Tag Archives: recapitulation

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Invitation to a Dream

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When we say good night to the world and drift into sleep, the golden person, the immortal one, the energy body, the soul, gently moves away from the nest of the physical body, though still safely attached by a thin silver ethereal cord, to begin its night journey in the daybreak of a dream.

Those journeys beyond the body, beyond the dense energy of the physical world, are our natural opportunity to dip into and explore the world of pure energy, infinity itself. This is why the Hindus and the Tibetan Buddhists call the bardo of the dream the bardo of death.

In dying, our incarnate essence leaves its nest for the final time, this time with its umbilical cord severed, as it is born into the greater world of energy. To the Buddhists and Hindus the ability to smoothly make that transition, that is, to be able to sustain a sense of cohesion and awareness beyond the body, to be ready to continue life beyond the physical world, determines what comes next. Will we choose to reincarnate in this world, in another carnate round of preparation, or, from an enlightened place, continue the journey beyond the carnate, beyond the body, in infinity?

Buddhists, Hindus and the Seers of Ancient Mexico spend much of their energy in this life becoming familiar and comfortable with life in the bardo of the dream to prepare for their definitive journey at the time of their death in this world.

Every night we do die to this world when we enter sleep and life beyond the body. I recall, as a child, when I first became aware of this truth. I realized that when I closed my eyes to sleep I could not be certain I’d return, the terror of which interrupted my going to sleep for weeks. Every person must pass this gate of challenge in this life. Many get waylaid at this gate, starting in childhood as we cling to parents, lights, and rituals to assure safe passage through the night and rebirth the next morning.

Children are not fully socialized, that is, they have yet to be talked out of their knowing perceptions of energetic life that they encounter beyond the physical world. They are challenged to reconcile with these ‘imaginary friends’ or stand up to scary projections. Seniors, as they prepare to die, often have clear visitations with evolved energetic beings—people they once knew, though long gone from this world—who come to prepare them for safe transition into the next life. Dying people may experience the lifting of the socialized rational veil that once blocked these perceptions and find themselves in a condition professionals often call dementia.

In between childhood and the dusk of life we are all challenged every night to let our physical bodies go to rest and open to a world of energy. So awesome is this task that it’s no wonder we remember so little of where we’ve been and what we’ve done during our nighttime adventures.

When I prepare to sleep at this stage of my life, I simply note when I need to return to this world, with the total confidence that I will be dropped off—that is, awoken—at the exact moment I’ve asked to arrive. What happens in between leaving and arriving is sheer magic, mystery, and adventure. Time and space are nonexistent in that world. I can awaken from but a moment of dreaming and recall endless dream journeys in what was only a minute or two of actual time. The only question is how aware I will be in the dream, or really, how much I will allow myself to remember.

It’s all about remembering. That is the essence of recapitulation in waking life. The more we remember the more we recover of ourselves. It’s not really about the skill of memory. It’s more about our readiness to expand our knowing of ourselves. Can we accept aspects of ourselves that seem foreign and uncomfortable and unfamiliar to our working sense of self? Are we ready to allow ourselves to experience the energetic world that is generally checked by the filter of rationality, keeping us fixated on the dense world of solid objects?

We owe to psychoanalysis the resuscitation of the dream, a modern attempt to reclaim the value of the night. There is indeed much to be gained by the analysis of dreams, much to be discovered about the shadow dimension of ourselves in the unrestricted playground of the dream. Again though, the challenge: how prepared are we to accept the unacceptable or unknown aspects of ourselves? Despite the analytical value of the dream, this approach does lend itself to domination by the ego with its monkey mind that quickly and associatively springs away from the dream itself.

Native American approaches to dreaming and the night became popularized and made accessible to the masses by Patricia Garfield with the publication of her book Creative Dreaming in 1974. She researched how the dream in the Native American world functioned as an active playing field that was valued as much as that of waking life. A father instructs his son, awoken by a nightmare, to return to the dream and actively confront the bear who chased him.

Carlos Castaneda’s publication of The Art of Dreaming in 1993 opened the gate to the active side of infinity through the step by step development of conscious dreaming. Don Juan made it clear that our dreaming attention was a dormant ability simply awaiting our attention. If we merely call to it, it will awaken, and with it our growing ability to venture into the bardo of the dream with awareness.

For myself, I am well aware that most of what I know comes to me in my nightly journeys. Though I don’t always remember the experiences, I clearly retain the lessons. Deja vu is really just a moment of remembering. I know that my dreaming partners, Jan and Jeanne, are amused at my reluctant remembering.

I offer these rudimentary steps to those who wish to accept the invitation to a dream:

1. Know that you are already a dreamer.

2. Put a pen and dream notebook next to your pillow with a handy light. Better yet, as Jan suggests, learn to write in the dark, in your sleep!

3. State your intent to remember your dream. Say it out loud—I intend to remember my dream!

4. When you awaken, no matter how tired and certain you are that you can’t possibly forget your dream, write it down!

5. Dismiss not the tiniest fragment of a dream. Every morsel is a golden nugget.

6. Know that you are safe and protected; you can always wake up if you need to.

7. If you don’t want to be in the dream you are in, change it! State your intent, change the dream, or wake up.

8. Treat your dream as a lesson of some sort. When you review the dream keep it simple. Imagine your dream was a movie you had just seen. Say to yourself: What do I feel, what do I take from it? What possible relevance might this have for my life? If nothing comes, let it sit, take another look later. Watch what happens in the day. Perhaps the dream will suddenly make sense in an encounter you might have.

I conclude with a story and a song. Carlos Castaneda and don Juan Matus enjoyed going to the movies together. One movie struck don Juan’s fancy: You Only Live Twice. I’m not certain it was the Bond girls don Juan liked. I think it was the song of the same title, sung by Nancy Sinatra. Here’s the link.

Sweet dreams,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Take a Ride on the Wings of the Eagle

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Here are some thoughts from M. Scott Peck, M.D. in his book In Search of Stones:

“One age does not turn into another overnight. Between the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason there lay at least three hundred years of confusion. An old Age does not die easily. Today, firmly ensconced in the Age of Reason, we look back upon its pioneers—men like Galileo—with admiration and respect. For the Inquisition that persecuted him, we have only disrespect and find it hard to imagine how the authorities of the church could have been so narrow-minded, stupid, and downright cruel. Yet were we able to look through the eyes of those authorities at the dawning of the Age of Reason, we would not only have seen a crumbling of faith, we would also have been filled with terror at the impending disintegration of civilization and loss of all that gave meaning and coherency to life. Perhaps the greatest sins of religion are not those of faith per se but of faith threatened.” –page 6.

Here are some quotes from Carlos Castaneda in his book The Wheel of Time:

“To change our ideas of the world is the crux of shamanism. And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it… When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.” –pages 118-119.

“Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and the extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been heavily guarded by our words.” –page 128.

“Human beings are not objects; they have no solidity. They are round, luminous beings; they are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is only a description that was created to help them, to make their passage on earth convenient.” –page 135.

“Human beings are perceivers, but the world that they perceive is an illusion: an illusion created by the description that was told to them from the moment they were born…” –page 137.

Here are some interesting quotes from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche:

“To see through the eyes of the mountain eagle, the view of realization, is to look down on a landscape in which the boundaries that we imagined existed between life and death shade into each other and dissolve. The physicist David Bohm has described reality as being “unbroken wholeness in flowing movement.” What is seen by the masters, then, seen directly and with total understanding, is that flowing movement and that unbroken wholeness. What we, in our ignorance, call “life,” and what we, in our ignorance, call “death,” are merely different aspects of that wholeness and that movement. This is the vast and transforming vision opened up to us by the bardo teachings, and embodied in the lives of the supreme masters.” –page 341.

“To see death, then, through realized eyes, is to see death in the context of this wholeness, and as part, and only part, of this beginningless and endless movement. The uniqueness and power of the bardo teachings is that they reveal to us, by showing with total clarity the actual process of death, the actual process of life as well.” –page 342.

Here are some thoughts from me:

I believe that we are always in the middle of a tornado, our world collapsing, in the process of death while in the throes of life, but that we do not perceive our world in such a manner until something shakes us out of our complacency, out of our narrow-mindedness, out of our internal dialogue, and out of our ignorance. I believe that we are being gifted with one of those times of shake-up right now.

Look around; look at what is happening. Take a ride on the wings of the eagle and realize that this is the time of confusion before the dawning of a new Age. But, as the shamans, the Buddhists, and deep spiritual thinkers suggest: this collapse is constantly presented to us—we are just not aware of it. And this is where Harold Camping, the end of the world predictor, gets it wrong. The end of the world is an every day occurrence and we all have the opportunity to grab onto the freedom of that clarity every day.

If we can learn how to let go of our reason—our internal dialogue, our conjuring mind, and our description of the world as we have been taught—and open up to the realization that everything is an illusion, we can enter a new reality. We can do this volitionally, learning how to shift our perceptions and how to experience the endless movement of energy, our own included, as it flows in the universe.

Through the process of recapitulation we learn to shed our old selves, our old perceptions and ideas of the self and the world, our self-importance, our attachments to the illusions of this world that we so solidly stand upon. In so doing we relieve ourselves of adherence to beliefs that do not truly serve us if we are ready to evolve into a new understanding of life and death.

We can experience our energetic wholeness in total freedom by constantly challenging ourselves to shatter our world as we have always perceived it, by refusing to attach to the illusions of this world. Those illusions are placed upon us from the moment we are born. If we can break our fixation with reality as we have been taught to perceive it, we might just discover that what is happening in the world, every day, is nicely set up to help us shatter those illusions. Even a momentary glimpse of a different idea of ourselves offers us the opportunity to gain in awareness, to aid us in letting go—just a little bit more—of all that holds us so attached to what we believe is so important and so dear.

Today, across America, many people are waking to a shattered world, everything gone. The tornadoes that have been touching down bringing the end of the world to so many lives remind us that we cannot hold onto anything. In such a moment we are offered the experience of impermanence. So what do we do when we stand there with nothing, when our dreams and our lives are shattered, totally gone?

This is the moment of enlightenment, the moment of freedom in collapse, the experience of death in life. The big challenge is to retain the experience of this moment of death; of ourselves without attachments, without belongings, totally released from the familiar. The is the gap moment that allows us a glimpse of our eternal selves while we still stand firmly in this world.

So, can we accept the convenience of our solidity long enough to embrace the fact that it is offered as a means from which to launch our awareness, as the shamans would pose? Can we allow ourselves to embrace this moment of impermanence, as the Buddhists would call it, as our big moment of evolutionary enlightenment? Can we hold onto our experience and use it to truly shift us away from our old ideas, needs, and desires? Can we use it to enter a new Age, an Age of true Enlightenment as the deep spiritual seekers understand it?

These are the challenges that the shamans, Buddhists, and deep spiritual seekers know are the moments that teach us how to face our deaths, but also offer us the opportunity to face our lives in the same manner. These are the moments of shattering the illusions we hold onto, though what we are really being shown is that we cannot hold onto anything and we don’t need to either.

We are beings who are going to die, as the shamans say. Yes, it’s a very scary thought, but can we live each day with that foremost in our thoughts, basing our lives on that idea? Can we live beyond the illusions of this world, and enter the flowing movement of unbroken wholeness? It’s not really that hard to do, we’re already doing it, every day!

Perhaps we just haven’t fully perceived it that way yet, but we have so many daily opportunities to do so. Every day is the end of the world.

Just trying to remain aware,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#759 Right Direction of Change

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Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

As I observe nature in spring unfolding, I feel the urgency to keep up, to keep changing and growing too, to not waste a second, but to continually evolve. This is not an urgency to go beyond nature, but to go more deeply into it, to learn from it, both how to live in better alignment with it, part of it, as well as how to better understand life and the meaning of human existence.

Today, I ask Jeanne: What guidance can you offer as I struggle to evolve in right alignment with nature?

Jeanne responds:

Do not look too far beyond your own intimate world for the signs and guidance you need in order to learn about the meaning of life. Each one of you have, within your home environment, the seeds of nurturance and evolution. Whether those are seeds of sustenance or seeds of decay, so are they seeds of change. Whether your tendency is to attach to a positive outlook or a negative outlook on life, so are you fully equipped with the tools you need to change.

Begin where you are, with what you have. State your intent to change, grow, learn, and then allow nature within the self to guide you on your journey.

Are you stuck in inertia? In complacency? Are you not sure? Or are you simply unaware of your true state?

It does not matter what your mind knows or does not know, so much as what the stirrings of your spirit know. True spirit knowing is often fear inducing, for your spirit is your greatest challenger, confronting you always with the truth of your situation.

You may wish to blame others or the outer world for your predicaments and circumstances, but, in truth, only you are to blame for your life, your situation in life, your health, your awareness, your clarity, your abilities to dare yourself to move on and truly live a full life.

Do not turn to others to resolve or solve your most urgent matters, but constantly turn inward and ask the self to show you the way. It may help to SLOW DOWN, even though you may feel the urgency of nature unfolding all around you. Slow down and OBSERVE how nature reacts to situations it finds itself in. Observe the SPIRIT of nature itself as unbending, unbreakable, unthwarted by what comes from the outside. Spirit leads to understanding LIFE itself, and this is where your most necessary lesson is—in learning to grasp what the energy of LIFE, that which you all hold within your personal world, really means to you as an individual and as a member of the society you live in.

The world is large and diverse, and populations are at different stages of life, yet each population and each individual within those populations around the world are living a life of meaning, potential, and purpose. It is up to you to find the true meaning for your life and act upon it with energy, daring, and in right alignment with the truth of all nature.

When Jeanne says this it reminds me of what the Buddhists say, that everyone has within them the true potential to be a Buddha.

Jeanne continues:

Within your personal permaculture must you each find your rhythm, your sustenance, your signs of growth. Within yourself must you seek your guidance.

When Jeanne said the word “permaculture” I immediately understand this to mean the physical body, that our bodies themselves are our total and complete world—that everything we need is embodied within the permaculture of our human, physical form. This is what she refers to when she speaks of our true natural world. We must keep it in balance, richly tended, attended to like a good organic farmer.

Jeanne goes on to say:

Look to nature at your feet, not at someone else’s, for your personal direction. Look for guidance in your own heart, not someone’s else’s, for your knowing. Look for the answers to your questions in calmness of self, knowing full well that your outer world is showing you that it is only within the self that truth and spirit lie.

The events outside of your inner world, even the events around the greater world, as they erupt daily, effecting everything about your life, are really only pushing you to confront your own inner events and conflicts, for that is where your life energy resides, caught in conflict.

Even as you work your soil, take in the sunlight, the moonlight, and connect to your natural world, dig deeper within, for that is your fertile ground where all the answers lie, seeds waiting for your mind to release them. They hold enough energy to burst open without your controlling mind attaching importance based on old, outer knowledge. That is done now. It is the inner knowledge of the ancient self that must come forth and guide each one of you now.

If you want to change your world—your personal world as well as your greater world—you must change the self, otherwise there will be no success. Lift your heavy mantles of intellect now, the mantles of rational thought, as great and powerful as they are. There is nothing so great and knowledgeable as the true knowing heart of each one of you.

The Ancient Circulating in Nature

Join in heart-centered energy and find the answers you seek. You will recognize them immediately, for they have always resided inside you. You have used them many times to guide you in the past. In all lifetimes, these are the answers you seek. Your ancient answers, your ancient knowledge—which has been circulating for eons—has always spoken, always been present in some form. You just have to hear it, recognize it, feel your true heart’s response, and get in alignment.

Watch out for the false words and the false heart’s response. Watch out for the ego’s alignment. Danger lies in this alignment. You know what I’m talking about: FEAR!

Yes, I must interject here, because I do know exactly what she means. Jeanne warns us earlier in this message that: True spirit knowing is often fear inducing. This is where we must face our greatest challenges because, indeed, fear shows us where we have to go to really change and grow. Normally fear makes us want to run back into our old comforts, but the true challenge is to confront the fear, go through it, and find out what it has been blocking us from. This is the challenge of recapitulation, to keep facing the fear rather than retreat into our old world, our old behaviors, and our old ideas of self. If we don’t face our fears we will never change our world.

Jeanne offers this final advice today:

Turn now toward LOVE, universally present inside all of you.

That’s enough for today. Find the difference between LOVE and FEAR, between the heart’s true alignment and the ego’s false alignment. This is where you will distinguish between right direction of change and old direction of complacency and no real change at all.

It takes daring to change. Watch Nature. It shows you all that you need to learn how to face the daring self who truly desires change, as the daring self challenges the fearful self.

Most humbly offered,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Price of Freedom

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Freedom is the ability to be alone with the truth. On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King stood alone at the podium, and, in the private knowing of his imminent death, uttered these final words:

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now, I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”

“And so I’m happy, tonight.”

“I’m not worried about anything.”

“I’m not fearing any man!”

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

In the shaman’s world, Martin Luther King was a warrior. In The Wheel of Time don Juan says this about a warrior on page 120:

“A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.”

To accept our lot is to be fully with the truth of who we are, where we have been, and, in full awareness, where we go next. To accept our lot is to soberly realize the dream we’ve been cast in and to accept full responsibility for that dream: to complete it and dream on.

The other night at the White House, the rapper/poet Common validated the completion of the dream Martin Luther King had glimpsed and so profoundly hinted at while speaking at the podium on April 13, 1968. Common ended his poem with the following lines:

“For one King’s dream He was able to Barack us.”

“One King’s dream He was able to Barack us.”

“One King’s dream He was able to Barack us.”

Dream to Freedom

Martin Luther King did not die a victim or a martyr; he died a dreamer completing his dream. There was no regret in his voice as he covertly bade farewell. Martin was living the shaman’s code: I am a being who is going to die. Martin accepted the living challenge of his pending death, without regret. This was a dream worthy to die for.

To obtain freedom in our own lives, we too must be warriors discovering and taking full responsibility for all our own dreams—for accepting our lot. In recapitulation we awaken to the full truth of the dream we are in. We cast out the energy of those who shattered our innocence. It’s not about regret, because we are not victims; no one is a victim.

It’s not about forgiveness; there’s nothing to forgive. No, in recapitulation we release the energy of others; all must carry their own burdens, discover and face their own truths and forgive themselves for their own actions. No one can forgive anyone of anything. The real challenge is to take back the full truth and energy of one’s own life, to be with it in full awareness, in full acceptance.

Our living challenge is to discover the full scope of our own dream. Are we ready to release it, having stared it down and faced every bit of it? Do we need to hold it any longer? Is there something more to learn, some fragment not yet discovered, not yet acceptable to know?

Are we ready to release that dream and move into new life, no longer needing the safety of old illusions, like believing that we are unworthy beings, unfit for this world? Are we ready to let go of everyone we have clung to who made us feel safe while caught in our repeating dreams, as well as old myths of who we are? Can we fully be alone with the full truth and, like Martin, flow effortlessly into the next dream?

This is the cost of freedom. But, as don Juan states, on page 123 in The Wheel of Time:

“Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible to pay.”

Awake in the Dream,
Chuck

Jan's Blog, Quote for the Day

Inviting Recapitulation

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Often we are dragged into recapitulation, a shamanic term for revisiting memories, by the usher, the moment of collapse of one reality as we enter another. The usher shows us something of cataclysmic proportions, jolting us out of our complacent and compliant life, and asks us to do inner work. We can also do recapitulation volitionally, by choosing to mindfully investigate something about ourselves that constantly needles us, that just won’t go away yet does not interrupt the flow of our lives. Such needles are often the first awakenings that we have deeper issues to resolve.

Not all recapitulation involves memories. It may also involve habits and behaviors that we do automatically, without thinking, though they may in fact be keeping us from evolving and growing. The following quote, from Full Catastrophe Living by John Kabat-Zinn, offers a gentle approach to mindful recapitulation, a nice description of a process that will, as we persist in its practice, aid us on our journey of change. Here is what he says:

Like the cat, be mindful and alert

“The way of mindfulness is to accept ourselves right now, as we are, symptoms or no symptoms, pain or no pain, fear or no fear. Instead of rejecting our experiences as undesirable, we ask, “What is this symptom saying, what is it telling me about my body and my mind right now?” We allow ourselves, for a moment at least, to go right into the full-blown feeling of the symptom. This takes a certain amount of courage, especially if the symptom involves pain or a chronic illness, or fear of death. But you can at least “dip your toe in” by trying it just a little, say for ten seconds, just to move in a little closer for a clearer look.”

Be courageous. Change your world. Change the entire world