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Jan’s Book Now in Paperback

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If you’ve been waiting for the paperback version of Jan’s book it was recently loaded on Amazon. Not all details are completed but you can place an order. Here is the link to the paperback version: The Man in the Woods.

Keep in mind that it is an adult book, containing adult content. We’d also love it if you’d be so kind as to write a review on the Amazon page and let others know about the book. It is already benefiting many people who have been in the midst of recapitulating. Jan is very open and revealing. She doesn’t hold back in describing and exploring the struggles of her youthful self at a most vulnerable and painful time. It is, in actuality, a very universal story of the human struggle to survive and thrive, and even more than that.

Thanks for reading!

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Chuck’s Place: Fear & The Un-Recapitulated Self

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ENCOUNTER

We are roused to fear in the presence of real or imagined danger. Under the influence of fear our body mobilizes the energy to confront the danger or in some way find safe refuge. Fear gets triggered in different ways. In one instance, there may be actual danger in the environment. In another, fear may be generated through the machinations of the mind. Finally, fear can be triggered by the un-recapitulated self utilizing life circumstances to bring attention to the unknown self.

The energy made available by fear may be quite useful and lifesaving in the case of an actual threat. However, the activation of fear through the wanderings of the mind’s eye generating images and thoughts of danger in the absence of it can be quite draining and incapacitating. Many techniques of meditation and mind control can be helpful in reeling in this roaming mind that stirs up trouble where there is none. The ability to stay in the present moment, focused on the reality at hand can greatly diminish the unnecessary arousal of fear in reaction to imaginary thought.

However, there are also experiences where fear is activated by some trigger in the environment where there is not an actual threat, but the encounter is nonetheless deeply meaningful. These experiences are stirrings by the spirit geared to awakening the conscious mind to the unknown or un-recapitulated self.

As we go through our life journey we are confronted by many experiences that may threaten our ability to keep going, keep growing, and keep functioning. Those experiences that threaten our growing selves are often forgotten to our conscious selves, stored away in a dark corner or shadow of the self. Those experiences remain part of the truth of our life experience but become dissociated from our sense of who we are, and are not part of the life we believe ourselves to be in. This defensive action of our growing selves to push aside experiences that could hold us back is a necessary compromise to our growing selves.

If we are too sidelined by a traumatic experience we might find ourselves completely frozen out of the world we live in, unrelated and disconnected to life around us—a condition akin to schizophrenia or autism. These are conditions of stuckness, very hard, but not impossible to emerge from in this life.

On the other hand, the ability to keep growing, despite an inner fragmentation—that is, a disconnection from parts of the experience of life lived—allows the growing self to gather skills and knowledge of the world that may prove to be extremely valuable in eventually recovering the lost parts of the self whereby bringing them into wholeness with the known parts of the self. This is the process of recapitulation.

In the case of recapitulation, fear can be viewed as a barometer of the experiences of the lost or frozen self. Seen from this perspective, fear marks the trail to be traversed in recapitulation.

Essentially, triggers from recapitulation are the psyche’s use of the raw material in our daily lives as its own language to show us where we need to go. For instance, as Jan describes in her book, The Man in the Woods, simply seeing a stick on the ground was enough to trigger her into a painful recapitulation from childhood. Obviously, a stick on the ground is not an object to be feared. It’s just a stick on the ground. However, when the spirit of recapitulation is activated, nothing can be taken at face value. The psyche is intent on using any life circumstance ranging from a word, a smell, a taste, to an encounter, a pain—virtually anything to jostle awareness to awaken suppressed memory.

The mistake that is often made around recapitulation triggers is to apply rationality to eliminate the fear. Recapitulation triggers are completely rational if you understand their language, and that language is largely associative, not literal. Once the language of recapitulation is learned, the journey of recapitulation becomes clearer.

The skills of meditation and calming of the central nervous system are valuable and useful during recapitulation, however, it must be understood that to recapitulate a traumatic experience includes allowing oneself to enter into a most feared experience of unknown depth. Fear is part of the experience that must be recapitulated. It simply comes with the turf.

With practice, one becomes used to identifying the triggers and signs of recapitulation and more adept at handling the fear and facing the unknown. Of greatest value during recapitulation is the grounding that the present self can maintain, knowing that it is entering an altered state in a very real way. The experience is being relived and deeply re-experienced, but also observed by an awareness grounded in a time and a self separate from that experience. Of ultimate value is knowing that once the recapitulated material is fully known, it is no longer unknown—no longer a fear from an un-recapitulated self.

With affection,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Worlds Colliding

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As we go into this weekend of remembering, recalling the 9/11 event that sent many people reeling into PTSD, I wish to point to the healing properties of the shamanic practice of recapitulation and the synchronicity of the publishing of Jan’s book, The Man in the Woods—The Recapitulation Diaries: Year One.

My entire professional career has been dominated by the treatment of PTSD. This was never a conscious choice on my part, it’s just the way it unfolded.

My entire spiritual life has been dominated by the shamanic work of Carlos Castaneda, from my teens to the present day.

When Carlos Castaneda and his cohorts—Carol Tiggs, Florinda Donner Grau and Taisha Abelar—faced the ending of their shamanic line, the enormity of the potential loss of the knowledge of the seers of Ancient Mexico weighed on them greatly. They chose to make that knowledge available to everyone in a new format called Tensegrity. Previously taught to only a chosen few with the right energetic configuration, tensegrity was suddenly launched, offering the ancient secrets to anyone wishing to learn them. In fact, Carlos said that previous to this moment he had been a documentor of the teachings of don Juan and the shamans of Ancient Mexico, but now he was faced with having to make a crucial decision regarding their very existence. Could he face the fact that he was the end of the line and what he had learned would be lost? Anthropologist that he was, he just could not fathom taking this ancient knowledge to his grave.

Jeanne and I entered the world of tensegrity nearly at its inception and fully immersed ourselves in its teachings and practices. Jeanne was determined to heal from breast cancer and remain in this world through its practices and we were both determined to reach our energy bodies, to meet each other in our energetic states beyond this world.

By May of 2001, worlds collided: Jeanne was nearing the end of her time in this world, Jeanne and I were facing the end of our worldly relationship—the knowledge of the ancient seers coursing through our veins—and then I encountered Jan, who was ending a marriage and opening the door to facing lifelong PTSD. Indeed, Jan’s final trigger to fully recapitulating was the traumatic event that happened on 9/11! This event too was many worlds colliding. And now, with the publication of her book, The Man in the Woods, I am freed to speak more openly about the collision of those personal worlds.

Carlos was deeply concerned that the knowledge of his shamanic line not be lost to the world. Tensegrity opened the door to that knowledge, but what direction would it take? And where would it be helpful? In spite of these and other questions, the greater intent was that tensegrity and the ancient knowledge find its way into the modern world. By teaching it to as many people as possible, Carlos and his cohorts intended that it would find its way and that its usefulness would become both readily available and readily apparent.

When I met Jan, I was completely saturated by the shaman’s world and saw the value of using the tools I had amassed in that world to help her. Jan had encountered what the shaman’s would call a petty tyrant of astronomical proportions in her earliest childhood. That tyrant dominated her existence into early adulthood. The encounters with him led to a defensive psychic fragmentation resulting in lost memory and an extremely defended life.

The shaman’s world uses experiences with this kind of tyrant to the advantage of honing warrior skills. A very negative, debilitating experience is turned on its ear, into a positive opportunity. This reframing of PTSD is sorely lacking in the clinical field, which relegates sufferers to the category of survivor, saddled with triggers for life.

Furthermore, the shaman’s world provides the tool of recapitulation; essentially, the tool necessary to completely retrieve one’s lost soul. With recapitulation, an individual fully relives the shamanic journey of their life, retrieving all energy lost during life’s challenges and releasing the internalized energy of others that has held one’s resources in check.

For Jan, recapitulation became the tool to fully discover the truth of her childhood journeys, when she was taken into dark, horrific worlds by a sadistic, calculated, predatory tyrant. The consequences of her successful recapitulation were the retrieval of her innocent self and the expulsion of the predatory tyrant’s grip.

As Jan took her recapitulation journey, Jeanne, who had left this world in December of 2001, returned in her energy body to guide and support Jan through that journey. Today, and for several years now, Jan has received guidance from Jeanne for all of humanity, which she passes along in weekly channeled messages.

As a result of Jan’s shamanic practice, she fully healed from PTSD and truly honed her shamanic warrior skills. Her book is a testimony to turning the limitations of PTSD on its ear, turning it into an evolutionary opportunity of magical proportions.

The collision of worlds—the shamans, Jeanne, myself, and Jan—has resulted in one valuable transmission of the intent of Carlos and his lineage that the knowledge of the seers of Ancient Mexico make its way into the modern world, in this case offering the opportunity to fully heal from PTSD. And, beyond that, to evolve the human potential in new directions.

Thank you, Jan, for so boldly publishing your story, a complete documentation of new possibility.

Love,
Chuck

Here is the link to the amazon page where free apps are available for download so you can read the ebook: The Man in the Woods—The Recapitulation Diaries: Year One. Also note that the print version is being prepared and should be uploaded next week.

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Chuck’s Place: The Magic in You

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Carlos Castaneda looked out at us and said: “Suspend judgment and see what happens.” That was in July of 1996 in Los Angeles. Fifteen years later, I can report that through suspending judgment a world of magic has revealed itself to me.

I am no longer restricted by the conclusions of the rational mind to interpret life and make decisions. I comfortably see that all things are interconnected and that guidance for my next move might equally come from a flip of the coin, from a song in my head or a pain in my body, or who I next encounter.

Suspend Judgment...

As I wrote this last sentence, a call came in from someone flabbergasted by a dream that literally sent them flying out of the dream into a bedpost. I see, in this synchronistic event, spirit affirming my intent in this blog to validate the magic and action of its intent. This is how I read energy, this is how I track spirit. My point here is that I let my life be guided by these occurrences; rationality is simply no longer comprehensive enough to reveal the full truth of the world.

This orientation may be my advantage as a therapist. Though I respect convention and state-of-the-knowledge, I find them way too limiting in their tools of healing. I find spirit’s guidance the true winning ticket.

I know that everyone who sits before me is guided by their spirit. I totally trust that. In fact, I am certain that spirit has had them encounter me at this time because I welcome spirit and validate its guidance. Much of what I do is help those who consult with me to recognize and appreciate the action and intent of their spirit for their own healing.

To arrive at this place we must first clear the debris of judgments that blur or misrepresent the facts in life. My flying dreamer questioned their sanity and wondered about the need for a psychopharmacological assessment. I helped them experience the awe of their spirit’s literal knock to awaken to change.

All that stands between you and the magic in you is the cloak of judgment sealing off the treasure within.

Suspend judgment, welcome the magic!

Knock-Knock!
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: I Feel The Earth Move…

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Unshaken

I had a break early Tuesday afternoon. I turned off the lights, sat calmly in a lotus position and began the sweeping recapitulation breath. Within moments the earth beneath began to rumble. I felt the solid old factory building sinking, the sure-footed earth turning to liquid.

That’s how it is, with recapitulation. The surety of the structures we’ve built a self upon, a lifetime upon, begin to crumble, no longer able to support the solid illusions of our lives. It’s a free fall, and one not to be undertaken lightly, but only out of necessity.

We, as a world, are in the time of recapitulation now—and we must take the journey because the intent has already been set and there is no turning back.

The earthquake shook the capital of the modern world, Washington D.C. It left a four-foot crack in the Washington Monument and brought down several pinnacles of the National Cathedral—Church and State—the foundational structures of society, rocked and rattled by the energy of change.

Synchronistically, the Martin Luther King Jr. monument, recently installed at the National Mall, had just opened to the public and emerged unscathed from the quake. Can the old structures of our society handle the true impact of such an agent of change? Apparently not, and we see the realization of Martin’s dream, President Obama, confronted with the crumbling structures of our changing world.

I see Obama as an agent of change, ironically aided now by the forces intent upon his destruction. Those forces are quite willing to grind government and economy to a halt, to turn back the clock to some romantic vision of blissful conservativism. Destructive as that might be, it is having the effect of bringing down the long-dominating economic structures of the world. Had those forces not acted so rigidly, Obama would have been forced to bolster the status quo. He’s been relieved of that burden, the status quo is being irradicated and there is no turning back. And even should Obama be ousted in a desperate collective attempt to restore security, there’s no way to turn back the wheel of time to the good old days. Those structures are falling down, even the wealthiest cannot stop it. We are being forced into a time of waking up, facing the truths, and building fluid structures for a changing world. And nature is making sure that that world changes!

On a personal level, once the agent of change calls, the knock of the spirit to discover the full truths of the self, we do best to heed the call with the knowing that we have Spirit behind us. When spirit instigates changes, spirit also provides the supports to take the journey. Free fall is inevitable, and it can indeed be frightening.

Feeling the earth move under my feet was quite an awesome, humbling experience, but it’s also a reminder that the only real choice we have is the attitude we take toward that inevitable journey. When I felt the earth tremble and loosen its solid illusion, I said, “Wow, is this it! This is a ride I want to take with eyes wide open and calm breath.”

Onto the next agent of change, Hurricane Irene!
Chuck