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: The Power Of The Coin

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Ask in alignment with heart, mind & spirit…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

In the solid world of everyday life a coin is an agreed upon object of stored energy for commerce. Our saved coin is our buying power.

Even in this most physical world, abstraction, or subtle reality, animates the value in coin. Without an agreed upon reality amongst humans—that assigns and allows coin to ‘contain’ a spirit energy—coin would hold no value.

At the soul level of reality, the appearance of a coin in a dream is a type of mandala, the outer attire of one’s High Self. Essentially, the High Self is affirming that this dream theme, accented by the coin’s appearance, is the next step on one’s path of individuation.

The use of a single coin throw for guidance is a very early predecessor to the I Ching,  an oracle which uses three coins tossed six times to create a highly differentiated hexagram of oracular wisdom. A single coin represents wholeness, via its circular shape, a shape that includes all that is. The two sides, heads and tails, give equal representation to Yang and Yin, the building blocks of everything.

Heads is assigned Yang. It is the masculine, active principle. When it appears, it says Yes to taking action. Tails is the feminine, receptive principle. When it appears, it says No, the time for action has not yet arrived, as things are still in utero. A single coin toss is only capable of reflecting a gross answer of either Yes or No, with no further elaboration.

Who is it that answers the question? The answer is, one’s High Self, or Spirit. In effect, one’s ego self poses its question to its High Self, which in turn answers Yes or No to the question posed. Sounds pretty straightforward, but actually much consideration and preparation are required to benefit from this oracle of the single coin.

Firstly, ego must assume full responsibility for its life. Ego can’t simply turn over this responsibility and sheepishly ask the High Self, as parent, to tell it what to do. High Self is the center of personality that insists ego evolve and expand consciousness through its thoughtful suffering of the travails of a human life. High Self will provide support and guidance but not the answers that ego must rightly figure out.

It’s not beneath the High Self to give a wrong answer if the ego is evading its responsibility in asking, or persists in over-asking. Even the I Ching has a reading, called Youthful Folly (hexagram #4), which reacts rather sternly to perseverating questioning:

“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.”*

The expectation is that ego sit in the tension of the opposite possibilities inherent in the question it struggles with and, as objectively as possible, come to a tentative decision of what truly is right action.

Right action is action free of prejudice or secret motive, action truly in alignment with what is right to do in the situation being considered. This of course would be action in alignment with the High Self.

Having  done this preparatory work, ego is in a position to say to High Self, “I’ve done my due diligence. Are you in agreement with my conclusion?”

If the answer is No, it gives ego the opportunity to go back to the drawing board and to look further into its shadow, asking itself, “What am I missing?”

I personally have benefited much over the years by being directed to reflect again, shedding greater light upon the blindspot of shadow’s hidden influences.

Of equal importance is the reverence one assumes for the feedback received. If ego has already decided what it will do, and then rejects the contrary council of the coin, ego is truly guilty of insincerity in asking its question.

For true guidance, when approaching the coin, one must be open to the possibility of not doing what one has already decided to do.

This may mean returning to the drawing board to deeply consider why one feels so certain of getting a No answer. Of course, it could be possible that ego must go it alone and make a decision that defies even the Law of the High Self.

Was this not the situation in the Garden of Eden, where a law being broken gave birth to human consciousness and free will, the essential building blocks of planetary growth?

Indeed, this may be one of the High Self’s greatest tests for ego—to take responsibility for right action, even in the absence of any support.

The bottom line is that an oracle is really only helpful if used as a support to ego growth in its refinement of subjective motives, as they are transformed into service to the underlying truth of its being.

The real power of the coin rests in the sincerity of the seeker who turns to it for guidance. And though of great support, nothing replaces the primacy of ego assuming full responsibility for its growth in its sojourn in a human life.

Valuing the correct use of the coin,
Chuck

*The I Ching or Book of Changes, Wilhelm edition, pp. 20-21

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Chuck’s Place: Exercising The Power Of The Second Attention

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The power of the second attention…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The shamans of ancient Mexico called the ability to access and influence reality at a subtle energetic level, the exercise of power at the level of the second attention. This is in contrast to the first attention, the province of using physical energy in the solid world of everyday life.

By simply thinking, we engage the second attention. Thought conjures the subtle energy of imagination, which generates a blueprint that then manifests as images in action, which influence the physical dimension of reality through the law of attraction.

Thought can also be directed to travel telepathically and to be subliminally received by someone whom we intend to be influenced by it. Setting a healing intent, or praying for someone, are examples of exercising this power of the second attention.

These simple examples of exercising the power of the second attention deepen as one learns of the existence of the astral dimension, where souls, in their energy body form, intermingle in what is called dreaming.

When the physical body goes into the deep regeneration of sleep, one’s energy body, or soul, is freed from its mooring within the physical body to travel, in dreaming, into the astral dimension of reality. The astral region is populated by visiting energy bodies of humans currently in physical form, as well as by those currently not in human form. Bob Monroe crafted this affirmation for astral travelers so as to ensure safety and protection:

I deeply desire the help and cooperation, the assistance, the understanding of those individuals whose wisdom, development and experience are equal to or greater than my own. I ask their guidance and protection from any influence or any source that might provide me with less than my stated desires.

The energetic modus operandi of the astral region is thought. Thus, if I intend to fly in a dream, I simply state ‘fly now’ and off I go. If my mind, however, is in its first attention perspective when dreaming, I will attempt to fly by flapping my arms and jumping up like a bird, to no avail.

Similarly, if I am in my first attention in a dream and consciously attempt to walk, as I do in waking life, I will experience tremendous weight and inertia as I stumble forward. Actually, this experience is a moment where I might be prompted to wake up to my second attention, as the thought might occur in the first attention that, “This situation is impossible. Of course it is, I’m in a dream!”

From this awakening realization I can simply command where I want to be, and be there in an instant. The trick is to stay in the astral region of dreaming and not wake up to the physical body and the first attention of Newtonian physics. To develop second attention awareness in dreaming, set the intent to wake up to it before you go off to sleep. Be patient as you seek to develop your astral prowess.

Outwardly, the world has truly woken up to, and become pervasively enthralled with, exercising the power of the second attention in daily life, the normal province of the first attention. The use of affirmations to manifest one’s desires is widespread. The caution here is to be sure that what one asks for is truly in alignment with one’s high Spirit. (See my blog: Don’t Forget To Ask If It’s Right for a fuller discussion of this point).

Our world is being challenged now with ideologies—thoughts—that state that if facts don’t support their contentions then the facts are false. The human race has become extremely polarized by thoughts that have manifested alternative realities, based on differing belief systems around the globe. The power of the second attention can be commandeered for egocentric and evil intentions, as well as for the good of the planet.

To protect oneself from the power of nefarious influencers, retreat to the sanctity of the heart, where the scales of justice will always tell the truth. Include a positive affirmation, such as Bob Monroe’s, to be fully present to observe and learn but still safe and protected from negative influences.

Intend to be personally responsible with the power of thought at the center of the second attention.

And, last but not least, intend always for the greater good, joining ranks with the evolutionary energy of love. Now that’s worthy of all our attention!

First and Second Attention on love,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Don’t forget To Ask If It’s Right

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The Way of the Mandala…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

We live in an age where direct access to the tools of manifestation abound. As human evolution has shifted to the psychic plane, we are all waking up to latent powers that allow us to tap into both elemental and subtle resources to manifest our desires.

One question that emerges as we expand our consciousness and deepen our access to psychic powers is, how we might appropriately use them.

Robert Monroe provided explorers with an affirmation in their journeys, “to Use such greater energies and energy systems as may be beneficial and constructive to me and to those who follow me.”

Clearly, Bob is stressing here that we hone our intent to the benefit of all humankind. In fact, the mission of the Monroe Institute is, “Helping people create more meaningful and joyful lives through the guided exploration of expanded consciousness.”

I participated in a recent intensive retreat at the Monroe Institute where the theme of mandalas emerged in many participant’s journeys. I personally, during one journey, came upon the face of my round wristwatch at the center of a rectangular door. A mandala typically includes the juxtaposition of a circle and a square.

Experientially, this encounter with a mandala coincided with a very powerful vibrational energy that I was experiencing at my heart chakra, which provided the energy, via this sensation, to come to acceptance of a disturbing dream image from the prior night.

Carl Jung brought to the attention of the modern world the archetype of the mandala as the central organizing symbol of life. The circle encompasses infinity; the square, our humanness. For Jung, at the center of the circle was the Self, or Spirit, and not the ego, which is the center only of the conscious personality.

The path toward fulfillment in life requires one to square the circle; that is, to align one’s life with the core intent of one’s Spirit. Expropriating one’s psychic resources for ego gain, which is out of alignment with Spirit, would be considered an ego inflation, where ego assumes the identity and authority of Self. Humans have the amazing tool of free will, which all too often leads to ego decisions that throw them out of psychological balance and negatively impact the world.

Mandalas frequently appear in waking life and in dreaming, as trail markers from Self, as we suffer challenging experiences and make decisions in our lives. The mandala in my experience guided me to raise the vibration in my heart chakra to be able to activate love to accept the unacceptable.

Carl Jung’s Red Book is his diary of his journeys into the collective unconscious, which became the foundation of his contributions to the field of psychology. His communications with entities during his discovery process are documented alongside countless mandalas he painted that enabled him to maintain psychic balance throughout this extraordinary process.

Stan Grof, initially through the use of psychedelics and later through holotropic breath work, has deepened the mapping of the transpersonal regions of the psyche. His protocol strongly encourages all participants in his workshops to paint mandalas as they restore inner balance and recapitulate their soul retrievals and adventures in infinity.

The highlight of the mandala in my recent retreat was a collective reminder to be sure to not forget to ask if it’s right. It refers to one’s intent, decision or ambition for manifestation.

The Self often spontaneously and creatively provides some semblance of a mandala-like symbol to provide guidance. These can take the form of a dirty, heads-up penny on the ground, or a circular or rectangular pool, or a grouping of 4 objects or people—the permutations are endless.

One may also have to wait patiently for this guidance or validation to appear. Sometimes the Self requires that the ego go it alone, taking full responsibility for decisions made. The effects of decisions and actions taken are often the best teachers.

When mandalas do show up, give the ego the worthy job of contemplating their messages. Or, to get in alignment with Self, simply start drawing a mandala. Or use a finger in the sand, and like the Tibetans and Native Americans sculpt a mandala with the intent to align with Spirit.

See what happens. Remember Bob Monroe’s affirmation to make constructive and beneficial one’s use of greater energies and energy systems.

Aligning with mandala,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Technology of Love

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Embracing it all…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Technology is planned habit. Love is nature’s instinct for union. By combining a planned habit with an instinct for union we create a technology of love.

To arrive at key efficiency, love must be employed at its highest impersonal truth: Action in alignment with what is right. What is right is the truth of the Spirit, that quiet whisper that issues from the heart of the Soul.

Love is the ultimate solution for our planetary woes. As one, united human race—the synthesis of all races—we will overcome. Union, however, has its stages of oneness and separation. Witness the evolution of the women’s process in the movie, Women Talking; sometimes love requires separation. Separation invites introspection and a study of one’s projections.

The psychological function of projection is not a function of conscious choice. Projections happen to us through the action of the instinctive unconscious psyche casting its shadow upon our view of the world.

Though we may become aware of this automatic projection and choose to change our behavior toward the actual person we’ve involuntarily projected upon, this has little effect upon the beliefs and emotions of the unconscious. Intentional consciousness must be applied to demystify unplanned projection, the necessary building block for truly responsible action.

A subset of this overarching tendency of the unconscious to make itself known via projection is the psychological use of projection as a defense mechanism. This defense seeks to unburden us of the tensions in the repressed part of our psyche that Jung called the shadow. The shadow houses all the unacceptable beliefs and emotions we repress in order to make ourselves socially acceptable people. This defense creates instability between conscious and unconscious regions of the self.

When our shadow is projected outwardly onto another person, people or situation, we resolve the inner conflict of opposing thoughts and emotions by assigning blame and badness outside of ourselves. We are then freed to outwardly hate our neighbor, who is truly seen and experienced as our enemy. By maintaining separation from, or by destruction of, the object of our projection, we achieve an inner, albeit tenuous, resolution of opposites: we are good, they are bad.

This projective solution is the dominant defense of nationalist forces currently seeking to maintain their security on the world stage. This same defense dominates both the individual psyche and the collective psyche of the human race. As individual cells of that one, collective human race, we are uniquely positioned to introduce the technology of love as a conscious pathway toward world stability.

We all project. Love thy projection. Love thy neighbor as thy self is actually easy, if we accept the psychological reality that what we defensively project onto our neighbor is our own disowned self. To love thy neighbor as thy self is actually learning to love thy self. This requires taking back ownership for the disowned self and loving it. Indeed, this may be painful and emotionally disruptive and require a lot of courage, but it is doable.

To own the fullness of self we must suspend judgment. We all harbor thoughts and feelings that uphold our survival and self-importance. We are all composed of positive and negative, good and evil. Can I objectively acknowledge the depth of my darkest thoughts and feelings? Can I love myself in this fullness?

The ability to bring the light of acceptance to the darkest of thoughts and feelings allows these dark and light opposites to find an inner reconciliation, which shifts outer projection to outer perception as the previously veiled prejudices begin to drop away. This is how we will end the mass shootings we see enacted daily, which are fueled by the veiled projections of the gunman’s own shadow.

This planned action of loving all—all for one human race, one human race for all—has the added benefit of allowing oneness and separateness  to coexist. In order to love my enemy, my enemy must first be acknowledged to exist as a separate being beyond myself. This acknowledgment is a step beyond narcissism, with its narrow fixation upon its own reflection.

Beyond separateness is the greater oneness of the human race, with separate parts respecting each other’s value, much the way the liver might view the heart as a different organ working synergistically to maintain the balance of the whole physical being.

The absolute union of self does not obliterate the operationally different parts of the self. For instance, knowing the different parts of the masculine and feminine self allows more fullness of being, in spite of these differing elements. Oneness and separateness are a reconcilable set of opposites.

The technology of love is the Aquarian Age’s greatest artillery. The army of love is the human race, at war with its projected reflections. Basic training begins at home, with each individual learning to love the self and the other, within and without, without exception.

In the fullness of loving acceptance,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Tracking The Magic

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Everything is alive and communicating…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

First a string of vignettes:

In my dream, I have rewired the lighting; it’s not fully operational. A silent, hostile female figure is rifling through my jewelry. I confront her. In Jan’s dream, she opens the passenger door of a dump truck as it’s unloading. Stan Grof is driving. He greets her with a big smile and eyes filled with gentle kindness.

Next I pull the tarot card for Lust (XI). Having tamed the beasts, this Anima Mundi is in complete alignment with the energy of the sun. Jan pulls the 6 of Disks: success that comes from deep within and manifests without.

I check an email from Cleargreen. I read in it a quote from don Juan that I am very familiar with: “I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it is a world of objects.” As I read this quote aloud all the lights in the house go out. A brief glitch, then electricity is restored.

I open to Cherokee Woman’s wisdom for February 12th: Picking herbs with her grandmother when she is a little girl, she hopes she won’t have to eat them in her salad greens. She shifts focus to other dimensions of energy: the warmth of the sun and her love of being in nature with her grandmother.

Next I open the astrological Time Passages app. Moon is in Scorpio, with emphasis on energy at the level of the personality. I check my daily horoscope aspects. I feel resonance with the directive, “don’t be overly critical of others.”

I read aloud the next letter in Last Letters From The Living Dead Man, the chapter entitled, The Watchers. We learn that most souls are only partly incarnated into physical reality. The High Self is the Silent Watcher who waits in infinity as it watches and allows the personality to learn its lessons, sending occasional messages of guidance, support, or challenge. The suggestion is made to see the Silent Watcher in everyone, regardless of the current state of their personality. The Judge, himself a Watcher who dictates the letter, points out his own influence upon the souls in this world through his concentrated thought that is picked up here telepathically.

End of vignettes.

These vignettes depict a typical morning flow. I share them to demonstrate how to track the magic, the magic of the flow of energy from and through our multidimensional selves.

This blog is written on the morning described above. A previous version had been written two days earlier, as I pushed to complete it to make room for other upcoming activities. That ego push proved disappointing; though the ideas were stirring they truly weren’t ready to be gelled by the guiding hand of Spirit.

Dreams are the royal road to communication and interaction with the subtler dimensions of life. Dreaming occurs in brain frequencies that, like trance, allow for communication and education between energetic dimensions.

My dream pointed out that the wiring I had redone was inadequate for an enlightened space. The Silent Watcher antagonist pointed to the jewelry, the persona/ego/personality dimension that emphasizes the will and emotion.

Jan’s dream pointed to the clearing of the deeper transpersonal dimension of the self via Mr. Transpersonal himself, Stan Grof. To arrive at this level, one must first tame the beasts of the personality as the Tarot card of Lust depicts. Jan’s card emphasizes that success requires a balance, as within so without.

The shaman’s world chimes in with the affirmation that yes, the self is both pure energy and solid object, but start with the knowledge that all is energy first. The Silent Watcher trickster totally enjoyed this teaching moment, cutting the power, the energy, at a synchronistic moment. Synchronicity with nature is an ever-present meeting place between dimensions of self.

The emphasis on energy first is picked up by Judge Hatch, in his missives from the afterlife, as he suggests that we try to observe the High Self in everyone. Though it may not be currently emphasized within the behavior of the personality, we are all energy first, Spirit beings. This focus helps one break the negativity of critical judgement suggested by my astrological reading, which also pointed to the need for emotional work at the subconscious personality level of Moon in Scorpio.

Astrology, Tarot and the I Ching are comprehensive meeting places for the Silent Watcher’s reflection of the overall state of the Self. Books of wisdom, or simply any books randomly opened, are also meeting places for Spirit’s messages, portrayed through written words.

Cherokee Woman also prescribes a method to step beyond the dominance of the wanting personality and into deeper energetic truth. She suggests taking advantage of awakening from mental ruminations that generate dullness in the moment to discover the luster of love and a private meeting with Self.

Finally, the Judge alerts us to the powerful impact of concentrated thought that issues from the Spirit dimension of being and is telepathically received at the solid body dimension of the human brain. Synchronous communications frequently come to me in the form of thoughts—great ideas!—that for years my ego assumed were its own!

Thought energy operates on a shared frequency between dimensions that makes possible the transmission of thought from the more subtle planes of reality to this dimension, as well as among beings currently in human form. Don’t let the solid boundary of the physical body fool you. Thoughts are energetic and permeable, completely transparent at an energetic level. Remember, as don Juan emphasizes, energy first!

Be mindful to not inflate the ego with thought ownership and instead employ its reasoning capabilities to discern the validity of thoughts from beyond. If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it!

Every one of us tracks the magic of our multidimensional selves daily. The more we awaken to the fullness of ourselves, the more fully informed and participatory we become to the magic of all that is possible.

Tracking the Magic,
Chuck