Tag Archives: detachment

What is Recapitulation?

Recapitulation is the practice of recalling and reliving past personal events. It’s main goal is the redeployment of energy that is stuck in past events, traumas, relationships, attachments, and emotions. Such energy is unavailable to us until retrieved. Recapitulation is a means by which to retrieve our energy and return it to ourselves for our own use.

To recapitulate one’s life is one of the greatest feats of a lifetime, leading to a kind of freedom unimaginable until experienced. Recapitulation frees our energy from events of our current life, as well as energy from previous lives that we have carried over to work on in our current life.

Those of us who have been sexually abused, whether as children or adults, know full well what it is like to not have access to our own energy. We spend so much time defending ourselves from perceived threats, long after they are no longer real, thinking we are in control, when in reality something else has total control over us, the places where our energy is caught: in our past, in our traumas, in our defense mechanisms, in our habitual behaviors, in our fears.

We may not even realize that our energy has been usurped by these mechanisms, for they seem to be protecting us. They even comfort us and keep us safely within certain boundaries that we know and perceive as protective. But such boundaries are limitations to fully living life, keeping our energy tied up, stuck in places that are not really that healthy.

Fear is our biggest enemy. If we can’t go outside of our house or apartment out of fear of being attacked, if we can’t have a relationship with another person out of fear of being hurt, if we can’t stand loud noises or are constantly awaiting certain disaster, we are cut off from real life. With our energy tied up in protective defense mechanisms, we are incapable of fully experiencing the true energetic vitality and loving possibilities that we see others enjoying in life.

However, once we begin to recapitulate what happened to us, whether in sexual abuse, traumatic accident, war trauma, emotional, or psychological trauma, we realize just how much of our energy went into those so called protective mechanisms. As we recapitulate and let down our guards, finding safety and protection within ourselves, we begin to experience ourselves as more than just our trauma, as fluid beings of energy.

As we recapitulate and slowly release our fears, we free our energy from them, bringing it back to ourselves for our own use. As we retrieve our energy it gets redeployed into new centers within us, into centers of power, knowledge, and wisdom. We begin to experience a new kind of safety, a safety based on wisdom gained through all the things we’ve recapitulated. We learn that because of our trauma we had access to the same lessons that yogis and shamans spend a lifetime trying to master. We discover that, as a direct result of our trauma, we know exactly what the energy body is and what it is capable of.

We begin to understand that our trauma was the catalyst to our energy body, to knowledge of ourselves as spirit, to ancient wisdom that many long to achieve yet have access to only through the teachings of others. We discover that we had received direct knowledge, long before we could understand it. As we recapitulate, we let go of what once held us captive and fully embrace our trauma as our path to enlightenment.

In the end, we are no longer victims of our trauma but redeemed by it. Fully released from it, we are fully available to all that life has to offer us, without fear. For fear is no longer interesting to us, only what comes next on our spiritual journey has any interest.

These are the things I wish for all of you as you take your recapitulation journey, as you dare to take that most powerful journey to freedom.

With love,

J. E. Ketchel

Author of The Recapitulation Diaries

Published simultaneously on The Recapitulation Diaries Facebook Page.

Soulbyte for Wednesday December 18, 2019

Be generous, even in small and simple ways. Let your heart be open and giving, with a smile, a helping hand, a kind thought. There is always someone or something needing kindness; another person, an animal, even a physical place may need a generous touch. Generosity comes in a softly spoken word of encouragement, a gift unasked for, a surprise in the mail. Fill your heart with giving kindness so that you may fill someone else’s life with something special, not out of duty or habit, not out of pity or shame, but because it makes your heart happy to give. Give not to receive something in return, nor to show off your giving self, but give only because you can, because giving is what it’s really all about, all the time. Give anonymously, with love, expecting and needing nothing in return. That is real generosity.

Sending you love,

The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: We Are What We Say We Are

What we wish for is right there, beyond the boundaries we surround ourselves with…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

To make room for the new, we must clear out the old. The challenge, in letting go, is the depth of our attachment to the familiar. The identity we have forged secures us within the safety of the known.

The known identity is often heavily laden with negative and limiting beliefs, which become the boundaries of the self. To find the self in new ways, we must venture beyond the comfort of the chrysalis that has provided stability, darting past the limitations it has imposed upon the unfolding of our fuller selves.

The internal dialogue, specifically, the words we say to ourselves and others, powerfully determines the self we know. St. John begins his Gospel: “en arche en o logos” (in the beginning was the word). And that spoken word became the flesh. Or, as the Shamans of Ancient Mexico put it: words are directly linked to intent, the key to manifestation. As Descartes put it, “I think therefore I am.”

Norman Vincent Peale highlighted The Power of Positive Thinking, as a practice to suspend the power of judging words to forestall the unfolding self. We are all programmable beings, much like the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of Siri and Alexa.

Our subconscious awaits commands in the form of the words we tell it we are. Those words manifest in the behavioral patterns, moods, and beliefs that we program ourselves to automatically enact. Change the words, change the mood and the outlook.

Would, of course, that change were so simple. And yet, in many ways it is that simple. Observe the power of a charismatic leader whose words galvanize the mood of the world. This is the action of mass hypnosis, and, at some level, we are all hypnotic subjects. Why not give ourselves positive, supportive, and encouraging messages?

Always forgive the self, for everything and anything. Rather than bemoan one’s weaknesses and limitations, validate the willingness to face the full truth, and move forward unburdened with negativity.

Observe and interrupt automatic conclusions about one’s abilities, such as, “I am a terrible writer.” Reframe it with, “I am a being learning to write.”

Treat words as power objects capable of casting spells. Cast only positive spells upon the self.

Try, “I am a being open to the magic and mystery of life.”

Or, “I am a caring being open to sharing myself with a compatible other.”

Beyond the words that we consciously state are experiences we may store unconsciously, beyond our awareness, that hold their own powerful words of influence. These are made known to us through the triggers of everyday life that suddenly transport us to dark, frozen places.

To neutralize the spells these triggers cast, we must take the journey of recapitulation. In recapitulation we relive and fully retrieve our lost selves, as we open to full acceptance of every aspect of life lived. With acceptance comes love. With love comes the energy to open to new life, with all our vulnerabilities.

Finding self is the journey of a lifetime. Carefully chosen, supportive words and ongoing recapitulation are the tools to achieve this wholeness of self. Exercise these tools! See what happens!

Warm words,

Chuck  

 

Soulbyte for Monday December 2, 2019

Detachment is a skill well worth learning and practicing. To be detached is to fully know the self, to fully feel and know where all attachments lie, and then to work through them so that they no longer hold charges of energy, so that they do not hold the self to old agreements no longer feasible, so that they do not eat up one’s energy, one’s life, or keep one from the pursuit of one’s dreams. Attachments are the keepers of energy, while detachment is energetic freedom. In detachment one fully acknowledges attachments and yet one does not allow those attachments to rule. One fully loves others and yet one is not a slave to those loved ones. One is free to live life while letting others also fully live life, aware that it is the goal, privilege, and right of all beings to live life without energetic attachments that bind, hold one back, or inhibit one. Detachment means loving freedom for all. Practice detachment, with love for self and other, and begin to see its winning rewards of growth, maturity, and prosperity, in one and all.

Sending you love,

The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Wednesday October 30, 2019

What are you holding onto? What have you encapsulated? Some thought, idea, perception that you think belongs to you when in fact it is not yours to carry? Perhaps you are unconsciously protecting someone else, burdening yourself out of fear for another, out of empathy, out of guilt? Everyone must live out their own life, their own mistakes, their own karma. Everyone carries something with them into life that defines them, something they alone must face and resolve. A true warrior attends to the personal karmic issues with unbending intent and reaches toward the personal potential with nerves of steel, simultaneously allowing others to do the same. This requires a certain degree of detachment, but it is detachment with utter dedication to a path of heart as the only true path. It involves awakening the deepest of love and kindness and the knowledge that the only way a warrior will achieve karmic resolve is by walking that personal path of heart and by facing those karmic issues personally. It involves knowing that everyone is a warrior and that life must be allowed to unfold along its karmic path in order for each warrior to resolve and evolve. But most importantly, do it all with love. That’s the warrior’s way.

Sending you love,

The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne