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: Facing Now

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Time for your two selves to sit down and have a chat?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

On March 24, 1995, Tony Schwartz phoned Elmer Green to share his frustration that his recently reviewed book, What Really Matters (1995), which chronicled the development of the New Age spiritual movement in America, had sold so few copies. This despite favorable reviews in The New York Times and Fortune, and an upcoming guest appearance on PBS’s Charlie Rose.

When I went on to research Tony Schwartz, I discovered that he was the ghost writer for Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal (1987), the hugely successful, number one bestseller that first made Donald Trump a household name.

The coincidence and cognitive dissonance of Tony Schwartz, who has gone on to be one of the most successful proponents of New Age energetics, as applied to the workplace, being the same Tony Schwartz who first launched Donald Trump, is too compelling to ignore. Regardless of the findings of the Mueller report, Donald Trump was being groomed to become president by the forces of destiny, decades ago, as the prerequisite to the real launching of the Age of Aquarius.

Destiny insists that we reconcile our nature and our spirit selves for evolution to proceed now. Tony Schwartz reveals this polarity within himself in his 1995 call to Elmer Green. His outrage at his poor book sales, and his attachment to self-importance reflect his bottom-line-self, growling from his solar plexus chakra, saying, “what about me!?” On the other hand, the book he wrote speaks to the emergence of the New Age, reflecting a view from his heart chakra self, where the self-serving ego of the solar plexus chakra acquiesces to synchronicity and the importance of interconnected energy, versus self-importance and the will.

The fact that Tony Schwartz bemoans his role in Donald Trump’s rise in his 2016 statement on Good Morning America, where he characterizes his ghostwriting of Art of the Deal, as putting “lipstick on a pig,” suggests to me that he misses the true significance of his contradictory actions. All humans have two selves that must be reconciled with to advance both themselves and the human race.

To project the evil squarely upon a president, who may have stolen an election (even if it is true), is to dissociate from one’s own shadow self, which, as is evident in the Tony Schwartz example, continues to impact one’s life, albeit unconsciously.

The self of the first three chakras is embodied in the caricature of Donald Trump, and we all have that self. The first chakra is all about the wall and core safety. Do I have enough to survive? How much of our lives is spent on this obsession?

Birthright and entitlement spring from this chakra. Did I get the attention, resources, and security promised by the ruling archetypes of family? Have I settled with my core disappointments and resentments, or do I secretly harbor acrid bitterness and jealousy? Why do I really have to share? The bottom line is everything. “I’m all for spiritual enlightenment, just as long as I get my piece of the action,” is the perspective of this chakra.

The second chakra is truly the scourge of humankind. As a therapist of some 35 years, I know for certain that child sexual abuse is a hidden industry in all communities, at all socioeconomic levels of society. It’s an ancient shadow industry that reflects humankind’s inability to face the true depths of its animal sexual nature and, with the turning of a blind eye, relegates the instinct to target the most innocent and vulnerable.

The notion that human beings have mastered and integrated their sexual selves is absurd. Many ‘solve’ the issue of sexuality through dissociation from and repression of their sexual selves. This, of course, only empowers the collective dissociated instinct that flourishes in human trafficking and the hidden corners of spiritual traditions.

Even those moderately engaged with their sexual selves have to question how much of their sex lives are commandeered by manipulation, avoidance, obligation, personal gain, control, or simply a focus on personal desire. How much of the fullness of sexual desire is integrated with true love and meeting of another? To reach this level of refinement, sexual connection must travel to the heart center, where the egg of narcissism is cracked open to reveal the other.

The third chakra is all about personal power, as the ego comes into its own.  At this locale, the ego is all about Me. I want, I need, I deserve, I desire. These are the ego’s marching orders. It’s about agency and will, deeply colored by desire steeped in narcissism. The emboldened ego serves the desires of the physical plane, be they sexual or material. The tendency is to overindulge all the appetites and be granted attention for one’s specialness.

Though many may have settled for a codependent solution here, the shadow of that dissociated will-to-power fuels the energy of a Me First president, regardless of how deeply he may be consciously disavowed.

These concrete, primal, instinctual footings of the first three chakras are the basement foundation of our spiritual being, which resides in the heart chakra. Material accumulation, carnal desire, and personal power are the building block challenges through which our soul must pass. Though we may stalk the higher values of energetic interdependence and love for all beings, at the heart chakra, if we haven’t grappled with and made peace with our own first three chakras, our experience there will be overshadowed by unrequited need.

A well-seasoned warrior is one who has faced the power of the kundalini energy of the instinctual self within, and raises it for further refinement in love, compassion, truth, and right action of the heart chakra. Arrival at this heart-centered place marks the integration of the two selves, that which is needed for evolution to proceed now. As destiny is boldly reflecting to us now, we must cross the divide from the full experience of the lower chakras to the heart chakra for evolution to proceed.

The transformation of our political landscape, that which rules the world, is directly linked to each of us, as we face the fullness of our own natures. Soulful introspection into the truth of our inner opposition, as well as a sacrificial attitude that brings moderation to the heart, as well as acquiescence to the true leadership of the High SOUL, are the keys to this transition. This is our golden opportunity to face, now, with strong foundation, and launch ourselves into the spiritual potential of a truly enlightened New Age.

To be alive in such times as these is the envy of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, who treasured the opportunity for spiritual advancement as they faced the tyranny of the invading Conquistadores. Nothing tempers the spirit more than to shake loose the bindings of self-importance, that which is needed to cleanly arrive at the sobriety of the heart chakra. Owning the tyranny of narcissism, both within and as reflected without, is to find the ark to begin the journey across the great chasm of self-reflection to SOUL purpose.

Taking the journey,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Messiness of Birth

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That which once held life decomposes as new life takes form…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

New life is contained in a sealed casing as it completes its readiness to burst forth onto the world stage. In humans this is the placenta, in butterflies it is the chrysalis, in corn it is the husk. Strikingly, the old order, that which new life emerges from, is vastly different from the consciousness and values of the new life struggling to take form. Once new life manifests, that which so prominently contained it quickly loses purpose, and decomposes into the soil of the Earth.

The New Age, with its evolved human consciousness, continues to birth, as its placenta, the casings of the dominant old world material values, which grip as tightly as possible to counter the forward thrust of new age values. This is tragically evident in the recent New Zealand massacres, where old world, misguided white-separatist values virally asserted themselves.

White is the ultimate absence of all color. White, therefore, is the assigned ‘color’ of innocence, a blank slate entering life. All humans are subject to the loss of this childhood innocence through worldly encounters in the developmental process of growing up. Life on this planet is conditioned with the progressive loss of innocence through the interruptions of trauma, standard socialization, or simply the demand to leave childhood and become an adult in this world.

Jesus remarked that only the Child is ready to enter heaven. As I unpack the meaning of this lesson, I see the child as the ultimate symbol of innocence. What Jesus is likely suggesting is that all must retrieve their innocence, not become the small blank-slate child again. Innocence must be refined, at an adult level, to encompass the trials, traumas, losses, and disappointments that are the inevitable facts of life in human form.

The restoration of lost innocence at an adult level requires a total integration of all experiences, all parts of the self, all parts of the human community. Psychologically, this is the process of recapitulation where one faces their own deepest fears by coming to know and accept all parts of their life experience and their multidimensional self. Adult innocence is reflected in the full color spectrum of the rainbow, not in a return to the blankness of pure white.

The encasing white supremacy energy of now has misguidedly projected, concretely, this quest for the restoration of innocence through the keeping out or extermination of the darker shades of the human family, as well as migrants, as it seeks to preserve its purity and old way of life. In the recent tragedy in New Zealand, in true Hitleresque fashion, we saw the extermination solution acted out and suggested as an option, via social media.

This misguided, powerful wall of energy cannot forestall, indefinitely, the birth of an advanced awareness that knows the true needs of survival for both humanity and the planetary being. This new life of innocence knows that purity is composed of the interconnectedness of all life, as One Life. Love is its operative energy in its embracing of all life. Truth is its acting cognition, unsullied by the illusion of separateness.

The messiness of birthing this all-inclusive loving consciousness is reflected in the massacres and environmental disasters of now. Though horrific, they are not apocalyptic. They are the labor contractions and messes of a major birth, an evolutionary shift, so ready to take charge of human navigation. Even those leaders who so boldly instigate hatred are serving to awaken humanity from its deeply entranced sleep, to take personal responsibility for the fate of the world. Strong hints of that evolved intelligence and loving compassion are evident in the person and actions of Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, as she guides her nation and the world to be ruled by love, for all.

Holographically, all humans have the opportunity to participate in this great metamorphosis, in the homogenization of all the hidden parts of the self. We are all compositions of white and black. The issue is to accept all parts of the self through bringing light, not white, to all the hidden recesses of self. When we can see and accept all that we personally are, we are ready to navigate and contribute to what is truthfully needed now for all.

I am saddened for all the innocent victims of New Zealand, as well as by the almost daily environmental disasters that erupt upon the planet. May these sacrifices be well-served in the quickening to birth of the coming ruling values of love, truth, and interconnectedness as the real solutions to survival.

Humbly facilitating,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Soul Communication

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Soulmate within…

As I sit here, preparing to write, I hear Bob Dylan in the backdrop of my mind, singing, “all I really want to do, is baby be friends with you.” This is one of the many ways our High SOUL communicates with its mate, ego-Soul, in the course of everyday life.

Also, as I sit quietly, I notice a very high frequency in my ears, what I’ve heard characterized as the sound of the chakras ringing. At times the frequency and intensity of the vibration rises and loudens or strikingly disappears in one ear. It’s a kind of Morse Code of the High SOUL that accentuates agreement with a thought or happening at that exact moment.

Actually, a golden thread of connection with High SOUL weaves through synchronistic events of everyday life. Morning reading, whatever it might be, is experienced in a heightened state of awareness, where a clear light is shone upon the lesson of the day. From there, any book might be randomly opened to provide further clarification and punctuating resonance to the lesson just presented.

Dreams retrieved from ego-Soul’s nighttime journeys further amplify the central theme of the unfolding day. Dreams are ego-Soul’s awakening to other dimensions of its High SOUL relationship at subtler levels of being, independent of time and space. Understanding the messages of dreams strengthens ego-Soul’s communication with High SOUL.

Awake states that access inner silence offer a direct communication with High SOUL. When Jan channels the daily Soulbyte, she silences the thinking mind and tunes in directly to the guidance of her High SOUL.

Pathways to achieving inner silence include mindfulness meditation, intent, magical passes, Hemi-sync binaural entrainment, and biofeedback training. All of these methods train awareness to release its attachment to the marketplace of thoughts that constantly lobby for our attention.

Beyond thought we encounter a hypnagogic state, generally associated with sleep and dreaming. Suddenly we might find ourselves in a drama with characters we don’t know but are fully carrying on a dialogue with. Often, at this point, we  drift into sleep and dream. However, if consciousness can remain aware as body drifts into sleep, we can journey lucidly in the subtler dimensions of being.

When Edgar Cayce traveled to this level, he was able to access the Akashic Record of all knowledge where his High SOUL dictated curative treatments for individuals seeking help. These treatments often combined many different allopathic and alternative modalities.

Fascinatingly, Cayce, in his normal waking state, had no memories of the readings. He was a simple man with no medical training or understanding. This reflects the true relationship between our ego-Soul and High SOUL.

Ego-Soul has its own intelligence, will, and desires but is terribly limited when compared to the fullness of knowledge of its High SOUL. Hence, the wisdom of developing a means to communicate with High SOUL in order to be guided to the best right decisions and actions in this life. Ego-Soul is solely responsible for navigating in this life. Why would it deny itself the guidance of its High SOUL?

Projected outwardly, we pursue a relationship with High SOUL as reflected in the search for a true traveling companion with whom to  navigate this life. Inwardly, we achieve this Soulmate connection through quieting our mind and centering our awareness in the heart chakra, a true meeting place with High SOUL. Yes, a high pitch in my right ear just now confirms this guidance!

A wave of  love devitalizes thought…

Time to go inward. See what happens in SOUL communication.

Tuning in,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Completing Karma

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What goes around comes around…

Causes have effects. Karma is the effect of a cause, the place we land subsequent to taking an action. And where we land is the only place we can launch from in our next action in life. It is truly where we are.

We are comprised of many dimensions of karma. At the genetic level, we are the karma of our DNA, the historic journey of our ancestral line seeking answers to its mysteries. At the High SOUL level, we are the next chapter in our SOUL’s journey through infinity, part of our ego-Soul’s sojourn to gather experience for our greater SOUL group.

In the karma of everyday life we might write something on Facebook. From this action we generate reactions to our post that may enrage or hurt us. To complete this karma we must make peace with our feelings. Short of fully detaching from our feelings, we remain bound to the karma of our feelings, which on some level will determine where we launch to next.

For instance, we may decide to defensively avoid our feeling reaction to people’s reactions, by allowing our feelings to slip into the body unconscious. The karma of this action may result in a stiff muscle, a headache, and a depressed mood. This unsettled state of karma awaits future reckoning if it is to be completed.

The body may house many incomplete karmas. In traumatic recapitulation an individual’s body may be seized by the full reliving of a completely dissociated experience. The karma of that forgotten experience is completed as it is transformed during recapitulation into a deactivated memory, carrying no emotional charge.

Carl Jung discovered, in his Word Association research, that the subconscious mind is filled with incomplete karmas, which he labeled psychological complexes . A complex is a feeling toned idea, in the subconscious, that gets triggered and intrudes emotionally upon everyday life circumstances. Triggers are caused by latent karmas seeking completion in the events and interactions of everyday life.

If I house a ‘complex’ karma of feeling belittled, I (it) may be triggered by anyone seeking to give me feedback in life. Actual completion of this karma may require both emotional discharge and full acceptance of the defining experience of being belittled. Full acceptance of that defining moment frees me from the legacy, or karma of that false belief. Incompletion of this karma would result in continuing to feel offended by people’s feedback, as well as maintaining a belittled complex within.

The subconscious also stores a composite of the many selves we have been in the many lives we have lived. There may be incomplete karmas from former lives that need completion. What we call our Soul Group is the cast of characters that seeks the wholeness of our SOUL, but struggles with a preoccupation with incomplete karmas from the separate lives we have lived.

Fortunately, the current life we are in has attracted many thematic elements from those prior lives into the composition of who we are in this life, providing a playing field for our past life karmic completion. It is not necessary to return to the knowledge and experience of a past life. All you need to complete prior karma is present in the circumstances of your present life.

Completion of karma can also be witnessed on a planetary level. Don Juan Matus admitted that in ancient times female shamans dominated the shamanic playing field. He contended that once the male shamans were able to gain the advantage, they swore they would never give up control again.

This position parallels the patriarchy of our planet, which has, until recently, succeeded in enacting a karma of powerlessness and pervasive self-doubt upon the feminine. The karma of the lopsided rule of the masculine upon the body of Gaia, planet Earth, has resulted in the pervasive breakdown of the world, as we now witness.

The fact of the matter is that all human life issues forth from, and is nurtured by, the body of woman. Earth, under the management of men, is on the brink of destruction. It is the inevitable karma of woman to restore the health of the planet. For this to happen, the feminine must be restored to its divine power.

Of course, this does not mean that women must once again solely rule the world. Women are equally capable of being dominated by a patriarchal mentality. All humans must restore the feminine to its rightful place to put the evolution of the world on solid footing. At present, political advance of the feminine values of love and interconnectedness represent the true collective karmic completion of planetary need.

Grappling with true karmic completion in our individual lives contributes holographically to the planet’s healing and advance. From a heart centered place, we are guided to the karma of right causes and right effects. Let’s pay it forward.

From the heart,

Chuck 

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Chuck’s Place: The Desire Body

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All is Love… Love is All…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Someone once asked Carlos Castaneda if we should recapitulate our current love relationships. He paused, and with a shy smile gently replied, “Not yet.”

Carlos knew that recapitulation would take the buzz out of love and desire at the level of archetypal projection, that which fuels the dance of relationship in the physical world. He wanted us to savor our projections, before the personal dissolved into the transpersonal knowing of the all-pervasive impersonal divine, that which maya clothes in the unique fabrics of this world.

Transpersonal love simply can’t limit itself because, at that level of pure truth, all is love. Carlos didn’t want us to have to suffer too soon the essential loss of specialness that our local illusions provide, the puppy love of our desire body.

Strictly speaking, the desire body is the emotional component of the astral body, the energy body component of our Soul in human life. The astral body is the home of ego-Soul, composed of both mental and emotional components. The astral body is the conscious personality that navigates waking life in the body. At night that same astral body unhinges from the physical body and journeys in the dreams of its desires. Freud called dreams the land of wish fulfillment. Pretty astute, from a transpersonal perspective!

Emotion is the fuel of action. A thought or idea from the mental plane requires the motivation of emotion to manifest. Emotion has a magnetic charge. A want  is a mental idea imbued with a feeling tone that magnetically attracts, via the law of magnetic attraction, the object of its intent to us, or us to it.

As I sit and watch a show the thought or image of popcorn might appear in the mind’s eye. If the thought or image is then imbued with the energetic momentum of desire, I might pause the show, get up, and make the popcorn! A mental thought that lacks an emotional engine is not likely to result in physical action.

Hence the guidance, don’t attach to unwanted thought. Attachment is thought which, when given continued attention, becomes strengthened by the emotional energy of desire. Sustained at this level, desire ignites into blind compulsion.

Sex is a powerfully wired instinctive mandate at the subconscious, little soul’s level of body management. Cyclical release programs of both hormones and neurotransmitters, in concert with external environmental cues, trigger powerful waves of desire that inundate consciousness from the depths of the body unconscious.

Clearly, nature’s most primal imperative is survival via propagation of the species. Archetypal imagery imbued with the highly charged emotional energy of desire dominate mind and action. The power of these archetypes to overwhelm even the most apparently spiritually committed is evident in the Vatican’s recent conference on sexual abuse.

But what about sex beyond the childbearing years? As nature’s cyclical programs recede, sex is still possible. However, it requires the higher involvement of consciousness at the ego-Soul level of the astral body, with both its mental and desire components needing to be engaged, to stir the body physical. Sex at this stage is far more a function of choice than biological imperative.

Although habitual mental patterns of sexual preoccupation and expectation may persist at this stage, the emotional energy of compulsion becomes freed for higher refinement. From a chakra perspective this is the raising of kundalini energy from the sexual and will centers to that of the heart, where a more conscious love becomes possible.

Oh course, sexual union may indeed be a concomitant of love at the heart chakra center. However, at this later stage, its overriding motivation is genuine connection and affection. This continued refinement of love ultimately flowers into universal love, as one clears the channel to the oneness of High SOUL in infinity. Reaching this state of love while still in human form is possible, though quite formidable a challenge as well.

As love descends from its purest state at the High SOUL level, where it exists as the cohesive energy that binds all into oneness, it becomes increasingly separate and personal, eventuating in the desire body of human form. The major opus of human life is to refine the physical and astral dimensions of the desire body to ascend to true love of another and, ultimately, love for all. That truly represents coming home.

This is the major play on our current world stage. Can the collective human desire body rise to the level of interconnected love in this hour of greatest need? It will, because it must, but when and how has yet to be written. We are the active side of infinity here, and the heart of every individual is the active playing field of needed change. Synthesize pure love.

With love,

Chuck