Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

The interconnectedness of now presupposes a relationship among all who currently inhabit the world stage. Why have we all chosen to be part of this time, with the unique challenges and opportunities of now? I imagine that our various incarnations have perfectly fitted us to come together for this particular world play. As always, the Christmas vignette gives us pause to step out of role and acknowledge our deeper connection.

To awaken to our deeper reality while we perform, impeccably, our parts in the story of our time, is the real challenge and the real opportunity of now. We used to need the jolt of death to awaken us, where all that seemed so meaningful but a moment before dissolved under the impact of the lifting of the veils. However, in our time, in our play, we can awaken without death; we can jolt ourselves awake to perform in a truthful play.

We woke up to elect Obama. Then, we went back to sleep and he went back to sleep. He is slipping into the Clinton formula: pacify capital under the appearance of progress. We, the populous, sit in our seats, laughing or cringing, as we watch heavily funded and poorly-acted delusional skits of tea parties, town meetings, congressional speeches, Glenn Becks, and Sarah Palins. We listen to another speech to defend our freedom with fresh troops going to Afghanistan (or was it Iraq or Korea or Vietnam?) and simply yawn. I tell you, that play is so boring, so played out, it really is a dud. Nonetheless, Obama, Director, Commander-in-chief, has chosen not to alter the play.

It looks like capital will prevail with the health care bill as well, under the veil of reform, another dud. This play is quickly slipping into the old formula, but I don’t despair. We woke up to elect Obama and I think he will eventually wake up and direct an honest reality play. (Honest Abe is his role model after all.) That’s where I direct my energetic intent. That’s our collective challenge now: to direct our energetic intent to perform in a truthful reality play.

We must be impeccable in this intent in order to advance our evolutionary potential but, at the same time, we must remain detached. After all, it’s just a play. Whether you play the hero or the villain, when the gig is up you step out of role into new life, new causes, with new roles to play. Detachment, with impeccability of performance, keeps a foot in two worlds at once, allows for a lightness of being, as we unburden ourselves of the heaviness of getting too attached and too serious about this reality. After all, it is only a play. The real possibility of our time is to participate in a different reality play, a play without veils that aligns with the truth.

This is what our many journeys through infinity have led us all to. This is why we share the stage together at this time. We are challenged with a collective recapitulation. Can we face the real truths of history and unburden ourselves of the pain and lies that construct our phony plays? Can we lift the veils in this world and open to the greater world of energetic interconnectedness, wide awake?

I say, yes! I say, we are all performers in the hottest new hit on Broadway: The Great Awakening!

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

I was named Charles at birth after my maternal grandfather, a powerful man of boundless energy and spirit. Charles was a successful banker, a self-made and self-educated man, a staunch Republican and capitalist. His energy and spirit live on in me but, from my earliest memories, I firmly rejected the heaviness and adultness of his name, Charles. I softened it to Chuck and have insisted upon that name to this day. What hasn’t escaped me, however, is the synchronicity of my adult life being driven by the discoveries and practices of two other “Charleses,” Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda.

I was introduced to their works in my teenage years and they have never ceased to guide and inform my adult life. The intent of my life is truth. These two men shared that intent and paved the way for others to discover their own deepest truths. Recently, a reader told me that my writing was starting to lose her, as it favored too much the description of shamanic practices. This coincided with my opening Jung’s The Red Book, realizing that it was time to delve deeper into his journey. What I have come to realize is that my role in this life seems to be the integration of Carl and Carlos.

I remember a dear friend and prominent Jungian analyst once telling me that he had read Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming and found it to be “worthless, total nonsense.” At that time I was already deeply immersed in the shamanic practices being offered by Carlos in Tensegrity workshops and was experiencing powerful new truths. This was not an intellectual affair nor was it the trickery of a charismatic shadow leader. This was personal experience, deep inner experience.

Today, as I pick up The Red Book, where Jung’s inner process is finally revealed, upon which the foundation of modern psychology rests, what we discover is a man talking to his soul, and, his soul talking back! This is not an intellectual affair nor a psychotic process, but a true journey of knowledge rooted in deep personal experience. This journey required “guts of steel,” as don Juan stated to Carlos, as the requirement for taking the shamanic journey to become “a man of knowledge.” Truly, Jung took the shamanic journey.

For me, the shamanic world and depth psychology are parallel paths to self-knowledge and evolution, each offering valuable tools for the journey. Yesterday, in Message # 617, Jeanne and Jan spoke of channeling and noted the similarity of guidance offered by many channeled entities. For those who channel, their lives are transformed by the guidance they are challenged to integrate, a true journey into another world. What we discover in Jung’s The Red Book is his own transformation, effected by his own channeled encounters with entities who proposed knowledge that he was compelled to explore and ultimately integrate into his understanding of the nature of reality. As we sat and watched the film Tuning In, I couldn’t help but note the entities use of “Jungian words,” such as shadow, synchronicity, and archetype. These were all concepts that emerged from Jung’s conversations with his soul.

Equally, the channelers speak of our ability to experience infinity, now. This is the shamanic journey, the tools of which require finding one’s energy body, fully achievable through the techniques that Carlos passed along in Magical Passes and that Carl introduced in the process of active imagination. Both Carl and Carlos insisted that real knowledge can only be achieved through a personal experiential process.

True to my namesakes, I engage in an experiential process and attempt to make accessible the valuable tools of both Carl and Carlos, in taking the inner journey. This inner journey is the most meaningful process anyone can undertake, as stressed by the channelers in Tuning In, in Jeanne’s messages, and by the expression of Jung’s inner work in The Red Book and by the works of Carlos Castaneda. If I were to characterize my synthesis of this week’s synchronicities, I would put it like this: Tuning In to The Red Book is The Art of Dreaming.

I close this blog with one final synchronicity. I open The Red Book to this quote on page 233:

“I am weary, my soul, my wandering has lasted too long, my search for myself outside of myself. Now I have gone through events and find you behind all of them. For I made discoveries on my erring through events, humanity, and the world. I found men. And you, my soul, I found again, first in images within men and then you yourself. I found you where I least expected you. You climbed out of a dark shaft.”

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

December ninth marks the eighth anniversary of Jeanne’s transition into the fullness of her energy body, in infinity. I have never wavered in my emotional reaction to her death, though I feel deeply the sadness of our children who lost their earthly mother before they themselves reached adulthood. I still find deep contentment at having successfully guarded Jeanne’s intent in this world up to her final decision of when to leave. Since then I have allowed myself to participate in an evolutionary journey of love beyond the personal.

I am most thankful, though not surprised, that Jeanne found a way to turn her attention back to this world, as we had intended, if at all possible. After her death, as she united with the fullness of her lives and loves through many journeys in this world, she chose to open the channel back to our journey together and share her ongoing lessons in infinity. Sometimes I am simply spellbound at her ability to still mother her children. Today, I reflect upon my experiences of, and personal transformation through, these lessons.

I love; I love deeply, but I am no longer attached to the specialness or the possessiveness of love. Had I not learned this lesson the door to a continued relationship with the evolved Jeanne would have remained closed. This is the challenge of death. If we cling to the specialness of what we had we can’t go forward in an evolving relationship.

My family now is far more comprehensive. It is the family of energy, with no special distinctions, no special advantages. I travel with those with whom there is resonance and connection because it is energetically right, not for reasons of self-interest. I have learned, over time, to clarify and understand and not dismiss non-resonant energy, to respect its purpose in our energetic family. The energy I flow with is of an evolutionary bend, as if the head of a fish is the resonant energy, while all energy is included in the body of the fish. The rear of the fish is as significant as the head. It is evident that many in the world today are resonant with this evolutionary energy that seeks a dramatic shift.

I live a life of evolutionary change. I totally trust energy. In my career I seek no advantage. I push not to make connections, to market, to manipulate, to survive and prosper through winning or being special. I will not enter any agreements of self-promotion. I trust that my intent to be aligned with evolutionary energy will provide. This has been proven in the signs and guidance I have received and the decisions I have made based on my reading of these synchronicities. I constantly refuse the urging of the old ways to take advantage. I am certain that our next global state of evolution transcends markets, consumers, accumulation, and unfair advantage. For me, it’s all energy; reading it and acting in the right alignment versus reading it to get rich. What this boils down to is decision making that is right, not decision making that seeks only personal gain, turning a blind eye to the needs of the whole.

We are all interconnected. In order for there to be global advancement, self-interest must expand to include the greater self, the world. The old paradigm of Us against Them is so played out. I must admit, though my love for Obama is deep, and I wanted it to be different, the truth is, this old story was putting the cadets to sleep this week as Obama spoke at West Point. Why couldn’t Obama have watched Joan Baez on PBS’s American Masters series before he made his decision? Joan, the Quaker, walked with Martin Luther King in deeply resonant non-violent revolutionary energy. Obama is the maturation of that energetic dream. Why more troops and CIA drones? We are back in the old boring story of the good and the evil ones, completely separate entities.

The new paradigm truly acknowledges the interconnectedness of all things. If there are terrorists, and there are, then we are connected and part of that terrorism. It is not a separate entity. We are acting in such a way as to create terrorism as a necessary balance, letting the tail lead the fish. We cannot separate ourselves and simply drone out the terrorist extreme. In fact, the more we attempt to obliterate it, the more tenacious we invite its extremist counter reaction.

Can we be courageous enough to reflect upon why the world has come to need terrorists? Can we look inside our own inner truths and see our own deep attachment to self-advantage, self-interest, self-accumulation, and self-comfort at the expense of, and exploitation of, others? Competition is a vital energetic reality but, honestly, when have we ever really played fair? Terrorism both reflects and matches unfair play. If we can embrace a policy of fair play that truly respects the whole fish, we dismantle the compensatory need for terrorism. The real enemy is quite personal. In my view, we all need to examine which self interest we truly serve: our personal wants and desires, those of our immediate family, or those of the greater family of all interconnected energy? To balance that energy and move it forward in a new way now is our evolutionary challenge of survival for this world. The head of the fish must consider the whole fish as it navigates now, or the tail will continue to spin us out of control in its own effort to awaken the head to the needs of the whole.

These are some of the love lessons I have learned as I continue my journey with the evolving Jeanne.

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

Several years ago, at a Tensegrity training in Barcelona we, the practitioners, were assigned to answer, in writing, the question: “Who am I?”. I was sure I had the correct sorcery definition of self: “I am a being who is going to die.” The truth was, however, that I was a being in hiding, terrified to speak a word in this foreign land. My high school Spanish blended with my college German to form a “foreign language,” the same language that comes to me whether in a Spanish speaking or German speaking country. To avoid humiliation my self-importance chose to become mute. In one store I opened my shaking hands filled with change, holding them like a beggar, while the disdainful shopkeeper picked out the appropriate coins for payment of my purchase. In this moment, the tent of my intent was the cloak of the beggar, embodying my fear and shame.

Jan and Jeanne, in Message #606 The Mystery and Magic of Intent, explored the notion of identifying the intent we are attached to and learning to free ourselves from being bound by that intent. Our personal intent creates a tent around us that embodies that intent; we physically become that intent. In Jan’s dream, Carlos Castaneda introduced her to a magical pass to remove this tent of intent as follows:

Removing The Tent of Intent Magical Pass: Imagine that a sheet is draped over your head and your intent is to remove it. Stand with legs slightly bent at the knees, feet comfortably apart. Bending the left arm at the elbow, palm facing up, raise it to the side of the head above the left ear even with the top of the head, elbow pointing straight ahead. Breathing in, hook the sheet with curled fingers and gracefully push it away, with a definite and forceful exhalation, in a downward sweep out to the left, which then rises in a wavelike gesture away from the body ending with left arm fully extended at shoulder level, fingers pointing to the side and palm back. Return arm to left side. Do this on the right side as well. Repeat at least three times.

In shamanistic terms, when we remove the tent of intent we allow for a shift in the assemblage point, a ball of awareness on our luminous body that, depending upon its position, determines how we interpret who we are and the world we live in. However slight that shift, we become a being unfamiliar to ourselves. With that shift our body changes, our thoughts change, our feelings change, our “issues” change, time changes. We step out of the familiar into new possibility, perhaps for a moment, like a deja vu experience, or permanently, a new being.

Sorcerers have many techniques to remove the tent of intent. They propose that the number one reason we remain familiar, ad nauseam, to ourselves, is our incessant internal dialogue that constantly tells us what we think, what we feel, who we are, and how to act, which we then obligingly manifest in our bodies. This creates the tent of our intent. Shamans would argue that we unconsciously perform self-hypnosis all the time to maintain a consistently familiar sense of self. One exception is in dreaming where the tent of our intent is automatically lifted as the assemblage point is dislodged from its habitual position. This is why shamans place a premium on learning The Art of Dreaming, taught in Carlos Castaneda’s book of the same name. To counter the incessant internal dialogue shamans employ practices to achieve a state of Inner Silence. A set of magical passes for inner silence can be found in Carlos Castaneda’s book Magical Passes.

Another sorcery method to remove the tent of intent is the practice of Not Doings. Not doings are behaviors individually selected to interrupt the energetic flow of habitual patterns. For instance, wearing two different shoes, two different socks, underwear turned backwards, or creating an OCD ritual for a day all serve to disrupt the typical self-hypnotic suggestions that we normally operate under to embody our familiar sense of self. Sorcerers embark on more extended not doings in a practice they call Stalking, where they literally embody the habits and behaviors of an unfamiliar personality, freeing themselves from their familiar selves, going so far as to actually change their names and live as new characters, a kind of improvisation gone semi-permanent. This volitional interruption of the habitual energetic flow of the self develops the ability to fluidly remove one’s tent of intent. I would add to these practices the use of conscious self-hypnosis to disrupt the flow of unconscious self-hypnosis. Create your personal mantra, state it incessantly, like saying an unending rosary. Watch what happens!

Shamans and physicists tell us that all things are connected. The thesis of The Holographic Universe, as presented by Michael Talbot in his book of the same name, suggests that infinity exists, all things exist, in every grain of sand. Everything that exists, exists in you and in me. What is it then that gives us definition, our tent of intent? I believe don Juan’s answer to this question would be our predilection, our personal preferences. In other words, what tent of intent do we choose, perhaps forsaking all others, though with fluidity we have access to them all. If we are able to remove the tent of intent we are free to explore and embody infinite possibility, or simply change.

If today I were asked the same question that was posed in Barcelona (Who am I?) my response would be: I am a being intent upon becoming unfamiliar to myself, intent upon removing the tent of intent.

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

NOTE: The books mentioned in this article are available in our Store. This is not a sales pitch, simply a convenient link.

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

The good news is this: when shamans view the energetic state of human beings they see the big baby as an inevitable consequence of our human predicament. In other words: IT IS NOT OUR FAULT. IT IS BEYOND OUR CONTROL.

Shamans observe that we enter life with a high sheen surrounding our energetic cocoon. Shamans call this sheen our glow of awareness. Shamans have discovered that this energetic glow is food for inorganic beings, which are self-contained energetic entities that lack physical form; hence remain unseen by human eyes. Shamans call these specific inorganic beings, that prey upon the human glow of awareness, flyers, due to their energetic form and behaviors.

Shamans observe that flyers actually feed upon the glow of awareness of all human beings. Shamans maintain that the universe is predatory. If we reflect upon our own feeding behaviors, or that of all life forms on earth, we can see this same predatory principle in action: life feeds upon life. As grotesque as it is, why would we humans be exempt from serving as a food source for another form of life?

Shamans observe that without our glow of awareness we die. Furthermore, they observe that if we lose some of our glow it does indeed grow back. Flyers are careful, when they feed, to leave enough of our glow on our energetic cocoon so that it will grow back for future feeding. Through this method of “sustainable agriculture” they are assured a replenished food source.

Shamans state that flyers leave the glow of awareness in tact from the level of the ground up to the toes; this is the epicenter of self-reflection; this fixation of awareness at ground level creates the big baby. The big baby simply cannot see beyond itself. It is caught in self-neediness, self-pity, self-survival, self-importance, and its entitlement to be given recognition, value, care, love, and attention from without. Don Juan states that when caught in self-reflection we become easily offended, causing emotional embroilments that result in spikes in our glow of awareness that the flyers, in turn, consume. Don Juan instructed Carlos Castaneda to observe carefully the behavior of seemingly mature adults whom he admired, for instance, certain professors. Carlos discovered that behind the veil of maturity was a well-hidden insatiable self-importance, greedily seeking the admiration of all.

The good news, from the shamanic world, is that this human predicament is correctable. Shamans discovered that if we can break our attachment to the tyranny of the big baby’s perspective, that of self-reflection, etc., our growing glow of awareness changes texture, whereby it becomes distasteful to the flyers palate and they leave us alone. We are then able to restore our full glow of awareness around our energetic cocoon, freeing us from the limitations of self-reflection.

Through the centuries, shamans have devised methods to achieve this detachment from the big baby. One major venue of great relevance and accessibility, in our time, is focusing on our relationships with the petty tyrants in our lives. In general terms, a petty tyrant is anyone or anything that triggers our self-reflection in the form of the experience of feeling offended. This could be a person who refuses to acknowledge us or care about us despite their vows, or someone who blatantly violates us. This could also be a life circumstance, such as poverty or disease that we simply don’t deserve. Behind all offense is a blow to our self-importance: Why me? Being emotionally embroiled in the experience of being offended becomes the perfect opportunity to learn detachment. Shamans would call detachment arriving at a place of no pity, no self-pity, while caught by the “offensive behavior” of a petty tyrant. By arriving at a place of no self-pity in an interaction with a petty tyrant, who is indeed subtly or blatantly violating us, frees us from the self-reflective perspective of the big baby. We simply don’t take it personally.

This does not mean that we must turn the other cheek and allow ourselves to be hurt. However, we can free our defensive actions from the offended place of abuse and victimhood, shift to an objective perspective, and take appropriate action. Simply put, this means not taking the behavior of the petty tyrant personally, no matter how personally directed it is. From this perspective we can see the interrelationship of all things, which includes the petty tyrant as necessary, as both a dark force and as a teacher. After all, success in detachment from the big baby when encountering the petty tyrant frees our glow of awareness, enabling it to restore to its natural state, allowing us a much broader perspective of life.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of this detachment is a newfound ability to truly love. To love another requires going beyond the fixation of self-reflection, the big baby. I repeat: detachment is the highest form of love. Until we can fully detach from the self, we are not available to see, be with, or give to another without some level, however hidden, of self-interest.

Learning to detach from the big baby allows us unconditional compassion for all. We see the connection between the self and all things. Our glow of awareness, fully restored, is now capable of truly engaging the world beyond the self.

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck