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 Law Of Mind

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Thought creates reality…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Carlos Castaneda was emphatic that human beings are magical beings. His greatest lament was how the power of negative suggestion veiled our awareness of our true power of creation. The irony is that we cluelessly exercise and partake in this divine power every day to generate a limited, disgruntled sense of self.

What Carlos recognized as magical is the human power of mind to intend  and physically manifest as a creator. The human species truly is the Chosen One,  endowed with a divine ability to freely create.

The laws of nature rule the subconscious minds of all beings in nature. Only the human mind can override nature’s instinctual promptings and create what it wants. Whether we are aware of it or not, the suggestions we deliver, or allow to be delivered, to our subconscious minds, create the life we are in.

What distinguishes the human mind is its conscious capacity to think, and with that, its ability to choose. The human mind has this added layer of a conscious mind that has a controlling influence upon the subconscious mind, the mind that it shares with all of nature.

Animals follow fixed patterns. I knew a master hunter who stopped hunting because the fixed regularity of paths that deer travelled gave hunters a ridiculously unfair advantage. I observe how deer around our house continuously munch on the same trees and plants, despite the fact that lush vegetation is available but a few feet from their established routine.

The conscious mind is a mind that can observe, reason, and change direction. The subconscious mind is the mind of creation. These two minds are symbiotically bound to each other. The conscious mind is charged with providing responsible leadership to the subconscious mind, which fulfills, without judgment, its suggestions.

Human infants are born with subconscious instincts intact but with a blank-slate conscious mind. The conscious mind builds an identity over time, largely based upon outside influences. For instance, an infant that sleeps through the night without disturbing its parents might be hailed as a ‘good baby.’ This feedback of goodness for non-disturbing behavior may then become a major conditioning factor in the child’s personality.

The conscious personality is filled to the brim with such internalized foundational beliefs about itself that become self-fulfilling prophecies. The beliefs are suggestions to the subconscious mind, which then builds a physical, mental, and emotional definition of itself that fulfills the conscious mind’s thoughts about itself.

Understand that the subconscious is not a thinking mind; it does not judge the quality or truthfulness of the suggestions it is compelled to fulfill. The subconscious is solely a creator, who has the divine ability to transmute thought into physical being. It accepts all suggestions impressed upon it with equanimity. It is the responsibility of the conscious mind to determine what is truth and to suggest right action.

The process of freeing the conscious mind from its attachment to false and negative beliefs is fundamental to desired change. Many technologies provide tools to accomplish this.  Ancient shamanic practices employ the shaman to cut the cord to internalized outside influences. Psychedelics burst through the shallow province of the conscious mind to introduce other worlds of possibility. Inner parts work utilizes active imagination and communication with inner parts to  loosen the hold of their defenses and limiting beliefs.

The oldest and simplest technique is borrowed from the first one employed to shape our personalities, from birth onward: rote memorization. The phrases that were used, often laced with emotion, to tell us we were good or bad, worthy or unworthy, capable or incapable, lovable or unlovable—whether they had merit or not—shaped our concept of self.

Those same messages of childhood, true or not, have often been transmuted into our core identity, as experienced in habitual modes of thinking, feeling, and believing.

We can approach embodying a new identity in stages. If, for instance, one has no faith in the power of their subconscious to heal, they can repeatedly state, several times a day: “I have faith in the power of my subconscious to heal me.” This suggestion affords the subconscious the directive to assemble experiences that will enable one to embody the feeling of faith.

Once this suggestion is manifested, one can voice a new suggestion to direct the healing capacity of the subconscious to a specific mental or physical concern, with full confidence that the subconscious mind is being directly and successfully impressed.

Suggestions should be stated rotely and repeatedly. Bring presence and enthusiasm to each repetition but, most importantly, keep stating your intentions incessantly throughout the day and before sleep.

Take a cue from the internal dialogue that never shuts up! Let your new, positive, healing suggestions become your new inner dialogue.

Just do it!
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: How To Manage The Inner Critic

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The power is in your own hands…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Shamans call the inner critic a foreign installation, programmed to overshadow the true nature of our magical beingness. Rather than bask in the awe of our unlimited potential it causes us to stew in the murky waters of  unworthiness and inadequacy.

The foreign installation delivers an inner dialogue that judges incessantly. The voice might sound like our own, but this is a kind of AI stunt. The voice is impersonal and it afflicts every human being with its negative messaging.

On a personal level, this internal dialogue delivers constant suggestions to the subconscious mind that manifest in powerfully negative moods and beliefs about the self. The way to neutralize the effects of this program is to reprogram the subconscious mind.

One major pitfall in dealing with the inner critic is to try to reason with it. It’s very tempting to stand up to the critic, but be forewarned. However receptive it may be, it is programmed only to defeat. Beware of its reasonableness and encouragement, it’s merely another opportunity to ultimately steal your positive energy through greater defeat and humiliation.

Another highly effective tactic of the inner critic is to trap us in feeling resentment for being offended by the words and actions of others. It is indeed necessary to take action when one is victimized, but the holding of resentment entrenches one in deeply negative thought and feeling, as the inner critic perseverates in its negative messaging.

Note the mechanism that the inner critic utilizes to achieve its decisive influence: the non-stop flow of negative suggestions to the subconscious mind. Rather than attempt to prove your worthiness to the critic, deliver your own constructive, positive messages to the subconscious mind.

Here’s an institutionalized example of negative messaging. Just prior to receiving communion with God, during a Catholic mass, this prayer is repeated three times: “Lord I am not worthy to receive You, speak but the word and my soul will be healed.” The message delivered: I am not worthy, I am undeserving, and I require you to heal me.

This disempowering messaging could be reprogrammed, as follows: “I am worthy. I intend to be healed.”

These suggestions, delivered to the magical center of the subconscious mind, generate positive self regard, acknowledge the power of the conscious mind to use its words to initiate a healing, and have faith in the subconscious mind to manifest a healing.

Rather than argue with an impersonal program, copy its highly effective strategy. State positive suggestions to the subconscious mind often. The subconscious will eventually pick up the consistent messaging of your suggestions and manifest their intent.

Of course, the new suggestions will be competing with powerful programs established by years of the foreign installation’s internal dialogue. These old programs generate blocking beliefs that compete with new suggestions. Have faith in ultimate success and perseveringly, and with passion, state your suggestions.

Sometimes, we might argue that some of what the inner critic highlights is true, so we can’t really believe the affirmations we’re stating. Face the truth of habits or behaviors that sabotage the self. Rather than berate the self, take steps to address these issues. While addressing these issues continue to state your positive intentions for the self.  Feel love versus disappointment for the self, regardless of its foibles.

Finally, don’t attach to the outcome, which means don’t try to imagine or plan how things will work out, just trust that they will. Exercise faith. Faith is the knowing that you are a magical being capable of creating a fulfilling life through the marriage of your conscious mind that designs the blueprint, with your subconscious mind that sculpts your intent.

Rather than passively allow a foreign installation to construct your life, create your own masterpiece. State aloud or write down your intent, fix an image of that intent firmly in your mind’s eye, and constantly reaffirm your intent with positive affirmations to yourself.

Trust that your beloved partner, your subconscious mind, will follow the necessary path, however long and winding, to manifest your heartfelt intent.

Hold faithfully to the image you have designed, knowing that every day is presenting you with circumstances that require decisions and actions, the building blocks of your already-in-progress, created, new life.

In construction,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Anatomy Of Lust

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Be illumined…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

The Latin root for lust is lustrare, which means to illuminate, to brighten. Like a moth, irrevocably attracted to a bright flame, lust is an overwhelming desire or craving to merge with or consume an object that shines with the promise of deep satisfaction.

Lust is most frequently associated with sexual passion, which comes online at puberty, fueled by hormones whose biological urgency is ultimately the intent to bring forth new life. Typically, one becomes sexually attracted to the shine or glow one sees in another, and lusts for some kind of sexual release with them.

The overwhelming power of lust challenges deeply the ego’s reasoning ability and will. The emotion of lust is so binding and blinding one often feels powerless to not acquiesce to it. Despite very negative consequences for acting it out, lust, due to its compulsive power of attraction, can frequently defeat the ego’s best of intentions of restraint.

Interestingly, the guidance upon dying is for the soul to travel directly toward the light. That which most powerfully Illuminates is the ultimate Creator. Union with God is union with the light. Passion is the energy of creation.

Lust imbues the human experience with creative energy from the most primal levels of biological desire to the highest form of spiritual love. Lust is the energy that the subconscious employs to draw to it the materials for its creative activity as it embarks upon the task of fulfilling a suggestion.

Lust is also the energy that feeds addictions. Addiction is a spiritual disease that achieves the momentary satiation of calm through union with an object, substance, or behavior that shines with the luster of promise. Addiction binds one to the repetitive habit of seeking union with the mana of its substance, usually with diminishing returns of satisfaction, generating greater dependency and despondency.

Lust is an essential energy of life that is so powerful that it can destroy life. The desire of lust is an essential component of intimacy, yet, if it is too dominant, can forestall the development of true relatedness and connection, qualities essential to enduring relationship.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in human form is the mastery of lust. To avoid lust is to forsake the creative and emotional dimension of one’s divine birthright. To give over one’s life to the compulsions and mismatches of lust is to lose control of one’s life.

Oftentimes, a repetitive cycle of doing lust’s bidding can accrue to its loss of luster where the spark of illumination can then transfer to a true path of heart. The Buddhists call this avidya , the long path of ignorance that eventually accrues to enlightenment.

If we recognize that the true source of lust is within our own soul, which is then reflected outward to ‘catch our eye’, we might then take hold of our creative energy within ourselves. If we align our desire with the realization of our true self we present to the subconscious the intent for fulfillment.

Shine on,
Chuck 

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Full Breadth Of The Subconscious Mind

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We are all part of the vast interconnected All That Is…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

If the conscious mind is characterized as command central, then the subconscious mind is boots on the ground.

The conscious mind is the active mental side of our wholeness. It has the capacity to think and suggest, with awareness.

The subconscious mind is the magnetically generative side of our wholeness. It has the ability to draw to it all the materials needed to create and manifest a suggestion.

In their most individuated relationship, the conscious and subconscious minds are the divine couple whose intent and manifestation serve the creative expression and experience of All That Is, the greater interconnectedness, the oneness that we all are.

The subconscious mind operates beneath the threshold of consciousness, at the crossroads of influencers that market suggestions from the conscious mind, as well as from a multitude of characters that exist in the depths of the collective unconscious of All That Is.

In these regions, one first encounters what Jung called the personal unconscious, which is populated by the shadow, which includes the rejected parts of the self, as well as a warehouse of internalized beliefs obtained through social interactions that heavily overshadow our view of ourselves and others.

Jung called the characters in the personal unconscious complexes. A useful current psychotherapy model calls them one’s internal family system (IFS). Negative beliefs about the self emanating from this shadow dimension prompt an ongoing internal dialogue that generates a steady flow of disempowering suggestions to the subconscious mind.

Beneath the personal unconscious are the characters of our ancestral tree, whom contribute their genetic disposition, as well as wisdom, wounds, and questions emanating from the lives they’ve lived. Bert Hellinger’s Family Constellations addresses influences from this dimension, which generate powerful suggestions to the subconscious mind.

At the deeper depths of the ancestral unconscious is the evolutionary journey of our species, which determines our instinctual reactions to survive via powerful instincts and archetypal patterns. When activated, the magnitude of emotion and energy from these centers powerfully influences the suggestibility of the subconscious mind and its subsequent manifestations. An example would be, a mother filled with superhuman strength to lift a car to save her trapped child.

Finally, the subconscious is connected to all the selves we have been in our various incarnations, as well as to our High Self, which is at the nucleus of our soul’s journey through infinity. This network of connections, with all their accumulated wisdom and concern, has its own portal of energetic influence upon the subconscious mind.

As you can see, the subconscious mind has a vast set of connections and suggestions to choose from as it navigates life. The subconscious largely controls the fate of our body, as well as the life we will manifest.

As opposed to the conscious mind that generally uses rational thinking to decide its course of action, the subconscious mind weighs the emotional intensity and attractiveness of proposed suggestions. The subconscious truly demands to be impressed by its potential suitors; suggestions must resonate.

The conscious mind has access, through the subconscious mind’s connections, to these deeper centers of the unconscious mind. Thus, when I ask for help from my High Self, this request becomes a suggestion to the subconscious that often results in an intuition—a meaningful image—that sheds a broader light on the concern I was contemplating.

I note that the image provided was not the result of a rational process but rather one of powerful associative value. The High Self provides the exact missing puzzle piece to fit the current puzzle. Remember the magnetic power of the subconscious; it draws to it, with precision, that which is needed to fulfill its chosen project.

The conscious mind is certainly the greatest influencer of the subconscious mind, at least in this human life. Its salient feature is the exercise of free choice. The fate of our current world hinges on the exercise of the conscious mind to align its suggestions for the greater good.

The greater the conscious mind is able to Know Thyself, in all its dimensions, the more balanced and fulfilling will be its suggestions. If current thoughts and suggestions to the subconscious mind are old, outdated and negative, resulting in old stuck patterns, then it’s high time to reprogram with new, inviting and invigorating suggestions to manifest something totally new.

The subconscious mind is highly impressed by thoughts, emotions, beliefs, intentions, prayers and mantras rotely stated, or emotionally expressed through art, music and movement. The key is perseverance without attachment to outcome.

Know that any suggestion you put out to the universe has already been created on the mental plane of thought and that it just needs to gestate under the magnetic sculpting of the subconscious mind before it manifests. Have the patience to ensure the faith of its inevitable delivery.

The ultimate key is knowing that you—as a necessary component of All That Is—are the creator of your own life. Go ahead and create that masterpiece!

Creating,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog, News and Notes, Soulbytes

Summertime Pause

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-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

New Soulbytes and Blog postings are on pause until Monday July 8, 2024. There is still plenty to read on our website.

Daily Soulbytes can be found here.

Chuck’s weekly blog can be found here.

And All Posts offers all of our postings in chronological order.

For the experience of calming suggestions to the subconscious mind (and every time you listen, you will go deeper), listen to Chuck’s recently recorded blog here: