Tag Archives: recapitulation

Chuck’s Place: State Your Name

July 13, 2012 Chuck Leave a comment

Every shamanic gathering I ever attended began with the leader standing at the podium awaiting silence. Then, in ritual format, he/she would state: “My name is __________. I am a being who is going to die.”

Those shamans have learned, through their many journeys through different realities, that it is critical to establish—state with intent—a clear definition of who they are—a name—which serves to hold them together as they confront the myriad of forces present in the world they are interacting with or traveling through. In this world, they add the caveat “a being who is going to die” to acknowledge the limits of the human form, indeed a being on its way to dying.

To state our name before all of infinity is to assume definite responsibility for the life we are living. This is not an act of inflation, of hubris, but an act of validation. I exist in definite form; I assume responsibility for my life.

In the psychological world, our hero self—our ego—must establish itself in relation to the power and infinitude of the personal and collective unconscious. To give our self a name is the beginning of consciousness. “In the beginning was the word, and the word became man.” (John 1:14) Without a name we don’t exist, we are nothing, merged with everything. To exist we must establish ourselves, affirm ourselves, give ourselves a rightful place in the world as a named being.

Many people, especially during recapitulation, must contend with tidal waves of energetic onslaughts from the deep unconscious that threaten to dissolve reality and identity. The experience might be pervasive nausea, dizziness, or disorienting out-of-body energy states, the sensation of being on an endless roller coaster riding at light speed in reverse, into the darkness without pause.

In such moments, we are threatened with a return to original chaos. We visit the land before time, the cosmic sludge, life without definition, without awareness, life without consciousness, for all intents and purposes, death.

Although we may have little or no control over our threatening encounters with our deeper energetic selves, we can and must, as we ride and are tossed about by those giant waves, state, with conviction: I am So-and-So! Stating our name over and over again, adding any caveat we choose, affirms the intent to remain a consolidated, sane being in this world no matter what we must face, establishing an ark to survive the floods of emotion, memory or sensate intensity. Beyond this, that ark establishes a boundary, a separateness, an observing perspective beyond the onslaught, the eye of the storm that offers cohesion and sobriety amidst the chaos.

Remember, as well, that the selves we establish are part of, and fully, the intent of original chaos. Nature chose to become conscious. Human beings reflect that intent, however poorly they manage it. Nature ultimately respects and supports our attempts at consciousness as we define ourselves and describe our world. It may insert an adjustment, a clarification of the true nature of things as it floods our consciousness, but, in the end, it seeks to further consciousness. Clearly establishing your name before it, is an act it will support.

During her own recapitulation journey, Jan encountered the chaos during a dream, a natural part of her process of self-realization and individuation. From her book, The Man in the Woods:

May 1, 2002

In a dream, I write my name in large script across my arm with a big black marker. Suddenly I don’t know who I am; I feel no connection to the name I’m writing, I don’t even recognize it. I don’t even recognize my own handwriting. I begin to panic as I enter an impersonal state, aware that I am nothing. I have no personality, no individual characteristics that I can identify. I no longer recognize myself because I am nonexistent.

“I don’t know who I am,” I say, panic rising higher, but then I calm down as I hear Chuck’s voice telling me that I can fix my dreams, that I can fix anything.

“It’s okay. You’ll be fine,” he advises. “You are you. Just let yourself be you.”

“Just let yourself be you. Just let yourself be you. Just let yourself be you,” I tenderly recite to myself, soothing my panic.

I wake up; those words flowing off my tongue.

Photo by Chuck — Treasures in the aftermath...

In the midst of traumatic recapitulation, as Jan establishes in her dream, it’s important to to remain anchored and aware of the self. Be you. State your name over and over again and the waves will subside. The naming will gain further clarity, as the treasures and trinkets left on the beach as the waves recede are sifted through. In further naming the artifacts of life lived, by more clearly knowing our personal history, we can shed its impact. Identified, named, and filed away, it loses its energetic punch, just as the chaos did in Jan’s dream.

Affirming the self via name also establishes a base for relationship as the ego/hero self can interact and form relationships with the unconscious selves, be they split off parts of the self or entities in the forms of beliefs and thoughts that don’t belong to the self and need to be cast off. Through naming, we anchor ourselves, finding clarity and healing.

State your name. State your intent to remain and become whole. Whether in the midst of recapitulation or facing the everyday onslaughts of life itself, you are a being on its way to fulfillment.

In closing: My name is Chuck Ketchel, a being on the way to fulfillment.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Young Heroes

June 29, 2012 Chuck 1 Comment

Life in this world is a hero’s journey for all living beings. We arrive here in utter need and dependence, and must all become heroes, forging our way to security and independence.

Traumatized children are catapulted ahead on their journeys to adulthood, forced into autonomy long before their childhood needs for safety and nurturance have been met. They must stalk a position well beyond their years and, like all heroes, they must brave the uncertainty and overwhelming odds of a deeply predatory, competitive world.

Under ideal circumstances, the hero initiates the heroic journey at an appropriate age, well prepared, with a deep well of inner security to be drawn upon as challenges arise. Young traumatized heroes, on the other hand, are thrust prematurely onto their journeys, without choice and the resource of confidence. To the contrary, their inner world is filled with the demons of terror and emptiness, as each encounter with the world is met with trepidation, vigilance and, often, paralyzing anxiety. The heroic journey of such young traumatized heroes consists mainly of survival; carefully reading and dodging the dangers of the outer world, and holding together inwardly against the threat of dissolution.

Such young heroes construct a false adult persona, tailored to assure survival. This persona may be quite pleasing to the outside world, a being eager to turn to and care for the needs of others, the listener everyone seeks out. This persona might exude modesty and calm self-assuredness, or carefully hide in the shadows, never seen, never picked; the classmate never noticed in a graduating class. Regardless of outer demeanor and presentation, traumatized heroes inwardly harbor deep shame, anxiety, and inferiority; feeling punished and undeserving of a place in the world. They feel no true ownership of accomplishments or the aire of confidence they might exude; it’s all about survival and holding together.

Art and Photo by Jan — Just hanging on...

As young heroes move into actual adulthood, they often accrue the necessary skills to secure a home and career in the world. Deeply practiced in the skills of survival, they have learned how to succeed, though inwardly this success offers little safety or comfort, as anxiety, fear, and the ever-present danger of dissolution remain forever present. In addition, genuine fun, satisfaction, and relaxation seem dangerous activities—to be avoided at all costs—however longed for, as the hero remains ever-cognizant of the unpredictability of danger in the world.

As young heroes move deeper into the cycle of life, something within the self signals that it is time for the hero to take up the challenge of reconciliation with the past, as traumatized material stored for decades begins to trickle to the surface of dream and consciousness, or is triggered by resonant events in the outside world. The hero self, what I call the present self, is now called upon to take up the challenge of discovering and recovering its true nature in the process of recapitulation, by reliving the past and retrieving all lost parts of the self.

As traumatized young heroes, many experiences had to be stored away and forgotten for the sake of survival. Many needs and feelings had to be abandoned. Embedded as they were in early trauma, too dangerous to cultivate in the war zone of trauma, too confusing to understand at such a young age, these experiences and needs had to be sacrificed. A contract had to be drawn to delay their processing until well into the future, when the seed of life had matured into a more stable tree.

The present self must remember, as it opens to this most unnerving challenge of recapitulation, that it is a hero—granted an incomplete hero—but the hero that has brought life forward to this point of transition and transformation. The present self has all it needs to take the journey of recapitulation, uncharted and unfamiliar though that journey may be. The hero is called when it is called because something in nature, something in spirit, recognizes that it’s time for the young hero to finally claim its full inheritance, awaiting retrieval in the trials of recapitulation.

Trust nature; trust spirit, in the timing of the call. You have all you need. Form a partnership with the recapitulation process and know that help will be provided, but must be asked for—always a challenge for young heroes.

Trust the call to adventure. Trust the hero and its ability to fully take the adventure through the fragmented land of recapitulation and emerge out the other side of time, in the land of wholeness and calm, a fully reclaimed hero at last.

On the adventure,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: ALL

June 27, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Image and photo by Jan — Into the center of Self...

I study Tao. I pull into my center, into the mandala of self, closing out all else. One morning I read the following: Always complete your actions.

I read further: When you do something, don’t hold back. Shoot for it all, go for it all. Don’t wait for a “better time,” because the better times are built on what you do today. Don’t be selfish with your skills, because the skills of tomorrow are built upon the performances of today.

To be with Tao is to live a creative life, I continue reading. To live a creative life always means that you express who you are. And expression is never helped by suppression. Expression always benefits from coming out. Then more inspiration will come from that source.

When you act, the advice is, act completely. Follow through. Do everything that has to be done. Be like the fire that burns completely clean: only from this pure stage can you then take the next step.

My early morning reading stays with me throughout the day. I ponder myself. Am I fully expressing myself every day, not holding back? Am I truly burning the fires within completely clean, so that I am free to take the next step unattached to the old? I recapitulate recent life events, and without hubris know that I am fallible, yet I am also intent on continually studying how to be more aware each day, even as I repeat old mistakes. Lessons are learned every day. I know this. I set my intent to give my all, to live and express to the fullest, to constantly follow through and complete my actions.

In the afternoon, I write. Working on the second book in The Recapitulation Diaries series, I face my old self of ten years ago. I see how much I have changed, and I also see where I still fall back into some old habits, not too often, I humbly say, and not too deeply, but just enough to let me know I have not completely burned through some rather tiresome old issues.

Paying attention to the Tao reading I have gotten earlier in the day, I sit in stillness and go deeply into my present self. I sit in the center of my being, at the center of my mandala of self, and build a little fire. I intend to completely burn away the old self still lingering, to fully express it so that I may return to balance, to the mandala of self with its geometrical symmetry in calmness once again. I intend that new expression birth out of the old.

I am an observer. I can’t help it. It is my nature. I am a sensation type. Like a camera, I constantly take photographs of the world around me. I report on what I see. The world has always been “out there,” separate from my inner world. As an artist the two meet nicely, my talent offering a means of expression for how my outer world observations meet my inner world.

During my recapitulation, I learned how to turn my observer self inward upon myself, to train my camera on my past and zoom in on everything that came from deep within. My inner world turned cauldron-like as I recapitulated, as my camera honed in on the truths that lay at my core. The embers of the fire within flared up repeatedly until a nice fire was burning. Eventually, I burned off enough of the past that I was able to emerge out of the flames of recapitulation into new life, transformed, a totally different person.

During the fiery process, I discovered that recapitulation is not a one-time thing, but a lifelong process of study. Like Tao, it requires constant attention to deep inner truths, constant release and constant rebalancing, to achieve new, fresh life.

While pondering all of this, I hear a loud racket outside the window. Observer that I am, I cannot help but get up from my inner ponderings and take my camera self outside. Standing on the deck, I see my inner world, my morning’s study of Tao, in action. Nature, the grandest guide of all is playing out the very reading I have spent my day studying innerly.

As I watch, a shiny black crow swoops down into a tree and snatches a baby robin. I watch the robin parents and many others—birds of all kinds, even the tiny wrens—come to the rescue. An army of birds dive-bombs the crow, attempting to knock the fluff of baby bird from its beak. Shrieking and screaming, they fly at the crow repeatedly. Instinctively knowing that every second counts, they do not hold back. The crow, seemingly oblivious to the attacks, flies up to a branch and holding the baby beneath its claws, gives a loud and sharp CAW! Then it picks the baby up again and flies off with it in its beak. Flying directly over my head, I see the baby bird firmly clenched, most likely dead already. I accept this fact. It’s dead. The robins will never get it back. They have to give up, I think, just let it go. But do they “just let it go?” No! They chase after the crow! They do not accept defeat yet.

Shrieking, they fly after the crow, furiously attacking with sharp beaks. With stiffened wings, like knife cuts, they attempt to knock the baby loose. They do not give up, but complete their attempts to save the baby. They give it their all! And then, only when it is truly clear that there is nothing left to do, when the crow has flown off, do they then take the next step. Even now, they don’t simply “let it go.” Not yet!

There is still something else to do in order to complete this most traumatic event in their lives. Now they grieve! I hear them crying loudly. Horrific, heart-wrenching sobs of grief and mourning, the most gut-wrenching sounds of sorrow, erupt from their wide-open beaks. Their deep sadness, like a moaning Greek chorus, reaches the heavens and then back to me where I stand on the deck. I take in this profoundly moving process. The robins of nature are not holding back, not suppressing a thing, they are fully expressing their loss and the great depths of their sadness.

This deeply affecting wailing goes on for several minutes. Only when they are completely done, when they have fully expressed themselves and fully emptied themselves of their sorrow, do the robins return to their nest, to the tree where their baby was snatched from, perhaps back to tending other babies that may still remain, or to take the next step. There is always a next step, new life to experience.

In shock, I step back inside. In awe, I realize I have been given an example of Tao in action, of ALL. This is how to complete a task, how to give all to a situation, and then, only when truly done, to move on. In fighting as fiercely as they did, in not giving up, until there was no longer any reason to fight, then in grieving fully, the robins completed their task. Now new life can happen.

In Tao, in life, everything is meaningful. Everything is directed toward evolving. I take my experience seriously. I return to my inner circle of self, turn my camera inward again, and sitting in my calm mandala center, I go ever deeper. I understand more fully now what it means to take everything to its completion, to not hold back, to give my all. I am thankful for nature, once again showing me the way. I am thankful for Tao.

Give ALL. Always complete your intent, express fully, live fully, evolve.

In Tao,
Jan

NOTE: Excerpts are from Everyday Tao, by Deng Ming-Dao

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: From Destiny To Choice In A Concubine World

June 1, 2012 Chuck Leave a comment

The lake rests in calm repose. Suddenly and shockingly, thunder blindsides the stillness. Zeus ravages once again; the lake is disturbed and shown its destiny. The marrying maiden is delivered to the threshold of her husband’s door.

In the case of Kuei Mei, the I Ching’s hexagram #54—The Marrying Maiden—this is not an auspicious event. This is the marriage of woman as concubine, indeed a destiny of suffering.

Buddha discovered that LIFE itself is suffering. As beings born into this world we are all stamped as concubines, and we only fully grasp this notion as we understand that the circumstances of our births, the stamps of our destinies, require us to fully suffer those destinies. We cannot escape them. Even if we refuse them through denial, delusion or death, we cannot escape the controlling hands of our destinies. We cannot change the reality of what or who we are. Our challenge is to fully discover, become, and accept that which we are. And then we are free to truly dream it forward, that is, to choose.

Once we embrace our destiny we are free to dream it into new worlds of possibility and fulfillment, untethered to the destiny of our origins. But, until then we must suffer.

It was my stamp, my destiny, to repeatedly suffer the ravages of rape and alcoholic violence foisted upon my mother as I lay in frozen stillness, incubating in the embryonic pool of her womb. Like the calm lake in hexagram #54, I had to withstand the sudden thunder and lightning that came from outside, in the form of my abusive father. My destiny was PTSD, PTSD in oneness with my pregnant mother.

My choice, after decades of discovering my destiny—who I am—has been to dream that destiny forward, as a therapist discovering an evolutionary advance for PTSD, dreaming it forward as a gateway to infinity. Arrival at that gateway—being released from the confines of destiny—through deep inner work, leads to choice and real freedom.

The journey from destiny to choice is multifaceted. Most prominent is the facet of recapitulation. Every day we are triggered by our spirit to recapture the deepest truths of our destiny. We are asked by our own fears and stumblings in everyday life to wake up to where we’ve been and who we are, right down to the elemental essence of our conception. That joining of genes is the stamp of our individuality, the formative journey of our material beings, sending us off on our destinies. Just as I was stamped in my mother’s womb, so are we all.

Until we can feel and know all that we are, all that we’ve been through, we suffer the limitations of beings not ready to fully know ourselves. Of necessity we are held back from the full truth of our heritage and personal history and remain caught in revisionist lives. We remain blinded by false beliefs of who we are, struck by the glare of the thunder and lightning of our lives. We remain stuck in a concubine world.

In recapitulation, we gather up and recondition our parts, the fragments of our destined selves. We reclaim and rejoin with our true selves, experiencing revitalized energy as we recapitulate. Along the path we are challenged to face our victim status, i.e.: None of it was fair. None of it was okay. We didn’t deserve it. It’s not supposed to be this way. They shouldn’t have been allowed to do that. All of this, and much more, is true. It must be acknowledged; yet, beyond that, the truth is that destiny is not fair. The world of the concubine is not fair. Destiny, however, is an experience seeker, a unique combination of energy—a “probe of awareness,” as the shamans would say—sent out in search of new experience.

Destiny has no morality. It just is. We awaken to our destiny and seek to make it pleasurable, meaningful, and fulfilling. That is our predilection, the stamp of our humanness. And so, as humans we naturally challenge ourselves to evolve our destinies beyond their victim, concubine, origins. To remain in the victim range is to limit ourselves to the concubine world, far from dreaming our destinies forward. But, the truth is, it’s a formidable task to release our destinies from the human judgment of victim. And, yes, “victim” is a human judgment, for destiny carries no such judgment. It simply is. It simply seeks to evolve, asking us to work with what we got in order to break away from the victim, concubine, world we find ourselves in everyday.

All judgments—though so humanly necessary, as we scrutinize and come to know ourselves and our world—are, ultimately, obstacles to full self-acceptance, as much of what we are, what we’ve done, and what we’ve been exposed to, is often truly unacceptable. To arrive at truth, we must release the human judgments of acceptability and unacceptability. We must fully open up to what is, and, most especially, to what was. Suspend judgment, Carlos Castaneda recommended, as the fundamental resource to discovering who we are and who we might fully become.

Destiny and choice, seeming opposites, are actually a pair of inseparable twins, though in this concubine world destiny births first, followed by choice. Allow the full birth of your own destiny, through recapitulation of the concubine world you now live in, and birth your choice.

Still choosing to dream it forward,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Peaceful Mind

May 23, 2012 Jan 4 Comments

So Chuck and I have lately been writing about mindfulness meditation with the goal of achieving compassion, for ourselves and others. We both spent some nights dreaming with the Dalai Lama, thought to be the incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, and indeed his life has centered on bringing the concept of compassion to the modern world. But what about mindfulness, what is it and how does one achieve it?

I like to think of mindfulness as a practice of achieving a peaceful mind, the true nature of mind. By constantly reminding myself that my life is a journey, and by acknowledging that everything that happens in a day and in a lifetime is an important part of my learning experience, I am able to bring myself closer and closer to achieving the goal of peaceful mind. Sometimes I get there for long periods of time, and other times I may only touch down for a few minutes a day, but the more I remind myself of my goal the easier it becomes to quickly experience peacefulness of mind.

Even during recapitulation, when in the throes of a memory, one can use the practice of mindfulness to ground the self and stay in the adult present self. Reiterating often that life is a journey of self-discovery helps anchor one in reality, even while another part may be experiencing something from a painful past. Mindfulness is that anchor, the anchor of awareness that we are all on journeys, that we are all in our lives to learn something, that we are all sentient beings capable of incredible feats. The first incredible feat is to remember these things, to change how we think about ourselves and our lives by constantly bringing our attention back to these truths. The second incredible feat is learning to let go of what normally fills our minds so that we can rest a moment in the peacefulness of empty mind. Mindfulness is building awareness of ourselves beyond the usual cogitations of the mind, awareness that the perfect state of mind is peaceful. It is what our minds seek most of all.

It is possible to begin training in mindfulness simply by bringing attention to what we are doing throughout the day, staying mindful of the moment. In such mindfulness practice peace exists. Now I am mindful that I am sitting at my computer and writing, but I am also mindfully aware of my breath, of my calm heart, of words flowing out of me.

In a little while I will make a cup of tea. I will sit calmly with my tea and drink it mindfully, focusing on its nourishment, letting thoughts go as I remind myself that “I am drinking tea, I am drinking tea.” When I take a walk, I remind myself that “I am walking now, I am walking.” I focus on my breathing and my next step, letting thoughts go. As thoughts return, as they always will, I simply bring my attention back to what I am doing. “Oh, yes, I am walking!” When I go to yoga class I calm my mind by saying, “I am in yoga class now, I am present in my body in yoga class.” I constantly remind myself to come back to the moment, to where I am and what I am doing in the moment. In so doing, I allow all else to escape the confines of my mind, leaving room for a few moments of empty, peaceful mind.

This mindfulness practice of constantly re-anchoring in the moment, aids in allowing worry and stress to be absent, however briefly. Given a reprieve it will often leave of its own accord, for in reality it does not exist if we do not give it a home to exist in.

Begin the process of mindfulness meditation in everyday life simply by being in the moment and then re-focusing on being in the moment. It doesn’t need to be something that we sit and do at a certain time each day, though that is perfectly acceptable too. In the end, by simply allowing it to become a natural part of everyday life, it grants us its gifts more frequently. By constantly reminding ourselves to be mindfully aware, we train our awareness to be mindful more often and pretty soon we find that it comes to our rescue when we most need it, such as in a moment of intense recapitulation as I mentioned.

Being able to anchor ourselves in the awareness of now, reminding ourselves of the truths of our journeys upon this earth and the desires of our spirits to learn and grow, helps greatly as we face our recapitulations. The more we are mindful, the easier it becomes to be mindful again and again. One day we might notice just how peaceful our minds are and, however brief the moment may be, take it as a sign of achieving the goal of mindfulness.

With mindfulness comes compassion; it just naturally seems to lead the way there. We find that compassion does not really need any explanation. One day we just find ourselves experiencing it because we have already taken on the biggest enemy of compassion: the old mind with all of its directives, judgments, condemnations, repetitive voices and tiresome criticisms. By letting it go we become open to new ideas, new thoughts, and incredible feats of mind never before thought possible. One day we find that all of our thoughts are compassionate ones, all of our ideas embrace a new paradigm, encompassing a broader worldview where everyone is equal.

By opening the mind to peacefulness we allow new energy in, and it comes in calmly, aware that something is different now, that the mind is no longer accepting the old way, for it is only interested in peaceful emptiness for all.

Peace,
Jan

Riverwalker Press