Undo your old thinking that someone else is at fault. Undo your old thinking that you need to vent and blame someone for what is wrong in the world. It’s so easy to find a scapegoat, but that isn’t really fair, is it? A scapegoat offers nothing, except perhaps a delay in facing the truth. The truth can be scary, but it is far better to seek the truth than to seek to cover it or to avoid it. Everyone who is alive now on the earth plane has a karmic reason for being there. What is your reason? Why are you in the life you are in? What is the issue you must resolve in this lifetime? Everyone is in the same boat, even those you find most disturbing and most destructive. It all comes down to making new choices that lead you out of the darkness and into the light, into a transformed state, freed of the karmic load that you came into life to solve. Place more focus on your personal issues so that you may find your way into a new pattern of living that allows for you to see the greater picture and opens your heart in ever greater ways.
“Use your words,” is the instruction we give the frustrated child. Words are magic, they make things happen.
“Name your Good!” would exclaim Emma Curtis Hopkins of New Thought fame. Your good is what you truly want, the Truth of your Spirit. To boldly state it is to fully claim it.
State your intent loudly, even in your dreams, counseled the shamans of ancient Mexico, and the word will truly become the flesh.
One method of achieving your dreams and your good is to recapitulate your life thus far lived, to bring to consciousness all the things that stand in the way of achieving your dreams and settling them once and for all. Perhaps these things entail repressed memories that inhibit fully living life, or old fears from childhood, or some trauma—physical, mental, spiritual or emotional—that intercepted the unfolding of life.
To state the intent to recapitulate your life activates the subconscious mind to initiate your very personal soul retrieval journey. First of all, with all due respect to Bessel van der Kolk, it is the subconscious mind that keeps the score. The subconscious mind stores one’s full personal history in the compartments it creates within the physical body, some of them, like a simple breath, quite constricting.
Although the subconscious mind stores all the minutia of every moment of life, it also stores and denies consciousness access to experiences that have traumatized, and therefore threatened, the overall growth of our being at different stages of our lives. Some of these truths remain secrets to the self until the life review at the completion of human life.
Under the powerful influence of the survival instinct, the subconscious mind dissociates us from knowing and integrating the threatening experiences it secretly stores, and thus we lose access to parts of our soul, often to the point of complete amnesia of them.
When we state the suggestion to the subconscious mind to recapitulate, however, we are overriding the influence of the survival instinct to keep us in the dark about our darkest hours. We now claim conscious responsibility to manage our wholeness.
To assume that responsibility we must fully know, and thus fully experience, the wholeness of our soul’s journey in this life and, sometimes, even beyond it. Once the suggestion to recapitulate has been accepted by the subconscious mind as its working premise, it will bring forth to consciousness the opportunity for retrieval of lost experiences in the most necessary and effectual order.
Thus, the order of memory retrieval is not within conscious control; it rests with the judgment of the subconscious mind. This judgment is not analytic. It is in full keeping with achieving its accepted operating premise, to recapitulate. What is under conscious control is to fully show up for the journey, even if it is unpleasant and doesn’t proceed in the orderly fashion that the ego would prefer.
The shamans of ancient Mexico recommended bilateral breathing, as one ventures into encounters with one’s unknown soul experiences, to steady the presence of the conscious mind as it relives and integrates its forsaken experiences. EMDR utilizes the same bilateral grounding and integrating mechanism.
In addition to the practice of recapitulation of memory, is the actual usurpation of all current life experience by the subconscious mind as its playing field, in an effort to lead consciousness to the experiences which must be retrieved. Be forewarned, to state the intent to recapitulate activates a soul journey that shows up in all arenas of life.
Several advantages of the impact of recapitulation upon the concurrent events in our lives is that we learn to read energy; synchronicities abound that attract our attention; interactions reveal necessary encounters; physical symptoms take on new meaning. Our whole world opens up and we are offered a myriad of experiences we might otherwise never encounter. Everything is used to further guide us to knowledge and experiences that are crucial to full soul retrieval.
As powerful as these intrusions may be, consciousness does have the prerogative to insist upon a break. State the intention to take a break, with the clear agreement that you will return to the work shortly. Be sure to follow through on your end of the bargain. The subconscious can be quite a task master. It insists upon a responsible adult partner.
Often, people state firmly to the subconscious mind their Good—their deepest heartfelt desire—not realizing that they are also initiating the intent to recapitulate, as in order to fulfill their desire they must first retrieve their soul. We cannot have fulfillment with half our soul lost to us.
The subconscious necessarily plots a course, which first enables us to retrieve the necessary parts of ourselves and to then be able to materialize our sought after dream. Many people become quite discouraged with the physical results of their stated suggestions and must be awakened to the deeper process of soul retrieval fundamental to their stated intent.
Soul retrieval neutralizes the old defenses that were once necessary to protect fragility. Until retrieved, dissociated parts construct their own lives with the core premise that they remain in hiding. The disabling effects of these parts upon conscious integration makes it critical that they be known and integrated as foundational to the desired growth of the conscious mind.
As soon as you state the intent to recapitulate, the journey has begun. The adult self is clearly using its words and assuming responsibility for showing up for the journey, the full journey.
The journey, though at times quite excruciating, is always magical and filled with awe. It is the journey we all will ultimately take, but we have the opportunity to take it right now! So why wait?!
All journeys have value and all journeyers have equal opportunity to advance in their lives, no matter their starting point. Everyone is born into a life of potential. Some people seem to have it all, very early in life, and they breeze through without a care in the world, while others have many challenges to overcome. Everyone is born into the circumstances that they need and that will help them to advance. Some people will not travel far in their life while others will make great leaps and bounds that carry them far from their beginnings. Without judgment, notice what your own life has challenged you with and how far you have come. Without judgment of others, notice how they are doing what they need to be doing to advance, based on what they have to undertake, just as you do. All beings are beings of light and love and goodness, even those who may not show it; just give them a chance. And don’t forget to give yourself every chance to take up the opportunities that you were born with too. Life! Its purpose is all about being where you are and taking up the challenges that life itself offers you, each and every day, as your stepping stones to greatness.
Let yourself off the hook a little more often. You are not as bad as you think you are. A little self-knowledge goes a long way as does a little self-compassion. One way to gain a little more self-knowledge is through experience, and by that we mean not just having experiences for the sake of doing things but having experiences with the goal of learning something from them. When you have an experience, and it can be any kind of experience, you are naturally going to feel something, gain something that might be of benefit to you, whether it be that you don’t want to have such an experience ever again or that indeed it was something that you enjoyed. What are you learning about yourself as you experience life and dare yourself to try new things? What more can you say about your experiences? Can you go deeper in finding out what they actually mean to you? Are you satisfied with yourself? Disappointed in yourself? Bored with yourself? Examine your feelings to the fullest, and then decide if you have gained in self-knowledge. If not, then perhaps it’s time to have a different experience.
When we get triggered we are involuntarily seized by the power of an archetype. Archetypes are the core building blocks of human experience that lie dormant in the ocean of our shared collective unconscious until called forth to define and respond to a situation we encounter.
The terror of a trigger is a tidal wave of emotional archetypal energy that floods both body and mind with panic. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” is an apt definition of the Shadowarchetype, as presented by the 1930’s radio mystery series. When we are caught off guard by an encounter, the Shadow archetype—the mystery and danger of the unknown—is activated, and we are in its grip.
Jung defined the shadow globally as everything that we are but don’t know about, which exists in the dark; hence, the term, shadow. Many things that exist in this dark region of the unconscious mind are purposely kept there because they evoke both fear and anxiety, which greatly compromise our stability and ability to function.
We are all frozen children in relation to our triggers. A child state is one of innocence. Shadow shatters innocence. We are no longer safe. We then install the protection of constrictive body armor. Our freedom of movement is checked by insistence of advance notice of everything. Our breath is shallow and often held. Our mind is either hypervigilant or not present at all.
The normal child state precedes the age of responsibility. The child, by definition, is taken care of. The overpowering danger of the greater world is held in abeyance until it is confronted by the shadow of the unexpected. When our adult state of confidence and autonomy is overpowered, we too become like children, overwhelmed by the unknown.
If we choose childlike defenses, we are caught in the existential kink of anguish, which contains the emotions of archetypes, generating the illusory belief that we are in control. Truthfully, however, we are like children playing hide and seek. We are victims, clinging to the child state of non-responsibility. We become like Little Red Riding Hood, haunted by the shadow of the Big Bad Wolf.
To defuse the power of archetype, we must first be willing to turn on the light in the shadow. This can be initiated by stating the intent to master the unknown trigger. Here, consciousness is taking a stand and presenting a suggestion to the subconscious mind. Previously, the subconscious mind was given the suggestion to avoid the trigger. That became its marching order and, consequently, an automatic habit.
This intent mobilizes the subconscious mind to channel the High Self, who then arranges a series of experiences tailored to achieve the necessary steps toward mastery. These experiences will show up in outer synchronicities, dreams and relationships. Slowly, the shadow archetype will be refined to reveal other archetypes that are the root causes behind the trigger.
For example, fear of approaching a woman might reveal the overwhelm of the Goddess archetype in all her piercing beauty; or terror of the Witch archetype, who threatens to castrate. Reflection on the terror experienced with an authority figure might reveal an encounter with a God archetype like Kronos, who would not even grant his children life.
The basics of achieving dominion over shadow require that we, as ego, undertake the Hero’s Journey. This will likely require that we revisit the triggers many times, as we gradually desensitize from them. When a trigger actually becomes boring, we are freed of emotional disruption. We are done.
There may be many other tasks to complete, as well, such as talking with or confronting someone, despite our trepidations. Inner mastery of the central nervous system through various kinds of breathing practices and body practices will support challenging tasks and build needed confidence.
Perseverance in all of these practices will eventually lead us to neutralize and integrate the shadow of all of our triggers. With this comes the restoration of a child’s innocence in the personality, coupled with an adult knowing that indeed, we can navigate the big bad world with truth and right action, the essence of love and wisdom.
