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: Nature’s Way

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My body stilled as I stared in heightened awareness at the fish, equally frozen, some twenty feet below the ocean surface. Effortlessly, without thought, I gently sank as my fish awaited my spear, the first I was to shoot, ever, after many weeks of trying.

Immediately following the calm of this numinous encounter I was overtaken by a surge of hunter energy that possessed me to shoot wildly in a feverish effort to add to my bounty. My spear missed every fish.

Frantically I raced to reload my spear, great pressure exerted to reset the spear in the back of my slingshot style gun. This time the spear missed its setting completely and forcefully penetrated the palm of my hand. I blacked out.

Next thing I knew, I opened my eyes to find myself sitting alone on a deserted beach, spear and gun at my side, my injured hand packed in sand. I brushed aside the sand, no bleeding, only the imprint from the back of the spear stigmatized into my palm: a Zia, the Pueblo Indian mandala of the sacred circle and the four directions. The gods had meted out both their punishment and their healing. I had been initiated  into the human hunter clan. My hubris was humbled. I was taught moderation and respect for life.

The Age of Aquarius was ushered in with overwhelming numinous energy. The Beatles, themselves a four-sided mandala, heralded an archetypal influx of spirit energy that put the world into trance and opened human consciousness to infinite possibility. If I put my original Meet the Beatles on the turntable right now I am immediately delivered to that energy; it is sacred shamanic music.

The 60s broke open direct experience of the spiritual dimensions. There were many casualties of excess. As the Modern Age has progressed so has the shattering of limits reached every sphere of existence. Most excessive has been the human population, which treats the world as its oyster, with little concern for balance, health, or the  sanctity of all life on the planet.

Like my mishap in loading my gun our world is now being humbled by nature to temper its greed and disrespect. Nature has delivered its hurricanes, fires and floods with volcanoes abrewing. Nature has taken possession of world leaders, rendering them untethered hot air balloons, catapulting the demise of greedy rule.

The destructive side of Nature also shows up in a human psychosis that results in a mass killing spree. This storm reeks its havoc through human psyche and human hands. Nothing is impervious to nature’s intent for change.

Indeed, Mr. President, it is “pure evil”. Evil, however, will always take charge when the will of the ego has transgressed the laws of nature and thrown the world into untenable imbalance. Are we ready to question why the uninitiated human hunter is allowed to be armed with an arsenal? If we cannot submit to moderation we must suffer the consequences of excess.

How far will nature’s destructive side need to go? When will it deliver its healing balm? Destruction is leading us to the healing. Love that transcends greed is birthing in the Caribbean. Necessity is so great that only true human compassion can ensure survival.

Nature has launched an all-out offensive to shift human consciousness, to bring it to truly embrace moderation or face further destruction. Until we are solidly fixed in this new attitude as a species we can expect the destructive side of nature to continue to unleash its war on our old attitudes of superiority and unbridled greed, like the inflation I experienced as I voraciously sought to possess all the fish in the ocean!

But nature, as I experienced sitting upon the beach, wants us to learn not to perish. Nature nurtures life and nature heals our wounds. It’s Nature’s Way. May we join nature’s healing intent: drop the greed, embrace compassion and accept moderation. Moderation is indeed nature’s intent for our species now. May we find our way there and be healed.

Embracing Nature’s intent,

Chuck

 

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Chuck’s Place: Finding a Safe Place Within

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The earth quakes from below and the winds blow from above as threatening words rock the safety and stability of our world. No reassurance can be trusted from without; we must find our safe place within.

Scariest ride imaginable!
– Photo credit GreatAdventureHistory.com

When I was a young boy I pleaded in prayer for a direct experience of God. My prayers were answered in a shattering vibrational experience that overwhelmed my consciousness. The buzz of billions of crickets filled my ears as vibrations became vividly colored and ferociously persistent. I was certain that I would soon dissolve into nothingness. Somehow I managed to hold on long enough for this numinous state to release me from its grip and return me to normalcy.

Once the door to this experience was opened it returned frequently over many years. Every time it showed up I was confronted with annihilation. One day I had the idea to imagine myself as a driver of a race car. It worked. I discovered my safe place behind the image of a steering wheel, my hands gripping the wheel, gaining some control by riding the vibrations. Embodied in this image I could race in circles, carving a boundary of self to withstand the disintegrating force. This image was to preserve my consciousness and sense of self in countless perilous encounters.

Years later I was preparing to leave America, perhaps for good, with my young wife, Jeanne. This was a great leap into an adventure we both desired, but beneath the surface was a serious question as to whether or not our relationship could continue into the next phase of our lives.

Before we left we found ourselves at Great Adventure Amusement Park. I hated, avoided all roller coasters. I decided to challenge myself to find a safe place on a ride called Lightnin’ Loops, the scariest roller coaster imaginable. I needed to take a leap to prepare myself for perhaps an even greater leap into the unknown.

I was secured in my seat. The ride began. I closed my eyes tightly and consciously breathed, relaxing my muscles. As the ride crept up to the zenith, where it might plunge forward or backward—either way a terrifying drop—I intensified my command to go calmer, relax, and breathe!

I succeeded in staying calm throughout that entire first ride and then through subsequent rides, as I obsessively repeated the ride using the same approach, but with eyes open, going even deeper into calm. My safe place evolved, as my ability to call my intent to go deeper into calm evolved. Incidentally, we did set off on our great adventure and left America for a time, confronting the possibility of the annihilation of our marriage and our union, with eyes wide open, acquiescing to the process by going deeper into calm.

For years, like many people, I avoided dental visits so as to not have the experience of numb mouth for hours after a procedure requiring  novocaine shots. I always had the fear that I might accidentally bite my tongue because I simply couldn’t feel it until the novocaine wore off. One day I decided to request that the dentist drill a cavity without using novocaine. He reluctantly agreed, reassuring me that we could and might have to stop and administer novocaine, as the pain would likely become intolerable.

Inwardly, I decided to master the pain by simply defining it as a sensation, and also a signal to go calmer. The truth is, I never needed novocaine again for cavities or crowns. I don’t recommend this approach to anyone, but do want to stress the power of intent and self-suggestion to ride through what might commonly be considered very threatening circumstances.

In our current world, nature and rulers are undermining our most basic security. We must turn inward to find our security and control in this free-fall of a world we now find ourselves in. We can access our safe place to successfully ride through these times by using our intent and our self-suggestion.

We cannot stop the world from changing. Mother Earth is in the midst of contractions as she reshapes our world. However, we can access our own inner ark to navigate her waves of contractions. That ark is in our intent.

Go deeper into calm. Breathe. Let every shockwave be interpreted as a signal to go even deeper into calm. Forge a secure boundary around yourself. Steady as you go.

Peace & calm,

Chuck

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Sage Guidance for Now

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The energy we prefer to spread…

Jan and I drove into our little village of Red Hook yesterday to be greeted at the main crossroad by a pickup truck sporting a huge half- American half-confederate flag blowing in the wind in the bed of the truck. The energy of the war drums pounding is palpable everywhere. How to respond? We turn to some sage guidance from the person we consider to be the wisest of the 20th Century, whose reach has yet to be fully realized, C. G. Jung, from his collected letters Volume 2, p. 502-3.

On April 28, 1959 Jung responded to a question as to why he didn’t protest against the injustice done to Tibet by the Chinese occupation. Here is his response:

“You are quite right: I also ask myself why I do not use the means that appear to be at my disposal to do my bit in combating the atrocities that are going on in the world. I can give no rational reasons for this. In such matters I usually wait for an order from within. I have heard nothing of the kind. The world situation has got so hopelessly out of hand that even the most stirring words signify nothing. It would be more to the point, or so it seems to me, if each of us were sure of his own attitude. But an individual who thinks that his voice is heard afar merely exposes himself to the suspicion that he is one of that band who have said something in order to prove to themselves that they have done something whereas in reality they have done nothing at all. Words have become too cheap. Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. Unfortunately this is all I have to say on the matter.”

What Jung is suggesting is that we act when we hear the order to do so from within ourselves. That order issuing not from impulse but from the quiet certainty of the heart. In the meantime the real contribution is to take on one’s own being, truly reconciling the opposing energies within the self. This is the playing field for world peace, the holographic solution.

Peace,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Spirit Matters

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Spirit & Matter in one…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Spirit and Matter are the building blocks of humanity. Spirit is invisible, matter is substantial and therefore observable. We infer the existence of spirit by the effects it has on matter. If I decide to stand up and walk to the door, my invisible mind, the spirit dimension of my being, moves my body, the matter or material part of my being.

Thus, spirit begins with the mental plane, which, granted, uses the physical brain but is not identical with it. Consciousness functions outside the human body as an energy body capable of defying the laws of time and space. This dimension of spirit experience, though a latent potential for everyone, usually remains dormant except under extraordinary circumstances like a physical trauma, which shakes the energy body out of the physical body in an OBE. In a generally less uncomfortable way our spirit or energy body separates from the physical body in dreaming every night.

Matter is all of nature. Nature is governed by instincts and inherited programs, which at the human level are called archetypes. Archetypes are nature’s inherited programs that can assume control of human behavior from a deeply unconscious level. For example, many people who were sexually abused in childhood lose conscious memory of their experiences almost immediately after they occur. Certainly this is not a conscious decision. This amnesic reaction is governed by an archetypal program deeply embedded in nature’s program for survival at such a traumatic moment. That program reactivates—generally in midlife, to facilitate the achievement of wholeness at a mature stage of life—as memory in the form of flashbacks, beckoning reconciliation with consciousness.

Consciousness is fixated on rationality as the governing spirit of our time: spirit intellectis. Juan Enriquez, a scientific visionary, has basically stated what most people really believe: that we are God now, that our intellect is God, and that we are completely in charge of our own and the world’s evolution. Certainly the words bellowed from the United Nations General Assembly yesterday reflect such an attitude.

This kind of inflated spirit erupted with Naziism, which had as its god the creation of the perfect superior human. Interestingly, C. G. Jung stated that Naziism was the eruption of the pagan god Wotan, long suppressed in the human psyche through the impact of Christianity, which had served to help humanity advance spirit over the dominance of its nature roots.

When spirit dissociates itself from matter, matter seeks revenge. That’s where we are now: matter is at war with spirit. Matter, as nature, is deemed irrational. Spirit, as mind, is deemed rational. Thus the war is played out as the irrational versus the rational, matter versus spirit.

Nature is dealing deadly blows to humanity at present. Simply view the state of our islands of paradise in the Caribbean. My heart goes out to all my friends there in the front line of nature’s forward march. The Caribbean is at the vanguard of our changing world. This has archetypal underpinnings as a paradise lost, representing a major shift in human consciousness. We can only return to the garden now with a wholly new adaptive attitude, which is already emerging from this precious part of the world as it braces for nature’s next round of energetic impact.

In human form, nature, as the irrational, has seized control of major world leaders, particularly here in America. These untethered spirits are governed by their own whims, which change dramatically, like the wind, day by day, with no rhyme or reason, as the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

The deeper issue that all these world happenings reflect is the relationship between the irrational and rational within ourselves. Our ego spirit intellectis simply devalues and dismisses all that is matter, and the laws that govern it. Our bodies and our physical world are filled with food stuffs and objects alien to the true needs of the body and the planet. Our ego spirit cares largely about me and mine; let the world community fend for itself. Our ego spirit identifies with reason and so dissociates from or tries to control, for its own gain, the basic instincts.

The war we are in must be fought within individuals, each of us striving to reconcile our own spirit and matter selves. The ego must ground itself in the body and in deeply unconscious nature. This  means facing the truths of body ailments that are expressing nature’s resentments and needs. This means facing, feeling, expressing, regulating and integrating nature’s powerful emotions, which express important needs and send archetypal messages that have the potential, if paid attention to, to steer the spirit in consort with material reality and need, that is, the true needs of the body and the planet.

We are all empowered here and now to make the changes in our own lives that are necessary to reconcile with nature. This is not the time to luxuriate in OBEs, dissociated from our body and our nature. The playing field is spirit-in-body now,  doing our best to bring this yin and yang of ourselves into working harmony.

Let’s calm nature by listening to her, within and without, acquiescing to the true needs of self and planet. This is the true spirit of the matter. Have love, compassion, and care without, but seek the needed transformation within.

The truth is that our world leadership does not grasp the heart of the matter. Our greatest playing field is restoring the Tao within the self. As within, so without. This is the spirit that really matters now.

In spirit in matter,

Chuck

*See Juan Enriquez on NPR’s Ted Hour here.

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Chuck’s Place: Water & Wind

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I consult the I Ching, one of my favorite oracles, for guidance as we pause in the destructive wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The I Ching first delivers Hexagram #48, the Well.

Nature’s lessons, water & wind…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The central feature of this hexagram is the pure water that springs from the earth’s depths to nourish all life. In the plant kingdom nature provides roots to trees and plants to channel this vital resource to sustain life. In the human species this archetype manifests in the building of the well that then serves to deliver this resource to support life in human communities.

Emphasis is placed on the quality of construction of the well as well as the social structure needed to maintain its purity, balanced use, and sustainability. I receive a moving line in the 6th place, actually a quite favorable line. In essence, the message is: the truth flows freely; now it’s up to us to decide what to do with it.  Like water raised in a bucket from the depths of the well, the truth is the life-sustaining spring water message of nature, raised to the level of full consciousness.

What are the truths that now flow freely in the flooded waters of these hurricanes? Global warming, climate change, is a fact. The rise in temperature of ocean waters is fuel to hurricanes that are becoming increasingly powerful and destructive. Can we acknowledge this fact, and take actions to change the warming trend?

The social structure that embraces unlimited growth as its imperative results in overpopulation that strains nature’s resources. As well, the high concentration of industrial complexes, with their toxic stores, threaten the purity of natural resources and the ability to sustain life.

These are broader truths presented to our collective species. On an individual personal level the I Ching is telling us that the facts, the changes we need to make in our personal lives, are presenting themselves to us quite clearly. The confusion or ambivalence we ordinarily feel is lifted now; the truth is that we know what we need to do, what is right.

Perhaps these truths are being clarified through symptoms in our bodies, our physical nature, that point to needed changes. Perhaps the messages are delivered from our spirit nature through the powerful emotions or insights we are receiving. Perhaps our truths are manifesting synchronistically in the events manifesting in the events of our personal lives that dramatize obvious need for change.

These truths are staring us in the face. In fact, the I Ching gives the follow-up, Hexagram #57, the Penetrating Wind, to further drive home its point. The wind is the penetrating influence that breaks up the thick clouds that block the truth. These deeply penetrating hurricane winds have been relatively sparing of human life so far, but devastating to the environments that have sustained them.

Nature is asking humans to penetrate the truths revealed. The well represents our modern governance of life’s most precious resource, pure drinking water. We are clearly being humbled, but not destroyed. We must heal our divide by considering the true needs of our planet, by being willing to sacrifice our power and special interest drives in the service of survival. To survive we must respect and uphold the vital balance nature requires to sustain life.

In the hologram of our individual lives we are being shown that the truths we must acquiesce to, to bring ourselves into sustainable balance, are abundantly evident now. The eclipse has passed, the storms have revealed the truths.

Time to penetrate the facts and forge a plan of action. Like the rebuilding of devastated communities progress will be slow but deliberate, but can be built now upon a secure foundation of truth.

The great changes we must make in our individual lives are upon us. Nature in some form has prepared the way for them, what awaits is consciousness to align with and be nourished by the pristine, spring water truths freely flowing to us now.

The truth flows freely; what will we do with it?

Flowing with the changes,

Chuck