Tag Archives: recapitulation

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: New World Family

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Everything is changing now, including what it means to be family... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Everything is changing now,
including what it means to be family…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

My lifetime symbol in the Tarot deck is the Hierophant, card number 8. Lifetime symbols reflect the central archetypal myth and challenge to realize during a lifetime. I am struck by the emphasis of this card on the value of family.

When I reflect on my personal history in this lifetime, it is noteworthy how many conventional rules I’ve been willing to break in the service of revisioning family to fit our evolving needs. I know I was drawn to Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic line to service this intent. Carlos ended the limited shamanic family of his ancient line. Like a true socialist shaman he freed all the secret teachings, all the secret practices, for anyone energetically ready or inclined to take perception to new levels. He ended secrecy and selectively of apprentices, launching shamanism as an equal opportunity employer. The time of shamans is over. Everyone needs to become their own shaman now and take their own soul retrieval journey. Castaneda knew this. That was the ending and the evolution of his line.

Carlos’s shamanic line also put a premium on releasing energetic agreements that bind one’s energetic potential and limit fulfillment. This practice is called “erasing personal history,” not to be mistaken as erasing the truths, in fact, recapitulation insists that we fully face our personal history. However, in recapitulation we also are charged with withdrawing our energy from old energetic agreements and attachments, especially those that go back to our families of origin, where we innocently assumed roles and beliefs that overshadow our lives. Whether meaningful and truthful or not, those roles and beliefs must be dissected and questioned as to their true relevance and usefulness in our evolving lives, as beings totally separate from our families of origin.

In erasing personal history, we free our own energy as well as the energy of those whom we have been attached to, allowing all of us to grow and evolve without the limitations of old needs, expectations, or conventions ill-suited to evolving beings. From my perspective, this is caring for family at the deepest level, loving deeply, while simultaneously freeing all to fully become who they truly are capable of being, with no expectation to turn back and asking nothing in return. This is the empty-nester who frees all to new life, and enjoys new life as well!

We are in a new world now. However, the old world lives on, posing as new. Fiercely unwilling to die, it constantly tries to reassert itself, tempting us with new tools of communication, inviting us into the new family home of cyberspace. The internet now offers us a new family—with the possibility of unlimited connection—but it also pounds us with all the old tricks, enticing us closer with promises of more, unrelentingly targeting the rabid consumers that it knows we are, gathering marketing information to sell its wares. Of course the internet is much more than this, but it still dominates with an old world economy, one ill-suited to serve the true needs of our interconnected world. It has opened the doors to greater communication and connection yet it lacks selflessness—keep in mind that this true new world family does not discriminate. Tribalism, filial piety, paternalism, self-interest, must all be revisioned away from the bindings of specialness and entitlement if we are to truly evolve.

We all belong to the new family tree of energy and transformation... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all belong to the new family tree of energy and transformation…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Decisions and actions must flow from the place of right action to serve the true needs of our real family, our world family. Decisions that serve the self or one’s own family interests to the detriment of others is an old world order that literally poisons the environment and melts the polar ice caps. This old world order is slipping away because it is not sustainable—don’t be fooled by the bravado of those who tout its sustainability, it’s simply the last stand before the inevitable fall.

The call to change and evolve is not about fighting the old world, it’s about staking a personal claim in the new world. Every decision we make and every action we take determines which world we live in. The new world is still a world of family, but it’s a one-world family. This is one of the worlds that Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic process of recapitulation allows us to join. Through the deep process of erasing personal history we offer ourselves the possibility of new life, as, in shedding the old world of self, we naturally experience our interconnected oneness; the new one-world family.

When we turn off the water, decide to walk, refuse to invest in profitable but destructive stocks, charge a fair fee, are guided by our hearts and synchronicities, eat local and real; when we give service without discrimination as we are energetically able, and as is energetically appropriate to those who cross our paths, we assume our rightful place as full citizens in our brave new world; a world where no one is more important than anyone else. As a steward of the Hierophant in our time, I offer this message: family does matter—the one-world family!

From the new world,
Chuck

In loving memory of Pete Seeger, the man who gave so selflessly and tirelessly that we might all join this new one-world family.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Beginning

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Angry! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Angry!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

A man was angry all the time. He drank every night to numb his anger. He wanted to change so he decided to meditate. His intent set, he got up early in the morning, took a shower and sat at his desk. Before long his consciousness left his body, taking him out of his apartment and the city he lived in. It withdrew further and further from the earth. Soon he was in outer space looking down at the world, seeing it in its entirety as his awareness expanded and expanded. He entered infinity and experienced the endlessness of it and the knowledge that he was part of it all, that all life was energetically connected and infinite. When he returned to his body he was a changed man, his perception of life and the world transformed forever. Even so, he knew that in order to hold onto what he had learned, to keep experiencing himself as infinite, he had to shed his anger. Even though he had experienced the light, he knew he still had to face the darkness within.

Not everyone has such an experience when they sit down to meditate for the very first time, but many meditators eventually have this same kind of experience, the experience of the self as energy, interconnected to and a part of all energy. During such experiences the issues of the self pale in comparison to the ecstatic experience. If we are to truly evolve, however, the angry man was right; we must face our darkness.

Last night I dreamed. I was traveling on a train beside the ocean. There was a voice speaking throughout the dream, instructing, chanting a calming mantra, saying that meditation must happen all the time. From the train window I could see a small island with a Greek style temple on it not too far from the coast. I could see that it was possible to get there and I desired to go, but each time I saw the temple the ocean was churning up gigantic waves, fierce and threatening. Many times throughout the night I rode this train. The scenario was always the same. I’d hear the voiceover, see the temple and wish to be on it, notice the dark and threatening waves impossible to traverse. I’d get off the train and enter a large hotel where a gathering was taking place. A lot of people were there, walking around, keeping their energy to themselves, not talking or interacting. Everyone was meditating where they were. I did the same. Outside the vast windows of the hotel I could see the churning ocean and the temple on the island. The voiceover still said the same thing, “Meditate all the time.”

When I woke up, I knew that the message in the dream was that in order to get to the temple we must endure the struggles that we are faced with, the darkness within—the churning ocean. Just like the angry man who wished to change, deep inner work is necessary in order to attain and maintain the transcendent experience—the temple.

During my recapitulation this was exactly what I learned. In spite of the most amazing experiences that literally cracked through reality and presented me with the most stunning view of my life and the world, I knew I still had to face my deepest secrets and challenges if I was to have full access to my energetic self and be able to actually live as the changed being I was working so hard to become. Having a deep and meaningful spiritual practice was as important as doing my recapitulation and, in fact, became the perfect companion to the shamanic work I was doing. It was essential to the entire process.

I am eating… I am only eating… - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I am eating… I am only eating…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The true work of recapitulation is reconciliation with the fragments of self, healing the wounds of life, and even lifetimes, so that the true self, the spirit, may finally take its rightful place as the true self in the world. The goal of my recapitulation was to find the means to live from my deeply spiritual self all the time. I could only do that by giving that spiritual self a practice that was as deeply meaningful as the recapitulation. And so, my lifelong practices of yoga and meditation deepened as a result, becoming the prefect companions to my shamanic work.

I encourage everyone to develop a spiritual practice. If you desire to fully experience and embrace your spiritual self, to live as a changed being, from that place of deepest truth, then a spiritual practice is imperative. A spiritual practice will accompany you through life, bringing you constantly back to experiences of yourself as an energetic being, bringing fulfillment of our deepest interconnectedness. (In fact, if everyone was doing a deep spiritual practice all the time our world would surely change, but that’s another blog!) Meditation, as instructed in my dream, can be done all the time. It’s simple and everyone can do it. It doesn’t take equipment or a gym pass. It only takes mindfulness.

For instance, right now I am sitting and writing this blog, but I am also meditating. I am writing; I am only writing. I am mindfully focused only on writing and honing the message of this blog. When I get up, I will focus on getting up. Perhaps I will say: “I am getting up now. I am walking away from my computer. I am breathing. I am walking.”

These are mindful messages to the self that cancel out the constant thoughts that circulate and defeat us. At the same time that I am doing this mindful thought-erasing activity, I am also mindful that at another time I will examine those other thoughts. I will find out where they come from, how they came into my head, who said them to me, and why I still carry them. I will face what is dark and disturbing within myself, mindfully, just as I mindfully remain present in my daily life, focusing on everything I do throughout the day. To have peace of mind, I must constantly and mindfully work on myself. But to remain a balanced and present being, sometimes it’s appropriate to have a calm mind, and at other times it’s appropriate to pay attention to the mind and confront our issues and thoughts. As our mindfulness practice grows we become better able to manage our minds and maturely handle what comes to challenge us.

I am drinking tea… I am only drinking tea… - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I am drinking tea…
I am only drinking tea…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

A practice of mindful meditation is the perfect way to gain balance. To periodically shift our thoughts away from negativity, we simply state what we are doing, over and over again. As the voice in my dream said to me during the night: we can meditate all the time. We might say: I am sitting at my desk working now. I am eating now. I am reading now. I am driving now. I am walking now. I put my foot down, I breathe and I walk, one step at a time, mindfully. I am walking.

A mindfulness practice offers the opportunity to gain balance and calmness even in the midst of turmoil. If we do it often enough, we eventually do it without even thinking. We can turn off bad thoughts by introducing mindful thoughts.

I am good. I am writing. I am breathing. I am love. I am sending you love.

In mindfulness,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Following The Metaphysical Thread

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I took a journey through a transpersonal realm and emerged anew! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I took a journey through a transpersonal realm and emerged anew!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I took a deep journey in my physical body, one of whole-body ecstatic movement and release. At a certain point, I became the observer as well as the experiencer—a being in two places at once. As the intensity of rhythmic movement overtook my body, I found myself in the midst of the labor of my own birth, discovering newfound freedom.

After this experience, I noticed the immediate onset of intestinal cramping. The cramping continued throughout the night and into the next day, powerfully dominating my experience. My discomfort was so great that I found respite only in crawling into the fetal pose and breathing deeply, where I finally found astonishing relief.

As the day wore on, my mind got more and more involved. “This must be a stomach virus,” it said. “It’s going around. Or perhaps it’s food poisoning.” Before I knew it, I was googling “irritable bowel syndrome”—the symptoms of which fit perfectly. At that point, my mind began to imprison me in the narrow corridor of rational explanations. I decided, however, to suspend these judgments, as I saw how any one of them would lock me into a known world where I would acquiesce to protocol by constructing a diagnosis and treatment plan, a solid world to frame and resolve my experience in.

I chose instead to stay with the metaphysical thread of a birthing experience that begged for new mastery through a recapitulation process. I know that as a fetus in utero, and at birth, I was impacted by violence. In fact, physical violence to my mother caused my premature birth. What came to me during my experience was the call to ride the waves of the contractions and, in conscious awareness, safely bring my body to shore, to, in fact, re-experience my birth. I did just that, riding the waves all day long, and when night came and I got into bed I set the intent to push my body through the final waves of the process. Incessantly stating my intent to calmly heal and relax, I breathed deeply and, before long, the contractions, most amazingly, subsided.

I was then able to sleep, perhaps for a half hour at a time. I’d awaken and repeat my mantra and deep breathing. Countless times throughout the night I did this and found relief. Eventually, I noticed that I’d awaken in a calm state with no need to restate my intent; the intent having taken over. By morning I was completely healed, delivered by my own intent and acquiescence to the process.

We live in a transpersonal reality, that is, many dimensions or worlds simultaneously. In one world, had I entered it, I suffered food poisoning and could have been treated appropriately. In another world, I suffered the collective stomach flu and could have equally been healed with several days of rest. In another world, I lived through and mastered the trauma of my own birth as I entered this life.

Most instructive to me in this experience was the deeper significance of Carlos Castaneda’s oft-repeated maxim, “Suspend judgment.” With judgments we create constructs, the walls of the world we live in, an all-encompassing world with its own set of rules. When we are able to suspend judgment, however, we can follow the metaphysical thread of an experience into transpersonal worlds, where anything truly is possible!

All things are possible,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Change? What Do You Mean?

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This view is different every day… So is all of life, if we care to see it that way… - Photo by Jan Ketchel
This view is different every day…
So is all of life, if we care to see it that way…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

What does it mean to be the change you want to see? When I was a child one of my favorite things to do was to hang upside down on the monkey bars or from the branch of a tree. Suddenly the world was different! The same thing happened inside when I’d hang my head off the side of my bed or the living room couch, my hair brushing the floor. Suddenly everything was different. Doorways had trestles to step over, furniture clung to the ceiling and my mother sitting nearby was capable of the most extraordinary feats. I’d watch her get up out of her chair and walk upside down! I’d imagine being a fly, able to walk up the walls and across the ceiling all the time.

I’d often climb high into the branches of my favorite tree and see the world from a different perspective, like a queen on her throne, ruler of all I surveyed. Sometimes someone would walk by on the path beneath the tree, unaware that I was above them, watching every move they made. During such times I experienced a unique and unusual sense of power, power that in my normal life simply did not exist.

It took me a long time to realize that I did in fact have the power to change how I perceived the world, my child self innocently showing me just how easy it really was. From a different perspective, the world was new and different and I was new and different as well. How could I not be when I’d suddenly find myself in such an extraordinary position, capable of changing the world as I saw it?

Most of my childhood was spent in deep depression. Not that I was aware of what depression was, as it’s only in hindsight that I know that it was a symptom of my life circumstances. As a result, I shut down, my inner fantasy world much more interesting that the everyday world I inhabited. The outer world paled and became dull in comparison. It became routine, boring, and uneventful. I never imagined it would be otherwise. The thing that changed all that was really getting fed up with that boring world, and with myself as well. I had to find out what else there was out there!

And so I got up and got going. I looked for signs to show me what to do. Signs appeared, which led to a series of changes as I dared myself to follow them. I moved, a lot. I married, divorced, and then married and divorced again. I filled my life with children and work, with keeping active and busy, with creative endeavors. I instigated change all the time—I became a person of action! But it wasn’t until I realized that with all the changes I was making, nothing had really changed at all, and I was still the same depressed person I had always been. Something was wrong with my approach.

It was then that I realized that all the changes I’d made had been related to the world outside of me. I was constantly changing my circumstances or the people in my life, or trying to. It was then that my spirit spoke to me. It was dying. It was worn out with the boringness of the life I was living. It gave me an ultimatum, change or I’m checking out. I sensed a spiritual death was about to happen, and in fact that it meant a physical death as well. Only then did a different kind of change start happening. A series of events began that instigated the real change I had always sought. As most of you already know, that was when I began to discover another, deeper self, and the reason for the deep state of depression that had plagued me my whole life. I met Chuck and began a three-year-long shamanic recapitulation.

Suddenly the world looks sugarcoated… It's changed! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Suddenly the world looks sugarcoated…
It’s changed!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

My recapitulation brought me right back to my child self and her ability to perceive a changed world simply by hanging upside down from the monkey bars. I discovered that all I really needed to do to change myself and my life was to look at the world and myself from a different perspective! Sounds simple enough, but it took more courage to do that than any of the other things I had ever done in my life.

By my own volition, I entered a new world. Suddenly, everything began to make sense. Pieces of the mysterious puzzle of self began to fit together, the events of my life interlocking in a way that made perfect sense. I wasn’t incapable of change, I just didn’t know how to let real change into my life. It involved taking action on my own behalf. It involved not looking outside of myself for the change as I had always done—filling my life with so much doing that I had no energy left for anything else, nothing left for myself—but by looking inside. The old frantic, neurotic self was an attempt to keep the truth at bay, but it wasn’t until I turned inward, away from who I’d become in the outer world, that things changed. My perspective on everything changed, just as it had done when I was a child. From a new angle the entire universe suddenly took on a new look and new meaning. Suddenly, nothing was impossible!

So, how do we become the change we want to see? We take action. We change ourselves, from the inside out. Instead of looking at everyone else, blaming, resenting, regretting, whining and moaning about how bad we have it and how everyone else is against us, or doesn’t notice or respect us, the best thing we can possibly do for ourselves is to shut down all of that and be okay with finding out who we really are.

Are we really powerless? Why do we feel so entitled? Who says we’re not capable or worthy? Who says we’re hopeless failures? How did we get where we are? Whose voice rattles through our head, putting us down, keeping us safe and contained? Is that how we want to live? Can we let go of our resentments? Can we free ourselves of our old ideas? Can we take full responsibility for our own life? Can we think for ourselves?

I continue to seek new perspectives, to do things differently, to consider different ideas and to take action to change myself. It’s not that hard. Read something new. Take a walk. Movement alone can bring in much needed energy, offering new fresh air into the brain and body, opening up long dormant synapses. Learn to play, sing, take up a musical instrument. Eat differently. Think in a new way. Look at life from a new angle. Hang upside down every now and then and get a new perspective on the world. Be the change you want to see by changing yourself!

Eternally in metamorphosis,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Shamanic Tools Of Freedom

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Freedom is the unmasking of the petty tyrant and seeing it for what it really is… - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Freedom is the unmasking of the petty tyrant and seeing it for what it really is…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

As a seeker and a therapist, I search for tools of freedom. Freedom is the ability to flow with life as it is. Life is flux—change—and with change always comes a wounding to that which once was. Woundings create fixations, protective shells of holding on, to that which was. Such fixations interrupt our ability to flow with life as it has become.

The shaman’s world accepts the inevitability of woundings and tracks the human tendency to fixate on judgment of the self for its woundings. These judgments take the form of self-blame or self-rage. Either judgment further infects the wound and alienates the self from the flow of life energy. The shamans are empathic to woundings but ruthless in their goal of freedom. Hence, they go to extraordinary lengths to uncouple from attachment to their woundings.

To break the fixation with wounds to self-worth, self-importance, or self-esteem, the Shamans of Ancient Mexico encouraged their apprentices to saturate themselves with the doings of tyrants who made their lives miserable. In order to free themselves from the effects of these tyrants, these shaman initiates needed to astutely study the tactics and behaviors of these petty tyrants to precisely plan and execute their defeat. If they allowed themselves to indulge in blame, shame, rage, pity, or self-defeat, they would lose focus, often to fatal outcome. Those shaman initiates learned to waste no energy on taking anything personally, but focused instead on staying present in objective reality. This was the path of freedom from their woundings.

Traumatic encounters are uninvited encounters with life’s harshest petty tyrants. Shaman initiates seek out the encounter with the tyrant, but innocent recipients aren’t given that choice. Whereas the shaman initiate is in an active playing field with the tyrant, in real time, the trauma recipient’s playing field is the field of recapitulation, the reliving of the trauma once lived.

The means of achieving freedom from traumatic fixation, however, is identical to the means of achieving freedom from all woundings. To complete the process, we must arrive at what the shamans call the “place of no pity,” for self and other. From this position, there is total clarity and total release, as the ability to be present for the full truth of what happened, and the full release of energies previously fixated by life interrupted, is achieved. This is the ultimate defeat of the tyrant: complete release from its grip and complete release from the protective shell of fixation. From this place of no pity we retrieve the journeying self. We shift and reengage in life, as it is. Freedom achieved!

Chuck