Tag Archives: recapitulation

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Magic & Insight

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A few weeks ago, I began reading a book called Anastasia, the first book in The Ringing Cedars Series, that someone had mentioned to me over a year ago. It is another “magical” book—series of books really—infused with powerful energy. I finished reading Anastasia and one night last week, before bed, I picked up the second book in the series and laid it on top of my dream journal as I prepared for bed, intending to read it next. That was all I needed to do to have a profound dream experience, touch the book with intent. Here is the dream I had that night:

I give birth to a girl child although I am not pregnant. In the dream, I go to the bathroom and, sitting on the toilet, I begin to feel and intuit that I am having a baby. At first it feels like a log, like I have a huge log stuck in my vagina. I try to feel with my hand if the baby is in fact down the birth canal or if the cervix is dilated. I move off the toilet after I see blood and go to look in a mirror. In the mirror I see the head has already emerged and so I know for sure that I am giving birth. I also know, from experience, that once the head is out the hard part is over and that the baby will come fast now. I have a moment of panic that it will get stuck like this, halfway out, and that I will have to walk around with a half-birthed baby protruding from my crotch. But in the next instant the baby pushes out. I catch her easily and bring her up to my breast. We bond immediately. She smiles up at me, looks deeply into my eyes, and snuggles against me. I hold her close, knowing that the warmth of our two bodies is enough to keep us safe, even in the coldest of climates.

I remember the book Anastasia at this point in the dream and the title character who contends that a child can survive in the world, even naked, as long as it is held close. I don’t know if she actually says this in the book, but this is what I get in my dream and she herself had survived in the Siberian Taiga through close nurturance and care by animals.

At this point, I take the baby to my parents who are sitting at a cafe table talking to my brother who died. I tell them I have had a baby and I show her to them, but they do not even look at her or show the least bit of interest. They say nothing and just stare blankly, gazing right through me, as if I don’t even exist. My brother looks at me tenderly and shrugs as if to say: “What did you expect?”

I walk away from them and bump into a few other people I know. I am aware that I have dried blood on my legs and that the baby and I are almost naked. I am wearing a short white shift, similar to what Anastasia is described as wearing, and I have the baby wrapped in a shawl. The people I meet acknowledge her, but only in uneasy glances. She is not well received or given any attention. I accept this, even though at first I am puzzled by the lack of interest, because I am having a most amazing experience, full of insight and intuition and I feel totally calm and at peace with this baby in my arms. I also know that she belongs only to me, that she is my responsibility and that I do not really need acknowledgement from others.

The details of the dream get fuzzy at this point, but the child grows almost immediately into a small thin creature, more doll like than human. I watch her running and skipping around. She can talk from the moment of birth like a well educated, spiritually evolved adult, full of wisdom and insight. I know that I must watch her carefully, not let her stray too far from me, and that I must keep her warm so that she not only survives, but also thrives.

As time goes on, I realize I have been forgetting about her more and more, that I forget to warm her against my body, that I am neglectful of her. When I notice she is looking cold I grab her, hold her against me and apologize for my lack of attention, but then I let her go again. At one point I see her lying in the shawl on the ground, not moving, and when I pick her up I see that she has dried up and that her right arm has cracked and broken off, as if she were made of clay. I feel terrible because I forgot all about her and let her get cold and dehydrated to the point of partially crumbling into dust. I am worried that she is dead. I am aware that I must take better care of her, that I must never forget about her again.

The dog woke me at 5:30 in the morning and I immediately forgot this dream. After I let the dog out I returned to bed, feelings of the significance of the dream staying with me, but still unable to recall it. The only thing I could remember was that I had dreamed of a log. As I lay in bed I felt a heavy feeling, almost a soreness in my pelvic floor. I heard a voice say: “Do a Kegel exercise,” which any woman knows is an exercise to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, especially recommended after giving birth. As soon as I squeezed the muscles I immediately recalled the dream. I had indeed felt like I had given birth in the night and my body held the memory of it until I recaptured it! From that point on the dream reemerged and as the day went on more details became clearer.

Immediately I noted the significance of having set the intent to read the second in that magical book series. I won’t go into details, but the series is based on the experiences of a Russian man who, in 1995, meets a woman, Anastasia, living in the forests of Siberia. She is energetically alive and evolved. His experiences in her company remind me of Carlos Castaneda’s experiences in the company of don Juan, and of my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia tells him things that he cannot imagine ever happening and yet they do, similar to my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia is directly connected to and channels energy and insight related to the planet and the environment. Whenever I have asked Jeanne questions about the environment, she has always stated that there are other soul groups working on that and that it is not her expertise. Jeanne is connected to a soul group that is involved with soul advancement. This distinction struck me, as I read the first book and thought that perhaps Anastasia is connected to this environmentally concerned soul group energy.

Anyway, that was my first insight as my dream unfolded, that I had set the intent. The second insight I got was that this dream was about my personal transformation. When I recapitulated my childhood, when my abuser did in fact molest me with wooden objects, I rid them from my body as I relived each memory. In the dream, perhaps I feared that this was just another wooden object, another memory to be removed, but then I see life, a real baby instead of a log. I see this as indicative of the transformational process; having released the trauma I can now allow myself to give birth to new life within myself.

When I attempted to show the child to my parents and other acquaintances neither it nor my transformational process was given any attention. In every attempt to introduce this innocent child to the world, the old world, there was no resonance. My personal experiences did not matter in that world. I received the insight that I must further detach from that old world now and more fully embrace this new world that the child represents. Anastasia’s story influenced my dream experience: I knew that the child must be nurtured to thrive. It was pretty clear and simple. All I had to do is keep her with me at all times. I am enough; I am all she needs.

However, I seemed to still need reminding of something, some piece was missing, because every time I laid the child aside, apart from my physical body, something happened to her. She got cold or brittle, and eventually dried up. When I discovered her all dried up and with a broken arm, I immediately felt deep remorse, regret, sadness and extremely guilty for leaving her to fend for herself. I realized that I had not been doing something right. I was killing her by forgetting about her. In the dream, I instinctively knew that I had to keep her close to me, that we did not need anything else, we were enough; that we were done with the old world, had already left it behind. We had already done the work of transformation. I was reminded, as I picked up the broken child in the end of the dream and held her close once again, that she is my innocent self, and that I must stay connected to her at all times, not just when I feel like it. I must remember that this is what my wholeness feels like, and yes, that I am enough. I also knew that if I stayed connected, bonded with her, that everything else would take care of itself, that life would unfold, as it should.

As the day went on and this dream stayed with me, I received a final insight. Pictures of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child kept popping into my head, paintings from my art history books that I’d studied a long time ago. Each time one of these paintings came to me, I re-experienced holding that child in my arms in the dream, nestling against my chest, snuggling in, totally trusting me, totally calm, knowing that she was exactly where she belonged. As I re-experienced these feelings throughout the day—utter calmness, contentment, wholeness—I saw the significance of these paintings; virgin and child, maturity and innocence; appropriate symbols of giving birth to the Self and to true spirit innocence, which, in my case, I worked so hard to reunite with and nurture into life during my years of recapitulating my traumatic childhood, a time when I was mostly concerned with simply surviving. With this insight I now clearly understand the symbolism of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child as Whole-Self, complete. I had gotten it right, finally the missing piece was found.

We are all the Virgin and we are all the Christ Child in her arms. No matter if we are male or female, we are all totally capable of giving birth to the total Self. This is not the wounded child self, but Christ as innocence within, Self and God-Self fully merged. I know I must not be afraid to embrace this wholeness. I must not put her aside again or depart from the path. I must stay connected to this magic within. I know she was not damaged throughout the whole childhood journey; she remained whole, waiting for me to reconnect.

I know how hard it is to stay connected to this spirit self at all times. We must all deal with the reality of our lives and remain connected to this world, but I also know that the magic is available to us, reminding us that this is really the biggest challenge, to keep turning toward it. Once we have connected to the magic of our true spirit self, whether through our experiences, dreams, processes of inner work, through our intent to change, or through the books we elect to read, our challenge then becomes to never put it aside again, but to hold our experiences as close as a child in our arms, remembering why we are here and what we are really seeking. The magic is really inside each one of us.

I humbly offer these intent-dream-book-insight-magical experiences as we enter a new phase of winter magic. Happy Holidays! May they be magically meaningful, personally, by intent.

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Magical Books

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Some books simply are magical. Every time I pick up any book of Carlos Castaneda’s—books I have read dozens of times over the past forty years—I encounter new knowledge. These books are alive with an energy that takes me deeper in my journey of awareness. They inevitably lead me into heightened awareness where my clarity of knowing is unparalleled. I experience directly the intent of the seers of ancient Mexico. Carlos channeled that intent in those living books by completely removing his self-importance from their pages. He reserves his words for precise descriptions of his experiences in the seer’s world.

Recently, while rummaging through the books at the local recycling center, I came upon the big book, AA’s “bible.” Though I’ve read countless works on recovery, I never actually read this book. This book is also a living book, a magical book. Unpretentious, blue, with no outer appeal, in fact, rather anonymous looking, it nonetheless called out to me.

As I began to read through its pages, I recognized the evolutionary intent it channels. AA is the most successful mass movement for evolutionary change on earth. The guidelines of that intent are clearly spelled out in shamanic terms. For change to happen one must beckon a power beyond the ego. The ego must then open to a shamanic journey with that power to experience genuine transformation. In preparation for that journey the guidance requires a complete loss of self-importance, in fact, in AA everyone remains on a first name basis only. No one is more important than the other—there is no hierarchy. No profit is to be made from the program and no one is rejected; all are equal. (I think Senator McCarthy was barking up the wrong tree when he was seeking out the true communists in America in the nineteen-fifties!)

Furthermore, the growth of AA was predicated on the energetic law of attraction, clearly spelled out in the book, attraction versus promotion. The guidance also strongly recommends one’s individual encounter with the truth in the form of a moral inventory and making of amends. This is a version of recapitulation that enables the seeker to put down old burdens, erase the constraints of personal history, preparing the ground for freedom and transformation.

In describing the magical origins of AA, the book chronicles the role of C. G. Jung. After failing to cure one of AA’s founders, the dejected patient pressed Jung for any glimmer of hope for what to do next to heal. Jung, offering little hope to this advanced alcoholic patient and without any further guidance, suggested he might experience a transformation through a spiritual experience. “Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences,” Jung told him. (p. 27 in Alcoholics Anonymous Third Edition.) He did indeed go out and have a spiritual experience that channeled the path to AA, and the rest is history, as chronicled in the big book, a living viable path for transformation.

Jung himself, the son of generations of protestant ministers, was faced with the personal experience that dogma and belief could not serve the needs of his soul. As Aniela Jaffé writes in C. G. Jung Word and Image: “In his eyes, the ability to believe was a gift of grace, one which he (Jung) and many others no longer shared. That loss justified the search for new approaches to the numinous.” This was the impetus behind Jung’s suggestion to his alcoholic patient to go out and seek a spiritual experience.

Jung himself recorded his own spiritual journey in The Red Book, another magical book. In this book Jung chronicles his personal confrontation with powers greater than himself, a series of numinous experiences that ultimately paved its own path to wholeness in the form of analytical psychology. This book, like other magical books, is bereft of self-importance and hints at a means for each of us to discover our own individuation.

The common thread running through the magical books of Carlos Castaneda, AA, and C. G. Jung is that they all channel the energy of transformation and evolutionary intent, offering access to a personal spiritual transformative experience. Whether the journey happens in the shaman’s world, supported by a nagual, or in psychotherapy under the guidance of a therapist, or in “the rooms” supported by the AA community, it is only a personal experience that will lead to genuine transformation and change.

These magical books speak to our time, where the grace of dogma and belief can no longer serve the spiritual evolutionary needs of a planet in crisis, in dire need of transformation. However, to go beyond dogma and belief and truly achieve transformation each one of us must individually take the journey, and see what happens!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Lessons Learned

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While I diligently and with a dogged sense of purpose went about a shamanic process of recapitulation of my earliest years, I was often presented with experiences in other worlds. In the beginning, I was more or less thrown unwittingly into many experiences that I could neither explain nor fathom; they were so otherworldly at times that I often came away from them steeped in both awe and fear. But all I really had to do was take them to my weekly shamanic sessions with Chuck and he would very soberly and kindly explain my experiences in the pragmatic terms of the world of the seers of ancient Mexico. As time went on, and I learned more about the seer’s world, I volitionally entered into experiences in an effort to gain greater clarity of my personal journey but also to more fully understand how the seer’s world could work for me in everyday life. In fact, I began to develop a hunger for the magic that I thought I could only find within that world.

Perhaps the biggest magic that I engaged and cultivated was the connection I developed with Jeanne. She was present from the onset of my recapitulation journey, though I was not fully aware of the reason why. I learned to trust her guidance implicitly. As I ventured into recapitulation and into experiences that could only be described as paranormal, she kept me very anchored in this world, always pressuring me to stay grounded and focused on taking life one step at a time.

In the channeling blog on Monday I introduced six practical steps that Jeanne stressed to me over and over again as I went through my recapitulation process. I think they are still some of the simplest and most useful steps in living a life of grounded awareness. Her advice was often not that profound, things I intuitively knew, but when in the midst of crisis or when undergoing the stresses of personal transformation her words often seemed like manna from heaven.

I repeat here the six practical steps I mentioned previously and then offer a few more:

1. Stay in form (good physical shape).

2. Rest.

3. Allow for flow and take one step at a time.

4. Stop thinking so much.

5. Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.

6. Learn detachment.

One day, while trying to get my bearings around some issues that just seemed too overwhelming to handle, including my car that needed some work, I pleaded with Jeanne to help me. She suggested, very pragmatically, that I make a plan. Here are her words:

“Make a plan to deal with your problems, even if it doesn’t feel like a complete and right plan, just begin the first step and it will begin to take on a life of its own, but nothing will happen if you ignore the problems. They won’t go away nor will they change. They will sit there like the car in your driveway, like a big gray elephant that you know you have to take care of. Deal with it. The longer it sits there, the more energy drains from you because of it.”

She told me to stop pushing myself so hard, to stop overworking to the point of exhaustion and she told me to breathe:

“Remember your breath. It sustains you and you know how important it is. Find your breath and move the tiredness out of your body with each exhale and bring in new energy and life with each inhale.”

She also stressed that dreamtime was as significant as waking time:

“You need to keep your dream paths open for more productive dreaming. That’s why you are so tired today, you didn’t rest last night, your problems fed and leached into your dream paths, stealing away your time of peace. Don’t let this happen. Your dreamtime is as important as your waking time.”

In reference to the above statement about dreamtime she also said:

“Pass this on. This is another chore I am giving you in this time of indecision: to pass along the things I tell you in order to keep open your channels, night and day.”

“Take care of yourself by dealing with the difficulties that arise in your life,” she went on to say, “and do it all in a calm and steady, one-step at a time manner. The answers will come to you. You don’t even need to try that hard. Do what seems natural—the thing that comes to you in a calm moment. Slow down and things will begin to happen.”

She told me to stop trying so hard to figure my life out, but to just flow with it, that it was already laid out for me, I just had to learn to acquiesce to the unfolding of it.

“I’m not giving you riddles,” she said. “The only riddle is being able to recognize what is right before you.”

She was right you know; everything was already laid out. In moments of deep meditation and recapitulation and during many Embodyment Therapy sessions, I saw everything laid out. I saw the past, already done, laid out in ancient times, as was the future too, long before I ever existed. I saw this future, my current life, though it seemed but a dream, and I even saw beyond this time. I saw paintings I had yet to paint, I saw books I had yet to write. I saw people I had yet to meet, and I saw lives I had yet to live. Some of those paintings, forgotten in the split second that I glimpsed them, did get painted and some of the books have been and are being written. At that moment of insight, I knew I just had to choose to live out what was before me. I had to choose life!

I have met many new people in my new life and even though I have gone on to become a purveyor of advice myself sometimes, I still pay attention to the words of guidance that I received from Jeanne when I felt like I was drowning in crisis after crisis. In quiet moments of calm, I know that they are still, in their simplicity and practicality, some of the soundest words of advice I have ever heard. And they work in the seer’s world too, for really that is where they come from.

I offer these words of guidance, because, as Jeanne told me back then, this was going to be one of my jobs, to pass on what I learned. I most humbly accepted the challenge she laid down before me, first to finish recapitulating my early traumas and then to keep doing my inner work so that I could always be open and available to not only be her partner, but to fully live life as it was presented and to accept my place in a world that is indeed quite magical!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Why Recapitulate?

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I’m going to get personal here, because I can only really talk about my own experiences with any authority. When I was a child I was viciously molested and raped by a man in my neighborhood. This abuse lasted the better part of sixteen years, mostly when I was very young, starting at age two until about age ten, but then intermittently until I graduated from high school and left home at eighteen to go to college. How could this happen, you might ask? How could parents, relatives and teachers not know what was happening? Did she not tell anyone? These are questions that I confronted over and over again as I recapitulated this segment of my life in a three year period beginning in 2001. Today, I specifically address the above questions because I know that anyone who has suffered abuse, sexual or otherwise, must also confront these questions.

I came from a family that was set up to ignore and deny even the possibility of such abuse. Perhaps most families are this way. My mother, a deeply depressed and angry woman, could not abide feelings of any kind. Perfection in everything was demanded and expected, nothing was allowed to ripple the surface of that perfection, no weakness within the family structure that she had created was allowed. If dissonance, conflict, trouble, or even emotion of any kind appeared it was quickly shut down, pushed away, swiftly disposed of, disappearing from sight and memory. My father, a deeply sensitive and deeply fearful man went along with this family structure. He spent his feelings elsewhere in giving time and energy to a long list of public service organizations, to other children and families in dire circumstances, to the poor, the depressed, the mentally ill. Within our own family everything was perfect, no sign of discontent, no sign of weakness, no sign of despair was allowed to leak out, the walls were solidly built and the entryways blocked. As a child, I quickly learned that this was how I too was supposed to construct myself, with strong barriers, not letting anything out, but also not letting anything in. This was, I believe, how the abuse I suffered could take place and my parents not “know about it,” because they chose not to. It didn’t fit into the world they decided upon, created and lived by.

I was seen as and indeed was an extremely shy child. This characterization never left me; it followed me into adulthood. The abuse, starting at such a young age, coincided with my emerging personality and perhaps created this withdrawn child self, but also the strict requirements of behavior upheld at home left little room for a true child self to evolve outwardly. The lessons and structures learned there fit well into the outside world, into the Catholic school I attended where we were taught how sinful it was to think about the self in any way, that selflessness was the most important of virtues, so how could I dare to speak about myself? My problems were nothing compared to other children in the world. Basically, I learned to maneuver through life according to the rules and demands of the authority figures in my life. I acquiesced and took the journey that was presented to me, with few options and little energy to do otherwise, so intent was I on keeping myself safe and protected no matter where I went.

My abuser groomed me from a very young age. In the beginning the abuse was made to seem like games, strange games, often painful games, but over several years they became part of a process, unfolding in a different world from that of my closed family world; however, the requirements of those two worlds were really not that different. I went from one secret world, where obedience and absolute allegiance were required to the other where the same structures were in place. I learned, over time and through hard won lessons, how to seamlessly maneuver within and between these two worlds, and as a result they rarely intersected. On occasion, when they did threaten to collide, I found the means to contain and protect myself, to keep myself safe, by dissociating, by turning to new worlds of my own in creativity and imagination. I sensed the ever-present potency of mental disintegration, but I avoided it the same way I had been taught to avoid any feelings or emotions; I shut it down, pushed it away, and carried on, withdrawing from that which threatened to trigger it.

In essence, I learned what my parents taught me. You don’t speak about yourself, your feelings, your problems. Instead you get depressed, you harden yourself, you get busy and spend your energy on others, but above all you never crack, you never let anyone see that there is anything wrong with you. It was perhaps the biggest and best lesson I could have learned at the time. In essence, the parents I received gave me the lessons I most needed at the time in order to survive, but in so doing I was also perpetuating a lot of secrets and lies, having to live out rules and mental constructs that did not really belong to me. I had to uphold my parent’s world. And even though, for a long time, it worked for me, one day I could no longer bear the burden of it. I could no longer carry forth the long held secrets, my own or theirs, and that was the day I knew I had to recapitulate that part of my life. It had ruled me for too long and I wanted to be free of it.

That was the original intent of my recapitulation, to set myself free of what did not belong to me and from what I had kept pushed down inside me for so long. I finally decided, consciously or unconsciously or a little of both, that it was time to let the child self speak about what had happened to her, to offer her the words to say what she could not even begin to fathom. She needed an adult to put into words the horrific events of her life, to make sense of them and to break the long held silent pacts that had been established before she even knew she existed, the pacts set in place by the adults in her life.

To me, this became the impetus that sent me on an awakening journey, an awakening that had been triggered many times, on many occasions in the past, but that I had to be in alignment with in order to truly begin to confront the lies, the secrets, the structures of a world that was not really the world I wanted to live in. The recapitulating of those early years of my life was a most painful journey and I admire anyone who dares to step into the mire of their past and confront the petty tyrants and fearful demons who stand blocking life from unfolding as it truly can.

I know what it means to feel now, to feel not only emotionally but physically everything that happened and happens to me. But I also know the liberating feelings of freedom from that which does not truly belong to me. I know what it means to embrace my truths, my desires, my needs, and my perceptions of a new world, under my terms. I know what it feels like to wake up every day knowing that I conquered the past, knowing that I won all the battles this time, on my terms, in my way, using inner work; truth and honesty my only weapons.

I discovered another thing as I undertook the recapitulation adventure of those early years of my life. I discovered a spiritual core that was as indestructible and strong as I always knew it was, the core that kept me whole and safe, even as I took a most disheartening and painful childhood journey. I rediscovered what it was that kept me alive and sane all those years. It was myself. It was myself finally freed of everything that had been imposed, and once reunited with that true self the adventure took on a momentum of its own. It has not stopped even though I still must recapitulate what comes to greet me on a daily basis. But honestly, that childhood past is done. It is solidly placed in the context of who I am and where I am going now. Now is all that matters, but I would not be present, facing oncoming time, NOW, if I had not dared to face the past and free myself of it.

I offer this essay today to all of you who are taking the first steps into the journey of recapitulation, to those who are well into it, and to those who fear venturing inward. I can only stress again, in so doing you will become free. You will become YOU. It’s a pretty great place to be!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Facing Oncoming Time & Recapitulation

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In his book The Art of Navigation Felix Wolf shares the following anecdote from Carlos Castaneda.

“The Nagual always maintained that the average man traveled through life in the caboose, always looking back, always keenly aware of his personal history, his experiences, and his identity as an accumulation of the past. It was one of his favorite analogies. A warrior who wants to become a man of knowledge, however, has to turn around and face life as it unfolds in front of him. Instead of facing receding time he has to face oncoming time, as he put it. Life in the caboose versus life in the engine.” (From page 60. *)

Isn’t the shamanic practice of recapitulation in fact living in the past, the exact opposite of facing oncoming time? Is there not a contradiction here? Doesn’t recapitulation strap us firmly to a seat in the caboose with a view out the back window, at life that has already passed us by? What about total presence in the NOW, the coveted goal Carlos describes as being seated in the engine, directly perceiving oncoming time, engaging life to the fullest? To answer these questions and resolve this seeming paradox we must first explore what it takes to truly live life in the moment.

Both the seers of ancient Mexico and the Buddhists place a premium on reaching a state of inner silence to become mindful, fully aware and present in the NOW. Toward that end Buddhist masters prescribe the practice of meditation where we learn to quiet our restless hearts and become keen observers of all that presents. The molding of this observing self that allows life to be known directly, without the interference of the thinking, judging mind, prepares us to be innocently present in the moment, freed of the cogitations of the mind that interprets versus lives in the moment. Achieving detachment from the ceaseless internal dialogue of the mind is certainly a major component of mindfulness. Like the Buddhists, the seers of ancient Mexico employ their own active meditation practice of magical passes to achieve this coveted state.

Another major component of mindfulness is access to a fully integrated self. How can we be fully present if parts of who we are remain fragmented, unknown and tucked away in the luggage compartment of the self? Furthermore, the legacy of our hidden baggage is the burden it places on life in the present. For instance, if we carry deep wounds of loss, abandonment, negligence, and violation, we will surely be limited in opening to all that life invites us to in the present moment. Recapitulation is the shamanic practice that frees us from these limitations and fully unites the self to be present in the NOW.

In recapitulation we allow ourselves to be taken on a train ride to all the stations of life already lived. We arrive at each of these old stations with our present self keenly observing, taking the journey with our younger self that has been stranded at the station, frozen in time. Our present self opens to the full experience of our younger self, and thereby faces fully the confusion and struggle that once froze our younger self. Often we discover in recapitulation that our younger self was forced to leave its body under the impact of overwhelming trauma and hence the full truth of that moment was never consolidated and made real. In recapitulation the full truth of the past becomes known, allowing its burdens to be released. The energy and innocence of the younger self is freed and united with the present self, firmly seated in the engine, facing oncoming time.

Part of what we encounter as we face oncoming time are triggers that take us out of the present moment. Meditation can help us to remain present in spite of a trigger, but it can’t help us to fully open to the moment if the trigger signifies a lost, frozen part of the self. Life often places triggers in our path to awaken us to discover our lost selves. We cannot simply transcend our triggers and fully open to life without recapitulating the truth that lies behind the trigger. We must be open to completing all our journeys, especially the train wrecks buried deeply within the self if we are ever to be fully available to life in the NOW.

Recapitulation, then, is actually a major component of being able to face oncoming time. Freed from the past we can allow life to approach us with all that it offers, unfiltered, without limitation. From this vantage point, firmly seated in the engine, we can read clearly the signs and synchronicities life presents us with to guide our evolutionary journeys, in infinity—NOW!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

* NOTE: The book mentioned in this blog is available through our Store listed under the category of Shamanism.