Here is this week’s channeling. Wishing you all well as you take your first lesson. Be patient. Just be present with what is!
Here’s the message:May 12, 2014-First Lesson In Channeling
Here’s the link to: Son Meditation.
There are many paths to take, many healing journeys. We must find what suits us best and stick with it if we are to overcome our issues and anxieties and evolve.
As Deng Ming-Dao* writes: “We are increasingly aware of the many different spiritual practices all over the world. And new practices are being created out of the resulting diversity. That is right. It only stands to reason that all, even the most tradition-bound practices were originally created at one time. There should be no stigma attached to spiritual practices that evolve in our lifetime—methods don’t have to be from dead people in order to be valid. But once we find a way, we should stay with it resolutely and not have anxieties about other people’s paths.“
He goes on to say: “It is healthy to explore other disciplines. If nothing else, the elements in common can give you fresh and interesting perspectives on your own practices. But we should not flit from one discipline to another. Ecumenical explorations are fine, but they are best done from a firm base of the practices that best suit you.“
No other psychotherapist that we know of has linked the ancient practice of recapitulation in a clinical setting the way Chuck has, a process that naturally evolved as he studied the Magical Passes of Tensegrity as introduced to the world by Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda, for his part, released them to the public, to anyone who was interested. In so doing, he sent them on their way, energetically, into new life. Recapitulation has found new life in a clinical therapeutic setting, even though Castaneda’s group distinctly stated that recapitulation was not psychotherapy. As Chuck discovered, however, it surely does have its place within the context of a holistic therapeutic setting.
We are all spiritual beings, made up of energy. As we are born, grow up, and live our lives in human form we gradually lose touch with the essence of who we truly are. From birth we are indoctrinated with the idea that there is only one reality—this one on earth—and that when we die, if we do things right, we will go to heaven. That’s pretty much the standard fare offered by all religions around the world. But who are we really? What are we really?
We are multidimensional beings. We are thinking, feeling, conscious beings as Chuck wrote about in his last blog. We know ourselves, however, most commonly as dense matter. We can get caught there and forget that we are vibrant energy, awareness eager to escape the confines of the human condition, open to exploration beyond the body and beyond the confines of our indoctrination. Though we all have access to this energetic self in out-of-body exploration as we sleep and dream, our experiences often do not cross over into daily awareness. They lose their magic upon awakening, for the most part lost to conscious consideration. Some people are peripherally aware that there is something else to life, others more so, actually exploring, while still others just can’t quite go there yet, wanting surety, scientific proof. But that kind of proof can only come in daring the self to continually explore and to hold onto the experiences as the truth of who we really are.
As I write about in my books, I suffered well into adulthood thinking that there was something wrong with me. Indeed there was! I was caught in my human form. All that it had been through weighed on me like a ton of bricks. I believe we all feel the same way, that we all feel isolated, afraid, ashamed and vulnerable. It wasn’t until I found my way to the process of recapitulation, within that clinical setting that Chuck had realized was possible, that I also began to experience exploration beyond the body in a totally new, acceptably healthy way.
So what is this path of recapitulation? It is a pathway to going into the body self to explore and resolve all issues and beliefs so that seamless, unattached transcendence from the physical self may occur. It is, simply put, a means of shedding the physical form—in all its multidimensionality—so that we may gain access to our awareness, our spiritual essence, the truth of who we all really are. This essence has no form, no belief system, no agenda; it simply is. That might sound pretty abstract, but once the shedding begins all of that starts to make a lot of sense. The big step along the path is the first one, to simply let the self begin the journey, to be open to where it leads.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico did recapitulation in a cave or other remote dwelling, isolating themselves from the world so they could be undisturbed as they recapitulated. Taisha Abelar,* a cohort of Carlos Castaneda’s, used a cave and then a tree house, writing a fascinating book about her experiences. Victor Sanchez, a controversial progenitor of Castaneda’s works, suggests constructing and sitting in a box. I, on the other hand, believe that we ourselves are the cave, the tree house or the box, that everything we need is inside us, that our human form, that which we seek to transcend, is also the gateway to our transcendent experiences.
It’s pretty impractical for most of us to disappear into a box for any length of time, or to find a cave to repeatedly return to. And, much as we might like to, how many of us are really ready to climb a tree and live in a treehouse for months on end. We may not have been chosen to train in the traditional fashion, but that does not mean that it is not our path as well. We are still free to choose the path of recapitulation if we come upon it and it feels right.
In fact, we recapitulate all the time, in the course of living our everyday lives. We recall memories, get triggered, have sensory experiences. If we think about it, recapitulation is really a natural part of life, flowing through us daily. How often have we sat, lost in a memory, really there, sensing and feeling it again. Recapitulation asks us to do just that, but this time to be the observer as well as the participant, to look at everything from a new and fresh perspective. Over time we begin to see our past experiences as part of the network of our lives, fitting neatly into the fabric of who we are, what has made us the beings we are today. As we weave that network together from a new perspective, a bigger picture develops, and we begin to experience ourselves as more than just our human self and our experiences. We actually begin to experience ourselves as energy.
As Deng Ming-Dao states, there are many spiritual paths and we must choose one that suits us. Then we must resolutely walk it. I personally have found my deepest and most rewarding path out of the physical to indeed be recapitulation. I use it daily so that my practice of meditation—my cave/tree/box—takes me beyond the body with ease and gentleness. The physical human form that we all reside in on this plane is our transformational vehicle, yet how can we sit and meditate if we are tormented by a mental state that does not let us sit still for very long!
In my experience, recapitulation offers a most valuable tool. It is the first gateway to accessing our energetic essence. Beyond that, with practice, resolutely walking the path of our choice, we can and will achieve our energetic essence. It’s just a matter of daring ourselves to take the journey, that first step the hardest and most frightening, and then sticking with it!
On the recapitulation path,
Jan
*Notes and Quotes: Deng Ming-Dao’s book is Everyday Tao and Taisha Abelar’s book is The Sorcerer’s Crossing.
Here is today’s channeled message, brief and inspiring.
We are born with ancestral baggage. We are attached to and burdened by the energy of our ancestors, our families of origin, and our life’s circumstances. We pass this burdensome energy onto our children and all who come into contact with us. We will suffer until we free ourselves. Others too will suffer until we free ourselves.
When spirit calls, it is asking us to free ourselves of our emotional baggage, our physical attachments, our mental constraints, and our spiritual limitations. It asks us to methodically unburden ourselves, to face the truths of our lives with utter honesty and humility. It asks us to question who we truly are, why we think the way we do, and if our thoughts really reflect the deepest truths of who we are. In 2001 I finally paid attention to that call from my spirit. I met Chuck and began the process of reclaiming my true self, the person I always knew I really was but was so afraid to be. I kept this person hidden.
As an artist I found a means for her to live, as I discovered I could covertly reveal her personality, her innocence and her darkness alike. In expressing myself as an artist anything was acceptable. Over the years I knew there was a lot more, a deeper level that even my artist self was not willing to enter. In the caverns of my soul lay the untouchable self. Alongside her lay the wretched remnants of that which could not be spoken.
Although this self was unknown to me, she flashed up every now and then, freaking me out, sending me deeper into the river of depression that flowed through my life. Eventually, I knew I would need to address her, or at least the feelings that I could not handle and the crumbling of the world I was trying to uphold. That was the beginning of my recapitulation process.
When I first met Chuck, he and Jeanne were deeply immersed in the shaman’s world, specifically that of Carlos Castaneda and the practice of Tensegrity, going to workshops around the world on a regular basis. When Chuck learned the recapitulation sweeping breath he noticed that it’s bilateral movement was similar to the bilateral aspects of EMDR, a trauma treatment process that he’d been studying. Quick intuitive that he is, he immediately saw the clinical potential of recapitulation. His hunch was to prove true.
I have just published the third volume in the Recapitulation Diaries series, Into the Vast Nothingness. This is the continuation of the recapitulation journey that I unknowingly embarked on when I met Chuck on that fateful day in 2001. I say “unknowingly” because I didn’t know that it was what I was going to be doing. As we worked together the process unfolded, the journey took us, though Chuck was deeply aware of it, always patiently waiting for me to find my way. Eventually, the word “recapitulation” became synonymous with the work I was doing; there was no other word to describe it.
I reveal just about everything about myself in my books. I see no value in holding back because I know there is someone else out there with similar baggage who might be helped. I offer my books as incentives to unburdening, even if only privately and in the safety of one’s own inner world.
The shamanic practice of recapitulation, however, comes with its own powerful energy. It has a habit of infiltrating into life. It asks us in a myriad of ways, just like spirit, to examine ourselves minutely. It asks us to face our deepest selves, presenting us with new ways of seeing, asking us to deal with what we no longer need in our lives. As we shed the old baggage, we discover that there isn’t really that much of our old world or our old self that need accompany us forward.
Just as I reveal my deepest self in my books, I don’t hold back about the difficulties of the journey either. Recapitulation is a difficult road, a solitary and lonely journey, but it’s a thorough means of achieving the great unburdening that our spirit asks of us. It’s a choice that we make or refuse, but it’s really only a choice if we know exactly what it is that we are choosing or refusing. Do we take the journey to freedom and wholeness or do we continue to carry the baggage of our lives, ancestral and otherwise? As Chuck always told me: When you are ready the journey will meet you and if you are not ready then wait, it will catch up with you soon enough!
At one point during my recapitulation, I realized I was carrying more than just my own depression. I was carrying the depression of generations of women in my family, that ancestral baggage! I no longer wanted to be the bearer of it. It did not belong to me! And furthermore, I did not want my children burdened by that which did not belong to them either, but I knew I could only free them by freeing myself. In freeing myself, I am able to free them to face life on their own terms, free to be who they are truly meant to be. They do not need to uphold the ancestral world, at least not because of me.
There are many tools to spiritual awareness. Recapitulation is a deep and lasting tool to unburdening the self, not only of that ancestral baggage that we all carry, but everything else that holds our spirit back from truly living.
I send another book out into the world. In publishing Into the Vast Nothingness, I free myself of attachment to it, even as I hope that others will find it and read it, because I wish for others to be free too. I hope you will read the books and learn that everything can be spoken about, everything can be talked about in the right, safe setting, and everything can be let go of.
Should you feel inclined, I invite you to write reviews of the books, as what you say may help others as they seek not only to heal from their traumas, but to heal from the ancestral traumas we all carry too. May your own journeys be journeys of freedom.
Blessings on your journey,
Jan
Here is a link to the new Book: Into the Vast Nothingness in our Store.
Here is today’s channeled message from Jan and Jeanne. May its guidance be helpful!