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: Let It Happen

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Jan shares an excerpt from her forthcoming book, The Place of No Pity:

“I don’t know. The whole idea of letting go just makes me hold tighter and I’m so afraid I haven’t completed everything on this side of the river yet. I don’t want to leave anything behind. I’m thorough that way.”

We laugh at that, but it’s no joke.

After the session I drive over to the studio. I told Chuck that I’d heard the words “true things happen” and that I like the idea of letting things happen so much better than letting go. “Let it happen” sounds so doable, a lot less stressful than “letting go.” To me, letting go implies that I am holding back and can’t let go, which is true, but it also implies that I am at fault, that I am to blame for not letting go. Let it happen, on the other hand, allows me to let myself be open, to acquiesce. Let go, inhibits by its very command and my reaction is: “Oh my God, I can’t! There must be something wrong with me! Why can’t I?” And I start thinking that I’m incapable and then I just tighten up. The phrases let it happen and true things happen are more soothing, allowing me to open, to be flowing, to go with the flow; all of which are much more positive, without a hint of blame, without some other voice making demands. Instead, I simply release and open to the possibilities. Or at least that is my intention! (End of excerpt.)

Looking out the back window... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Looking out the back window…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

How many times do we come to the conclusion: “I just have to let go!” But what is the technology of letting go? How do we actually let go?

The realization that one must let go derives from the growing awareness that much of life energy is exhausted by and preoccupied with what has happened in the past. One feels the impact of the unresolved past overshadowing and consuming the present as we obsess about what has happened, how it has impacted us, and how we handled it. Conclusions and fixations from the past define our sense of self, our self-esteem, and the limiting beliefs we are controlled by in everyday life. In effect, as the train of life moves into new territory we find ourselves staring out the back window of the last car, unable to be present for the uniqueness and possibility of unfolding time.

Clearly, the optimal seat on the train is the engineer’s—first car, front window, being fully present to the nuances of oncoming time. In practical terms, this means being mindfully present now. If I sit down to a meal and munch away but my mind is fully engaged in replaying a disturbing incident, I will surely not be present for the flavors and textures of the food, much less a conscious participant of the beginnings of digestion—slow and thorough chewing!

The decision to be present to what is truly occurring now, is a conscious decision to encounter now as it happens. This is at the heart of an existential attitude, to be fully engaged and present for what is happening in the moment, letting it happen by being fully open and present to the full experience of it.

The mechanics of this kind of mindful presence is to volitionally bring one’s attention and intent to the present moment, letting it happen with full participation. Of course, part of being fully present means also being fully present to all that is happening within oneself as one faces oncoming time. In the present moment one might feel a gripping tension in the throat, a holding back of breath, a tightness in the solar plexus, the bladder, and a clenching in the perineum. These energy centers, or chakras, are all revealing their present state of activation and various forms of protective defense. While acknowledging their collective state of anxiety, one is still free to choose to place one’s attention on the present moment, on what is happening, and engage it with conscious awareness.

If one is experiencing waves of terror within, one can still be available to interact with another being—still be fully present, still look the other in the eye, focus on their words, while also noticing one’s own feelings and impressions—in essence, to have the experience of a conscious encounter, no matter what is going on inside oneself.

The act of letting go in “letting it happen” is training awareness to release the stranglehold of the past, just enough to take in now, to be present in everyday life. It is not possible to be present if one does not let go, to some extent, of being completely consumed by the view from the back window. The trick here is to not dissociate from one’s past discomfort as it presents, but to “let it go” just enough to remain aware of the unfolding of present time as well. This is the act of remaining associated, open to the full inclusion of inner and outer experiences, as presented by the clash of the past with oncoming time. This is the kind of fuller awareness that opens doors to new possibilities and new perspectives, as one looks out the back window and the front window of the speeding train of life simultaneously.

Fully present, fully facing oncoming time... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Fully present, fully facing oncoming time…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Recapitulation, which Jan was in the midst of in the opening quote, requires a conscious choosing to “let it happen,” to acquiesce to what comes in the unfolding of one’s journey through life. “It” may be the full impact of a viscerally stored experience reaching way back in time, through the back window of the train, into early childhood history. However, by consciously choosing to remain present with the experience, one is simultaneously at the front of the train, viewing the experience from a much broadened perspective, a lifetime of experiences providing a lifetime of insights.

“Letting it happen” is the real technology of letting go. In this earth dimension, we are all treated to a reality of oncoming time all the time. To open fully and be present to oncoming time is our opportunity to exercise our freedom. When we exercise that freedom by choosing to be fully present, no matter what comes at us, we release ourselves from the tenets and limitations of the past. And, little by little, we take bold and definite steps toward opening to new and present experiences of life.

Letting it happen,

Chuck

Note: Volume 4 in the Recapitulation Diaries series, The Place of No Pity, is targeted for publication early next year.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Locker Room Talk

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(This is the third in a series of blogs around the same theme. Beginning with Narcissism on the Way to Love and followed by Hillary as Hermaphrodite, this blog takes a closer and deeper look at the psychology of narcissism. All three blogs are commentaries on the rebalancing of the masculine and feminine partnership, so necessary for the survival of the world and currently being played out in the political arena.)

Recent political events have given rise to the term “locker room talk” as a recognizable and understandable categorization of male sexual fantasy or actual sexual behavior, at least one common expression of it. So recognizable is its occurrence that many intelligent women in a recent New York Times article actually dismissed locker room talk as a legitimate reason to disqualify a potential presidential candidate exposed as engaging in it, in locker room talk.

On some level these women seem to be expressing the truth and acceptance that all men have that side of themselves; however annoying or immature it might be—it simply is. So, what is “it”?

In my recent blog, Narcissism on the Way to Love, I gave a nod to Freud’s stages of libidinal (sexual) development, beginning in primary narcissism. Narcissism is a psychological mindset that literally can’t get its face beyond looking in the mirror. The eyes simply cannot take in a picture of the world separate from the self.

Time to put away the toys and grow up! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Time to put away the toys and grow up!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Relationship is not possible at the narcissistic stage because relationship requires two separate people in order to exist. For the narcissist there is only one being, the self. Of course, at the adult stage, a narcissist must function in a world of separate objects, and they do. However, those objects are just that, toys in a toy chest for one’s pleasure and amusement.

Locker room talk depicts a woman, not as a separate being, but rather as an object with body parts available for one’s play and for one’s taking: legs, tits, asses, and pussies. The narcissist cannot solve the puzzle of a world beyond the self, much less the mystery of woman, a being distinctly other than themself. In fact, the terror of confronting the mystery of otherness gives rise to the sanctuary of locker room talk. Here men can brag of tales of conquest as they graphically describe the booty of body parts, the treasures they have stolen or intend to steal. Here men collude in an attempt to avoid real terror at the power of nature as embodied in a woman. The fixation here does indeed go back to mother. For what more powerful being on earth could there be than woman, whose body gives life to all human beings?

Freud localized this problem to an incestuous desire to unite with this powerful woman and therefore remain under her protectorate in an eternal Eden of bliss. Jung expanded this perspective beyond this regressive wish to include the challenge to individuate, to truly become a separate self capable of standing on one’s own two feet and thereby actually able to take on the mystery of relating to a feminine being that exists outside the narcissistic orbit of the first three chakras. For Jung, true relationship could only begin at the level of the heart chakra, where another individual can be seen and experienced objectively as existing outside of the self.

At the heart center, another person is a whole person, both body and psyche. Connection requires meeting the whole person. Body parts may indeed activate instinctual desires, but at the heart center the true desire is to meet and connect with another being, body and soul. Reaching this stage of development requires a heroic effort to both withstand the regressive protectorate of the mother world, frequently projected onto all women “partners,” and a willingness to truly encounter the mystery, power, and integrity of another as they truly are.

Donald Trump serves as a helpful example of both Freud and Jung’s perspectives. Donald expresses his penchant for married woman. Freud, of course, would see the oedipal victory in this: steal another man’s wife, obtain mother! This includes the power dynamic of defeating father because, as Donald states, in his world mother (married woman) willingly chooses/loves his lecherous approaches!

Jung would acknowledge this pyrrhic regressive victory but would insist as well that the hero in this case has really not slain the primordial dragon of dependency on mommy and her power to sustain life. To slay the dragon is to move beyond the family nursery, to stand on one’s own and enter the mystery of life. And, in entering that mystery of life, we must grant others their own autonomous existence.

Beyond the narcissistic orbit others are not simply need-fulfilling objects to play with or break. Others are powerful beings who likely terrify us because of their godly ability to give life, as well as take it if they see fit. Can woman be granted the fullness of who she truly is? This is a Relationship 101 prerequisite.

Like the toys of childhood, locker room talk must be put away if we are to take on the challenge of true adulthood and real relationship. It’s time to stop settling for less, men and women alike.

Outside the locker room,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Hillary As Hermaphrodite

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The hermaphrodite is a being that overtly embodies both male and female characteristics. The name itself is the merger of the male god Hermes with the goddess Aphrodite. In ancient alchemy, the hermaphrodite symbolized an important stage in the merger of chemical products leading to the ultimate goal of the alchemical opus, the creation of gold or a diamond.

Masculine & Feminine together... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Masculine & Feminine together…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

The significant achievement of the hermaphroditic stage during the alchemical process was the incorporation of opposing elements into a single entity. This incorporation did not ensure a fruitful union of these elements, called the conjunctio, however, it did set the stage for this possibility by ensuring that all the opposing or warring elements were present to undertake that unifying process.

At present, America, indeed the entire world, is sharply divided into opposing, warring factions. The only hope for future progress, even saving the world, may be predicated on an hermaphroditic container that can set the stage for a unified whole.

Also at present, Donald Trump has embodied an exaggerated defiant masculine energy that relegates the feminine to a youthful sex object. Beneath the surface, however, he is driven by a Dionysian energy that promises renewal through the destruction of the gridlocked established order. His appeal touches those who identify with the beleaguered masculine, as well as with those excited by the spark of spontaneity he offers and the change it promises. Mr. Trump expresses no interest in integrated wholeness. He boldly extolls the one-sided solution of masculine power, control, and domination. Mr. Trump does not contain all the elements of the hermaphroditic symbol; he represents one exaggerated side only.

Hillary Clinton has been dubbed the establishment politician, identified with an untrustworthy old order that needs major revamping. Of course, this characterization is highly suspect and lacking of many facts. However, the public has been highly conditioned to view her through this filter.

Though far from perfect, Mrs. Clinton does present as a mature, steady person who embodies the caring side of the feminine and the clear thinking side of the masculine. With respect to the feminine, Hillary does not present as a mere sexual object but rather as a wise and stately, beautifully aging crone. I assign her the symbol of the hermaphrodite for her ability to incorporate both the mature yet opposing elements of the masculine and the feminine, the unity of which has the promise of leading toward a reconciling process for America and the entire world.

The other night, the collective unconscious sent me a dream to weigh into this process. I was in a YMCA gym. In one corner of the room, a woman’s basketball hoop was centered on one wall. On the other wall a men’s hoop needed to be put up, centered, and anchored. The set up made no sense. If the men and women played at the same time they would occupy the same space, clashing into each other. It became my job to put up the men’s backboard and hoop. I lifted it up and walked up a ladder to set it on the wall. As I got to the top of the ladder I realized that the backboard was wobbly and unstable. I took a hammer to pull out a flimsy nail, thinking I would set a screw in its place, when the entire thing suddenly fell. Immediately, the scene shifted. Now I was on the roof of a ten-story apartment building. A young teenaged girl was sitting on the ledge of the building. As the backboard fell it turned into a flat TV screen, hitting the girl. Both the girl and the TV screen plunged to the ground, ten stories below. I woke with a start.

Cornered! -Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Cornered!
-Photo by Chuck Ketchel

The salient feature of my dream is its “cornered” setting. First, there is no escape; the masculine and feminine basketball players cannot escape each other. They must contend with each other as they occupy the same space. Secondly, the fact that the masculine and feminine occupy the same space points to the alchemical hermaphroditic container of both masculine and feminine features in one being.

The central problem in the dream is the masculine backboard; it suffers a weakness and ultimately is raised way too high—ten stories—clearly a very unbalanced state of inflation that must be brought down to earth. Here we see Trump’s bombastic inflation, symbolizing the high and mighty abuse of masculine power. This inflation is then characterized as a projection—the TV screen—and a teenaged girl, what the exaggerated masculine, in its high and mighty state, reduces the feminine to, a sex object. The death of the young girl and that projection point to the need to destroy that projection, allowing for the mature feminine to assume its rightful place. There was, in my dream, after all, nothing wrong with the sturdy women’s backboard!

The backboard and hoop are the circle and square of the mandala, the ancient symbol of wholeness that points the way to individuation. The appearance of this symbol and the action connected with it—a repair that destroys an immature feminine projection and brings the exaggerated masculine down to earth from its highly inflated state—are the necessary actions to create the hermaphroditic condition of equally containing these opposing forces in one being, i.e., in one space, the shared basketball court.

Of course, this containment is not the final resolution. One can imagine that once the hoops are properly mounted according to my dream—in the corner—that the masculine and feminine players will have to find their appropriate places and relations with each other to reach a harmonious solution to their competing needs in order to play the game in that cornered situation. This indeed will be Hillary’s task should she be elected. The Dionysian energy demanding genuine change that Trump has tapped into, that is indeed needed, must be incorporated with the balanced steadiness of her mature mind. This will be an evolving process should it come to pass.

On the other hand, Trump’s one-sided passion is such a throwback to the ethnic cleansing of Hitler’s regime, a volatility that the world can hardly afford in our fragile times. The challenge to world survival requires world unification. Only leadership that begins with hermaphroditic inclusiveness has the potential to evolve into a much-needed union of masculine and feminine. May the right being be elected.

Reconciling,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Narcissism On The Way To Love

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Even as the sun rises over Mother Earth each day so are we, her children, charged with rising our consciousness... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Even as the sun rises over Mother Earth each day so are we, her children, charged with raising our consciousness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Freud rightly identified early childhood as the stage of Primary Narcissism. We are born into this life with but the seed of an individual personality planted in the fertile soil of this world, what the Hindus identified as the first chakra, Muladhara, at the location of the perineum at the base of the spine. The spark of awareness at this stage, amidst the vast unknown dark soil of this world, is simply the needs of the body and the relief of those needs from somewhere. The infant can hardly differentiate itself and its needs from the world and from who attends to its needs. All is experienced as one narcissistic Me.

For Freud, this need state evolves into the Pleasure Principle, the prime mover of all stages of life through its myriad of mature civilized permutations, what Freud came to understand as civilization and it discontents, ultimately a variety of sublimations under which lies the libido of narcissism.

Jung introduced the two primary trends in nature, introversion and extroversion. In human nature the introvert looks to the inner self as the final arbiter of truth and rightness. By contrast, the extrovert is open more to the greater external reality and adapting to it as the basis for survival. From this perspective, the introvert, though perhaps more self-reliant, can also be seen as more self-involved or narcissistic. The extrovert, more keenly in tune with the needs of others, can on the one hand be seen as more related to the other yet on the other hand self-negating or codependent. The truth is, however, that both natural introverts and extroverts are likely to be equally driven by narcissism as long as their maturity is limited to the first three chakras: Muladhara, Svadhishthana, and Manipura.

These first chakras, in fact, all exist in the realm of narcissism. Despite outer appearances these three chakras are extremely self-involved, essentially in establishing the ego in the areas of basic security, sexuality, and individual power. These three chakras are bathed in narcissism at their core, simply a fact of development at those stages. These are necessary chakras in the foundation of the ego/body self, which then serve as the ultimate launching pad for the discovery of the spirit self in the fourth chakra, Anahata, located in the region of the heart.

It is only at the level of the flame of consciousness at the heart where an individual is truly freed from the dominance of the pleasure principle, the primary motivator of the animal part of the self, which dominates the first three chakras. It is only at the level of the heart that an individual can grant another autonomy and independent value, separate from their value as a need-fulfilling object, which is the perspective of the world at the first three chakras. At the lower levels, whether introverted or extroverted, the outside world is colored through the lens of what’s in it for Me, whether that be in the form of food, sex, or power and control.

Rising to higher consciousness... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Rising to higher consciousness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

However, once kundalini energy rises to the level of the heart, narcissism undergoes a mighty transformation, as one becomes truly capable of love for another. While narcissism once narrowed the energy of love to the self and how the world could support it, true love at the heart level grants the other and their needs a place in one’s own heart. Thus, at the heart center the way of narcissism becomes the way of love. Of course, the body is included in this new mix, but it must acquiesce to the greater objective need the heart accesses, beyond the narcissistic orbit of Me only.

The journey from the lower chakras to the heart center is many-faceted, involving many explosions and implosions as the world increasingly refuses to gratify the entitled expectations of the narcissistic self. This may result in repeated cycles of failed relationships, but over time, with knowledge accrued, it eventually becomes clear that the main culprit behind the failures is the compulsive drives of the narcissistic self.

With this point of self awareness one learns to contain the leaking of emotional frustration in the form of blame and develop an introspective posture that reveals the prejudices of the narcissistic worldview and begins to mold the objectivity of the heart center that acts from the place of truth vs blind need. And with this accomplishment, narcissism transforms and finds its way to true love.

Transforming,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Kundalini Unhinged

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Like a coiled serpent...
Like a coiled serpent…

Kundalini is the Hindu name for the primal energy that fuels creation. In the human being, the microcosm of the macrocosm of all creation, kundalini is said to lie dormant, a coiled snake at the base of the human spine awaiting activation at times of growth.

Kundalini awakens, becomes aroused, and begins its upward climb through various chakras, energy centers located along the spinal column, until it ultimately merges with its male counterpart, Shiva, at the crown of the head. Yes, kundalini, in the form of the feminine Shakti, is the divine energy that fuels and causes to unfold the Self, that which we truly are.

Kundalini energy is not specific to Hindus and Yoga traditions. Mystics of all faiths, who have experienced transcendent encounters in visions and meetings with God, have been struck by the illumined energy of kundalini. In psychology, kundalini would be the equivalent of psychic energy, what Freud first identified as libido, as it innervated the sexual center or chakra in its awakening of the physical body to its primal sexual energy.

The Taoist would know kundalini through what is termed chi, an experience of which every seasoned martial artist can attest. In the realm of everyday life, somatic ailments in the form of anxiety or headaches, for example, aside from their physiological roots, may indeed be the consequences of an awakening kundalini, pushing for developmental unfolding with great urgency.

Even drug addiction can be understood in kundalini’s energetic terms. Methamphetamine activates a compulsion to experience the expansive union of Shakti and Shiva in godly omnipotence. The heroin addict experiences the equally blissful state of oneness of union with Shiva in a blissfully dormant state, like a fetus enveloped in the womb, in the sweet harmony of sleep prior to kundalini’s violent awakening at the time of labor. Hallucinogens are a crapshoot as they stir kundalini to usurp the ego’s control and take one on an unhinged trip with kundalini within or without the body.

The Hindus have defined our current time on earth as the age of Kali Yuga, which essentially represents a Dark Age with the degeneration of human civilization. Carl Jung in the 1930s agreed with this characterization of our time, which he likened to the time of the fall of the Roman Empire.

The events we now witness around us on the world stage reflect this disintegration, as reverberations in the macrocosm of the destructive side of Shakti unleash kundalini throughout the world to prepare the way for a new era. Whereas an individual may be confronted with powerful kundalini energy when it is time to grow up, kundalini can also take the form of a powerful recapitulation experience that rocks the body and psyche as it insists upon burning through the limitations of old trauma.

On the world stage, Trump is definitely controlled by an activated kundalini energy. This is partly the power of his seductive draw. He embodies the energy of destructive change, and everyone feels the desire to break through the gridlock of the current world order.

I have often spoken of ISIS as also being an unconscious agent of the destructive side of the Goddess Isis, who, like Shakti with her kundalini energy, seeks to level the current world order that threatens her planet Earth. The problem here is that kundalini,  lacking the companion of awake human consciousness to safely guide its path of change, will wreak major destruction to the planet. In the nomenclature of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico we are being asked to engage our intent to beckon positive change.

Just as an individual who takes drugs risks death or psychosis with an unhinged encounter with kundalini, so our collective human race also risks serious destruction if we further kundalini’s destructive path by electing madness. As I have previously stated, Hitler was not elected, Hitler seized power. Evolution insists now that we consciously choose our leader, who is entrusted to safely guide us and this kundalini energy of change through the chakras of our current world reality.

Just as a student of yoga is taught to safely guide kundalini through the chakras of the body with the appropriate deliberate guidance of a master, or risk destruction through overzealous action, so may we be wise in our choice of a leader to soberly channel kundalini through a newly formed world backbone. If we miss that opportunity, we will indeed be consciously signing up for the world rollercoaster of kundalini’s unhinging!

In calm meditation,

Chuck