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: 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

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Formative Power of The Imagination

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Open to the power of your imagination…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh.” – St. John

“Thou shalt not Covet thy neighbor’s wife.” – Tenth Commandment

What do the words Word and Covet have in common? Both are insubstantial. Both issue from the creative action of the mind’s imagination. Imagination is the causal dimension of physical reality.

The mind’s imagination produces the energetic blueprint that draws to it and manifests all material creation. The major attractive energetic activity implied in to covet is judged equal to, if not more sinful than, the action of an actual physical affair itself. Imagination is indeed the primal force of creation.

Be responsible for that which you wish for. Be responsible for that which you think. The mind’s imaginative thought is a living entity, brimming with energy. Thought is a seed that once thought must take root and find completion, somewhere, in some form, somehow. Many a fiction novel is an outlet for the karma of unlived thought.

What does a conservative Jew, devout Catholic, faithful Muslim and evangelical Christian have in common? The answer is, reverence for the Law: the written Words in the sacred texts. This reverence for upholding the Law has animated the behaviors of humankind throughout the centuries. Sacred words originating from the thoughts and images in the imaginative mind are the guardians of that which must be obeyed.

In modern psychology these sacred laws and words are the archetypes of the collective unconscious of humankind. These dominants of our shared human psyche govern the unfolding and autonomous functioning of our physiological being, as well as the species specific behaviors involved in mating, parenting and surviving. In fact, all behaviors available to our species are, at core, latent archetypal potentials.

As conscious beings we’ve been granted the free will to obey, innovate, deviate from, or fully ignore the laws of the archetypes. Clearly, the transgender explorations of our time reflect promptings to express new permutations, beyond the limits of established archetypes. One only need consider the pivotal role that the Tenant, a death defier, had on the evolution of Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic lineage. The Tenant was equally facile at manifesting physically either side of humanity’s  inherent androgynous nature.

This, of course, gives rise to clashes with conservative upholders of primal archetypes, who feel it their duty to uphold the Law as once imagined and laid down.

Others would argue that if we allow the archetypes to press us into their molds we don’t exercise our obligation to evolve and create. The truth is that archetypal patterns are fixed. The phases of the moon never deviate. However, though the waning phase of the moon may urge that new enterprises not be initiated during this phase, a rogue adventurer might launch a successful enterprise anyway, though lacking the moon’s archetypal energetic support.

Typically, archetypes are nature’s best course of action, but humankind was issued consciousness to steer life into new possibility with greater efficiency. For example, to love one’s enemy is an innovative advancement from an eye for an eye, which seeks a new solution to conflict and opposition. So, sometimes archetypes in their primal form fit a need, but at other times, archetypes must evolve to ensure the present survival of the species.

By understanding and respecting the dominance of the archetypes upon life, we are freed to innovate in the magical world of the imagination. In this subtle realm of thought and image we become the weavers of our own lives. While accepting the concrete facts of our material existence, we are freed to suspend our attachment to the belief systems that manifest and uphold our physical lives and imagine a new and changed reality. The imagination has its own facts of reality.

The often laughed-at placebo effect is the greatest proof that what we imagine can indeed become our physical reality. The more we exercise our imagination to create what we want, the more we become the architects of our lives, drawing to us the material manifestation of our imaginal blueprint. The subconscious mind, the factory that converts imagination to materialization, will respond to suggestion.

Realize, however, that if we depart from an archetype we will be tested; archetypes are fierce warriors. We must be prepared to go it alone, as nature guards her established patterns. We must also be humble in our search for new frontiers, and accept that perhaps our ego is deluded by an inflation that is unsupported by the true needs of the Self.

On the other hand, we were granted the power of imagination to exercise the divine right of our existence to create and innovate, so we have every right to take life forward into new possibility.

We are all granted the freedom to square the facts of our own life with the power of the imagination.

Dream on. See what happens!

Imagine,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Temper The Invasion Of Spirit

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In the Age of Aquarius…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The wholistic movement of a herd of cows as they graze throughout the day is a clear display of interdependent unity. This positive side of the herd instinct is countered by the dangers of a group mind where the impulse of one member can become a contagion of lethal proportion. This was on tragic display in Memphis, with the brutal killing of Tyre Nichols.

We are solidly in the Age of Aquarius whose salient impulse is the herd instinct. At its highest level, this collective concern for all of the human race is the evolutionary path we will be on for the next 1000 years, as we wend our way through the Age of Aquarius. That collective intent will deliver our future world to solid footing, eventually.

Social media and political parties throughout the world have settled into large herds with lowered consciousness. These independent groups react with lightning speed, bereft of deep reflection and morality, which frequently eventuates in impulsive, aggressive, and, at times, lethal consequences.

Aquarius is an air sign whose spirit rises above the Earth on the mental plane. Its capacity for rational, civilized thinking to address the true needs of the whole is its modus operandi. The compensatory depths of the Earth, which harbor the deeply irrational forces of nature, which are part of our wholeness, may be devalued or completely underestimated from this view from above.

WWI and WWII were major eruptions of the irrational dimension of human nature, as science and technology jettisoned to become the superior function of humankind, supplanting God and religion, which once offered reconciliation for the rational and irrational sides of the psyche. War is the compensation when spirit negates the fullness of nature.

The war in Ukraine is actually WWIII being played out, with tenuous balance, by all the major powers in the world attempting to prevent its contagion beyond its local borders. Nonetheless, the irrational is bursting through all over the world in mass shootings and in conflicts in intimate family relationships. Though everyone must be accountable for their behavior, let us not be naive as to the power of the unconscious to take possession of ego sovereignty.

Channelings from Judge Hatch, Letters from The Afterlife, and Jeanne, through Jan and archived here on our website, have assured us that the Earth, though vastly changed, will endure and evolve beyond the next millennium.

Thus, we can trust in the ultimate success of our Aquarian ideal. However, we must face the likelihood that the next few centuries will be dominated by conflict. Our challenge is one of patience, a call to courage, and a reconciliation with the multi-dimensions of who we truly are, spirit in all of its many forms.

The Greek gods on Mount Olympus demonstrated the law that the gods must be propitiated, or else. Even the one God of modern Christianity has its shadow.  As individuals we can best propitiate the gods by finding them within, facing and reconciling with our own shadows.

The gods/spirits rouse us in dream, projection, thought, sensation, intuition and emotion. Listen to them, acknowledge them through interaction and action, which give expression to their messages. Stay true to the ideals they espouse, in alignment with our true potential as individuals and as a collective whole, despite the limitations of the real in everyday life. At all costs, keep ego deeply grounded in the truth of these numinous encounters and the truths they reveal, lest it get swept away in a contagion of volatile energy.

Don’t get ruffled. It’s our destiny, but approach it practically by practicing discipline in all things. Get into balance with all spirits, positive and negative, to balance wholeness and forestall the invasion of too much spirit of the wrong kind. Stay in the commonsense of the heart; think with the heart not the head.

Reconciliation with spirit requires ego to be at its scientific best, as it journeys to discover and reconcile with the depths of its fuller spirit self. First and foremost, steady the breath, calm the central nervous system, and acquiesce to the true journey of your own lifetime.

Steady,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Love Is No Pity

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A place of no pity…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Perhaps the most Herculean task that we all face is for our Soul to have to fit itself into the helplessness of a human infant’s body, completely dependent upon the kindness of others to usher it into a human life and support it to maturity.

Stan Grof, with his extensive research into the perinatal stages of birth and the accompanying impact of primal birth trauma, has extended our knowledge of the Soul’s consciousness of itself as it evolves through all stages of gestation.

Back further still are the Soul’s prior lives and identities, which the Soul is required to temporarily forget in order to create the blank slate needed to authentically engage in the purity of a totally new, unfettered human life.  Knowledge of one’s infinite life would completely minimize the impact of any suffering in this life, undermining the very reason the Soul chose to enter into the life it is in. Earth School’s working axiom is simple: no pain, no gain.

The postnatal stages of development are archetypally governed by what are called object relationships with significant others, essentially our parents or first caregivers, to reach the necessary milestones of physical and ego autonomy. What we call ego is actually a part of the Soul, wiped clean of its eternal history, capable of growing into a mature adult; ego is the center of the Soul’s identity in this life.

In truth, what we call the inner child is actually the ego itself, a lost soul separated from its true parentage, forced to grow and learn how to navigate this mysterious world it was adopted into. How does one not feel sorry for this lost soul? Even great Master teachers in infinity have a soft spot for the plight of the innocent infant ego. However loving or unloving its adoptive world may be, it will never truly be home.

How does ego not fall prey to self-pity? No matter how much it inflates or deflates itself, at its core, ego feels itself as an abandoned child, disempowered of its divine heritage, inadequate to the task it unknowingly tasked itself with. This pervasive and inescapable self-pity might be tucked away in the ego’s guiding attitude of perfectionism, but even here it sneakily binds one’s attention and emotion through projecting itself upon the sad state of victimized others.

The shamans of ancient Mexico pierced this true reality of human suffering. They understood that the majority of human energy is spent on self-pity. To unclip one’s wings and fly to true freedom one needs a ruthless awakening to this hostage state. They called this great accomplishment, arriving at the place of no pity.

Carlos Castaneda truly loved his Master teacher, the Nagual, don Juan Matus. One day, don Juan had Carlos drive him into a city. Suddenly, Don Juan transmogrified himself into a feeble old man, who had seemingly just suffered a stroke. Carlos was beside himself with fear and pity. Don Juan then started screaming for help, claiming that Carlos was a predatory foreigner trying to rob and kill him. This aroused a group of young men who chased after Carlos.

Carlos was able to get away and ultimately reach a place of cold indifference toward don Juan, at which point he returned and found don Juan transmogrified back into his more familiar, kind and youthful self. Carlos had reached the place of no pity, total detachment.

In fact, the place of no pity is the place where the ultimate veil of narcissism is lifted. Don Juan explained that Carlos’ apparent love and pity for the old suffering don Juan was actually a projection of his own self-pity onto don Juan. The egoistic inner child state of self-pity was lifted as Carlos stepped out of the matrix of his projected self.

A modern example might be a parent blocking their adult addict child’s phone number. This ruthless act is in fact an act of true love, as the child is given the opportunity to assume responsibility for sustaining their own life in this world, a hallmark milestone of mature adulthood.

This cutting of the phone cord sends the message to the child that they truly have been let go to live their own life, and for them to trust in their own independent Soul to guide their journey, wherever that may lead. Trust that this being has their own angels and spirit guides. Retire the overbearing helicopter parent attitude.

In letting go, the parent must suffer the dread of the deep subconscious parental archetype that refuses to ever release the parent from parental responsibility.  However, to fully let go, the parent must in turn assume responsibility for their own innerly projected wounded child, which they had previously sought to rescue in the person of their actual child.

For love to rise above the veil of narcissism we must free ourselves from our own self-pity. Outwardly, this means reclaiming our self-pitied selves and facing them squarely. Ego is next tasked with assuming its true purpose and capability in this life: aligning with and mastering its greater Soul’s true mission for this life. That mission is likely situated in the very life circumstance that draws one to self -pity.

Truthfully, the adult self must arrive at the place of no pity toward its own inner child’s journey. This involves deep loving compassion for all of the child’s suffering yet appreciation for the lessons learned and a total assimilation/integration of those experiences into the adult self’s being.

From a place of no pity all experiences are valued with true equanimity. The real question becomes not how was I victimized, but what have I learned? And yes, the journey requires feeling the fullness of all life lived, however traumatic, and the release of stored emotional energies, but ultimately it is awe for the fantastic journey of the fullness of one’s actual life that one seeks.

In the end, full assimilation means to appreciate one’s life, regardless of its experiences, as a beautiful work of art. In this way the child self is dissolved into a powerful adult being, who discovers how much it has truly learned and grown through all of life’s many experiences, good and bad alike.

With this loving embodiment of all that one is, one is reunited with one’s greater Soul. And then one is able to handle remembering their true identity, in and beyond this life.

The willingness to suffer the fullness of one’s Soul’s mission is true love of self, love of Soul, and love of other.

On the mission, with love,
Chuck

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Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: A Vibrant Synchronicity

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Exhale…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The blog I intended to write this week is not this one. This blog is the result of a profound synchronicity that Jan and I experienced and that I feel is my responsibility to share. My intent is to present it as it occurred, leaving all interpretations to the mind and heart of the reader.

In recent months, someone had sent me the book, Breath, by James Nestor. Jan started to read it alone and then informed me that we should read it together because, as she said, “it is a book that will change our lives.” That suggestion caught my attention!

We read the book eagerly over a couple of week’s time. One chapter was particularly challenging, dealing with the potential health benefits of carbon dioxide retention via slow exhalation. Though I regularly practice breath retention, as prescribed by ancient pranayama techniques, as well as practices suggested by Jack Schwarz, I never connected its benefits as stemming from the retention of carbon dioxide in the body.

A major collaborator of James Nestor in the exploration of breath is the Swedish researcher, Anders Olsson. Both have spent more than ten years researching the effects of breathing on the human body.

Independent of my knowing, Jan researched Olsson’s website and discovered and purchased a pair of breathing devices called the Relaxator. She presented me with one. It looked like a plastic whistle or pacifier, and it cost $35! Needless to say, I was not impressed. Jan said, for the second time, “it’s going to change our lives!”

In spite of my doubts, I began to experiment with its protocol, which is to place the Relaxator in the mouth, breathe in deeply through the nose and then exhale slowly through the Relaxator, which constricts the breath and elongates the exhalation.

After the first 15-minute session I was deeply calmed and, yes, hooked! Jan and I have been deepening our practice ever since. During our last shared breathing session, I had the thought that when we finished we’d reread the chapter in Breath that dealt with carbon dioxide, to further grasp its action in the body, and then move on to an unrelated spiritual book, entitled Letters From The Afterlife, which we had been reading.

To backtrack a little, when we had previously finished reading Breath and pondered what to read next, Jan quickly breezed through our library and knew that Letters was the book we should read. She plucked it off the shelf and declared that we hadn’t read it yet. It’s part of our modest collection of Spiritualist books from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

Letters is a channelled book by Elsa Barker, published in 1915. The character she channelled was the prominent judge, spiritual seeker and noted author, James Patterson Hatch, whom Elsa had known while he was alive in human form. From his place on the other side of the veil, he made contact with Elsa and asked her to write Letters, which documents his discoveries of life after death, which he desired to share with humanity.

So, when Jan and I had completed our breathing session, instead of picking  up Breath, as previously planned, I unthinkingly picked up Letters and opened to the next chapter to be read: Letter 31, A Change Of Focus. In this chapter, Judge Hatch quite abruptly describes a methodology to heighten one’s psychic powers by raising one’s vibration through the practice of breath retention! This discussion was completely out of context from all the letters we had previously read.

Judge Hatch states that he has met with yogis in India in meditation who are aware that the retention of the breath causes a buildup of a poison (obviously carbon dioxide) that acts upon one’s psychic nature, raising one’s vibration and psychic powers. He suggested that at the level of gross matter—the physical body—many illnesses are cured as well. Judge Hatch mused that for all the volumes published on Yoga, none of them had described the physiological roots of the retention practice.

Well, as I realized that I had picked up a book written in 1915 that out of nowhere answered the question I intended to receive from one published in 2020, I knew, in that moment, that Judge Hatch is a teacher still! Though living in the astral dimension beyond this world, he continues to be very much focused on supporting spiritual evolution in the modern world, through the use of an extremely practical method—the retention of breath, the very method that I had recently been learning about myself. I further realized that a trickster spirit had crafted an amazing set of circumstances to captivate my attention!

I feel a deeply grounded imperative to pass on Judge Hatch’s synchronistic affirmation of Anders Olsson’s research. Of course my intent here is not to prescribe or recommend the Relaxator. My intent is to share a most vibrant synchronicity and, for me, a clear interaction with a spirit seeking to benefit humankind.

Links are provided below to the works cited, in case one is interested in taking the journey of this synchronous happening for one’s self.

Synchronicity provides a meeting place for different soul dimensions, both within and outside the self. Anyone who might choose to engage in a practice with breathing should consult with their medical practitioners to obtain medical clearance. This blog is simply informational, not prescriptive.

Gratitude for the gift of Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art. Love for all the souls engaged in this fantastic voyage of ever-evolving consciousness.

Vibrantly,
Chuck

Elsa Barker: Letters from the Afterlife
James Nestor: Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art
Anders Olsson’s website: Conscious Breathing
The Relaxator