Tag Archives: recapitulation

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Love & Laughter—Tools Of Detachment

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Incredible lightness of being... waiting to be freed... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Incredible lightness of being…
waiting to be freed…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

If we understand karma to be unfinished business, that which grounds our flight, then we can understand detachment as the necessary tool to free our incredible lightness of being to find fulfillment in this life and beyond. Detachment unhitches us from the energetic drains that keep us tied to people and situations that impede our freedom. Energetic drains take the form of intense emotional attachments, be they fear and hate or, quite the opposite, unrequited love. Either way, attachments keep us tethered, and, until released, we cannot journey deeper into life.

But what are the nuts and bolts of detachment? Often enough, Jan and I write about the formal process of recapitulation to free and reclaim all the entangled energy knotted in the lives we’ve lived. Love and laughter are tools at the heart of the recapitulation journey.

Prior to his assassination, Gandhi had expressed, “Even if I am killed, I will not give up repeating the names Ram and Rahim, which mean to me the same God. With these names on my lips, I will die cheerfully.” He also said, “If I am to die by the bullet of a madman, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips.”

Rahim also means compassion. When Gandhi was actually assassinated, he raised his hands in front of him, in a common gesture of greeting to his assassin. And he did call out to God, according to some accounts, speaking the words “Ram, Ram.” In speaking these words, and with this final gesture, Gandhi forgave his assassin, leaving this world completely untethered to what his assassin had done to him, but also thanking the man for delivering him to the next stop on his journey.

Jesus similarly cried out to God while on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He also left this world completely untethered to his accusers, who delivered him to his future.

From wherever we come, we land; we move into life on this earth. It’s where we are now. If we turn around we turn to stone and can move no further, according to a common concept. Recapitulation, however, requires us to turn around, but with the intent of removing all the energetic strings that keep us bound in regret, anger, sadness, longing, and hate. In retrieving these energetic strings of self, we can turn to the unfolding awesomeness of continuing our journey untethered.

Buddhist wisdom guides all who leave this world to glance only briefly at the bardos of their discontent and stay focused on the light. To remain attached to the emotional ties of our life, loving or traumatic, forms the seeds of our karma and interrupts our journey to spiritual wholeness and enlightenment. Gandhi was well aware of this, as he faced his assassin in the common greeting of respect, namaste, meaning “I bow to you; I bow to the God within you.”

We all travel in and out of the light and the dark all the time... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all travel in and out of the light and the dark all the time…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

To release emotional attachment to those who harm us frees our karmic load. We are then freed to proceed into new life unburdened by emotional heaviness. Karmic attachment requires us to stay put, until we can free our spirits to move into new life.

The love or compassion that Gandhi and Jesus portrayed transcends the attachments we have to our lives, interrupted as they are by our assassins. Instead, it accepts the reality of our unexpected launching into a different journey. Those that launch us must then grapple with their own karma—for the choice made to act from the dark side. We can extend the love of compassion to them, as they continue their journeys into that karma, and appreciate our own opportunity to free ourselves, at their hand, from attachment to the dark side that would have us stew in powerful emotions. If we look instead to the dark side and send it love—the last thing it wants—it releases its talons from our light being.

Laughter, like love, is equally freeing of energetic bindings. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered that the greatest hook to our energetic selves from the dark side is self-importance. When we are offended by another, or by life circumstances, we are drawn to the seriousness of anger, pain, and resentment. These emotions, though transiently valid and necessary to encounter during recapitulation, are equally capable of keeping us attached to the dark side, for the dark side looks for ways to hook us, to entrap us indefinitely by feeding on the energy of our fixated, negative emotions. We can completely break the chains of these offenses by learning to laugh at ourselves.

We can laugh at our attachment to seriousness. We can laugh at our own human frailty. We can laugh at our tendency to judge the self and other. And we can laugh at the frailty and foolishness of others. If we can find our way to the divine comedy of self and other, we are freed of all karma associated with the injustices we have engaged in and those that have been foist upon us—however serious!

Can we learn to laugh at our predicaments? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Can we learn to laugh at our predicaments?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Love and laugher are powerful tools that, when genuinely engaged in, free us from the binding attachments that tether our fulfillment to our karmic lives. As we exercise these powerful tools, we offer ourselves the opportunity for new and different outcomes. Love and laugh! Try it, and see what happens!

Loving and laughing,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Alzheimer’s & The Journey Of The Soul

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Who knows what we will encounter as we take our first steps into the bardos... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Who knows what we will encounter as we take our first steps into the bardos…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The rational sensibility of the modern world observes the deterioration of the brain with Alzheimer’s disease and questions the validity of the soul. In effect, it asks the question, “What is left to ascend after death, when clearly there appears to be a total dismantling of the personality as the disease progresses?”

All religious systems, nonetheless, propose that a soul, an ethereal essence, separates from the body and continues to live after death. Hindu scientists have an elaborate understanding of the composition of that soul, or what they have termed the astral body. According to their findings, our abilities to think and feel originate in the astral body. The astral body, or soul, is intimately connected with the physical body; feelings are experienced in physical sensations and mental processes are connected with the brain. These two bodies, physical and astral, are inseparable except in dreaming, shamanic journeying, and in severe trauma, when the astral body—though still attached to the physical body—separates and goes off on its own journey.

Shamans utilize dreaming and journeying to explore life beyond the body, as they prepare for life after death, for the moment when the astral body completely separates from the physical body.

The Tibetan Buddhists, as outlined in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, have identified several bardos, or in-between worlds, that all humans encounter shortly after death. In the bardos we are all confronted with unresolved issues from our lives. Our ability to resolve, or not attach to these issues in the bardo states allows us to progress deeper into our soul’s unfolding journey in infinity. However, this cosmic recapitulation process in the bardos may require many lifetimes before we achieve true freedom. Alzheimer’s, as I see it, is the beginning of that cosmic bardo adventure, begun while still living in the human body, offering the opportunity to engage in recapitulation.

With the deterioration of the brain during Alzheimer’s, the astral body is freed to enter the bardos and deal with deep issues, as it is freed of engagement in the affairs of daily life. Deterioration of personality in this world in no way reflects loss of self, it simply reflects a breakdown of cognitive functioning connected to the physical body.

Things may clarify the deeper we go... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Things may clarify the deeper we go…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The mental and emotional self is fully present in its astral travels and is deeply engaged in working through karmic issues with souls from other lives, as well as those who have already crossed over, whom one was associated with in this life. Alzheimer’s offers an individual an extended opportunity, while still in human form, to resolve issues of many lives, with the added benefit of possibly breezing through the bardos after real death, moving quickly into higher spiritual realms. What appears in physical form as a difficult to manage and heartbreaking pathological disease, in spiritual form is actually an opportunity for great healing and advancement.

Relatives of Alzheimer’s patients are often treated to stories of these adventures in the bardos when the Alzheimer’s traveler is in lucid moments. He or she may speak of adventures with relatives and other beings in the astral realm. And, yes, some of those encounters with entities in the bardos realm can be quite terrifying, as patients might report their terror at feeling robbed or attacked, or having met evil or monstrous beings.

Nonetheless, if we can value their experiences as coming from layers of reality that we are unable to witness, rather than simply dismissing them as hallucinations, we might be granted glimpses of life beyond life. Not only are we offered valuable insight into what we will all one day encounter as we enter the bardos ourselves, but we are able to support our loved ones as they deepen their soul’s journey in infinity, preparing for their final launching.

Is Alzheimer's seeding new life? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Is Alzheimer’s seeding new life?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Looking at Alzheimer’s from a different perspective,
Chuck

I wish to thank Elmer Green, PhD, brain researcher and pioneer of biofeedback, for his insight into Alzheimer’s as he took the journey with his wife, Alyce, learning what she was encountering on her trips into the bardos. You can hear him talk about it here: The Ozawkie Book of the Dead He mentions his findings about Alzheimer’s within the first few minutes and goes into it in greater detail throughout the recording. It’s well worth listening to!

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Patient Waiting

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From inside the tunnel of self... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
From inside the tunnel of self…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Shortly after I finished college and went to live in Sweden, long suppressed memories began to stir. They came in short bursts, most often as dissociative states. I would suddenly retreat from the world, tunneling down into myself, where I’d view the world as if from inside a telescope.

Such moments could last for a few minutes to a few hours. I had no idea why they happened, but there was something incredibly familiar about them, though fuller memories of my childhood sexual abuse were not to surface for decades. I had never heard of recapitulation nor was I seeing a therapist at the time, but there was a deeper part of me that knew that one day both of those things would become central to my existence.

It was also about that time that I had the clear insight that one day I would have to retreat into a cabin of my own, as I thought of it, and do the deeper inner work that I sensed would one day be necessary.

To combat those disturbing moments of dissociation, I began keeping a list of all the things I would take with me into my cabin. I planned to go for a long time, a year or more. I made lists of foods, water, personal supplies, how much of each I’d need. I made lists of art supplies and writing implements, clothing, bedding, batteries, pots and pans, etc. My cabin was heated by a wood stove, so I stacked wood outside the walls, lining it several feet deep, both for lighting fires as well as insulation during the coldest months. I expected that I would be buried under several feet of snow for months on end, it was Sweden after all.

The lists were long. I’d check them over and over again, adding new things, deleting others that seemed unnecessary. I tried to think of every item I would need and every circumstance I would encounter. I wanted to be sure that I had not forgotten one thing that I would need in my isolated cabin. Whether my imaginings were practical or not didn’t matter; it was a deeper part of me that was making the plans.

Here is the cabin on the mountaintop that I envisioned for myself and drew and painted over and over again... - Detail from painting by Jan Ketchel, 1979
Here is the cabin on the mountaintop that I envisioned for myself and drew and painted over and over again…
– Detail from painting by Jan Ketchel, 1979

My cabin planning became an art piece. I worked on it for months, drawing floor plans, exterior views, picking the perfect mountaintop spot with beautiful views, incorporating it into all my other art works for years to come, getting it just right. Putting the final touches on it, I put it away, for I knew it was not going to become an actuality, at least not then. I would have to wait for the right time, because I was certain that someday I would be going into a cabin of my own, that I would be there for a long time. Once there, I knew I would be ready to finally face my demons, all that tortured and plagued me.

Little did I know that, in a sense, my mental planning would one day prove useful, though the entry into my cabin took a far different route from my early imaginings. In the planning stage, I was establishing a real cabin, but in the reality of my recapitulation, many decades later, I entered a metaphorical cabin, as I personally became the cabin. My own body housed me, protected me, nourished and supported me throughout the three years of my inner journey. It contained everything I needed to do my recapitulation. And just as I had imagined, I did finally face all that had stirred back when I was just a young woman starting out in life. Though I had been granted a taste of what was to come, little did I realize just what it would mean or where it would take me.

I am struck now by the patience of my young self. I seemed to know that when things are ready, they will come. It was a valuable lesson, one that I relearned many times as my recapitulation unfolded. Often I would want to push the process, get it over with as quickly as possible. I remember one day saying to Chuck, “Why don’t we just spend a whole day doing the recapitulation and get it over with once and for all.” Ha! Little did I know that it doesn’t work that way.

There was no point in pushing. Pushing, I learned, only created unnecessary tension and anxiety. Far better to wait. The recapitulations, the memories, came on their own. I didn’t actually have to do anything to trigger them. I had to learn to be available, recognize that I was being prompted, and take the journey that was offered, because that’s what I was being taken on, a journey. My job, if I was to truly get through the memories as quickly as possible, was to consciously let them go through me, in whatever form they came, and learn what I needed to learn from them, both what they offered me in childhood and what they came to teach me again as an adult.

I even envisioned a future happy self! - Detail from a painting by Jan Ketchel, 1979
I even envisioned a future happy self!
– Detail from a painting by Jan Ketchel, 1979

The recapitulation process was invaluable. Painful as it was, I would not trade it for anything. It was the journey my spirit was setting up for me so long ago, letting me know that one day I would indeed be going into a cabin of my own. I just had to wait for the right time, the time when I was ready.

The lesson of patient waiting can be applied to other areas of life as well. If we want something and push for it, it might backfire on us. It might not be the right time or be the right thing for us. But if we wait, if it’s right, it will come and we will be ready for it. This I know.

From my cabin,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Real Security

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Still dealing with computer issues, but here is a blog from Chuck, sans pictures again, but offered with our heartfelt wishes for good journeying through all the changes.

The human animal is acutely aware of great change on the horizon. Such impending change produces a collective fear that emanates from the deepest stratum of our instinctual selves, rising to the surface in our individual experiences as anxiety. We seek to dispel this anxiety by seeking refuge in our ego self, which responds by associating the anxiety with current events as it defensively reasons us to provisional security. This anxiety/fear, however, goes deeper than that, into the very nature of our human animal selves.

The question arises: How do we achieve real security? The truth is that although it is evident that we are in for great planetary change, life is and has always been about great change. All life ends; what greater change could there possibly be?

Real security is not to be found in a respite from change. A respite from change may temporarily be found in the ego’s bag of magical defenses, but such respite is an illusion. In reality change is constant and unrelenting. We might, nonetheless, discover a sense of real security on a warm day at the beach.

The ocean tide is the ultimate expression of unrelenting change. The heartbeat of the earth never ceases in the circulatory system of the ocean’s waves. If we lie calmly at the seashore, we might attune ourselves to the sounds of the true pulse of change. No wave is ever the same. Some waves are calm and smooth, others are crushingly powerful.

If we venture beyond our sandy bed into the ocean waves we experience more directly the energy of change. As the waves approach we might decide to learn to dance with them, timing our moves to leap at just the right moment, barely impacted by the passing waves. If our timing is slightly askew we might find ourselves mercilessly dragged down and under, into sand and swirls, frantically awaiting release that we might breathe again. Most times we are released back into life, returned to the control of our own bodies. Sometimes the ocean claims life, the catalyst to moving into new form.

Perhaps we might decide to align ourselves with the flow of the waves, with the energy of change, as we ride the cresting waves ashore. Sometimes we are fooled or miscalculate and again find ourselves pulled asunder, forced to face the crushing uncertainty of change head on.

Real security, however, is only to be found in facing the inevitability of change by allowing the ego self to learn about its energy, discovering how to ride it successfully by facing the truth of our own lives.

If we can allow ourselves to engage with consciousness in our dreams and bring them to waking life, we enter more deeply into the ocean of our deeper selves.

If we can allow ourselves to fully experience our feelings in the present, and in our deepest memories in recapitulation, we release the energy of stored inner tidal waves and learn to stay afloat through the inevitable storms of our lives.

And yes, if we can allow ourselves to fully reexperience our deepest encounters with terrors that once tore us asunder, we gain the knowledge of holding together through the greatest cataclysms of change.

Real security is to be found in the ability to flow with the changes that life presents us with. To fully become our wholeness we must allow for encounters with, and knowledge of, the parts of ourselves that rock the limited identity our ego has constructed to keep us safe. But let’s not sell the ego short; it is fully capable of the growth to fluidity that is necessary to accept life on its own terms without machinations to make it palatable.

Bring your ego to the beach of your dreams tonight. It’s fine to rest comfortably on the shore and attune to the rhythm of change. The time will come when you are ready, or not, for the deeper plunge into the ocean of pulsing life and constant unrelenting change. Real security is found in flowing with the changes, wherever they take you.

Resting comfortably on the beach, until the next wave comes along,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Three Vexations

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[Here is Chuck’s blog for this week. We are dealing with some computer issues and thus no pictures accompany this post. Look for a blog from Jan later in the week. In the meantime, here is some good stuff to ponder as you take your own deepening journey. And don’t forget to check in each morning for our daily Soulbytes!]

In his 1477 poem, the Ordinal of Alchemy, Thomas Norton, the English alchemist, warns any seeker of this Sacred Art of three major trials: haste, despair, and deception. These three devils are the gargoyles that all would-be adepts must pass by if they are to find the path to achieve the Opus, the Grail Cup.

In modern terms, seekers of individuation through the path of psychotherapy and recapitulation will meet these same vexations cast upon their conscious intent.

Norton states: “He who is in a hurry will complete his work neither in a month, nor yet in a year, and in this Art it will always be true that the man [or woman] who is in a hurry will never be without matter of complaint…” (Anatomy of the Psyche, Edinger, p. 5)

We enter psychotherapy because life circumstances have mobilized our ego intent to find resolution to the conflicts that thwart our fulfillment. Our mobilized ego is frustrated or in great pain and is highly pressured to achieve freedom from these constraints. These are the conditions that set the stage for haste. We want to move on quickly, move deeper into life. We do not want to suffer a moment longer.

The rationalistic psychologies of the modern world promise just such results with well-laid out plans and programs promising great success. Would that the problems that befront us were all of the world of reason! Unfortunately, to solve our deepest issues we must sink into the depths of nature, far beyond the purview of reason. And for this healing adventure the ego’s demand for results in a timely fashion will only be met with disappointment and complaint. To enter the depths of the psyche we enter a world outside our familiar space and time where we must acquiesce to the healing tides of nature.

“If the enemy does not prevail against you with hurry, he will assualt you with despondency, and will be constantly putting into your minds discouraging thoughts, how those who seek this Art are many, while they are few who find it, and how those who fail are often wiser…than yourself.” (Ibid., p. 5)

Deflation of the ego, diminished self-worth and self-esteem, negative thinking, doubt that things will ever get better—these are the many faces of despair that seek to derail the concerted effort needed to prevail through the long, arduous, and often physically painful and emotionally terrifying journey into the inferno of recapitulation. A willingness to keep the candle of intent lit within the self, even though one feels utterly alone and abandoned as one takes the journey into the abyss, is critical if one is to prevail through this trial of despair.

“The third enemy whom you must guard against is deceit, and this is perhaps more dangerous than the other two…” (Ibid., p. 5)

By deceit, I believe Norton is referring to the helpers who come to serve the journey. Many of these so called “helpers” are the characters of the shadow self, entities that offer insights or respites in the form of inflations and addictions in exchange for allowing them to act out or take possession of our lives as we traverse our journey.

There are many tricksters within the self promising treasures in exchange for habits that subtlely drain our energy and resolve as we struggle to keep our course set on our goal of wholeness. Many an oasis offered can be a tricky resting place, claiming decades of our lives while we wait to awaken from our slumbers in a poppy field of a needed break.

Know that the vexations of haste, despair, and deception are the guardians of all paths of heart. They cannot be avoided. Better to see them as worthy opponents that forge us into the Grail Cup that can fully contain our wholeness, the goal of the opus.

We are all taking the journey in one form or another,
Chuck