“There is a state of mind which does not change, despite anything that happens in life. With that state of mind you can live with all the conditions of life. You can live with a good partner or a bad partner, prosperity or poverty, disease or death, in a discotheque, on a beach, a hotel, everywhere, because nothing affects you. You are where you are, firmly rooted in your own self, but at the same time you can interact with everyone. You can even fight, but still not be affected.”
“Nothing being more important than anything else, a warrior chooses any act, and acts it out as if it mattered to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn’t; so when he fulfills his acts, he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn’t, is in no way part of his concern.”
The first quote is from The Five Koshas, a talk given by Swami Satyananda Saraswati on June 9, 1984, and the second quote is from The Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda. These two quotes that flow seamlessly together, reflect the consistency of the knowledge of ancient India, as revealed in the Upanishads, and that of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico as articulated by don Juan Matus. Both traditions pierce the illusional nature of reality and cut to the heart of enlightenment: detachment.
Detachment knows that all things are equal, all things are part of the same interdependent whole. To grasp or attach to anything is to enter maya—fragmented reality—or the world of ordinary reality.
In everyday pragmatic terms, the guidance suggests being mindfully present, mindfully engaged in every situation with equal presence. Nothing is greater, better, or more important than anything else. The banal and the profane are as significant as the saint. Being locked away in a prison or lounging on a beach in the Caribbean are equal opportunity employers for the soul seeking liberation. Engage in life, treat each moment, each being, with equal appreciation. Choose with whom you journey, but know that this is but your predilection, as no life is better or more significant than any other.
Choice matters. Yogic science teaches that choice is the seed of manifestation, or what is known as karma. The secret of liberation from karma, however, lies in detachment. It’s not about being good, or moral, because choices that grasp at life in any form fixate and attach life to that form. Shamans, like true Yogis, free their energy from attachment to the world of ordinary reality, from fixation on the maya of this dimension, through this same process of non-attachment. Though they engage in life impeccably, they are ready to leave in an instant without looking back.
Flowing with the changes…
To leave without looking back is to have achieved complete love and compassion for all whom we are leaving behind. This detachment is the acceptance that life is complete and it’s okay to truly flow with the changes that death invites. Unless we have arrived at the completion of compassion, we will resist the changes and stay where we are in some form, until we are ready to flow with the deeper nature of reality.
When enlightenment and total freedom are the intents, only unconditional, all-encompassing compassion will be the path. Compassion requires absolute detachment. Anything excluded from our compassion actually generates attachment and becomes the seed to bondage in another life, where we are challenged to continue working it out. This was the wisdom of Christ’s guidance to “love thine enemy.”
All-encompassing compassion is the vehicle that releases all karma attached to this world and frees the soul to journey onward, into the finer energetic dimensions of its infinite journey.
Like a leaf on the autumn breeze this is where I have landed…
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. So goes a Zen expression. If I think about that statement in relation to where we are now in our evolutionary process as human beings, as spiritual beings, as Americans, as Citizens of the World, I immediately go calm. As I ponder my own process of growth and those who are closest to me, I go calm as well. For I sense that we are all in perfect alignment for evolutionary advance, that we always are, and when we are ready we will know what to do, in calmness.
Evolution is defined in Webster’s Ninth as: a process of change in a certain direction: UNFOLDING; the action or an instance of forming and giving something off: EMISSION; a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state: GROWTH; a process of gradual and relatively peaceful social, political, and economic advance.
I define evolutionary advance in my personal life in the same manner: I must allow life to unfold, letting go and giving off that which is unhealthy or unproductive, and get myself into a better state where growth, gradual and peaceful, can take place.
Just as no snowflake ever falls in the wrong place, so are we constantly falling into the places we need to be. Life, the force of the universe inside all of us, by its very nature is in constant flux, and so are we. If we allow ourselves even a few minutes to sit quietly and meditate, we will find that life force calmly waiting inside us to take its next natural step on the journey that awaits us.
The other night I woke at 2 a.m., worry spinning through my head, and being that it was night the worry spun its crazy web, as worry does in the dead of night. It spun and spun until I found myself helplessly caught in its sticky web, thought and intrigue, and more thought and more intrigue tightening around me. Shifting away in disgust, I turned onto my back, opened my eyes, and stared into the darkness of the ceiling above me.
“Please help me stop this worry!” I called out to the universe. “I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to be free of it. Help me to be free!”
The next thing I know I’m dreaming. I wake up in the dream, fully alert, and clearly see that worry does not exist in my dreaming state. I see that worry is nothing more than thoughts conjured by the mind, but now the mind is asleep. I see that it does its thing because it’s programmed that way, but as I look at it from my dreaming state I see that it really has no power at all, it’s simply a machine. And I can turn it off as quickly as I can flip a light switch.
“No worry,” I say, “how nice,” and I fall right back into my dream.
In the morning, I wake up totally refreshed, the worry of the night totally shed, and again I see it for what it is, a spinning machine. But at the same time I accept it in my life, for I know its value in teaching me.
Worry is like the snowflake that never lands in the wrong place. A petty tyrant of the highest magnitude, it comes to teach us. If we attach to it, it will swoop us up like leaves on a brisk autumn day and take us traveling on many adventures. I find, however, that the biggest lesson worry teaches is how to let go, how to become calm and detached. Worry by its very nature asks to be switched off, just as life by its very nature asks to be lived. Worry teaches us how to get ourselves in alignment with where we have landed. By flipping its switch to the OFF position, we are free to sit in calmness, to find our bearings, and know what’s right for us to do next.
Practice shifting…
I know that switching off worry is not that easy to do, but trust me; it just takes a little practice. The first step is to see it for what it is, to redefine it as I did in my dream. If we can separate ourselves from the thoughts in our head and give them a name, such as spinning machine or petty tyrant, we begin a process of change and we learn the real lesson of worry: detachment. Redefining things in this way offers not only a fresh perspective, but empowers us to begin taking action on our own behalf.
Was my worry of the night justified? Would it solve any problems, for me or others? Would it help in any way? Absolutely not. It had no impact on anything in reality. The only impact it had was on my energy and my sleep. It was a machine that I decided I did not want in my life anymore, and so I found a way to turn it off, kick it out of my bed, and get some sleep and dream insights instead—much preferable to the sticky web of incessant worry!
In these times of political, social, and personal energetic turmoil, I find that this simple Zen quote—No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place—is as calmly shifting and direct as my shift away from worry and into dreaming. In repeating it to myself throughout the day, I find myself calmly accepting of where I am, of where the world is, of where those closest to me are.
I believe we are all exactly where we need to be at this moment in time, in our lives, and in the evolution of our world. If we can accept this, then we can begin making choices in alignment with growth. Perhaps we see that where we are is necessary, that our next move in life is evolutionary, that we are in fact being shown what it means to be in alignment with our spirit, that where we have landed is leading us toward a gradual, peaceful unfolding of a life truly worth living.
I have landed where I have landed. Each day I wake up and remind myself of this, that I am where I should be, where I need to be, learning what I need to learn for my personal evolution. And then I dare myself to calmly take the next step, in alignment with where my heart tells me to go. I let my worry about this or that go; I let my fears about this or that go too. And I remember my dreaming self clearly perceiving worry as outside of myself, not mine, but conjured by the energy outside of me seeking attachment, wanting to feed off my energy, like the good petty tyrant that it is.
Those who have returned from near-death experiences report that upon leaving their bodies and entering into an out-of-body state, their entire lives flash before them in a single instant. Every nook and cranny of life lived is relived and reviewed. This is the ultimate recapitulation experience that we will all encounter, an essential component of transitioning from this life to the next.
The Buddhists are particularly cognizant of this experience at death and spend a lifetime honing skills of detachment so they will not get caught in the trappings of fear, regret, or longing for life lived in this world. Lack of preparation for this encounter upon dying is a major karmic variable for future incarnations, according to Buddhist tradition, as one’s future life is influenced by enduring attachment or non-resolution of life lived in this world as one travels through this moment of recapitulation.
Though the Buddhists spend a lifetime preparing for recapitulation at the moment of death, within Carlos Castaneda’s lineage, shamans discovered that recapitulation could be consciously and volitionally performed while still in this world. These shamans discovered that by recapitulating before dying we not only enhance our options upon death, but vastly change our experience of life in this world. Through beginning an early recapitulation we are afforded the opportunity to make ourselves whole, and with our full energy available to us now, achieve fulfillment in this life.
As a clinician, I returned from my journey into the shamanic world of Carlos Castaneda with the knowledge that recapitulation was a tool for total healing. Regardless of the shattering impact of the most horrific trauma, recapitulation enables us to retrieve our fragmented selves and energies, as well as disentangle ourselves from the binding energies of others that have compromised our growth and fuller potential in this life.
Recapitulation is an inevitability. We will all recapitulate our lives when we die. If we can’t face and know the full truth of who we are and the life we’ve lived now, will we be able to do that at the moment of death? Will we be so overcome with fear, regret, and longing that we will have to return to relive it all again?
Excavating and sculpting the self…
The shaman’s gift of early recapitulation offers us the opportunity for deep fulfillment in this life, as well as the evolutionary advantage to advance beyond reincarnation upon completion of life in this world. Furthermore, recapitulation is a magical pass. Magical passes have been performed for centuries in the shaman’s world. Magical passes are imbued with the intent of all those shamans, and anyone who undertakes a recapitulation is supported by the vastly helpful intent set by those shamans.
Here is an excerpt from Jan’s upcoming book, On the Edge of the Abyss, the second year of her recapitulation series in which she experiences this intent: “It’s eerily apparent that no matter what arises in the unfolding of this process, in which Chuck and I are but a small part, there is a sense of everything fitting together. We both remarked on that yesterday, as if we had been thinking the same thoughts. In some way, my dreams always show me where to go next—deeper truths revealed while my conscious self is out of the way—while the memories come in such a way as to suggest that everything is orchestrated. And I sense that whatever or whoever is helping me is worried about my energy. I sense that it wants to keep me whole and safe, deeply caring that I arrive at a place of total healing.”
When we recapitulate we must encounter the full truthful impact of life lived. How could it be otherwise? If we skip over that, we haven’t truly retrieved and mastered our real selves and our real experiences. However, we must keep in mind that we are protected and guided by a power greater than ourselves, by the ancient intent of recapitulation. That intent is that we fully revamp our lives, that we fully sculpt our energetic selves, and that we fully release all the burdens of extraneous energies formerly bound to the experiences of the unknown self. With this now fully-known and energetically-replenished self in charge, we are freed to live life to the fullest and to fully love the life we are living.
We gather our books, our notebooks and writing pens, and go into retreat. We leave everything else behind. Perhaps we take a cup of tea, a jug of water, an apple or two, but little else. We leave the phones, laptops, all forms of communication with the outside world, and disappear. No one knows where we are. For the time we’ve allotted ourselves, we are free.
We sit amongst the catbirds, quietly conversing or silently reading. We meditate, or perhaps even doze in our chairs. A doe and her two fawns come out of the woods and walk past. We are so invisible in our intent to retreat that they take no notice of us. We are present yet not present.
We reject all attachments, including the needs of those closest to us. On another day of retreat we sit in our canoe on calm waters. We drift, going nowhere. We let the world rumble by, all its troubles and turmoils, all its fears and desires, all its crisis and calamities. We are free.
We know what awaits us upon return to the reality of our world, yet we allow ourselves to turn from it as often as possible. In this manner we offer ourselves balance, we create a container in which to nurture our spirits. We offer ourselves sacred space in the midst of everyday life. We lift the veil of one world and enter another, rejecting the chaos that constantly seeks attachment. In the simplest of ways, at little or no cost, we seek retreat as often as possible.
Choose a new path...
Perhaps we take a walk at dawn, or at midnight. Perhaps we go to a movie. Perhaps we sit on our deck as the sun rises. Perhaps we build a fire and watch its sparks light the night. Perhaps we take a friend out to dinner and sit in a calm garden cafe. Perhaps we take a yoga class, or hike along a new path. All of these things offer retreat from the energy of the world constantly stirring around us.
Part of going into retreat, part of disappearing for a few hours or a few days, requires careful planning. It requires honing detachment by setting limits on the self and the outside world. It requires that we reject the chaos. It requires that we leave everything behind that might interrupt our retreat, anything that might interfere with our solitude. Often enough it requires leaving behind worry and fear, leaving behind the thoughts and ideas that we are needed, that we are important, that the world might collapse if we are not available every minute of every day to those who need us, want us, rely on us for whatever reasons. Going into retreat requires honing nerves of steel while simultaneously extending a tenderness toward the self that we might not ordinarily feel. Foremost, going into retreat requires rejection of all outside energy.
In turning inward, in going into retreat, in rejecting the chaos of everyday life, we learn how to care for ourselves. We learn how to detach from the critics, whether outside of us or inside. We learn how to suspend judgment: what others might think of us, what we might think of us, how the world judges us every day.
In successful retreat, we achieve calmness and contentedness. Our minds slow down; our hearts slow down. We become better givers, lovers, kinder more gentler people, because we give to ourselves, love ourselves, are kind to ourselves. In desiring to be giving beings we must first learn how to give to ourselves. In desiring to become more compassionate beings we must first experience what that means, and the best way is to practice compassion toward ourselves. In desiring to be loved, we must first learn how to love ourselves.
If we are in the midst of painful recapitulation we have already learned how to leave the world behind, for we do it every time we go into a memory. We know how to retreat, but it’s vastly important that we give ourselves sacred space for healing retreat during recapitulation too. In small increments we must learn how to care for ourselves, even though we are not used to caring about ourselves at all.
Recapitulation is forging a new self...
Recapitulation is really a time of retraining our minds and bodies, of reawakening our spirits, and remaking ourselves into a different being altogether. It’s a time of rephrasing how we think and speak, recreating our life styles and agendas to fit the changing beings we are in the process of sculpting. And so, even when deep into painful recapitulation—especially when one is in deep painful recapitulation—one must take responsibility for occasionally pulling out of the chaos and advancing the healing process. By finding some means of rejecting the chaos—however captivating it may be—one establishes balance.
Keeping in mind that the intent of recapitulation is to heal, the balance comes in learning healing activities and skills, and actually practicing them. Nothing will change if one does not act on what one is learning during recapitulation. This entails regularly stepping back from the intensity of the process and assessing the progress made. This entails reevaluating the self, appreciating the self in a new way, actually rewarding the self for the difficult work that has been accomplished. This entails reframing the state of one’s mind by offering it positive accolades as one rejects the old negative thought language. This entails learning how to be gentle, kind, and compassionate with the self, and eventually learning how to love the self.
Although recapitulation is an ongoing process of change, there will always be times when it is appropriate to reject the chaos of recapitulation—even if only for a few minutes at a time. In such moments of respite—think calm retreat—one builds stamina and regains balance that may have been lost during intense memory recapitulations. One learns how to detach from energetic attachments, nurturing one’s own reclaimed energy in the process, experiencing small doses of freedom along with a newly unfolding self.
A young woman told us of losing her phone and how free she felt. Sitting in a circle of friends, she noticed how everyone had their head down, looking at their phones, texting, reading, only peripherally attached to the conversation of the group. In that moment she clearly understood the addiction that she normally carried in her own pocket, the addiction to constantly needing to be in touch, to not missing something, to having everything at her fingertips. In that moment she saw her friends as slaves and she experienced her own freedom. Forced to break her own habit, she experienced a sense of relief, for a moment glad she had lost her phone. For a moment she basked in her own place of calm retreat.
No matter who we are, where we are in our lives, no matter what is happening, we must learn to take moments of retreat. We must learn how to reject the chaos, turn from our addiction to the chaos of life, and take responsibility for our spirits needs for calmness and balance. We must learn to nurture ourselves. It’s not that hard to do.
For the past week the Dalai Lama has come to me in my dreams. Sometimes when we wake up in the morning Chuck tells me that he has also been dreaming with the Dalai Lama. This is significant. What I am learning from the Dalai Lama is important. He has been teaching me how to handle the energy of now, the pushing, almost volatile energy of late that has been unrelentingly asking us all to face ourselves, what comes to us from within, while simultaneously withstanding the onslaught of the turmoil of what comes to us from without. We have all been suffering lately through the same kind of energy that Buddha encountered during his 49 days under the bodhi tree. And, as Chuck mentioned in a recent blog, the energy is not going to stop, it is coming at us with the speed of light!
This kind of energy circulates through our lives often enough that by the time we are adults we should be pretty used to it, but that doesn’t mean we handle it well. It takes awareness—recognition that we are in this type of energy state again—as well as a concerted effort to achieve balance and calm so we can not only maneuver through it but learn something as well.
In my first dream, the Dalai Lama handed me a fifty-pound bag of sand. He then instructed me to create a circle with it, large enough for me to walk around in. He showed me how to use the sand to build a little wall, just a few inches tall, sloping upward to a point, as if to create a small mountain range. The point, he told me, was to create a barrier between what was outside and what was inside. I worked on building that wall all night long, getting it just right, refining the edges, perfecting the circle. It was satisfying work and by the time I was done I had created what I set out to do.
The next night, the Dalai Lama came again. This time he instructed me to define quadrants within the circle, four equal areas that defined my life. The first quadrant became my inner world, the second my work in the outer world, the third my relationships with others, the fourth my home and my personal life. These quadrants, he said, must always be in balance.
I constructed a mandala...
When I woke up from the first dream it was pretty clear that the Dalai Lama was instructing me in making a mandala, a dream mandala, I thought. Little did I know that it was more than just a dream manifestation. By the third night I understood that it was a working mandala, merging the Shamanic process of recapitulation with a most important Buddhist practice. On this night, the Dalai Lama taught me about detachment, probably the most important practice in both recapitulation and Buddhism.
On this night, the Dalai Lama taught me that I must constantly utilize and hone my practice of detachment as I encounter the onslaughts of energy that are constantly present, whether from within or without. He instructed me to face what comes to me, to dissect it thoroughly, understand it completely for what it is and what it is teaching me, and then to let it go and move on. I sat in the different quadrants of my mandala and did as he instructed. His hand gestures were always prominent in these dreams, but this night they were broad sweeping movements as he demonstrated pushing the finished product of my inner process away, actually expelling the energy beyond the walls of my mandala. “Be done with it!” he said. “And then move on! That is detachment!”
By the fourth night I was beginning to wonder if he would come back. I wasn’t really surprised to find myself in his company once again. This time he spoke of compassion, instructing me in achieving calm within no matter what came from without, but with gentleness and compassion for myself as I went through the process of detachment. He told me that I had to get to a place of detachment in order to fully understand compassion, and that I had to get to a place of compassion for myself if I was going to truly be able to be compassionate toward others. He told me this was an endless process of facing both the inner and outer world, for there will always be something new each day to figure out and detach from with compassion.
Honing my awareness...
The next night, he instructed me, in a final note, to remember that all of this had to happen with awareness that I—my ego self—was not all that important. What was most important in all of this practice was honing my awareness so that I might also hone my energy. This is the ultimate reason and the goal in life. The daily challenge, he told me, is to face what comes in life in full awareness that it is the path to enlightenment, to full awareness and use of energy. How I express my energy through this body that is me—how I meet others in the world, and how I elect to live my life—all matter.
In essence, the Dalai Lama was pointing out that we are already on the path. We have always been on it. Our path is personally significant; we are the only ones who can walk it, taking the journey that we got. We are all, however, equally outfitted with what it takes to make the trek along that path to enlightenment. As my dream encounters suggest, it just takes utilizing a few practical tools in how to use what we innately possess: the means to achieving full awareness in our dreaming and waking lives.
In my dream encounters with the Dalai Lama, I was being reminded that we all face lessons in detachment in our daily lives, every day. The four quadrants of my dream mandala are the places that my personal challenges occur. But the Dalai Lama was also reminding me that we are all Buddha, going through the same kind of suffering that the Buddha went through in his 49 days of suffering. We must learn the same lessons that the Buddha learned, how to withstand the tension of what comes to us, investigate it—in a deep process like recapitulation, for instance—then let it go having learned what is most important. And then move on. There is always something new to move onto.
I learned, once again, that although the process is endless, the rewards are immediate. Each day, as I move around in my dreaming-waking mandala, I find that as I face what comes, the world without eventually changes, meeting me differently too. Where I am, so is the world. If I am in balanced calmness then I meet similar energy without. If I am avoidant, that too is what I encounter without, avoidant energy.
I have already constructed a magical wall...
One day I may find myself in the relationship quadrant and another day I may find myself in the outer world quadrant. It doesn’t matter where I find myself, the work is the same, to face what comes with awareness that my reason for being here is so that I may evolve. What must I face today and how will I face it? Will I remember that I already built a magical protective wall to hold in the energy that is important and to keep out that which is not?
I must remember that I am well prepared. All I really have to do is set my intent. And what was my original intent that brought the Dalai Lama’s energy into my dreaming-waking life? What it always is: to change. I find that there is really no other intent I need to put out there. Every day I ask to change, to keep changing, for I find there is no end to the magic and awe of life in change. “Let me change,” I ask. “Let me change.”
By constantly returning to my mandala, I am offered structure when I often feel that I have no structure, nowhere to turn, or no anchor. I do have it, a gift from the Dalai Lama himself. His own energy utilized far beyond his own physical body. That is his intent.
I sit in my mandala and set my intent to change. Try it. It really works!
