Tag Archives: recapitulation

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

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Accumulation in Excess

October 7, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

We are in a time of extreme imbalance. Imbalance is the result of accumulation in excess. Accumulating in excess is the precursor of change. When a river swells to excess with accumulated rains, it must, of necessity, overwhelm its banks and flood the lands—a time of great change indeed!

The accumulation of angst through decades of stagnant repression has broken through to revolution in the Middle East Arab Spring. The accumulation of excessive wealth in the hands of the few has sprung another spring of protest upon the “wall” of Wall street.

The excessive stranglehold upon the economy—from whatever tainted, purist, or natural source—presses now upon the spirit to relinquish its attachment to materialism in excess as a source of meaning in life. The flood of deprivation drowning the planet is pressing human life into a new, sustainable balance.

There is no restraining the floods of change currently unleashed upon us. No corrective action can shore us up or return us to an old world balance.

We are in a different world now. The environment is rapidly shifting, the masses are wiser, more interconnected than ever, and the ruling platitude of unlimited growth and expansion has proven unsustainable.

We find ourselves truly at a major evolutionary juncture: Accumulation in excess as a way of life, as a planetary economy, is unsustainable. What will come next?

What is called for is a new paradigm that separates true needs from want, hunger from appetite. Accumulation in excess derives not from true need and hunger but from want and appetite. Want and appetite are abstractions, projections of value attached to things. From this projection derives the equation: more things = greater value. This is the equation of addiction. Addiction is accumulation in excess. Addiction is the human condition at this current evolutionary juncture.

The ethereal impulse behind addiction is spirit. Spirit seeks greater life, greater possibility. Spirit projected onto matter always seeks more for completion: more love, more alcohol, more numbness, more freedom, more adventure, more sex, more intensity, more money, more food, more, more, more.

If we are to find safe passage through this time of great change we must satisfy spirit in spirit terms. We must lift our spirit’s longings off our material world and allow our beleaguered planet to restore its balance.

We are energetic beings. Energy is the home of spirit and spirit longing. The ultimate adventure that awaits us is our energy body, the body that lives on beyond the material world, the body that journeys in infinity. We all have access to it in this life, but only if we shift. The more we cycle in excessive accumulation of material things, the longer we remain in avidya—ignorance—yet to discover that all that glitters is not gold.

Fulfillment in this life requires us to explore and meet our deepest needs: material and spiritual. But if we refuse to recapitulate—where we free our spirit from our material experiences—we remain frozen, unable to find fulfillment in spirit or body. One cannot substitute for the other. A spirit being who shuns the body—a spirit in excess—results in a being in need of reincarnation. Likewise, a physical being who shuns the spirit will find itself steeped in addiction, bound to the spirit, projected onto matter.

Such is the condition of now. Accumulation in excess—unsustainable and uncontainable. The walls are coming down in floods of revolution. May we find safe passage as spirits soaring in material balance.

In dedication to the soaring spirit of Steve Jobs,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Shedding

October 5, 2011 Jan 1 Comment

What needs to happen today for me to become more of me? To me, life is all about shedding: shedding roles, shedding skins, cloaks, crusts, and predicaments to reach the true essence of self. Think of a fruit surrounded by a tough skin, a bitter skin, a sour skin. If we did not remove the skin we would not be able to enjoy the delectable sweetness of the fruit within. Shedding the skin and figuring out who we truly are takes work. In my case it took a full and deep shamanic recapitulation into my very soul, into the darkest self where I met my enemy and went to battle against what had been living inside me my entire life. The process was one of shedding the fearful enemies that hid so well inside. No one but I really knew of their existence, no one but I dealt with them daily, no one but I kept them imprisoned inside me.

I continue my shedding process every day as I ask myself: What can I shed today?

Last week a very subtle inner shift allowed me the freedom to become a little more of the me that I have been allowing to emerge and live. This is autumn, a time of great shedding and most meaningful change and transition. Synchronistically, in the news, Amanda Knox, a young American woman convicted of killing her roommate in Perugia, Italy four years ago, was released from prison. After a long and difficult period of truth-seeking a simple reversal of the decision made four years ago—guilty or not guilty—sent her back home to Seattle, a free woman. Though that decision was deeply meaningful and simultaneously controversial, when it came down to the verdict it was one spoken word that set her free. I see this case as a metaphor for our times, underscoring the need to make decisions that allow for drastic change. These times ask us all to question deeply, ourselves and our world, to find out the truth and to act on it. I have no idea what her truth really is, no one will ever know except Amanda Knox herself perhaps, but we can all learn from her story.

The other day, someone, in a rather accusatory tone, questioned me: “Why are you so fabulously happy all the time?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m done with despair and besides, I spend most of my time with one foot in this world and the other in the ecstatic, why wouldn’t I be happy?” It was all too much for my questioner to fathom.

I didn’t just wake up one day and find myself straddling these two worlds; not at all, I had to go through the deepest, darkest despair to arrive at this place of light and balance. But it was always my choice to take the journey that led to this place, in a gradual yet intentional process of shedding the old self.

So that brings me back to my declaration of independence from Jeanne as teacher and guide that I so boldly declared last week and have, since then, experienced in so many ways. I find that she taught me well. In finally taking her up on her insistence that I could do it on my own, as she so often urged me, I find that I have freed myself from yet one more self-imposed imprisonment. I freed myself from a role that in reality only I was attached to. And all it took was months of inner struggle!

We do tend to imprison ourselves: in labels and declarations, in our student-of-life roles, in our promises that we made a long time ago. It was only in shedding promise after promise that I was able to evolve into someone who is “so fabulously happy all the time.” Although those promises were made when they were extremely necessary, they now no longer serve who I truly am. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t get sad or depressed, but I’ve learned to face the truth with a different outlook now. I take in the broader truth, the long-term perspective that I am a being who is going to die, but also that my life is a never-ending journey. I now, constantly and consciously, focus on urging myself to take the next step, subtle or otherwise.

Who, indeed, can I become today? It may take only a tiny shift in perspective, in action, in thought or inner perception, but it may be a life-changing decision on my part, in the end capable of catapulting me further than I ever thought possible.

As we head into deeper autumn now, as we notice what is happening in the world around us, such as the case of Ms. Knox, can we ask ourselves the same questions that were asked about her? Do I deserve imprisonment for the rest of my life or do I deserve to be set free? What role do I want to play: that of the prisoner or that of the free spirit? The main question, however, is: Where do I imprison myself?

Most of us do keep ourselves shackled to old ideas of the self when, in fact, we’re actually being urged to change, to keep taking the journey of the evolving self.

Who will I become today? If I pay attention to the synchronicities and signs in my life, those that resonate both inside and outside, I may be able to let go of despair, shed an old skin and release the sweetness within, bursting with ripeness.

I face my own shedding process each day as I question myself and ask myself to shed my self-importance or my fear of my evolving spirit, as I once shed old feelings, during my recapitulation, of unworthiness that I did not deserve to walk upon this planet. I take another step each day upon this earth as I wander my path, asking to be guided, knowing that I do indeed deserve to live just this life upon just this planet.

Yes, I fully accept that I am a changing being and that I am a being who is going to die, but before that event I intend to fully live, “so fabulously happy,” as is my choice.

Wandering still,
Jan

Riverwalker Press