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 Weight of Being Offended

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To the summit!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we characterize spiritual advance as reaching the summit of a mountain, being offended is the weight of a leaden backpack we carry as we attempt to climb upwards. The more we feel offended the harder it is to climb. Frequently, the quest becomes like the fate of Sisyphus: repeatedly nearly reaching the top only to tumble back to the start.

The weight of offense is measured by the resentments and entitlements we harbor for the wrongs done to us. These heavy emotions and expectations poison the mood and spirit of everyday life. Though we may have little control over the things that befall us, we have total control over the attitude we assume toward the fact that they happened.

The shamans of ancient Mexico came to the realization that we live in a predatory universe. Objectively speaking, all life feeds upon other life. Even an advanced Yogi who lives through breathing in air alone takes from it and consumes its prana, the subtle ether that sustains the physical body.

Shamans accept the predatory nature of the universe as an energetic fact. They focus on how to navigate life to both survive and advance under these predatory conditions. They see the major hindrance to successful navigation as the human tendency to get caught in affronts to one’s self-importance.

When Jeanne Marie Ketchel was diagnosed with breast cancer, she struggled for years afterwards with resentment. “Why me, I don’t deserve this, I take extraordinary care of myself!” Eventually she came to, “why not me, I’m no more special than anyone else.” This loss of preoccupation with being offended was to free her energy and lead to her spiritual healing and advancement. When she left this world there was no need to fully reincarnate to work through issues of offended self-importance.

Shamans recommend that we use those occasions of feeling offended as opportunities to hone our souls. Though we may be hurt and injured by an attack, we can lighten our pain and sharpen our focus by not being personally offended by an event. The wisdom of martial arts is to never waste any energy at being offended by an attack but instead to have one’s full attention available to prepare the best response.

Shamans suggest we view our interactions with the antagonists in our lives as opportunities for spiritual advancement. This is not about treating our challenges as gifts but simply as necessary opportunities for growth. The task then becomes what we choose to do with our challenges. Our first task is to ruthlessly stare down any self-importance that would compromise our energy and effectiveness.

If we complain, we lose energy. If we get caught in self pity, we lose energy. If we shed offense, pity and judgment, we are free to mold ourselves into any being that would be a step toward ultimate success.

Thus, if I am unfairly treated at work I can allow myself to do grunt work calmly, without wasting energy on being offended, if I see that this will lead to my ultimate advancement. I can feel good that I am honing my energy for spiritual and career advancement by remaining calm while actually being treated unfairly.

Even if I never receive the promotion I deserve, I am significantly lightening the weight of being offended, and lightening my backpack, as I rapidly surmount the summit! That’s the best use of the predatory universe we live in.

Without attachment to outcome, release the weight of offense and you can’t help but spiritually advance.

Shedding,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog, Jan's Blog

Beyond Facebook: The Spirit of Maturity

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With spirit’s intent there are no limits…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

This past week we withdrew from Facebook. We are no longer posting on it. We were always of two minds about using it. We didn’t use it in the way that most people use it, never having engaged in searching for old friends or using it to connect with people we knew.

We used it solely as a platform for our work, sort of as an extension of our website, but even so, we didn’t really like what was behind it. Last week’s testimony by whistleblower Frances Haugen clarified for us the deeper truth about it and underscored our persistent uneasiness.

We offer tools for healing from abuse and trauma. Our intent in sharing our work and our lessons in life has always been to offer what we’ve learned without strings attached, freely given. That is not, nor has it ever been, the intent of Facebook.

After listening to Haugen’s testimony, it became clear to us that the Facebook corporation has been complicit in systematically grooming young children, and even adults, to adopt addictive behaviors that lead to harmful and even damaging mental, physical and spiritual trauma. Though not necessarily malevolent in its intent, Facebook has nonetheless been neglectful in its effort to correct these commercially driven destructive practices.

How could we utilize Facebook and piggyback off it, when we are all about healing? How could we use a platform that has done harm to the innocent? How could we allow our healing work to sit on a platform that doesn’t care about people, only about making more and more money, no matter who falls by the wayside while they do it?

The time had finally come. What we had talked about for months, became the action of the day: remove our energy from Facebook and no longer use it to promote our healing work.

Although our pages, as previously published, still remain accessible, we do not look at them and, at some point, when we feel that everyone who has been used to reading us via Facebook has become familiarized with accessing us directly through our website, we will fully remove them.

Facebook has become the major social network to empower all citizens of the world to connect directly with each other. That in itself is not a bad thing. The byproduct of such access, however, has also entrapped much of the world’s energy in the insatiable need to be liked, what the shamans call the trap of self-importance. Self-importance and insatiable greed have undermined our moral compass.

Recent revelations have clearly exposed the preeminence of algorithms for profit over the common good, as the operating principle for the publicly traded Facebook corporation. From the economic perspective that values maximum profit as a most legitimate goal, Facebook is no different than most corporations. The old axiom, “the business of America is business”, has become anachronistic, driving us, in the extreme, to the brink of destruction.

Our planetary and species survival is contingent upon a way of life that accepts modesty, limitation and equanimity as its guiding principles. The quest for unlimited profit has compromised our moral underpinnings and the common good. We are evolving into a species that must operate from the place of truth and true need to insure our survival on our rapidly changing planet. This, as the new algorithm, places the true needs of the planet and its inhabitants above the profit motive.

What is the alternative? Specific to our decision to leave Facebook we call to the intent that those who would truly benefit from what we have to offer will find their way to our offerings. In fact, this has been the overarching intent that has always controlled the unfolding events of our lives.

The overarching intent of the individual spirits of all human beings is that we mature in this life. This spirit intent is materialized at the center of the subconscious mind, that which naturally attracts to it the physical circumstances necessary to advance its maturity.

The marketing psychologists of the early 20th century discovered and exploited this attractive function in the subconscious, which they infiltrated with advertising suggestions to make a profit. This drove a wedge in the human species, between listening to the guidance of the inner spirit vs the outer promptings of the marketplace, with all its hypnotic suggestions.

Spirit intent never abandoned human life, but the challenge for ego to  trust its guidance has greatly compromised its ability to choose wisely and trust its own heart and mind. Outside approval and likes have become the measure of personal value and has commandeered the direction of intent.

Take back your intent. Refuse the ruse and dependence upon a way of life that places the influence of heartless marketing above the truth of the heart. Trust that placing your intent upon your heart’s truth is all that is necessary to attract to you exactly what you truly need to advance your spirit’s maturity in this life. Advancing in maturity is the real solution to this world’s survival.

May the business of America become the Spirit of Maturity,

Jan and Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Of Your Choosing But Not Of Your Choosing

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The law of nature is growth…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

After Jeanne Marie Ketchel left her life, in a human body, she was amazed to discover that she was still very much a part of this world, though in a much more subtle body than the physical body she had recently shed. Following a period of rejuvenation and orientation she chose a task that was to become her new life mission.

More precisely, she describes this afterlife choice process as, “It will be of your choosing, but not of your choosing. It will be granted because it is exactly where you need to go, but it will also be where you fit perfectly.” (The Book of Us, p. 165)

No outside judge decides where we need to go, we are the ultimate judge of our lives.

“Where you need to go” is how I define karma. The underlying law of nature, both physical and spiritual, is growth. Spiritual growth progresses through lighter and lighter stages of being. We shed the denseness of physical matter upon physical death and enter our lighter energy body soul-state.

However, an individual who remains attached to their worldly possessions and physical proclivities upon death will, of necessity, enter a bardo environment that fits this state of evolution. The Buddhists define bardos as alternative worlds that reflect a soul’s state of spiritual accomplishments, high or low, offering what is necessary for continued growth, for every soul is destined to grow and evolve at their own pace.

Thus, continued life would be in a bardo of one’s choosing and yet not; it would be the only fitting place in which to evolve, hence, would be a natural next step. Souls remain in bardo states until they are ready to move on, meaning until they have grown or progressed enough to shed their attachment to the coveted activities of physical life or have completed the necessary expiation resulting from them.

The significant point here is that we are in full control of where we land based upon the choices we make and how far we spiritually evolve, in whatever world we are in. Upon changing worlds, at death, we can only go where we have prepared ourselves to go.

Karma is not punitive, it is objective. Though we might covet a highly evolved spiritual existence, we will only manifest it when we have completed the prerequisites for such an existence. Death does not automatically result in spiritual advancement, unless we have consciously worked toward it during our lifetime. Alternatively, though we may in fact be spiritually advanced during our lifetime, we may be placed in a remedial bardo to complete the necessary requirements for even greater ascension.

The same principle governs the life we are currently in: we can only advance in our careers and relationships to the extent that we have learned and prepared ourselves to advance into deeper fulfillment.

We are the ultimate judge of our lives, as we place ourselves where we need to go based on the choices we have made and the consequences of those choices. Judgment is based on full transparency—the truth. We are free to ignore the truth, but in that case we land ourselves in the bardo best fitted to allow us to accept the truth that we avoid, and to grow beyond it.

Our truest judge is the voice of our conscience, which is located in the heart center. This is the heart not of sentimentality nor romance but the heart of our morality, our deepest knowing of what is right. This voice of the heart is to be distinguished from the voice of the aberrant inner critic, the product of the conjuring mind’s incessant storytelling.

If we quiet our mind and ask our heart to speak the truth, it will calmly reveal it—no drama, just the plain truth.  The true judge—the voice of heart centered conscience—will always know and choose rightly where we must go next.

If we align our decisions and actions with the truth that we are shown, we will advance as spiritually enlightened beings.

From the heart,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Heart Beats to the Intensity of Activation

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Heart centeredness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

 We live in a time that many have identified as one of quickening. The impact of such fevered evolutionary activity on the central nervous system (CNS) is quite palpable in the form of heightened anxiety and quickened escalation to panic. The heart beats to this intensity of activation. 

Underneath the energetic impact of our times is our innate temperament. The genetics which inform the inborn settings of our CNS greatly impact our innate resilience to stress. Thus, an inheritance of ancestral trauma can program our CNS to approach life with constant   vigilance. The heart beats to this intensity of activation.

In addition to inheritance is the impact of many experiences post-conception that are regulated by the subconscious mind. To assure survival and balance the subconscious might split off and store these unprocessed experiences in the body and shadow regions of the psyche. These splintered complexes form autonomous mini-psyches that occasionally are triggered and disrupt ego functioning. The heart beats to the intensity of  their activation.

Whether the source of activation be engrained habit or triggered complex is immaterial, the result manifests physically in the tempo of the beating heart. The challenge is to reset the CNS in order to find calm.

Psychopharmocology approaches this task with chemicals that both enhance or block the influence of hormones and neurotransmitters, whereby exerting regulation upon the CNS and the beating of the heart. This might be viewed as a material intervention to influence the physical body and, secondarily, the mind or spirit, which finds peace in a calmed body.

Heart centered breathing brings consciousness directly to the heart and can reset its rhythm to homogenize with the pace of the breath. Focus upon the breath also screens out activating thoughts through mindful presence with the heart center. Yogic pranayama breathing, as a regular practice, develops greater conscious control over the CNS. 

When we breathe with awareness the mind shuts off thinking. Conscious breathing is the mind exerting direct influence over the CNS. Psychotherapy offers another integrated mind body approach to CNS regulation through the processing of complexes and strengthening of control of the mind over itself.

Meditation and neurofeedback address CNS regulation at the most subtle dimension. In the stillness of inner focus one encounters the impact of complexes and habits, each vying for attention with stories and feelings, and notices their impact upon the heart. Release of attachment to these stories and feelings, while traveling deeper into the quiet dimensions of the soul, brings the CNS to utter calm. Sustained practice affords everyday life a modicum of detachment from the storm and stress of life in human form.

Finally, repetitive mantra, prayer or intention directly instructs the subconscious, the mind body center that automatically controls the CNS.

With sustained practice these programs can be altered through conscious effort. Of course, deep resetting of the CNS will take time and may require a combination of the practices outlined above.

And though the heart will always beat to the intensity of its activation, activation can be greatly transformed through mental practice. And mind you, all mental practice issues from the province of the soul. 

Soulfully,

Chuck

 

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Journey Continues…

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And the journey continues…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Every time we change we move into a new life. This coming December 9th will mark the 20th anniversary of my wife Jeanne’s definitive departure from human life. Since then, though we remain connected in a different configuration, I have moved into a completely new life. I experience myself and the world from a very different perspective. Though I remain connected to what I once was, I have grown into a totally different person.

I would characterize my change as my soul reincarnating further into its latent potential. Even my body has reshaped itself to support my soul’s current journey. The great Hindu Guru, Sri Sivananda teaches that the physical body is actually the expression and creation of our soul. As our soul ventures into new life it shifts the body to serve that change.

Carlos Castaneda was emphatic that shamans should avoid looking into mirrors. The trap of the mirror is that it literally catches one’s self reflection. Such was the fate of Narcissus, the namesake of narcissism, who became frozen in his gaze, unable to see beyond his own physical reflection.

For shamans, the trap of self-importance is the greatest impediment to human evolution, as is mirrored in the greed apparent in our world’s energy crisis. Despite their contribution to the climate crisis, fossil fuels continue to dominate our energy demands, as we place our self-interest above the true needs of the world. Similarly, our ego’s fixation upon receiving validation of its personal importance absorbs the lion’s share of our personal store of energy, severely underfunding our evolutionary potential.

Practically speaking, the mirror can also serve to reinforce a static view of ourselves that does not allow for the possibility of change. Like the monotonous internal dialogue, the image in the mirror may be typecast to deliver the same old message, i.e., “You’ll never be good enough.”

Of course, we need mirrors to reflect to us the orderliness of our outer presentation. The shamans would suggest only cursory glances to achieve this, avoiding the judgment of sustained viewing. I am actually fascinated with the changes glimpsed in these brief glances. I ask, “Who is that being; he keeps changing!”

Don Juan Matus warned that we should pay scrupulous attention to the agreements we enter into as to who we are, consciously or unconsciously, when we fixate on socialized beliefs or frozen images in the mirror. Transpersonal psychotherapists recognize the power of heredity and archetypes to shape our physical bodies when we believe their influence to be sacrosanct and irrevocable.

Hypnotists stress the power of suggestion to manifest what we become. In fact, the subconscious mind is both the storehouse of all inherited and acquired habit but also the home of every individual’s personal genie. As the body is constructed by the intent of the soul, everyone has the latent opportunity to assume full control of who they will become. It’s all in what we believe and what we choose to tell ourselves.

Even if it be the case that our present life was chosen as expiation for choices made in past lives, we all have the free will to change the course of our development. Once we’ve squared with the reasons for our fixations we are truly freed to release them. Freeing the ego of its self-importance, its routine judgments, and its unnecessary agreements allows it to consciously direct its subconscious companion genie to manifest positive and evolutionary changes in the self.

Our world now mirrors how the power of the beliefs we attach to generate the reality we live in. We live in a virtual marketplace of suggestion, where we see dear family and friends become beings we hardly recognize. The sublime gift of such manifested polarization is absolute proof of the power of suggestion. We can choose to use it for the advancement of self and the greater good.

As don Juan Matus wisely advised, enter into no agreements you have not consciously chosen. As well, freely choose to make new conscious agreements and retire old agreements that are no longer necessary or helpful to your evolutionary Spirit. Join your personal intent with your Spirit’s intent for the ever-unfolding journey of fulfilling life.

Take humble but definite charge,

Chuck