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: 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

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