all the stations of life already lived. We arrive at each of these old stations with our present self keenly observing, taking the journey with our younger self that has been stranded at the station, frozen in time. Our present self opens to the full experience of our younger self, and thereby faces fully the confusion and struggle that once froze our younger self. Often we discover in recapitulation that our younger self was forced to leave its body under the impact of overwhelming trauma and hence the full truth of that moment was never consolidated and made real. In recapitulation the full truth of the past becomes known, allowing its burdens to be released. The energy and innocence of the younger self is freed and united with the present self, firmly seated in the engine, facing oncoming time.

Part of what we encounter as we face oncoming time are triggers that take us out of the present moment. Meditation can help us to remain present in spite of a trigger, but it can’t help us to fully open to the moment if the trigger signifies a lost, frozen part of the self. Life often places triggers in our path to awaken us to discover our lost selves. We cannot simply transcend our triggers and fully open to life without recapitulating the truth that lies behind the trigger. We must be open to completing all our journeys, especially the train wrecks buried deeply within the self if we are ever to be fully available to life in the NOW.

Recapitulation, then, is actually a major component of being able to face oncoming time. Freed from the past we can allow life to approach us with all that it offers, unfiltered, without limitation. From this vantage point, firmly seated in the engine, we can read clearly the signs and synchronicities life presents us with to guide our evolutionary journeys, in infinity—NOW!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

* NOTE: The book mentioned in this blog is available through our Store listed under the category of Shamanism.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Recapitulation & Beyond

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There are many worlds awaiting our discovery, but first we must discover those closest to home, inside the self, in the body. Discovering a new world requires breaking through a barrier of perception formed by walls of the familiar world we’ve come to know and love, or hate, but in either case cling to, for the comfort of the known, the consistent, the people we can count on, the things our sanity and security can safely rest upon.

When we encounter a trigger we are really being offered an invitation to discover a new world, close to home. Triggers are ushers, potential awakenings, stirrings from the Spirit to explore beyond our known world. This is the journey of recapitulation.

To leave the world of the known is always a challenging affair. We are confronted with having to assemble the details of this unknown frontier into a graspable world. Then the challenge is to remain cohesively in it, allowing ourselves to experience the reality and full truth of it. Ultimately we are challenged with merging the world of everyday life with that of our newly discovered experiences.

When, for instance, we turn our awareness to sensations or pains in our body, and suspend the familiar judgments of the known world that identifies them as indigestion, infection, or muscle fatigue, our body might suddenly be ushered into the memory of another time and place filled with frightening images, powerful emotions and painful sensations. Can we allow ourselves to stay in that world and discover the full story or will the energy of this encounter be so overpowering that we quickly shut it down and return to the security of the known world, dismissing the journey as but a strange daydream? So powerful is the pull to stay confined within the familiar walls of everyday life that we may not only never discover the fullness of who we are and where we’ve been, but we may never tap into the fullness of our potential, the world where everything is possible.

When we shift worlds and remain cohesively in them we discover hidden treasures. In recapitulation we reunite with lost worlds of the self. Beyond recapitulation we tap into the magical potential of the self. In The Second Ring of Power on page 106, Carlos Castaneda asks don Juan how he might help a mortally ill dear friend in the hospital. Don Juan replies:

“…You can cure her and make her walk out of that death trap,” he said.

“How?” I asked him.

“It’s a very simple procedure,” he said. “All you have to do is remind her that she’s an incurable patient. Since she’s a terminal case she has power. She has nothing to lose anymore. She lost everything already. When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can cling to.”

Don Juan offers advice to free this woman from her attachment to this world, and her disease, using the boost of her pending death as a catalyst to enter another world where everything is possible, where she has the potential to completely heal.

Once we have learned the art of shifting into other worlds—through recapitulating and discovering the magic of the unknown self—and are able to maintain cohesion in those worlds, we are further freed to explore infinity. Ultimately, the treasures and magic we uncover and integrate, as we follow our triggers and ushers into unknown worlds, provide the skills that enable us to volitionally travel freely into ever-new awakenings in infinity.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#734 Chuck’s Place: Meeting Fate: The Seers, Job & Jeanne

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I open The Wheel of Time and land on page 120:

“A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.”

Actually, I’m soon to go into session and want to quickly research a motif of relevance for this next session. I open The Oxford Companion to World Mythology and my eyes land on Job. Job, perhaps God’s most loyal servant, is stripped of family, possessions, and health. Job asks God to appear to him in a form he can handle, to discuss his confusion over his fate. Instead God appears as a terrifying whirlwind and chastises Job for questioning God’s decision making. The lesson: God’s will is independent; humanity’s will has nothing to do with the matter.

I ponder the relationship between these two readings. I come to acceptance and acquiescence. We are who we are. For the seers of ancient Mexico the message is: see clearly what you are and spend no energy bemoaning your fate. For Job, accept that you are subject to the will of God. That will is impersonal, don’t take it personally: accept that you cannot change your fate.

Jung pointed out many times that nature is not democratic; nature is not fair. This was Job’s lesson: being good guarantees nothing. One of Jeanne’s deepest challenges in her cancer journey was to face the fact that, in spite of her impeccability, cancer was relentless.

This left her in Job’s position, resenting how her impeccability had no influence upon her fate. Ultimately, she achieved detachment toward her fate and asked the question: What is the challenge my fate presents me with? This is the seer’s wisdom: face the truth of where you are and take on the challenge of it.

For Jeanne that challenge was to break all attachment to self-importance. Her impeccability had served as a life long shield from her deepest issue, abandonment. That shield had been so powerful that only an agent such as cancer was able to break through it and lead her to completion.

From the point of view of a humanity bent on a healthy life without end, this explanation is absurd and irrational. But as Job was forced to face, there are greater wills present in our lives that, from a human perspective, might make no sense yet may be serving our deepest spiritual and evolutionary needs.

The seer’s advice is critical here: accept your lot with deep humility; waste no energy on regret, instead turn it toward meeting the challenge, wherever that leads; it’s what you need to find fulfillment. Incidentally, in the end, God restored everything that Job had lost. Job’s fulfillment required total acquiescence to his fate. When we learn the lessons we need to learn or discover the truths we need to discover, fate takes us in new directions, presenting new challenges.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#732 Chuck’s Place: Repetition

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The seers of ancient Mexico state that the only barrier between this world and infinity is the internal dialogue. The internal dialogue is the incessant conversation that plays in our heads from the moment of waking to the moment of sleeping. These inner conversations continuously tell us who we are and interpret, non-stop, the events and people around us. With our attention so fixated and monopolized by these inner conversations, we are hardly available to perceive or experience anything outside the world this internal dialogue generates.

The seers of ancient Mexico describe dreaming as a time when we are naturally freed of the internal dialogue and, as a result, journey into other worlds or other potential realms of experience. Those seers cultivate this natural phenomenon into a conscious art of dreaming where they volitionally journey into infinity.

Other traditions such as Yoga and Buddhism have discovered similar pathways to exploring infinity by achieving inner silence in meditation. Though deeply attracted to the value of these esoteric traditions, most Westerners experience considerable difficulty engaging in these practices. Perhaps it is the added burden we Westerners encounter at every nook and cranny of our existence—the external dialogue constantly telling and selling us on who we are, what we need, what’s new, what’s best and, most recently, the addition of all the latest news from our friends on Facebook. Is there any Western practice that can lead us to inner silence? I propose: Repetition.

When I was a preteen I was abruptly torn out of public junior high school, mid-year, and placed in Sister John Michael’s seventh-grade class at Saint Ignatius Loyola grammar school. Sister John Michael was horrified that I was left-handed but, even worse, that the quality of my handwriting was a dead give-away of demonic influence. For Sister John Michael the most important things in life were presentation and uniformity. I failed at proper lowercase loops on L’s, which I was taught must be clearly differentiated from loopless T’s. Lowercase F’s and P’s must sink below the line at the proper depth and angle, never interfering with subsequent letters on the next line. And of course, all letters must be consistently drawn, clones of each other. Sister John Michael taught me, through shame and fear, but most importantly through repetition: endless pages of letters until I got them right, consistently.

Repetition is a pathway to inner silence. If I mindlessly wrote a page of letters I was sure to receive a scolding, a sentence to blackboard writing after school under the watchful eyes of Sister John Michael, and the insistence that my mother sign my heavily marked up homework filled with red corrections. Hence, repetition must include mindfulness, being fully present versus falling asleep at the wheel of habit as the internal dialogue resumes its incessant chatter.

Don Juan made it clear that setting an intent and the repetition of it is key to harnessing intent. My suggestion to reach inner silence, the gateway to infinity, is to set the intent for inner silence, repeat it incessantly, with mindfulness, whenever it comes to mind: in the shower, walking, going off to sleep, waiting, etc. As with all meditation, attach to no outcome, yet know with certainty that silence will come. Expect nothing, wait with patience; simply repeat: “Inner silence, inner silence, inner silence…”

I send my gratitude to Sister John Michael, wherever she may be, for teaching me this deep shamanic practice of repetition. Unfortunately, I’m not so sure that she’d be proud of my handwriting, which I’m sure she’d still judge to be possessed!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

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#730 Chuck’s Place: Intent & The Left Body

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“The concealed advantage of luminous beings is that they have something which is never used: intent. The maneuver of shamans is the same as the maneuver of the average man. Both have a description of the world. The average man upholds it with his reason; the shaman upholds it with his intent. Both descriptions have their rules; but the advantage of the shaman is that intent is more engulfing than reason.” —From The Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda, page 138.

The seers of ancient Mexico, who view the energetic dimension of human beings, observe two distinct energy patterns, on the left and right side of the body respectively. The energy of the right body moves in a continuous rocking motion. The energy of the left body, in contrast, is more “turbulent and aggressive, moving in undulating ripples and projecting out waves of energy.” —From Magical Passes, page 140.

Those seers also note that the energy of the right body is the dominating force in human beings. The right body energy is rationality; the left body energy is what Carl Jung would call the unconscious. For seers, the left body is both the more comprehensive reservoir of human potential as well as the human door to infinity.

The energy of the left body is accessed in various ways. Carlos Castaneda describes many times how, after a blow on the back from don Juan, he shifted into a state of heightened awareness, opening access to the energy of the left body. In non-shamanic life experience, trauma can force a shift out of body into heightened awareness as well. The peculiarity of heightened awareness is a state of detachment with a heightened ability to focus, understand, and know, at a profound level, as the dominance of rationality is suspended. However, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, heightened awareness suddenly ends with a return to right sided dominance, and all the accrued knowledge and experience of heightened awareness fades and is forgotten. These experiences are nonetheless stored elsewhere in the left body awaiting retrieval. This is a major reason to recapitulate. Recapitulation is an exercise in retrieving stored memory. The functional value of recapitulation is to open the channel to the left body and infinity.

Intent is also linked to left body potential. While the word intent is generally bandied about, full of ego desirousness or right sided control in such expositions as The Secret, intent belongs to the realm of energy and the left body. Intent is beyond ego, beyond reason, beyond the mind.

“Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend, simply by intending it.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, don Juan.”

“Pay close attention. Someday it’ll be your turn to explain. The statement seems nonsensical because you are not putting it in the proper context. Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively the realm of our reason, of our mind.”

“For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending, understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.” —From The Art of Dreaming, page 23.

There is no rationality to intent. If we want something from right sided awareness we develop a plan, employ a strategy, manipulate, and control in order to create an outcome. When you boil it down, that’s simply ego control, not intent.

Intent, from the left side, is a simple intent, stated, sent out—light as a feather—with no attachment. No reason, no control, no manipulation is necessary. A silent knowing that the energy body has received the intent and works its magic is all that is required.

The process of tracking the path of intent is synchronicity: everything is meaningful. Everyone and everything that presents in your life reflects intent in manifestation. Follow it, and be guided by it. Suspend judgment, the dominating influence of the right body, and track instead the meaning and signs of the unfolding events in your life.

These events are the signs of unfolding intent. The challenge becomes one of aligning right sided decisions with unfolding intent. So much energy is consumed by right sided resistance through doubt, fear, indecision, rationality, and, frankly, big baby refusal to take the unfamiliar journey beyond known habit, the rocking chair of right sided energy.

Perhaps our ultimate intent is the one we set from infinity before we entered this world, our reason for being here. That intent persistently presses upon our lives, through the years, seeking to awaken our right sided dominant body to its true mission in the world. In the final analysis, our reason for being in this life is to discover and acquiesce to this core intent; the one set long before the birth of the ego and the right sided human self.

Send your intent to your energy body; see what happens!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

NOTE: The books mentioned in this blog by Carlos Castaneda, and other books, are available through our Store.