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.

Thank you Michael Moore. Not only have you made a movie of supreme importance and relevance to now, but, because you did it so well, I am freed to write about Youthful Folly rather than have to comment on current events that equally attracted my attention this week. We must become real students of the truth of our beloved America. Everyone, go and see Capitalism: A Love Story! Jan suggests that you bring tissues, lots of them. We traveled a bit to view this movie on its opening day. We thought we might enjoy dinner at our favorite city of Poughkeepsie restaurant, The Busy Bee Cafe, only to discover that, like Flint Michigan, Poughkeepsie reveals the true nature of reality in America: our favorite eatery was empty and boarded up! As we traveled north toward home we decided to stop at Sabroso in Rhinebeck, another favorite place, for delicious tapas. They get it right! On to Youthful Folly.

After deep contemplation of a challenge that I have reckoned with for years, I consulted The I Ching for its perspective on how to approach resolution of this issue. I was a bit taken aback, or should I say my ego self was a bit taken aback, by the reading I received: Youthful Folly, hexagram #4.

I have put in a few years in this current lifetime and my ego would like to think that I have accrued enough wisdom to be beyond the level of inexperienced youth. After assuaging my wounded ego I pondered, in earnest, why I had been presented with this reading. It became apparent to me that Youthful Folly is really the hexagram, the archetype, of the eternal student. No matter how far we have come we remain the inexperienced youth as we approach our deepest challenges or the next challenge awaiting us on the horizon. If there were no more challenges our evolutionary journey would cease, the adventure would be over. Some might consider the end of challenge as bliss, heaven, but for me the adventure must continue.

The hexagram of Youthful Folly is built by the trigram of water below, in the form of a spring, rising within the chasm of the mountain, the trigram above. The hexagram offers the image of an inexperienced youth hesitating, in perplexity, on the brink of this dangerous abyss. The I Ching clarifies that folly, in the youth’s hesitation, is not a function of stupidity, but rather that of immaturity and lack of experience. In his translation of The I Ching, Richard Wilhelm suggests the analogy of Parsifal, the virgin knight of King Arthur’s Round Table who bumbles innocently and naively on his quest for the Holy Grail.

The natural images used to depict the dilemma of Youthful Folly also hint at its resolution: as water rises from the spring in the abyss of the mountain it will, ultimately, completely fill the cavity and then, of necessity, move on. The process of the rising water filling every nook and cranny can be equated with Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. In effect, as we tackle a challenge in life, especially our deepest, we find ourselves going round and round, over the same ground, enacting the same habitual patterns, until, one day, we might awaken, ready to flow with the necessary changes to move beyond Groundhog Day into new life, resolved, detached, relieved of the burden of an unsolved challenge. This process may take years, a lifetime, or several lifetimes. We do have free will to live as many groundhog days as we please, but, ultimately, we will flow beyond the abyss. Ultimately, we will accrue enough experiences, learn our lessons, and allow ourselves to let go and flow with the necessary changes.

The I Ching is one of mankind’s oldest sages and consequently offers the sincere student the most expedient method to traverse the abyss. However, to truly benefit from its counsel the student must have the correct attitude. The I Ching warns:

“It is not I who seek the young fool;
The young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle I inform him.
If he asks two or three times, it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information.”
(From the Richard Wilhelm translation, p. 21)

Oracles are living things. Just because they appear static, wholly contained in books or other forms, for centuries, they are not our slaves. If you don’t like your reading and choose to doubt and demand another one, then the oracle responds to the big baby by confounding the coins and delivering an irrelevant response. Hence, The I Ching teaches the student how to be a real student. A real student acknowledges his inexperience and follows the guidance of his teacher. This means relinquishing the inflated ego self and becoming the innocent unknowing child who chooses to explore what is presented.

Do your homework, take action, and see what happens. This does not mean turning over responsibility for one’s journey. However, once one has chosen the right teacher it is time to do the assigned work and discover where it leads. Obsessive questioning and reticence to do the work lead nowhere. Furthermore, each step must be followed, in succession, to completion; no skipping steps allowed, no jumping ahead. ADD is simply not an option here. Discipline the self. Water methodically fills each space, leaving no space unfilled; it is thorough as it rises upward and onward. Be like the rising spring.

The hexagram goes on to offer six more specific points of guidance in the time of the condition of Youthful Folly, which I interpret as follows:

1. Be disciplined. “He who simply plays with life never amounts to anything.” (From the Richard Wilhelm translation, p. 22) Of course, conversely, all work and no play creates the same imbalance, leading to collapse. The mantra here would be: discipline with moderation.

2. Accept that despite the inferiority that you struggle with, which leads to an inability to exert power, your willingness to acknowledge the truth of this inferiority actually empowers you to lead yourself through the learning process, which will ultimately lead to true empowerment. Modesty and perseverance are the operative principles here.

3. Don’t attach to a false persona that portrays mastery, an inflation, masking the underlying inferiority. This does not mean you shouldn’t “fake it till you make it,” but it does insist that you remain aware that faking, in this context, is a task leading to mastery. Don’t believe that you are your persona; know who you are: a student.

4. Don’t deceive yourself with empty imaginings, delusions of specialness, romantic fantasies, and unlimited time. If one attaches to any of these, the teacher will step aside, for a day or a lifetime, as the student plays out the illusion.

5. Only the child may enter the kingdom of heaven. We cannot truly learn and master unless we assume the unknowing innocence of the child as we approach our tasks. We must allow ourselves to ask the silliest of questions and be able to acknowledge that even at this age we simply don’t know such a basic thing that everyone, of course, knows!

6. “He who will not heed will be made to feel.” (From the Richard Wilhelm translation, p. 23) Our stubborn resistance to learning, or our inexperience, will be met with punishments. However, let us greet these outcomes as natural consequences, necessary lessons. Let us avoid the pitfall of negativity and self-hatred. Suspend judgment.

And so, The I Ching’s answer to my query as to how to resolve my challenge: become a real student! Final answer!

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.

When I think about the upcoming publication of The Red Book I experience a warm tender glow inside my heart. Carl Jung’s deeply personal journey is being shared with the world, a journey that unearthed the structure and dynamics of the psyche, but most importantly offered modern man a path to both heal and realize the mission of his soul.

I must admit, seeing The Red Book as the Holy Grail and bringing it to New York City for public display at a museum before it returns to its vault beneath the earth in a Swiss bank is a bit bizarre to me. This projection of The Red Book as some kind of holy book or piece of art worthy of public display would make Jung cringe. His intent, I believe, in not destroying the book before he died was to offer it, at the right time, to a future generation to learn how to take the inner journey.

We live in a time of felt-powerlessness at the forces being enacted upon the world stage. “What can I do? How can I make a difference?” we ponder. “It is beyond me, it’s destiny, overwhelming,” and so we retreat. Now that’s a start. Perhaps we are gifted with a depression as well. This is nature calling us inward, inviting us to take the journey, to heal ourselves and heal the world. We are the world. The identical forces that rule the world operate within us. If we can discover, then own, then reckon and reconcile with them, then the world evolves.

The journey Jung took changed the world. Every individual in the world has the opportunity to take their own inner journey to heal themselves and heal the world. This is ultimate empowerment.

“Where is my inner terrorist, my inner abuser, tyrant, lover, mother, father, etc.? Who is in control? Who in the world can’t I stop thinking about, feeling about? Why?” We must search for the true meaning behind our compulsions. Compulsions are one language of the psyche. They connect us to reflections of our inner world.

Everything is meaningful. Of course we want to get rid of our depressions and compulsions that we might live calm productive, fulfilling lives, but if we simply chemically manipulate our neurotransmitters we fail to decipher our psyche’s communications and must suffer new symptoms, signs offered once again to lead us to meaning and healing.

Through Jung’s own inner journey, which is documented in The Red Book, we learn the art of active imagination, where we can consciously communicate with our psyche, whereby relieving our bodies of symptoms, and our psyches of compulsions, as we directly reconcile with the forces of our soul.

As usual, 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.

We are instinctual beings. As infants we are completely dependent upon the world to meet our instinctual needs of hunger, security, and love. At best we can scream, cry, smile, or withdraw to communicate the state of our needs. If you are reading this, it is a fact that your basic needs were met, “good enough,” to emerge into adulthood, capable of some level of self-sustenance. However, the quality of our adult lives rests upon our own ability to find fulfillment of our deepest instinctual needs.

In the hexagram of The Well, in The I Ching, it is stated, “we must go down to the very foundations of life. For any merely superficial ordering of life that leaves its deepest needs unsatisfied is as ineffectual as if no attempt at order had ever been made.” (From the Richard Wilhelm translation of The I Ching, page 186.) Foundationally, the quality of our early parenting sets the stage for our own ability to be good parents to our instinctual self. Our ability to nurture and soothe ourselves, find safety and security, pleasure and love, rests completely in the hands of our adult selves. No one else is responsible for our fulfillment but us, our adult selves. Our adult selves may be severely handicapped in our ability to successfully parent ourselves and meet our instinctual needs; however, we remain completely responsible for solving this dilemma.

In a dream the other night I was on vacation, yet having to baby sit a child named Daphne. Daphne, in Greek mythology, was sworn to virginity and when chased by Apollo turned into a tree rather than acquiesce to a sexual encounter. Here we have a person choosing to completely physically rigidify and refuse instinct altogether, rather than face the onslaught of instinctual energy and desire. Many of us, at least in part, become trees rather than open up to the torment of unmet needs and face the vulnerable feelings related to the failures of those who supposedly loved us. In fact, we often elect to become rigid rather than vulnerable. Actually, the decision to become a tree is driven by an over-attachment to the instinctual need of self-preservation. My dream depicts the dilemma of clashing instincts, for how does one have fun on a vacation when saddled with babysitting the overpowering dominance of self-preservation, the Daphne in all of us.

This constellation is a common dilemma for many adults. The instinct of self-preservation can so dominate the adult self that the rest of our instinctual needs become relegated, by way of compensation, to the big baby who screams for attention. In fact, the big baby is really a bundle of frustrated instinctual needs demanding, with cries of entitlement, to be integrated into our lives. Often the adult ego-self avoids this dilemma by projecting responsibility for the inner child upon the world, like the helpless infant who needs to be cared for by others. This enables the rigid instinct of self-preservation to continue to reign by blaming and lamenting the failures of others to meet its obvious basic needs. Generally, the world greets the big baby with rejection, which leads to further disappointment, bitterness, and deep sadness. Unfortunately, this approach will never solve the challenge of fulfillment, which requires the individual to assume full responsibility for life, regardless of all crimes perpetrated by others upon the self. The individual must realize that the true culprit, at this stage of life, is the adult self, the real parent to the whole self. It is the up to the adult to forge the connection to the instinctual self. No one outside the self can do this.

Jan shared a dream the other day that reflected her current recapitulation of her recapitulation as she writes her book. She and three other women stood at four equidistant points around a deep circular black pit, the Pit of Annihilation. This configuration formed a perfect mandala, the psyche’s symbol of wholeness and healing. The task was for all to descend into the blackness facing all the truths, all the traumas accumulated through life experiences. At the bottom of the pit they were to face the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, after which they were freed of the burdens and limitations of their painful experiences, in fact doing a complete recapitulation, becoming fully released, opening to a full relationship with the instinctual self.

As the women stood beside the pit, contemplating their plunge, they experienced extreme tension; this is Daphne fleeing from Apollo. What was required was for the rigid adult self to let go and take the plunge into the abyss of truth, to relive all the experiences of feared annihilation in order to release itself from the rigid hold of self-preservation, to the exclusion of all other needs. This is the path of wholeness and healing. The adult self is the only parent who can solve the dilemma of the big baby. If the adult refuses to take the plunge the individual will end up controlled by, and catering to, the deeply saddened big baby, behind whose cries lies a bottomless pit of unregulated instinctual forces demanding attention, a true pit of annihilation. Only an adult self that has totally withdrawn the expectation that the outside world parent its baby can take the journey through the pit of annihilation to arrive at truth, reconciliation, and release. From this place the personality is in a position to integrate the instinctual energies of the deepest self and achieve fulfillment in this life.

As usual, 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.

This morning, as I pondered my topic for this blog, I struggled to find a clear focus. I opened Castaneda’s Wheel of Time to page 165 and the following: “The human form is a conglomerate of energy fields which exist in the universe, and which is related exclusively to human beings. Shamans call it the human form because those energy fields have been bent and contorted by a lifetime of habits and misuse.”

What is the relevance of this quote to now?

The shamans contend that we generate our world by contorting energy into habitual patterns which then encapsulate our lives. In so doing we lose access to possibilities beyond those habitual patterns. As I observed the health care debacle this week, with its enactment of good and evil energies, which I previously wrote about in Darkening of the Light…, I pondered the habitual category health care, a major component of the human form.

When Jeanne and I first confronted her diagnosis of breast cancer, we were seized by the conventional wisdom of health care that demanded immediate surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, etc. Due to a fated pause, having to wait for an appointment, we were able to step outside this powerful habit and examine its energetic consequences from a place of calm sobriety. As a consequence we chose to by-pass the conventional habit, as its energetic contortions were simply unappealing. The components of the conventional habit consisted of submitting to accepted procedures and treatments that debilitated, poisoned, and weakened; rendered the individual powerless; appeared at root to be driven by greed as it carefully and thoroughly discredited and shut down possibilities for cure outside its rigid categories; and defined cure with an illusory cloak: five years of survival. Obviously, many people take this route with success. However, for us it was not energetically viable.

We chose instead to be guided by the intent to heal, synchronicity, and the conviction that everything is possible. Our journey is well documented in The Book of Us, but the end result was both magic and death. We are beings who are going to die, yet we spend the lion’s share of our energy preserving our bodies through obsession with the habit of health care in a very narrow sense. Meanwhile, we miss the real show: our inevitable energetic transformation into infinity. What is the state of our energetic health care? Are we prepared for this transition? Have we discovered the true purpose of our life? Have we accomplished it? Have we achieved completion? Are we ready to evolve beyond the human form, or must we return due to incompletion?

Jeanne’s transition was sheer magic. She not only achieved completion, but was able to forge a channel of connection to those who reside in human form. This she accomplished through her healing efforts in this world as she stepped outside the poppy field of conventional health care. I am reminded of the sage comment made by Dr. Incao, an anthroposophist who we met early in our journey, that sometimes real healing requires death.

Many look at Jeanne’s outcome and see failure, after all, they observe, she died! I myself have been judged by some as delusional, the product of pathological mourning because I communicate with the dead. These judgments are the guardians of the conventional human form, encased in its wall of rationality. After all, the dead don’t continue to communicate to the living, that must be the product of some form of delusional wish fulfillment! Sometimes my own rationality can emerge strong enough to entrap me in a mood of doubt, with its tempting invitation to return to the comfort of the tried and true human form. I had such a moment earlier this week when I questioned everything that has happened over the past eight years. That night I had the following dream.

I am with Jeanne. We have met a couple with a teenaged daughter. We walk about, freely sharing our unconventional journey through the cancer world. This young daughter suddenly stops and states: “I don’t agree with what you’ve done, and you should be careful, not talk so freely.” The dream progresses. Jeanne and I are to be married. We are older. We go to a doctor who lightheartedly asks if there will be witnesses at the wedding. He is considering foregoing the required medical exam before marriage when he realizes that there has been illness, hence an exam is required. I am immediately frightened. Once he examines Jeanne we will be discovered; all our unconventional treatments will be exposed. Then I realize, the whole time we have been out and about Jeanne has exposed her neck. Her collarbone on the left side has two deep holes in it, shaped like a double-barreled shotgun. Apparently, I had forged those holes as part of her treatments, and they were deep. Jeanne had been exposing them the whole time, quite carefree, without embarrassment, no concern for infection; in fact, she displayed them almost like ornamental jewelry. I thought maybe we should fill the holes. As the doctor started to undress Jeanne, I suddenly became aware, with great amusement, that she is dead! It didn’t matter, the examination was immaterial. With that I awoke.

Is she really dead? Am I too uncomfortable standing behind the energetic facts of our journey? Does my rationality prefer that I fill up the channel we achieved? I believe the dream was a course correction for me, Jeanne reminding me of all our truths, most importantly the two-way channel we have forged between worlds. The guidance that flows through this channel from Jeanne in infinity has opened up the possibility of an expanded configuration of the human form, which corrects its limited habits and misuses. What’s more, she raises the focus on health care to a new level, that of energetic health care, with its practices supporting the successful completion of life in the human form and continued evolution in infinity. This would be the passage of the ultimate health care reform bill, which is completely in the hands of each individual.

As usual, 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 wrote this blog on Friday morning as Jan sat next to me and channeled Jeanne’s Message #565. Jan and I are always struck by the magic of synchronicity, as Jeanne’s themes are reflected in my own flow of thoughts. Perhaps calling my thoughts my own is a bit presumptuous!

It’s hard for me to sink into Jung’s works without becoming completely enchanted with the depths of his discoveries. Suddenly, everywhere I look I see with clarity (I think!), the pearls of wisdom he illuminated. I have encountered critiques of Jung from well-established authorities in the field of psychology who consider his exhaustive studies of alchemy of little contribution to the needs of modern life, in fact, a complete waste of time.

As I see it, the major problem of our modern psychology is the focus, in one form or another, on ego psychology. Rationality has become the one true God of our time. Connection with that God means the ability to actualize our goals, satisfy our needs, and find fulfillment in love, career, and family in this life. Modern psychology researches the brain, seeking techniques and drugs to manipulate and maximize its beneficial functioning to serve the fulfillment of the ego’s reasonable goals. Isn’t that, after all, the meaning of life?!

Jung, on the other hand, was a deeply spiritual man. Though the son of generations of Protestant preachers, he experienced no value in dogma or Christianity as it was espoused and practiced. For Jung, Christianity’s handling of the dark side of God left mankind helpless in reconciling the dark side of his own nature and left him constantly at war, projecting evil upon, and seeking to eradicate it from, his neighbor. Jung explored the depths of what it means to be human, taking on the challenge of becoming conscious, and reconciling the oppositions within human nature.

In one of Jung’s early dreams he saw the heavens opening up, dropping excrement upon the towering spires of the church. This dream represented both God’s attitude toward the one-sidedness of the church as well as offered the missing ingredient to its wholeness, the dark side. This dream was the foreshadowing of his life’s work and its parallel to alchemy. Jung’s opus, like the alchemist’s, was to begin with the black substance, the nigredo, which, buried deep within, contains the jewel. Jung termed this transformational process, individuation: the individual’s journey to claim his or her true, real, whole self and, in that process, union with God within.

Jung’s psychology is a far cry from ego psychology with its limited aims. For Jung the purpose of life is to fully discover and embrace the totality of the self, to find completion in wholeness. In his own encounters with his own guides, who were ancient alchemists, in a process he called active imagination, Jung was led into the laboratories of those ancient masters and shown the secret practices of the adepts as they subjected the nigredo to a series of chemical processes to arrive at their gold. Jung realized that through the psychological function of projection these alchemists were undergoing the processes of individuation that led to wholeness. He studied these processes, with their deep transformational qualities, and recognized their relevance to depth psychological treatment. This was his gift to us: resurrecting the spiritual wisdom and transformational practices of the alchemists for our modern times.

I am struck by the parallel contributions of Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda in this respect, as both have left us the benefits of ancient wisdom and practices in a format applicable and usable in our time. However, as don Juan cautioned, pursuing sorcery (or alchemy or individuation) requires guts of steel. It is not an intellectual road or one to be pursued out of curiosity, though they can lead you to the doorstep. Herein lies the reason for the secrecy of the alchemists: only the worthy may enter the laboratory. Worthiness, not in terms of ego achievements, but in a readiness to leave behind the world of judgments, that both torture us yet comfort us, by keeping us securely nestled in the womb of a known life, a world we can function in, however wounded and insecure we are.

The adept knows he is inadequate. It is a fact. The adept knows that no amount of ego psychology or brain manipulation will change that fact. Inadequacy, incompleteness, is the reason to take the journey into the unknown. We all begin as nigredo. We cannot evolve to enlightenment if we can’t embrace the truth of where we are and what we are, at every stage.

Furthermore, we cannot experience true transformation without a genuine experience of God, magic, infinity, etc… Call it what you will. This isn’t about belief; it’s about experience. Depth psychology subjects the ego to a series of processes to prepare it for its experience of transformation, in communion with God within. Ego psychology can only prepare the ego to commune with the limits of the God of reason; no transformation here, merely inflation supported by constructs and chemicals.

Which path do we choose to follow, the path of power (the ego) or the path of spirit? Jung gave us dreams, active imagination, and a humble ego seeking wholeness. Carlos gave us Tensegrity, with its own dreams and recapitulation. Jeanne gives us guides, signs, and energy. All of these practices are practices, if practiced, that offer the possibility of completion, wholeness, and infinity, now!

As usual, 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