Tag Archives: recapitulation

Readers of Infinity: A Message From Jeanne

November 7, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Dear Jeanne,

A few weeks ago, I made a change in my intent to be open to all of infinity. You have been a part of my life for ten years, teaching me what it means to change, to face the inner darkness, but most of all to trust. Learning to trust people, my inner knowing, and the signs in my life that appeared to guide me, have all shown me what it means to be a changing being. As I shifted into a more open relationship with infinity, your presence seemed to open as well, expanding generously beyond the confines of a process that worked well but no longer felt necessary, for, as you had once said, I would one day no longer need you in the relationship we had enjoyed as teacher and pupil. In a sense, you were encouraging me to accept my role as a full-fledged partner. And so I have taken up the challenge. I do however, miss the special bond with you, and I suspect others may as well. So, today, I wish to converse with you directly, for old time’s sake, but also for your special brand of guidance.

As I personally opened up to trusting not only my relationship with you over the past ten years but also my own inner process, I never felt special. I always knew that everyone could learn to be so open and available to outer guidance and learn to awaken the often deeply suppressed inner knowing. Through my own process of recapitulation, a process of doing deep work on the self, I reconnected with the self I always knew existed, the self I was afraid of because she had so many secrets and mysteries to tell me. I knew that what she had to tell me would shake my world, and I had to be ready for that. Now I can only say that in beginning to listen I did indeed have to face a great shake up, but it was only through that process that I was able to rid myself of all that inhibited me and kept me from truly enjoying life. Only in daring myself to change was I ready to engage in life, gaining insight and a new outlook on my entire existence as I went through my recapitulation. It is my greatest wish that all people find the courage and strength to face their inner darkness and in that process to find that they are more than worthy of this life, discovering that it is pretty spectacular to be human, especially in these times.

I wish to converse with you on many things, but I will start with a few simple questions for today. First, when I open to guidance, open to you or infinity as a whole, (I interpret you as the same thing really) what is it that I’m actually doing? Can you explain this so people can understand it? And what could others begin to do to learn how to be open to guidance as well?

Here is Jeanne’s response:

My Dear Jan, and all you Readers of Infinity: You may not realize that you already access the greater intent of being human, that is, the intent to change, evolve, and continue in energetic form beyond the confines of that world. Infinity is always available to you—it is the great secret of being human. By that I mean that your opportunities to receive guidance abound, you just have to listen. That is all that Jan does. She has learned to listen.

All who are in human form have the ability to receive guidance, yet the mind often refuses the invitations to listen. The mind fights with inner knowing. You have to admit this, for all of you have had instances in your lives when you knew what to do, how to act, react, or be; what to say or do to change or shift out of one situation and into another; how to grab the right moment and, yet, you hesitated long enough to let the clarity of that moment blur over.

That moment of hesitation is a missed opportunity for growth. One must have a certain amount of daring to grab onto such moments of change. These moments are the catalysts in life and, yet, even in missing them one must not fall into regret but discover instead what one is meant to learn. Meaningful encounters with infinity require a little self-searching and often much more than that. Often deep inner work is what is necessary for greater change.

If one is ready to accept that life is indeed full of lessons, for a reason, then one must get in the proper alignment, humble enough to accept the position of student, though one may be very learned and quite brilliant. To become a student of life one must set the intent to be open, as Jan calls it, open to the truth that life is indeed a journey of the spirit, seeking growth and higher understanding.

In order to truly accept the grand opportunity to be a student of life in a new way, one must learn how to trust. For that, as Jan mentions, is how one will be available for making decisions and choices in alignment with awakening the inner process of self discovery.

In learning to trust, one must also learn to be daring. Although daring to listen to the inner knowing may sound like a simple enough process, it is not. One must first acknowledge that the self is full of inner knowing, grounded in ancient truths of the universe. Then one must pay attention to this inner knowing. But the biggest feat and the biggest challenge is daring to act, to accept its guidance, its truth, and its process as a whole as it unfolds.

This means that as one learns that inner knowing is available one must shut down the normal chatter and judgments of the mind, attaching only to the inner truth, the right guidance from deep within, and dare the self to pay attention.

Photo by Jan — Find a quiet place to listen

For this day, I suggest a concerted effort be made to engage inner listening. Learn to quiet the mind. There are, as you all know, many ways to quiet the mind. Pick one that works for you. With quiet mind, begin paying attention to what else is happening inside you. Are there other voices? Are there deep truths emerging? Are there answers to your questions? Find a means of listening, even once or twice a day for a few moments to start. A good time is when you first awaken or are ready to fall asleep, the natural transition times in a busy life.

Begin listening. Start with that. Other guidance will come to guide you, perhaps from me, from Jan, or infinity, or even from you. It doesn’t matter, you each have it in you. Begin a practice now of change. It’s time!

As Jeanne finished her message, I was reminded that whenever I asked her for help, she would invariably tell me that I already had the answers inside me, and indeed she was right. I just had to dare to act. I had to get to the place of ruthlessness and no self-pity too, not in a mean way, but in a gentle way, pushing away the old voices as I allowed myself to trust the process I really wanted to engage in. It was a process I’d intended long before it started, because I needed to change, I’d known it for years.

Sometimes, however, we just don’t know how to enact change. Letting the process itself guide us may be the only way to get started, and that’s a fine way to begin acquiescing to the inevitable truth that we are all Readers of Infinity. I truly believe this is true, and I fully support your endeavors to prove this to yourself. The entire universe supports you! Once you set your intent the universe supports you—this is what I experienced during my own recapitulation and every day since. All I had to do was start looking for all the signs that proved this. They appeared every day.

Thank you Jeanne! I hope you enjoy the message today. I’ll be back on Wednesday with something new.

Until then,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Consider the Trees

November 2, 2011 Jan 1 Comment

We can learn a lot from studying the trees. During her recapitulation, Taisha Abelar, a cohort of Carlos Castaneda’s, lived for a time in a tree. She’d never climbed a tree in her life when she began but by the time six months had passed she’d recapitulated through many dark nights in the tree house she slept in. Over that time she had absorbed so much of tree life that she could communicate with trees directly. She learned to be silent enough to sense their needs, to know their pain, and to communicate with them through feeling. But she also found herself freed of her traumatic past.

“As I was seated on a sturdy limb with my back resting on the tree trunk, my recapitulation took on an altogether different mood,” she writes in The Sorcerers’ Crossing. “I could remember the minutest details of my life experiences without fear of any coarse emotional involvement. I could laugh my head off at things that at one time had been deep traumas for me. I found my obsessions no longer capable of evoking self-pity. I saw everything from a different perspective, not as the urbanite I had always been, but as the carefree and abandoned tree dweller that I had become.”

During the recent early winter storm, I thought a lot about the trees. As I watched them bear the brunt of the snow and the wind, I saw the parallel between learning to become like a tree, withstanding the beauty and fury of nature, and doing a recapitulation.

Trees are rooted, unable to move from their designated spots. Forced to withstand constant exposure they must be strong enough to survive yet weak enough to bend in the breeze. From the heights of the highest branches we can gain a new perspective on life and the world around us. Offering us the opportunity to gain new insights and clarity, they also offer us deep grounding. The deeper the root system, the better the connection to the life force of Mother Earth.

Trees are silent beings, observers of life, pensive and heavy, yet they jostle and sway, tossing lightly and gaily in the wind. They lose branches in storms. They topple over when their time is done and return to the earth from which they once sprang. They know the course of their lives, having lived them many times. Upon their demise, springing up again from their deepest roots or previously dropped seeds, they are ready to take on life anew. Most meaningful to us is that they give us the oxygen we need in order to breathe and live on this planet, thus their lives are more than meaningful, for they support all human life.

We too must learn to become like the trees as we recapitulate. We must learn how to stand our ground, our roots firmly sunk in the nurturing earth while at the same time we withstand the onslaughts of the past. Steady and balanced in two worlds—roots in the earth and branches reaching for the heavens—we too are capable of withstanding the onslaughts of the seasons of our lives. Whether we recapitulate a fine memory, a delightful memory, or a horrific memory too distasteful to speak of, we can learn from the trees how to handle what comes to greet us in recapitulation.

During the recent storm, I noticed the trees in my yard standing silently, accepting the unusually early snowstorm. I saw them bear the weight of the unexpected snow cover. I saw them bowing down under the weight of the heavy attack from outside, their leaves unsuspecting collaborators. I saw them bear the tension, until it was time to let go because they could no longer hold back what had been imposed on them. I heard the breaking of limbs, leafy branches that had no recourse but to snap.

I saw all of this and said to myself: This is like recapitulation. During recapitulation we are not in control, yet we strive to control in the old ways that worked for us. But during recapitulation we are often confronted with things that we just cannot control, things that come at us out of nowhere like this autumn winter. We too have no recourse then but to snap beneath the weight of the onslaught and allow what falls from us to be strewn at our feet. We too, like the trees, can look down and see our branches of self—parts of ourselves that we thought we needed to hold onto—and realize that they now lie at our feet and yet we still stand.

During the storm cleanup we can look back and wonder: Did we really need to hold onto those parts we once thought so dear? Without them we feel lighter, freer, our branches now able to lift higher than before. Freed of the burden of trauma, of the accumulation of old ideas, misconceptions, and old perceptions of the self, we are like the trees, able to experience ourselves in a new way, just as Taisha once did. No longer attached to the past in the same way we find that, having recapitulated, we are totally different beings.

There are sturdy and tall trees, oaks and maples, and yet there are supple and easily swayed trees that survive just as long, that have the ability to spring back to life no matter what occurs. In recapitulation, is it better to be so strong that our branches continually snap and break off until we are limbless? Or is it better to sway in the breeze of our recapitulation, knowing that we are firmly rooted, connected to the life force of all things, certain that new life awaits? At some point in our recapitulations we must all consider how we are going to proceed on our life’s journey. What kind of tree are we going to be?

Indeed we can and should study the trees. In their silence alone they offer so much for our consideration. Just contemplating the fact that we could not survive on this planet without them may be enough of a start. I hold trees in the highest regard and I am thankful for them. With great respect, at each breath I take, I am humbled to share the planet with them.

Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Doubt—The Enduring Sentinel

October 28, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

During recapitulation we use intent to shift us into places of non-ordinary reality where we discover parts of our personal history hitherto completely unknown to our everyday selves. Although we may encounter many triggers in everyday life—events that evoke anxiety, fear, bodily sensation or fleeting images of prior experiences—the full knowing of the events of our lives requires that we shift into non-ordinary reality to retrieve the full truth of our lives lived.

October 28, 2011—An undeniable sudden shift into non-ordinary reality

Whenever we experience events in life that fall outside the realm of normal, our hold on reality is threatened. Inwardly these events are experienced as overwhelming and disintegrating, often accompanied by dizziness and nausea. Our sense of self that is based on normal reality is forced to dis-integrate under the impact of experience that happens outside of everyday expectations. In order to hold onto some sense of a cohesive, recognizable self when the experience ends, a set of reorganizing defenses are employed to make the experience fit into normal expectations, or reality as we expect it.

These defenses range from rationalization—where a non-rational experience is cut and pasted into a rational one—to repression, where the experience is completely lost to memory; it simply doesn’t exist in one’s personal history.

As we go deeper into the intentional process of recapitulation, the body opens the hidden reservoir of personal history stored from experiences of non-ordinary reality. The body takes us into a direct, unedited reliving of those experiences. This is not a process of mental cogitation or speculation, this is an experience of direct knowing. This is the experience of worlds colliding, the world of ordinary reality with the world of non-ordinary reality.

As these worlds meet, so do different selves meet. The self constructed from experiences of normal reality meets the self resulting from experiences of non-ordinary reality, each isolated and unknown to the other until the moment of collision.

The impact of the truths of experiences from non-ordinary reality upon our working sense of self and the world at large is deeply challenging. Suddenly we may be forced to face the fact that people we have loved and known to be good people actually violated us in horrific ways. We might also discover that things we definitely did in states of non-ordinary reality, like leaving our bodies, defy our rational grasp of the world. We might also discover that behaviors that we have engaged in for a lifetime that have led us to a sense of a deeply flawed, bad self, were actually defensive maneuvers to rearrange reality and make survival palatable.

The self of survival is not the true self. Constructed or not, flawed or not, it nonetheless is and has been the working definition of self, the familiar self, the self that has held down the fort for decades. In recapitulation that self is asked—or forced at a certain point—to take the journey to find the self locked away in non-ordinary reality. This is the ultimate journey that removes the barriers to all the truths and allows for the mergence of worlds, resulting in the full birth of the true self.

As we work our way through recapitulation, we encounter the defense of doubt—the enduring sentinel of the self of ordinary reality. I call it enduring because it is astounding how, despite a growing sense of deep knowing of experiences from non-ordinary reality, it persists in its ability to cast a long shadow over the validity of those experiences.

In a recent article from Harvard Magazine (Nov-Dec 2011) reference is made to a study that determined that repression—dissociative amnesia—is a “pseudo-neurological symptom that lacks medical or neurological basis.” The researchers conclude that repressed memory is a “culture bound symptom,” a product of 18th century Romanticism following the Age of Enlightenment. They hypothesize that the notion of repressed memory endures into our time due to its attractiveness as a dramatic device.

Studies like this show the power of doubt employed to preserve a rationally constructed world of ordinary reality. This is the kind of energy behind the concept of “false memory syndrome,” constructed to shut down forever any attempts to expose the truths of events stored from encounters with non-ordinary reality.

The old sentinel can give way to Buddha consciousness that can handle the truths of all worlds.

Doubt serves the process of recapitulation to the extent that it insists that the events of non-ordinary reality be fully experienced and fully known. However, at a certain point, it’s time for the old sentinel to put down its sword, a worthy warrior that has protected an old world so gallantly for long enough.

It’s okay, it’s time to allow the new self, the true self to be in the world, in full possession of all parts of itself, with all of its powers in hand. This is the self that can handle the truths of all worlds, an evolved self, ready to lead and fully enjoy real life!

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Thunderbolt!

October 14, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

In The Godfather, Michael Corleone, in his protected Sicilian retreat, is struck by a powerful, almost dangerous desire for the peasant woman Apollonia—what the Sicilians call “being hit by the thunderbolt.”

The thunderbolt originates in the realm of the immortals at the hand of Zeus, head of the Olympian gods. Being struck by the thunderbolt then is a divine interaction of great energetic and emotional significance. The encounter might result in rapture, transformation, conflagration, or death.

The “key,” as Ben Franklin is said to have demonstrated, is whether this powerful electrical charge can be safely harnessed and conducted to empower the boldest of human enterprises or, in its raw form, strike and destroy with uncontrolled power.

Today, we conceive of the Greek pantheon of gods as archetypes residing deep within the human psyche. The divine is part of us. We are human/divine beings who experience our divinity in thunderbolt surges of energetic encounters such as in experiences of falling in love, awe, rapture, passionate sexuality, compassion, interconnectedness, power, violence, hatred, creativity, ecstasy, rage, and grace.

As humans we long for these energetic experiences of wholeness, fulfillment, and transcendence. These experiences are both our birthright and deepest challenge to realize in this life. We must find our way to the energy of our divine nature and safely funnel it into our lives to attain these energetic possibilities.

The real challenge is to successfully channel these divine surges of thunderbolt energy into our humanness in a way that funds our human fulfillment and, as well, opens access to our energy bodies that live beyond our human form in infinity.

As a young child, my first encounter with divine energy was terrifying, as the experience of myself as pure energy nearly fried the circuit to my humanness. That’s why we develop egos and rationality—to insulate ourselves from the full impact of our energetic selves.

Major ruptures to our ego’s construction of reality can force us into experiences of our true energetic nature. Frequently, in trauma, people leave their human form and discover themselves as energy beings outside of their bodies. These are often terrifying encounters that lead to a lifelong challenge to reconcile energetic self with human form.

All encounters with thunderbolts generate anxiety, fear, trepidation, excitement, and anticipation. Some are quite unexpected, others quite planned for. Falling in love can be longed for, but not made to happen. Addictions, on the other hand, are experiences chosen because they open the channel to thunderbolt energy. Under the influence of the drug, the wine, the food, the purchase, the job, the obsessive activity, etc., the human form is flooded with and enjoys union with surges of divine energy.

Unfortunately, in addiction, access to the divine energy is limited to the substance or behavior and is not available independent of it. Furthermore, one cannot fully be in control of what kind of divine energy might show up. Perhaps a vengeful god resulting in a crime of passion or perhaps an omnipotent god that pushes to acts beyond the limits of the human form, resulting in accidental death or even suicide, comes calling.

Divine energy may be exciting but its power must be respected. To allow it to take full possession of us results in the manic side of bipolar disorder. You can be guaranteed that the fallback into humanness once the divine vacates will be a deep fall into the pit of depression.

On the other hand, to live a life sealed off from the tremendum of divine energy will lead ultimately to agoraphobia—the need to wall the self in from all high energy triggers projected everywhere in everyday life. We need divine energy to fulfill our lives. We must reckon with it in one form or another.

Recapitulation is a practice that clears and fortifies the channels to divine energy. In recapitulation, we relive the high energy onslaught of disintegrating experiences in our lives over and over until we can fully stare them down, be present, and handle them in full truth. We dismantle every disintegrating component of the experience until it no longer has any energetic impact. In the process we reclaim and reconfigure our energy that had previously been dispersed in the encounter into a channel for our energetic being. We develop the ability to access, funnel, and enjoy our divine energy in human form, as well as our energetic selves, at will.

Although Michael Corleone was able to unite and possess Apollonia after being struck by the thunderbolt, their union was short-lived as she was killed in an explosion that was intended to kill him. His real challenge, though he failed miserably, was to find his way to love in a real human relationship, with Kay, upon return to America. A successful human relationship forms the channel to divine love in contrast to the thunderbolt, which overtakes the human and quickly burns out.

The challenge is the same with integrating all divine thunderbolts into our human lives. We must open and fortify the channels to handle the energy of the divine to avoid being overtaken or fried by its power. Recapitulation is a valuable tool to channel and merge with the thunderbolt.

Out and about in today’s thunderstorm,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Our Intent to Change

October 12, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Chuck and I live in Red Hook, New York, a rural community in Northern Dutchess County. We are surrounded by fields and rolling hills, with nature at our door. There is another Red Hook, New York, in Brooklyn, quite a different environment. Sometimes people think we live there. Although Chuck and I have both had our city experiences, at this point in our lives we are quite contented with our rural existence. But that does not mean we are free of the issues that Red Hook, Brooklyn faces in its urban chaos of growth and change, as rustic an environment as our own in many senses. We too have our gangs, coyotes that roam the neighborhood at night, owls that swoop down and grab the unsuspecting ones. We have the unseen hovering always over us, destructive forces of nature and environmental catastrophes abound. At any moment something can happen, just as it can happen in a city of millions, in a rural Red Hook just as in an urban Red Hook. These two places with the same name represent contrast and sameness, two worlds equally offering darkness and light.

Today as I sat and meditated, gazing out into the backyard from my favorite spot, I allowed my eyes to note what was outside, when normally I would have turned my gaze inward. It felt important to take note of what which was happening in the outer world rather than refuse its insistent, distracting call.

I heard the blue jays, like warning sirens, loud and clear. I saw the squirrels leaping from tree to tree, their mouths full of large green hickory nuts that seem to have grown in abundance this year, perhaps portending a harsh winter. I breathed in the colors of the changing leaves and accepted that autumn is now in full swing. I noticed the large black crows, calling to each other as they swooped low over the house.

I noticed another bird, lighter in color yet the same size as the crows, flying across the sky, going in the opposite direction from the crows. I was struck by its struggling, flapping wings, looking more like the fluttering wings of a butterfly than a bird. I couldn’t remember when I had ever seen a bird fly like that. It did not soar as the crows had done, but seemed singularly intent, flying in great, breathless haste.

I was struck by the light and dark of the world we live in, the urban and the rural, the soaring black crows equally as intent as the flapping white bird, though their practiced, narcissistic moves appear so calculated, their stature as rulers of the sky taken for granted. I was struck by the synchronicity of this scene before my eyes and that which is happening in our own world, in our earthbound world, the grassroots Occupy Wall Street movement taking up residence in the narcissistic world of money, fledgling white birds daring to own the sky too.

I’m struck by President Obama’s fight against the dark crows of republicanism, his every effort to enact the change we all want shot down again and again, the struggling white bird constantly knocked from its perch. In our electing him as our president we set the intent to fight this fight that now is being waged, the light against the dark, the fledgling prince of the skies against the dark kings who so easily swoop over us, dismissing the kind of change that is so right for all humanity. We did indeed set the intent for this clash of worlds.

I see it as no different from setting the intent to change our personal world: to recapitulate or not, to divorce or not, to move or not, to change jobs or not, to become a spiritual being or not. The time has come to realize that we must change because even if we are not personally choosing it, change is happening.

We have to change. It’s not a choice anymore. Everything about the world, as we know it, is changing. It’s not fair, in my opinion, to argue that President Obama is not bringing the change he promised, because, as I see it, he is bringing us the greatest change we’ve probably ever seen. Simply by us, the American people, electing him as our president, we also elected to engage the universal energy of change. We set our intent to change along with him and his slogan: Change we can believe in.

So where do we go from here? The first thing to do is to embrace this change, to indeed believe in it and to accept its inevitability on a national and a personal level. We must all allow ourselves to be engaged by it, both innerly and outerly. We must find out why we live during this time of change and what it might mean to us personally.

I think we are all being asked to let go of the old world and flow into the new, but we can only do that by acknowledging that the old one no longer works for any of us. When we get so fed up with our own lives, when the way we function no longer gratifies or fulfills us, when we finally accept that we have reached a point of total despair, boredom, frustration, sadness, anger, or whatever else comes as a catalyst, we must be ready to open to new ideas and new ways of living. These are the moments of enlightenment that we all need, but the trick is to handle them properly, in balance and with pragmatism, so that we don’t just create a new wall, so we don’t just construct new structures impossible to penetrate or scale.

We must not turn from one darkness into another. We must find the light in all of us and use that to change the world. But we must all face our own darkness first, even as we ask the government to do the same. We must reveal our own deepest truths to ourselves, even as we ask others to be transparent. We must all become honest, with ourselves above all. For if we, the people who are protesting the dishonesty and the backhandedness of those we consider the culprits, the evil ones, do not face our own darkness we will not have a leg to stand on when it comes to the final battle.

I exposed my deepest self in my book, The Man in the Woods, and yet each day I am confronted with still more work to do on that deepest self, for that self offers endless opportunities to explore and discover who I really am, why I do what I do, why I conclude the things I conclude. It’s a little daunting to be so exposed, but I know it’s right in alignment with the times we live in. It’s time for all of us to face the truths of what we hide inside us, to free ourselves of that which keeps us stuck, so that we can be the change we so desire in our world. We can only be a world of truly changing beings if we each individually change ourselves too.

So the white bird fluttered away, butterfly-like in its insistence on getting where it needed to go. I didn’t see where it went, somewhere beyond the trees, but like the butterfly spirit it embraced it had set its intent and nothing was going to stop it.

As I watched it fearlessly make its way across the sky I sent my own intent to ride along with it. It was only then that I turned inward and asked myself to take up that intent, to never stop challenging myself, even though, on some days, I must force myself to confront the uncomfortable questions that arise within. I know that I must respond by facing my fears and questioning myself once again with the universal question that never seems to be fully answered: what am I so afraid of?

I’ve already learned that change is good, that each time I face down a fear I face down something that has been standing in my way. I’m as fascinated by the rural Red Hook that I live in now as I was fascinated by the urban Brooklyn I once lived in, not far from the other Red Hook. Life flows in both places and right now we’re all living in the same place. It doesn’t matter who we are or where we live, the place we’re in is the place of change.

Let’s go for it, in whatever way we can, personally first and then universally, because we are going anyway. I prefer to go openly and honestly, challenging myself to face what I do not like in others, learning from them what I must also face inside myself.

Love,
Jan

Riverwalker Press