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: It’s All In What You Emphasize

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The nagual shaman, don Juan Matus, explained to his apprentice, Carlos Castaneda, that yes, the solid object reality we live in is indeed real, but, it is energy first. Our thoughts, which are interpretations of energy, manifest our physical reality.

What we manifest is real, but the broader truth is that all manifested realities are but an interpretation of infinite energy. Like the Hindu image of the cosmic ocean, the wave is but the manifested surface that appears, and then disappears, back into its underlying cosmic oneness.

From the Thoth Tarot deck of Aliester Crowley

Aleister Crowley, in discussing the Three of Swords, in his Thoth tarot deck, states that the extreme sorrow of this card can be likened to the Buddha’s initial stage of enlightenment when he encountered the pure potential of unmanifested reality: no forms, no reason.

Despite the bliss of this pure clarity, there is the necessary sorrow of releasing attachment to the familiar. Here, one is challenged to surrender to a  consciousness greater than one’s current manifestation.

It all begins in the mind. Outer reflects inner. It’s all in what one chooses to emphasize. Negative thought is certainly an option; it’s just as real an option as a positive thought—divinity includes everything.

Everything is possible, but the paradox is that to realize this truth we must be willing to let go of our cherished beliefs, which are fixations of energy that block the natural flow of energy needed to manifest desired change. The struggle is indeed one of submitting to enlightened sorrow, the necessary crossroad that accompanies moving beyond the familiar habitual self.

Take for instance a desired physical change in the body. One may state a healing intent of change but is constantly assaulted by the feedback of sensory evidence that contradicts one’s stated suggestion to their subconscious mind. This sensory feedback loop becomes its own internal dialogue that presents a more powerful counter-intention to the subconscious mind.

The technology of change, through the use of autosuggestion, insists that one emphasize repeatedly that their desired change is already accomplished. The seed has been planted in the divine substance of the subconscious mind and its full manifestation cannot be stopped, despite the presence of a solid sensory artifact, rooted in a prior interpretation of energy.

I suggest resting the body so that the subconscious mind, relieved of its physical oversight responsibilities, might clearly receive its new directive and move toward manifestation. With presence and passion, repeat the stated intention. Be bold, no hesitation, thy will is done.

At other times, be willing to suffer those moments of fear and sorrow when one glimpses the real possibility of letting go of the cherished limited self. Yes, you are chosen; you have chosen to emphasize the red pill: the life-changing, often painful truth beyond the current fixation of solid energy.

From the Thoth Tarot deck of Aliester Crowley

Of course, when the gig is up, the gig is up. In another card of Crowley’s Thoth tarot deck, the Three of Cups, we find the near perfect realization of the manifested intent of abundance. The presence of pomegranate seeds in the cups, though symbolic of abundance, also recall Persephone’s required stay in the underworld for six months of the year with her husband Pluto, god of the dead.

We cannot escape the expiration date located in the small print of every manifestation. Life insists upon growth, which always requires the letting go of the known.

This recalls the Buddha’s suggestion that life is suffering. Everything that we attach to ultimately limits our growth. But that sorrow can be sweet when we embrace love for all in this adventure of forever. One always has the choice to emphasize love and let it fully manifest.

With love,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Your Ultimate Superpower Is The Subconscious Mind

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Everyone has the same superpower…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

The subconscious mind is the true equal opportunity employer. Everyone has one. Everyone exercises it every day. Everyone has access to its treasure trove of riches.

In the Torah, God tells the Jews that they are the chosen. The broader implication of being chosen is that all of humanity was chosen to direct the superpower of the subconscious mind.

While all of nature remained under the absolute control of the archetypes in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, the parents of humanity, obtained the power of conscious intent to direct the superpower of the subconscious mind and create their world.

Humankind has stumbled through history in its exercise of its power of intent. Many live in utter poverty of mind, believing themselves powerless to manifest the life they desire. Christ introduced the secret to manifestation. That secret is simple: to be a master of intent you must believe that anything is possible.

In all his recorded healings, Christ emphasized that one must have faith, that they must believe they can be healed, in order to heal. This is the secret of the book, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. Simply put, we attract to us and manifest in our lives what we believe. Our beliefs are the suggestions we send to the superpower of the subconscious mind, which attract the necessary elements from Infinite Intelligence to manifest the dream we truly believe in.

The evolution of the conscious mind has delivered us the power of reason, the current fixation of the modern mind. This power has enabled us to somewhat master nature and generate an ordered civilization. It has also caused us to revoke our beliefs in the irrational —that anything is possible— leaving us distant and removed from the spiritual essence of our physical being.

Perhaps Donald Trump’s greatest contribution to our time is his shattering impact upon the hegemony of reason. His power is purely irrational. It’s a fact, he insists. His beliefs and suggestions are so strong that they have manifested as true reality for half a nation.

The conscious mind must mature and learn about the true superpower of the subconscious mind. We, all of humanity, must become responsible  administrators of our thoughts and beliefs, which become the intentions and suggestions we manifest. We manifest what we concentrate on, what we think about; it’s that simple.

The chaos in the world at this time is the manifestation of a developmental process that we are collectively undergoing. Just look at how social media targets beliefs in order to accrue greater suggestive power over the superpower of the collective subconscious mind. As horrific as the events on the world’s battlefields are, the real superpower lies in the subconscious mind of every individual.

We have the power to inspire our subconscious minds with the suggestion to manifest an all-inclusive world of love. Like the single rainmaker who can restore the Tao and break open the heavens to rain through his personal intent, we are all individually empowered to generate pervasive love and joy for our fledgling planet.

Believe,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Watch My Words

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Carrying a lot of extra words around?
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

Thought is the first cause of manifestation. Words are the currency of thought. The words we use create our realities.

Take for example the use of the word my. It’s quite typical for people to refer to a physical condition, such as a migraine headache or cancer as my headache or my cancer when discussing their status.

Though logically it makes sense to refer to a condition one is grappling with as my ________,  on a subtle level the use of this possessive adjective grants the condition full citizenship in the physical body. Every time we use the word my we suggest to the subconscious mind that the condition being identified exists in and is a part of me.

Of course, a diagnosis, deemed essential for proper treatment, requires a distinctive name, but once we put the word my in front of it, we plant it as a seed in the fertile soil of the creative substance in the subconscious mind, the very substance that creates and manifests life.

Inadvertently, through the use of the word my, we may be sending suggestions to the subconscious mind that substantiate the very condition we are seeking to eliminate. From an internal family system perspective, the word my can generate an entity that is entitled, because of its my-ness, to be part of one’s internal family. We might then actually feel powerless to insist that it leave us.

An alternative, which bypasses this conundrum, would be to acknowledge the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment one is working with without claiming personal ownership of it through the use of the word my. For example, one might speak in this manner: “Sometimes I experience headaches that have been diagnosed as migraines. This is the treatment I’m involved with to eliminate the issue.”

Another common misuse of the word my is in the oft-stated phrase, my triggers. The phrase my trigger grants a trigger legitimate entity status and permanent residence in one’s personality. Triggers should actually be treated as transient experiences that reveal the existence of root issues that need to be processed.

The processing of a trigger means to fully neutralize its negative effect upon one’s life. When we say, my trigger, we send the message to the subconscious mind that this is a powerful and permanent condition that must be avoided at all costs. This also results in the expectation that other people take responsibility to both know and avoid provoking these hidden bombs that we house but seek to avoid.

The antidote is to assume responsibility when triggered. Often this requires one to retreat, release activated emotional energy, and then process the root issue that has come to the surface. Triggers should be thanked for their guidance as we track the true culprit of our discontent.

Saying thank you is a powerful way to gain the support and influence of the subconscious mind. Triggers are actually present associations to established habits that the subconscious activates, as per the instructions it receives from established beliefs and suggestions.

By thanking the subconscious for the trigger that enables us to root out its cause, we warmly engage our inner partner, the subconscious mind, in the task of reclaiming our defensive energy and releasing entities we have created to avoid uncomfortable issues.

Thank the subconscious often for its tireless efforts to create the self we ask it to be. For best results, may that intended self reflect the truth of the heart.

Thank you,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Law Of Mind

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Thought creates reality…
-Artwork © 2024 Jan Ketchel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just do it!
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: How To Manage The Inner Critic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In construction,
Chuck