Imagine perfection. Imagine stillness. Imagine inner calm and outer calm. Imagine sitting with such stillness inside you and outside you. Let it be—even for a moment—the truth of your life. Experience it. Let it be your reality for this moment. Accept it. Know it. Take it with you into your day, a moment of perfect stillness. Let it sit inside you, the knowledge of it. Carried forth, let it blossom; for once experienced it will not leave you.
Do not turn from it throughout the day, but anchor in its calmness, bringing you to your senses, reminding you of its truth inside you. This is perfection.
“I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are,” says the Joker in the hospital scene of The Dark Knight, 2008.
James Holmes dyed his hair orange, became the Joker, and in REAL LIFE—at the midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado—unleashed a fatal assault upon an unsuspecting movie audience.
The Joker is a Trickster. The trickster is a force of nature, an agent of chaos with no attachment to the material world. The trickster’s objective is to disrupt the prevailing order, to break the rules with abandon. The trickster’s pranks may indeed result in tragedy, as evidenced in the horrific Aurora massacre, but they may also reveal truths and weaknesses that if faced squarely might lead to needed transformation and change.
Evolving human consciousness has relied upon spiritual institutions to mediate between its rational, civilized, ordered ego self and the powerful, chaotic energies of the instinctive self. Religious ritual has traditionally offered sacrifice to the instincts in exchange for energy needed to fund the structured, ordered objectives of the ego self in the modern world. In our time, similar to the crumbling of the absolute power of the Catholic Church during the Protestant Revolution, the reigning churches of the day have lost their ability to serve this mediating function.
In fact, modern humanity has become so rational that it has disowned its animal core, and religious affiliation or participation has largely become a place of social gathering or identity. The prevailing consciousness views religious institutions as relics of an unenlightened age.
What has largely replaced the mediating function formerly performed in religious ritual, in today’s world, is Hollywood. It’s a throwback to the days of the gladiators in the Coliseum in Rome or the bullfights in Spain. The modern movie theater is the setting where citizens vicariously project their instinctive energies onto the projections on a screen, as these images duke it out in epic battles of good versus evil. Moviegoers experience contact with their deep instinctive energies through powerful emotions that are enlivened and released, with the outcome being inner balance restored when they are safely delivered back to ordinary life as the movie concludes.
The massacre in Aurora instructs us that the sanctuary of the movie house has ended. It can no longer safely contain our psychic forces. The trickster broke through the screen in Aurora, showing us that the movie house can no longer safely mediate between our ego and deeper instinctive selves. The trickster has shown us that the psychic mechanism of PROJECTION—placing the issues and dangers within us outside of us onto some form of screen—can no longer keep us safe. We must grapple with the psyche directly, finding a new balance, a new relationship to the deep instinctive forces that both threaten us and enliven us.
On a global level, this tenuous balance is evident on every front. Global warming, with its consequent natural disasters, shows us the precarious hold humanity’s decision making has over nature’s wrath. Is it really time for another flood? Or will we do better?
Revolutions sprout up almost daily throughout the world as the urge for change and greater freedom press to topple outdated, repressive regimes.
Revolutionary energy is stirring throughout Europe and the United States from the economic underclass, as they balk at giving more while the 1% accumulate more. This is the energetic climate of Germany preceding the outbreak of Nazism.
All these revolutionary stirrings are threatening to disrupt if not submerge the world as we have known it. All are direct reactions to the collective world ego’s actions in relation to its deeper instinctual needs—nature reacting, both within and without.
On an individual personal level, we are all charged to deal with the psychic balance within our own beings, that is: between our conscious ruling selves and our unconscious instinctive selves.
Those in the midst of recapitulation are well aware of the tenuous balance between the psychic energies of their fragmented selves and their conscious selves. These individuals have heeded the trickster’s warning and have set to the inner work of integrating their deeper truths, to open a cooperative partnership with the deep unconscious.
But for those not currently in the throes of recapitulation, the urgency of the trickster’s exploits must be seen as THE CALL to introversion—to the facing of inner truth.
What are the ruling attitudes of my conscious ego? Are those attitudes listening to my inner revolutionaries: my symptoms and fears? What is my relationship to my deeply instinctive self—to safety, to hunger, to sexuality, to power? Am I being honest with myself? What is the true reality of my psychic economy?
We need to take responsibility for bringing our psyches into new and lasting balance, and not allow the collective imbalance that surrounds us to lead us into hopelessness and surrender. To attend to the self is to bring real change to the interconnected world that we are all part of. To place this call to action upon the self is to honor the victims in Aurora for their sacrifice.
May their sacrifice lead to a transformation that ends the need for human sacrifice as a means to needed change.
It’s a bit early to go to bed, but I’m tired. Something’s bothering me and I don’t want to wake up in a few hours with it still on my mind. I don’t want to lie awake for hours, my mind crawling with thoughts, becoming what the shamans call flyer food. Shamans see flyers as entities that feed off human agitation, and thoughts generate agitated energy. As I drift off to sleep, I ask the universe and my dreaming self to take the “bothersome something” from my mind so I can sleep peacefully.
“Please give me something so I can get through the night without disturbance,” I ask.
Immediately, I am standing in a windy desert. I look down and see an aluminum pie plate in the sand at my feet. I put my thoughts into it, in little bits and pieces like rolled bits of pie dough until the pie plate is filled. The wind, already strong, grows stronger now. I watch, as first one and then another bit of pie dough blow away, then another and another, until all the bits of pie dough have blown away. Then the aluminum pie plate blows away too.
“Oh,” I say, “that’s how I’ll do it. I’ll just keep putting bothersome thoughts into the pie plate and let the desert wind blow them away.”
I go into the desert many times throughout the night and each time I do the pie plate is lying at my feet, once again returned for use. Dropping little thought-clumps onto the pie plate I watch them pile up and then watch as they and the pie plate blow away in the wind. Each time I do this, I am aware of the power of intent to create exactly what is needed. I remark to myself in my dream how well it works and how calm and peaceful I feel. In addition, I notice that the contents of the thought-clumps never materialize in my mind, not even for an instant. I am so intently involved in the process of rolling them up and watching them blow away that they never become real. Thus, my mind is totally empty and at peace.
I sleep deeply. When I wake up in the morning I am calm and well rested. I tell Chuck of my nighttime process.
“It really worked, I slept so soundly,” I say. “I was able to not only sleep deeply but my mind was perfectly empty and calm even when the “bothersome something” arose. I just went through the process as it came to me and let the wind take it. It’s really an excellent mindfulness practice.”
Chuck reminded me that I had mentioned to him the other day that Byron Katie spent a lot of time in the desert after her awakening in 1986, listening to her inner stories, letting the winds take her thoughts, thoughts that came out of her, both her own and those that did not really belong to her personally. Although I live far from the desert, the desert winds appeared just when I needed help too. Who knows what else lies waiting to help us, just for the asking.
To be clear, there’s a huge difference between ridding the mind of bothersome everyday thoughts and what goes on when one is engaged in deep recapitulation. As Byron Katie discovered, she had to encounter her own darkness; in order to heal she had to face everything that came up out of her. In contrast, I just didn’t want useless thoughts interfering with my sleep last night. I had no intention of inviting the flyers to a feeding frenzy.
In addition, I had no intention of going back to or revisiting any thoughts that might arise. I sensed them hovering about, waiting to see if they’d find an opening, and set my intent to do exactly the opposite, to not become available. Instead, I encased them in pie dough, letting them know that they were inconsequential thoughts of no significance and I would give them no energy whatsoever. In letting the wind take everything, including the pie plate, nothing was left behind for the flyers to feed off; no crumbs even to lick clean.
Peaceful healed mind enjoying life...
We have to accept that thoughts naturally arise, seeking a place to land. In meditation practice, it’s the eternal process of letting go of thoughts that eventually allows us the experience of peaceful mind, as they drift through our mind without attachment. I see the pie plate and wind of my desert dream as a natural meditation tool. Give it a try; it really does work!
It’s even often appropriate to send thoughts away during recapitulation, but we have to be aware that some of the issues we’re trying to push away will return, no matter how far the wind blows them, until we are done with them. This is because the intent of recapitulation is to heal, totally, and total healing takes many forms, painful and blissful alike. However, I could see using the same practice as a recapitulation tool to send interfering thoughts away that are blocking the truth, or for sending away self-defeating thoughts, old scenarios that are no longer true, as well as the voices of others. It may also help in dealing with the onslaughts of messages from the deeper self that we are just not ready to acknowledge yet.
Once we’ve healed, the flyers leave us alone for the most part, and we are free to dream new dreams.
Dear Jeanne and Infinity: What guidance do you offer us today?
Though the outside world carries on, often swirling in mayhem and offensive acts of cruelty, ignorance, and greed, do not get attached. In such times, deeper meaning must be sought and such deeper meaning will only be found within.
Each one of you upon that earth must turn inward and investigate your feelings, motives, and desires. You must discover what drives you, what rules you, and why. You must constantly investigate the self—not just check in briefly, but with full-fledged commitment to the inner process—for the times call for a conscious turning inward as the only means of survival and growth.
“What do you mean, survival?” I ask.
Survival of the human species must catapult to a new thought process, for survival must extend beyond physical survival to survival of all that is at the root of being human: compassion, kindness, love, and the expansion of and awareness of these tenets as being of utmost importance now.
As human beings face their infallibility and their fragility in the face of disaster, natural and otherwise, they must grasp at a deeper meaning for their existence. Beyond the constant necessity of survival in the reality of the world you live in lies a far greater meaning, and this must be probed. That is, survival of a new consciousness in the awakening to a greater understanding of all that you experience.
Are you sad, distraught, fearful? If so, the answers to your dilemmas are inside you. Even if you are happy, contented, and at peace, so are you also tempered with disturbance, for balance is naturally sought, and so deep inner work must not be forgotten. In order for the human population to evolve, acceptance of both the shadow self and the light self, as they act out in your own life or in the world around you, must be allowed.
Even in the darkness there is light...
You live in the times of dark and light. You are the dark and the light. Knowing that you are both the darkness and the light combined must be the central truth of your deeper inner work. Accept your truths: I am the darkness and the light. Pay homage to the powerful forces within and make your decisions on how to live, act, think, and pray based on these blatant truths.
Reality has always been what it is now, and that too you must accept. Your perception of it, and what you do next, is of utmost importance.
Ready to shift? It’s in your power to do so.
As always, ask your deeper self to guide you along a new path of acceptance of greater truth, insight, and action. All you have to do is accept its hand, always extended in your direction, always asking you to take it and move in a new direction.
Change begins and ends inside you. Find the shift you need by accepting the truths of your life and move on from there in a new positive direction. And remember, even as you face the darkness there is always light.
Thank you Jeanne and Infinity! Most humbly channeled by Jan.
Imagine the horror of looking in the mirror and seeing nothing. This is the experience of many young heroes who look to the world for safety, approval, encouragement, and love, only to be met by disapproving, rejecting eyes, or perhaps blank eyes incapable of meeting, or even worse, a wolf’s eyes intent upon feasting. The reaction of this young unwelcomed “me” is stinging shame, a curling inward around a deeply vulnerable full-of-potential self that protectively walls itself off and sinks into the womb of the unconscious. In its stead, the young hero self is charged with bringing life forward, awaiting the call from the deep unconscious to finally come and participate in the birthing of the true golden child when conditions are ripe for it to be born into fulfillment in this life.
The call to the journey of retrieval from the unconscious can come in many forms: a deep depression midway through life’s journey—where the energy to fund the current life has dried up, and the search for new energy to find meaning and fulfillment requires mining the depths of the unconscious to find the missing pieces of self—is a frequent prelude to the journey. Often the emergence of long walled-off traumatic memory may intrude upon consciousness in a dream, a flashback, or in powerful physical symptoms and pain. Often the call is mistaken, concretely, for physical ailment and only once that is ruled out can the real journey begin. Today too, much focus goes to genetic diseases requiring chemical cures, clouding the true meaning of the symptoms: a call to action by the deeper self.
Another complication in undertaking the journey is the veiled hope of rescue, of vindication by some mirroring person in the world to liberate and meet the deeply walled-off self. Though experiencing love can go a long way in healing, to truly be open to the intimacy and vulnerability of real love as adults we must first take the journey of inner liberation to free the unborn self from its illusions regarding love. We must first dismantle the walls of defense erected long ago to protect the golden but shamed self. To go to love without liberation is to invite dependency, fear of loss, and a persistent dark cloud of doubt around worthiness that no other person can ever remove. The search for the liberating other can mesmerize us for decades before we realize that the real needed partner for the journey is the ego self, willing to take the plunge into the darkness and find its lost soulmate, waiting within.
Love lies buried within
Dismantling the protective walls surrounding the true self is the task of recapitulation. In recapitulation, the present self—forged through years of heroic efforts—becomes the midwife to the golden self. Practically speaking, this means truly suspending judgment and being fully present to the truths of the buried self. These truths may come full of excruciating physical and emotional pain. As the present self meets the eyes of the buried self, it mirrors compassion and total acceptance, encouraging the buried self to reveal its deepest truths with all its emotional intensity. Without collapse, deep shame, rage, hatred, and sorrow are systematically allowed to be fully felt. Gradually, the power of the old feelings to shut down access to the gold is diminished.
As recapitulation progresses, it becomes clear that there is nothing more powerful than the truth of the self and its unborn potential for fulfillment. Driven by its desire for this fulfillment, the ego self welcomes and ultimately merges with its lost self in the truest of loving unions. In this mirror of acceptance, regardless of what is presented, lies the deep validation needed to encourage new life and for transformation to blossom.
With this union, the self is finally freed to open to the outer world and enjoy extraverted love and fulfillment. And now, a glimpse into the mirror reveals only the glowing golden self looking back.
