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.
In a recent channeling, through Jan, Jeanne assured us that spirit forces are presently heavily engaged in influencing life upon planet Earth. She encouraged that we remain positive and continue to work on our own spiritual advancement. And truly, how does one spiritually advance?
First of all, we are all spirit beings, currently attached to our wondrous human cocoon. We are surrounded by spirit beings who have released their fleshly garments and continue to live their lives on finer material planes. Continued evolution on those planes requires that one fully square with the truths of life lived while in human form. For many spirit beings, this means lives of service and making amends.
Life beyond the physical exists at a much higher vibrational speed, and the method of action is largely mental. Thus, spirits in service to humankind bring positive, encouraging thoughts and inspirations to loved ones or others in need. Spirits are also able to impact electricity and other occurrences in nature. Thus, the synchronicities we experience each day are often spirit messages and affirmations.
Our openness and willingness to receive spirit help directly impacts our contact with spirit forces. A note of caution here. State to the spirit world your intent to only receive support from benevolent spirits. The truth is that many spirit entities who have left human life in the flesh are reluctant to leave human life in the spirit. Practically speaking, this means they remain earthbound in focus, seeking to parasitically continue human experience by attaching to and influencing human behavior.
Spirits at this stage have either failed to realize they have died or simply remain addicted to life in the physical body. They will eventually evolve, when they grow bored of their empty imaginings and are ready to place the light of truth upon their greed, and become helpful spirits.
Ironically, spirits at this stage of narcissism perform a valuable service to their human victims. Spirits could not gain entry into our human life if we didn’t provide them with an opening. That opening is generally our own attachment to unhealthy thoughts and behaviors, our own addictive tendencies.
Often, we employ various defense mechanisms to shield ourselves from the truth of our collusion with excessive or unhealthy behaviors. These blind spots open the door to hungry spirits impacting our thoughts, moods and behaviors. These heightened states of acting out also offer consciousness and conscience the opportunity to become aware and take responsibility for our hidden compulsions.
These aha moments illustrate the ‘service’ provided by even malevolent spirits to help us spiritually advance. With increased awareness we can choose to align our thoughts and actions with right action. The less we burden our spirits with ignorance, confusion and lies, while in human form, the freer our spirits will be to advance at our time of passing.
As spirit beings, while in physical life, we are also able to access and develop the power of thought to advance spiritually now. Thoughts are the commodity, the currency of spirit life. Imagination is the master builder of life beyond the physical body. However, though densely veiled, imagination is the prime mover in physical life as well.
Our freedom to imagine health and loving support to all human beings impacts their feelings and decisions. In my imagination I can send love and healing energy to the most recalcitrant of beings on earth. In so doing, I both lighten my personal load of negativity and spiritually advance to embrace the equanimity of every moment and every being.
Take advantage of spirit openings by asking for help from beneficent spirits, by facing the truths and lessons brought through malevolent spirits and by exercising the spirit power of positive thought and imagination. See what happens!
Our home, as the personal repository of the remnants of our earthly existence, is the perfect metaphor for our human personality, our soul. Closets house moments of the past, some joyful, some deeply sad. Bedrooms house our intimate lives and our nightly journeys of rejuvenation and ventures into infinity.
Bathrooms meet our animal needs and ego primping; kitchens our desires and physical sustenance. Living rooms support our relaxation and social gatherings. Basements are home to the powerhouse of heat and the central electrical nervous system. Upstairs are rooms of spirit, hobby, and fanciful dreams.
Dreams utilize this powerful metaphor of home to reflect the status of our soul’s journey in this life. When we leave this physical life the home we leave is the home we arrive to, replete with the sensations, emotions and thoughts of our earthly experiences and attachments. Some rooms of our familiar soul are polished, some a mess, some avoided, others the home of creative possibility.
Our work beyond this life is no different than our work in this life, that is, until we have perfected the home of our human personality we won’t be ready to continue the great adventure of new life beyond the human personality.
In spiritual terms this would mean our readiness, beyond physical life, to shed the astral soul body, called the double, as it completely resembles the physical body it entwined with while in physical life. Once we have perfected the completion of our earthly challenges beyond physical life, our spirit moves on to a new body of experience. While in physical life, however, our dream homes remain an active playing field to enhance our soul’s refinement.
When we dream of childhood homes we are brought back to our entry into this world, with our primal attachments and core feelings and beliefs about ourselves. Such dreams invite us to recapitulate and free ourselves from formative habits and hurts. Such dreams also suggest that our current waking life is a milieu for reliving the past. Meeting deep challenge in waking life can free one of past limitations.
Dreams of explosions of the furnace, or electrical fires in the home, speak to unruly passions of desire, fear or rage. Often they correspond with physical symptoms in the solar plexus and heart. Dreams of this genre beg for acknowledgement of suppressed and repressed emotions, seeking safe release and practices, such as meditation to gain mastery of the energy of emotion.
Dirty bathrooms and compromised toilets correspond to the digestive and elimination systems, where certain experiences of life refuse to be cleansed or flushed away. These dreams generally point to the need for deep self-reflection and honesty, where we acknowledge the truths we have denied or projected away onto the lives of others.
Attic dreams may reflect promptings from our high Spirit to build a new room for creative endeavor by opening, in our waking lives, to new projects, relationships, and innate unfolding of potential. These promptings might also appear in visitations to homes never inhabited, or in the discovery of a room never before known about in one’s current abode.
Kitchen dreams might harken back to a spotlight on early nurturance and how those patterns overshadow the present. Cooking dreams focus on self-care, the quality of what one is taking in to nourish physical body and soul. Kitchen adventures also reveal one’s relation to the desire body, often the one hidden away in waking life.
Houses in the mountains are the abodes of spiritual life. Houses by the ocean depict one’s relation with one’s inner nature. Is there threat of tidal wave? Here, nature warns of a coming major life transition or a compensation for too much repressed life. Dreams of this type call for a broader view of the balance of the energies within the self.
Homes under construction portray the soul work you are currently engaged in. Is the foundation secure? If not, the dream asks you to slow down, have patience with the basics. Are the building materials inferior or insufficient? Perhaps one is asked to be more generous at devoting one’s resources to true needs.
The dream house is a guide to soul work in this life. Perfecting that home leads to fulfillment in this life and advances the soul when it lands at the next stop on its infinite adventure, beyond this physical life.
Roughly speaking, the left brain is the home of personality and ego, the right brain is the home of our evolutionary history, our intuition, and our connection to spirit.
Eminent Yale psychologist Julian Jaynes hypothesized that, prior to the dawn of consciousness—that is, left brain ego—right brain automatically dictated human response to environmental and physical triggers. He went so far as to suggest that humans have always had voices in the head telling them what to do!
Carl Jung named these innate programs archetypal images that directed human behavior, unconsciously, through directives to the subconscious mind. Prior to the birth of ego consciousness, humans functioned as do animals, automatically reacting to the world according to the directives of archetypes. With the dawn of ego consciousness, humans developed the ability to reflect and choose whether to follow the automatic promptings of archetypal images or not.
The biblical Garden of Eden story depicts this moment of ego wrestling the ability to choose from the control of the archetypes. God essentially cast humans from the Garden for their decision to break from archetypal mandates. Thus, fledgling ego was left to both think for itself and manage the influence of archetypes upon itself. Left brain development gave humans the power to suggest their own destiny.
Nineteenth-century psychologists were immersed in the study of hypnosis, which could so deeply impact human behavior through the use of suggestion. Their studies proved that once a subject established connection with a hypnotist, it was even possible to be influenced by a mere thought of that hypnotist, though they be miles removed from the subject’s location.
Here we have an example of right brain non-spatial interconnectedness utilized by a hypnotist to circumvent a subject’s ego control and direct their subconscious to act. In clinical terms, we might call this an established transference, where the hypnotist becomes the authority figure that takes over the operation of the mind of the subject.
Psychic researcher Frederic Myers predicted, in the late 19th century, that hypnosis, with its components of trance and suggestion, would be foundational in clinical research in the 20th century. He was right. However, what took up the charge in the 20th century was applied marketing psychology, with the intent of material gain through influencing human behavior.
Psychologists Walter Scott and John Watson scoffed at the notion that humans were reasoning animals, calling them instead “creatures of suggestion”. They were able to demonstrate how easily the supposed ego could be subverted by powerful suggestions. They founded the advertising industry, perfecting the use of archetypal images in advertisements as bold suggestions, combined with verbal or written commands, to influence consumer’s purchases.
The modern world is dominated by an advertising industry that has now morphed into a social media that directly subverts the fledgling ego of humankind via hypnotic suggestion. Today, when a candidate runs for office, the main concern is the size of their war chest, that is, dollars to be spent to hypnotically entrance the electorate.
No longer is science or rational thought a trusty guide. The world is largely run by influencers, who through word, image, repetition and command entrance the populace with suggestions that become facts via their action upon the subconscious mind.
We are indeed creatures of suggestion, but with a reasoning capacity. The ego, however, is easily possessed or circumvented by the power of hypnotic suggestion. In fact, most of daily functioning is driven by one incessant voice in the head, the internal dialog.
To take back our extraordinary power to manifest via our subconscious powerhouse, it is best to assume conscious control of our innate suggestive tendency. Begin by identifying where you have unconsciously transferred your personal authority, allowing it to be controlled by the commands of authority figures.
Break the spell of these figures by commanding your central nervous system to go calm when you think of or visualize them. This is taking back inner control of the self. Regularly send the subconscious new suggestions to get calm. Exercise your own reasoning capacity, allowing it to guide your understanding and actions.
Truly take charge of your self-hypnosis with suggestions consciously intended for the betterment of self, and the greater good. Suggestion is indeed a highly influential force in human manifestation, but exercise it with reasoned care.
In flight in life, grounded in death, beautiful nonetheless… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Carl Jung recognized the psyche’s insistence upon balancing itself out in some way. Thus, if we consciously live a one-sided attitude in waking life, our dreams will balance it out with characters and dramas that engage us in the exact opposite attitude. Freud captured this principle in describing sexually promiscuous dreams as balancing an individual’s sexually repressive waking life attitude.
Psychic researcher, both in human life and in his soul’s afterlife, Frederic Myers, teaches from infinity how this law of compensation extends into the life of the soul after its completion of physical life. Myers channels, through Geraldine Cummins, his observation of the soul’s residence in the Plane of Illusion, the immediate world we encounter after a brief adjustment phase subsequent to physical death. (See both The Road to Immortality and Beyond Human Personality by Geraldine Cummins.)
Similar to the Buddhist description of a personalized bardo, Myers describes how the soul’s imagination creates a world uniquely suited to fulfilling its unlived earthly dreams, or to feel fully the pain it caused others, as it compensates for the cruelty it delivered during its earthly sojourn.
Souls live and reside in these personal environments until they achieve the completed balance to further their soul’s journey at higher, more subtle and objective levels of infinity. Thus, the Plane of Illusion enacts the life necessary to compensate for and balance out the life just completed in human form.
On Earth, presently, we have two distinguished nonagenarians, Noam Chomsky and Sir David Attenborough, reflecting to us how this law of compensation is exacting its present toll upon our planet’s survival. In a recent podcast with Ezra Klein*, Chomsky states, without hesitation or reserve, that humankind has twenty years left to radically change its environmental behaviors before it faces definite extinction.
This deeply reflective 92-year-old scholar is bluntly pointing out how significant this time on Earth is for humanity. Within our current lifetime, decisions and actions now taken will determine the near immediate fate of our human race and planet Earth.
How much greater a wakeup call could there be? How awesome to be a participant in life, on this planet, at this moment in time! Such the opportunity to awaken to a world unfiltered by blurry narcissism!
Attenborough is gentler in his challenge to a humankind that has doubled its world population in the last fifty years, seriously squeezing out other life on the planet. In his Netflix series, A Life on Our Planet**, Attenborough invites us, in graphic detail, into the beautiful yet tenuous balance of all of nature, deeply interdependent and perilously impacted by human habit. He remains optimistic, appealing to our love and awe for our home planet to curb our attitude of entitled excess.
Much of the human population is reacting aberrantly to this intuitive knowing of the precarious state of the planet that both these distinguished sages affirm. Addictions of many kinds reflect a mass of humanity seeking to remain comfortably numb in the oblivion of a soothing, fanciful, materialistic womb. Staggering gun sales reflect the fantasy of survival in a post-apocalyptic world of diminished resource.
The objective truth is that humankind is emotionally and cognitively at a narcissistic stage of development. Narcissism represents an early developmental stage of the imagination, filtered and constrained by the needs of self. From the vantage point of narcissism, the purpose of other beings and resources is limited to serving the self, the boundary of the known world.
Decisions and actions stemming from this narrow view are often to grow and hoard as much as materially possible, to be able to move about as desired, and to continue to survive and thrive upon a dying planet. Migrants are often seen as aliens, trying to take what is not rightfully theirs, rather than as people seeking refuge from an increasingly uninhabitable planet.
The issue is not ultimately about caring for the less fortunate, however noble such a cause. The deeper issue is about facing and taking right action to save the planet. And right action is the willingness to sacrifice, to set limits upon the supposed sacrosanct right to more, more, more.
Very early in my college days, I ventured into an economics course, which insisted, as its sacred dogma, that humankind’s need for more was innate, and that the world must be irrevocably organized to meet this human demand. Who ever questions the given that the economy, jobs, the human population and the stock market must continually grow?
The world emerges now from its yearlong pandemic retreat. Already, CO2 emissions are climbing back to “normal”. All envision expansion as recovery. And yet, as Attenborough’s graphic display of the melting of Antarctica portends, the compensation for expansion will be the continued unleashing of endless viruses upon the world stage.
Chomsky points to atomic fusion as the likely safe antidote to our ever-growing world energy demand, but states that such a solution is decades beyond our twenty-year survival limit. But I ask, why do we accept, without question, this supposed absolute imperative that we accommodate our energy appetite?
Beyond this materialist fixation upon energy expansion lies the final frontier of energetic expansion into the province of our soul. The energy body, our subtle soul that innervates our physical body during the physical phase of our immortal life, is ripe for discovery and exploration now, while we reside in human form.
This is literally the stuff that dreams are made of. To open to this dimension of spiritual life is to direct the human felt manifest destiny for more into sustainable evolution. To awaken to this spiritual unfolding is to stretch the imagination beyond its narcissistic constraints, to take in the deeper reality in which the self is a participant but not everything.
The current initiatives to address climate change, at the highest levels of world governance, are laudable but likely to suffer the sad fate of most New Year’s resolutions. More likely, are continued attacks from nature herself—from viruses to earthquakes—to assist humankind, via compensation, to learn to curb and redirect its insatiable appetite for more.
Nature can take down our energy infrastructure in a heartbeat, teaching us how to live small and interdependently. The law of compensation insists that we will find our way to balance. All individuals are empowered to address this inevitable fate by squaring with the imbalances in their own lives.
Taking an honest accounting of one’s habits, and willingly sacrificing excess, in whatever form, is both the individual and the planetary imperative. All excess, voluntarily sacrificed, results in the accrual of energy for spiritual advancement and planetary survival. All individual sacrifice of excess additionally accrues to humankind’s growing account of energy for necessary attitudinal shift: from narcissism to right action.
The law of compensation is the truly sacrosanct law that governs this world, and the beyond. It will help us to grow and find fulfillment through mastering the art of sacrifice. We can aid this natural and spiritual law by voluntarily taking a personal inventory of habits and aligning with right action and true interdependent need.
Start small; all donations, of whatever size, are equally appreciated. Choose one small act of sacrifice today and notice its subtle appreciation by physical body and energetic spirit. Ask for help from the unseen and experience the synchronistic material response.
Put the law of compensation to best use: let material sacrifice be compensated by spiritual advance.
The mass shootings of now grate upon our collective heart, nerves and gut, agitating our intent for calm and spiritual advancement in ourselves and our world. Our reactions range from outrage to utter despondency, true depression of spirit.
In the midst of WWI, in 1915, psychic researcher Frederic Myers, who had physically died in 1901, channelled to Juliet Goodenow the following perspective on the forces at play in the Great War, from his removed subtle perch in the next dimension:
“Germany is suffering today, in consequence of her having accepted as truth the writings of misguided theorists, involving the world in a conflict of opinion. Materialists have accomplished this tragic result through the materialistic belief of the nation… Nations that overdevelop materialistic ideas lose the necessary spiritual balance to retain sufficient equilibrium.” (Letters to Juliet: Is there Life after Death? p. 18)
Certainly, if we fast-forward to WWII, Germany fully materialized its theories of human perfection through actualizing laboratory procedures of purification via human extinction. The Holocaust became the ultimate material realization of misguided and misapplied spirit.
The passion of misguided beliefs achieving materialization are the tragic sparks we witness daily on our current world stage. The equilibrium we require for stability is extremely tenuous. How might an individual, but a cell of this living world soul, contribute to needed balance, both within and without?
All have direct access to the inner workings of their central nervous system. The subtlest thought or vibration registers in the nerves of the body, activating automatic reactions and responses. The speed and network of this subconscious activity is far more rapid than the deliberate analytic workings of the conscious mind.
As a result of these hidden mind/body processes, we might find ourselves seized with passion, or equally mired in sullen mood for unseen or unreflected reasons. These unconscious operations take hold of our state of physical charge and swoosh us along like dried leaves in a powerful wind. Collectively these winds generate the human clashes of now.
True, there are forces, seen and unseen, that strategically seek to provoke such disarray; all are not the meeting of non-premeditated intents. However, intended or random, we, as individuals, have the power to assume control of our central nervous systems.
In fact, this is critical to our greatest challenge in life, as we all must release our physical bodies at our time of death. Critical to optimal transition is the ability to completely relax, let go, and go with the flow of body to spirit. Resistance or refusal at this stage fixates one’s journey in an alternative illusory life, necessary to be completed before the real journey can be successfully resumed.
Thus, now, while fully alive as souls in physical body partnership, through focus upon our physical body, which constantly registers and reacts to spirit commands—conscious and unconscious—we can deepen our spirit’s calm and take command of our soul’s journey in this life and beyond.
The practice is quite simple, yet like all skills of value, requires patience and perseverance for optimal development. We begin by turning our awareness, which is a function of our spirit, to the state of tension in the physical body. We will notice if our heart rate is elevated, if our jaws are clenched, if our breathing is restricted, if our throats are constricted, if our belly is tight, if our perineum is tense, if pain or numbness is registering in some organ or appendage of the body.
With conviction and intention, we suggest to the body to go deeper into calm as we consciously release the tension in the body, taking it down a notch in calmness. With our breath in exhalation, we ask the body to take it down to another level of calm. We repeat this several times, as we reset and take command of the state of relaxation in the body.
Notice how another spirit, the internal dialogue, begins to initiate its interpretations, judgments, negative beliefs and stories, and how they stir the body to resume a tense state. Don’t engage in arguing with this cognitive activity. Instead, use it as a trigger to go deeper into calm.
In fact, begin to use all explosions of emotion and physical threat as triggers to go deeper into calm. Fear not that this will ill-prepare you to respond to danger. Every seasoned martial artist knows that the best strategy for encounter is the clarity afforded by deep calm. Certainly, the greatest opponent of all, death itself, is best managed in utter calm.
From the place of deep calm, you contribute calm and clarity to the collective world’s nervous system, contributing soothing balance to stabilize it in such tumultuous times.
Regardless of eruption upon the planetary surface, go deeper into calm. This is the Spirit that will materialize true equilibrium in our world.
