Tag Archives: recapitulation

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Memorable Events

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In the introduction to The Active Side of Infinity Carlos Castaneda writes that don Juan Matus encouraged him to prepare a special album, a collection of the memorable events in his life, an album that “reveals the warrior’s personality, an album that attests to the circumstances of his life.” (p. 6) Eventually, The Active Side of Infinity became that album. In the recounting of his conversation with don Juan, Carlos has a hard time understanding just what this might mean. At first he protests that every event in his life was profoundly significant. Don Juan retaliates by suggesting that, in reality, there may only be a few events in a person’s life that actually change things for them, that illuminate the path before them. “Ordinarily,” he says, “events that change our path are impersonal affairs, and yet are extremely personal.”

In last week’s blog, I wrote about an out-of-body experience (OBE) that changed my life. It was a memorable and momentous event. This week I pose the questions: Why do we have these moments and what do they mean to us personally?

In Black Elk Speaks, Black Elk recounts a vision he had as a nine year old boy. The vision begins when he hears a voice calling to him: “It is time; now they are calling you.” (p. 21) He elects to follow the voice. Over the next few days he becomes very ill. For twelve days he lies sick, as if dead, but meanwhile he is in another world, receiving a vision. In this vision he is shown that he must lead his people through four ascents, or times of great difficulty. When he returns from this vision he is afraid to speak of it for fear that he will be considered crazy.

Over the next eight years, he receives many messages and he increasingly realizes that he must pay attention to them. He follows the guidance offered; training himself to trust the messages he receives, saving his people and others from death, devastation, and starvation many times. Although he does not speak of his vision, others notice that he seems to have a certain power and it is only when this power can no longer be held back that he dares to speak of his long-ago vision.

This time comes when he is bombarded with calls from the Universe itself, calls that he cannot ignore. The thunder beings from his vision call to him from the clouds. The stars call to him. The crows call during the day and the coyotes call at night. And what do they say? They all say the same thing: “It is time! It is time! It is time!” (p. 164) This goes on for quite a while, until he thinks he must be going crazy. He begins to fear everything. He becomes withdrawn and isolates himself. His parents, noticing his distress, call an old medicine man to their tepee and ask him to see what he can do for their son. By now, Black Elk is so afraid of everything that he cannot hold back any longer; he fears he will die if he does not speak. He tells the medicine man about his vision and everything else that has been haunting him.

The medicine man says: “Nephew, I know now what the trouble is! You must do what the bay horse in your vision wanted you to do. You must do your duty and perform this vision for your people upon earth. You must have the horse dance first for the people to see. Then the fear will leave you, but if you do not do this, something very bad will happen to you.” (p. 165)

Now that his secret is out, the vision can be shared. While the vision is being acted out by members of his tribe, Black Elk looks up into the clouds and sees his vision once again, as he had seen it the first time. He says: I looked about me and could see that what we then were doing was like a shadow cast upon the earth from yonder vision in the heavens, so bright it was and clear. I knew the real was yonder and the darkened dream of it was here.” (p. 173)

What Black Elk discovered was that our fears are leading us. Carlos also discovered this, for when he related a fearful experience, don Juan pointed out that it was indeed a memorable event in his life and worthy of being included in his album.

Jeanne wrote on Monday that this is the time for us to change, that it is here. Later that evening, as I read this account of Black Elk’s confrontation with the Universe telling him it was time to reveal his vision to his people, I could not help but feel that it was a synchronistic, momentous moment, worthy of passing along.

So why do we have these momentous moments in our lives, whether they be synchronicities, experiences, visions, OBEs, voices, animal messengers, or simply our own fears calling to us? I believe, and this has been my personal experience as I have heeded the calls from Jeanne to pass along her messages, that we, as we listen and follow the guidance given, are offered the opportunity to experience that other world, the “real” world, as Black Elk refers to it. By facing our fears we offer ourselves greater access to our own energy too and this, in turn, allows us the confidence and trust to keep opening ourselves to more experiences.

And how do we face our fears? Sometimes all it takes is finding someone to talk to. We work so hard to fight our fears, as Black Elk did, but one day we just know that it is time, and instead of turning away from them again we make the momentous decision to find out where they have been trying to lead us all these years. I know many brave people make that decision every day. And I also know other people, equally brave, who elect to keep the fear in their lives; for whatever reason, it has its purpose for as long as we need it. Either way we are challenging ourselves to have energetic experiences, one of which can be energy-giving, allowing us access to the unimaginable; the other can be energy-robbing, and often we do feel that we might die if we do not find some form of relief from our issues. Black Elk went on to see his vision unfold in reality. Carlos went on to write about his experiences. Both of them changed their personal worlds.

What does life have in store for us and how can we make this lifetime meaningful? Personally, I elected to face my fears, to recapitulate and relieve myself of sometimes crippling habits and behaviors that kept me from listening to the truths of my inner world, rejecting my own visions for many years. Now, I’m allowing myself to take a different journey. I still must face what arises to lead me, but the more experiences I have with Jeanne and my other forms of guidance, the more easily I flow.

I most humbly offer this essay and my own experiences as examples, but also as incentives to keep going. There really is so much else to experience. That other world truly is real, and it is attainable now, which is really what Jeanne, Black Elk, don Juan and Carlos are suggesting. We have access to it; we just have to get beyond our fears. Is it time? If you wish, feel free to respond in the comment section below.

Until next week, wishing you all love, dreams, and visions,
Jan

NOTE: The books mentioned in this blog are available for purchase through our Store.

Chuck's Blog

#693 Chuck’s Place: FATHER

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THE CONCERT

At Carnegie Hall, on a Tuesday night, a full day of work awaits, starting early the next morning. I make the sacrifice, my stepson is singing in Eric Whitacre’s Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. Paradise Lost is the story of a lost generation of angel children left behind by their dying parents, walled off, without their wings, in a deeply protective structure. Logos is the leader of the now grown up lost children. The Gospel according to John begins: In the beginning was logos (the word), and the word was with God. Logos is the word, the law, the blueprint, the archetype of God, the ultimate father. In Eric Whitacre’s story, Logos frequently imbibes “amber,” some kind of hallucinogen that opens, for him, the channel to his deceased father, who communicates the message that he must protect all the children, at all costs. The decree of the father is to protect, maintain the status quo, keep things unchanging within the highly guarded and protected walled-in structure.

The love of Logos’ life is Exstasis. Exstasis is the Greek root for ecstasy, which literally translates to going outside of the stationary or static walls. Their names, Logos and Exstasis, foreshadow the ultimate conflict between conservative protection and freedom. Exstasis, in her own amber journeys, discovers from her own ethereal mother that her wings are hidden and retrievable, but she must take up the journey and go beyond the walls to visit the Oracle in the sacred temple. The Oracle insists that she face the truth, only the truth, to be guided to her wings. She passes this test and ultimately discovers her wings. However, in her final confrontation with Logos in which he burns her wings, she is killed, as the secure and protective father principle cannot tolerate her flight beyond the known, into potential danger.

A DREAM: The Great Train Robbery

I am at a train station on Long Island, right next to the ocean. In the first half of the dream, dimly recalled, I am part of a well-planned and executed plot to rob a train/railroad station. I recall a knapsack full of bundles of money. The robbery is successful, and involves the use of packs of dynamite, placed in several places around the station, set off just at the moment of getaway.

The consequence of this robbery is the end of this railroad station being included along this train line. A nostalgia sets in, particularly from my father. I join him in a campaign to restore the destroyed station. My father becomes involved in the beautification effort, the landscaping. I, in turn, distinctly recall where the planks and stones from the explosion had landed, which I easily begin to retrieve and restore. The dream ends as a smart detective, who has been tracking my activity, confronts me on the boardwalk about the crime.

I immediately awakened from this dream charged with the energy to record it, as well as contemplate it, with my consciousness still between worlds. I suspended my ego’s judgment about being a criminal and instead asked myself: what was the true nature or meaning of the crime? Not all crimes are criminal. When Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, mankind gained in consciousness. When Adam, at Eve’s urging, bit from the apple of the tree of knowledge, the world advanced in consciousness. In both cases, God’s, the father’s, rules were broken and there were punishments, paradise lost.

To go out alone, without the protection and security of father’s walls is both a reward and a punishment. In my dream, the destruction of the train station was a boon for me, a backpack full of money, a tremendous pick-up of energy. The seers on ancient Mexico devised the practice of recapitulation as a means of freeing oneself of static behaviors, returning that energy to the self for new possibilities. The train line, with its familiar stops and fixed rails, which cannot be deviated from, is the security of known habits and routines in life, the protective walls of the father. After I had committed the crime of breaking the routine, freeing myself from a familiar, well-trodden stop (the train station), I was drawn back to the old familiar place, by father, in the form of nostalgia for the old, known, unchanging stasis; the old way.

Regardless of our formative experiences with our actual fathers, real or imagined, present or absent, supportive or threatening, we are all our own fathers now! Formative experiences with our actual fathers are merely awakenings to this father within, the true father, who will guide and protect us through life. The father within us guards and protects the status quo of our lives: our habits, whether good or bad; our rules for ourselves, however limited or open they may be. The guiding principle of the father is the protection of the family. Inwardly we execute this father function by upholding the familiar safe-place train stops of our daily lives. Familiarity breeds safety and security, a bulwark against the changing sands of time. Zeus’s father, Kronos, Father Time, consumed all his children at birth to ensure the longevity, the unchangingness of his rule, that is, until his clever wife wittingly exchanged a stone for baby Zeus, which ushered in a new era.

Sometimes, of course, the conservativism of the father within us is wise to clip our wings. Daedalus, father of Icarus, constructed for his son wings to fly, made of feathers and wax. He tried desperately to warn his son not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus, so enthralled with his freedom, refused his father’s warning and suffered the inevitable consequence of his inflation, a perilous fall. Obviously there is a need for this protective father function, at times, but more often than not the supportive protective arms of our inner father attitude is just as likely to keep us entombed, limited within the safe walls of our familiar selves, however dysfunctional that might be.

Father is the guardian of the familiar: our inner family of known habits, behaviors and attitudes. The true challenge of my dream was to let go of a tried and true habit, to eliminate it from the repertoire of the self, to take back the energy spent on it and take up my wings, untethered to the tracks leading to an old station in life. But alas, I succumbed to the reconstruction of the walls of Logos, the protective rule of the father, enticed by the safety of the old familiar way, resulting in paradise lost. Thank God I woke up!

P.S.: As I conceived of this blog today, moving through the experiences of this past week, it never dawned on me that tomorrow is Father’s Day. There was no conscious intent to write on this topic, to highlight Father’s Day. I take that to mean that I was moved in this direction by the collective energy that marks the celebration of that day. In keeping with the intent of what I wrote, I wish you all a Happy Father’s Day! Whether we are male or female, our true father is the powerful father within us all, who exerts a tremendous influence upon the blueprint of our lives. To become fully conscious of the operation of this father principle within us is a worthy exercise for Father’s Day.

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: Dreaming the Eleventh Step—Inner Calm Knowing

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Rely on the self
the inner knowing.

The above was written in the middle of the night of November 3, 2009 when I was dreaming with the women seers of don Juan’s generation. This is what I wrote in my journal upon awakening the next morning: I was in a place of incredibly balanced calm where I totally understood, intuitively, what inner knowing meant. I was tapping into it and thoroughly enjoying the peacefulness of it. It was a struggle to write down what I was feeling, and what I should have written was lost because I took a long time to alert myself to the fact that I should write it down. Instead, I wrote the above, knowing full well that it did not capture the experience I was having nor the greater meaning of it. The feelings I was experiencing encompassed compassion, detachment, balance, utter calm and complete knowing — a total knowing with access to all knowledge, including the state I was in at the moment. I was able to stay in that state of utterness, of knowing with access to greater knowledge, simply because I could access inner calm. It is a place I want to stay in. It appears to be quite accessible, and I can get there by intent. Once there, all mysteries dissolve; everything is clearly known. (End of journal entry.)

I had channeled ten elements of a shamanic practice and when I wondered if there would be an eleventh I went into this calm inner world, which I believe was showing me what is achievable if the ten steps of shamanic awareness are practiced. I do not think I could have so easily reached this place of utter calm knowing if I had not learned and thoroughly processed the preceding ten steps. Furthermore, had I not done a pretty thorough recapitulation, I would not have been able to truly take in and assimilate those steps either because, as it turns out, they are all very pragmatic steps of the recapitulation process.

When I began my recapitulation nine years ago, I did not have any steps to follow, per se, but followed my own process as it unfolded, day by day, seeing where my body took me, what triggers arose, what synchronicities, dreams and experiences appeared to guide me, and what came to pull me back into my past. That was the process of recapitulation as I undertook it, guided by Chuck in this world and Jeanne in her world. It lasted for three full years and, in fact, to be truthful, it did not begin with the word recapitulation even being spoken, until I was deeply into the process.

The process unfolded as I learned to flow with it, and, as Chuck began to introduce me to the shamanic world, it became very clear that we were fully immersed in a recapitulation process. I say “we” because, although I alone took the journey, I was fully supported by Chuck and Jeanne, by their knowledge of the shamanic and spiritual experiences I was having. As I allowed myself to go deeper and deeper into experiences from childhood that had been completely blocked the recapitulation took on a life of its own, showing me how to gain access to all parts of myself, spiritual, physical, mental and emotional, through memories, dreams, flashbacks, visions, and experiences in this reality, in the past, and in other worlds.

A thorough recapitulation leads to wholeness, to integration of all aspects of self, and that leads to the place of utter calmness that I experienced in dreaming with the women seers that night. I longed to stay there, but eventually I woke up and had to leave it, but only for the moment. I knew I had that place of calmness inside me. I am never far from it; I just have to go there.

Next week, I will write about the twelfth and final step in developing a shamanic practice that I learning in my dreaming with the women seers.

Until then, keep dreaming, keep setting intent, and keep recapitulating!
Love,
Jan

NOTE: The day after I had this experience I posed a question to Jeanne in the channeling blog regarding it, which I link to here. She, in turn, offered the first of three steps in learning detachment, in an evolutionary sense.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Take Action

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Take action knowing that it is your move.
No one else is present in your life to take action or move for you.
Everything depends on you.
Do not look to others to resolve your dilemmas.
Your life is totally up to you and your actions.
Take action.

This is the tenth step in learning a shamanic practice, a practice that is pragmatic and helpful in learning to evolve, to keep going, to grow and to change, but also to learn to live in more than just this fixed and rational reality. I wrote the above in the middle of the night of November 2, 2009, after intending again to connect and dream with the women of don Juan’s generation of seers.

A shamanic practice revolves around becoming totally responsible for the self, for the past self and the future self, as well as for the self who strives for each moment to be one of awareness. As I have been relaying these shamanic steps in my blog over the past few weeks, I have been struck each week by the relationship each step has to recapitulation, perhaps the most important step, according to the seers, in really electing to change and grow.

In doing recapitulation, in seeking to fully know the self, these steps that I learned from the women seers become more than just pointers, they become a way of life. Until one is in the process of learning about the deeper self these steps may simply come across as good ideas or thoughts that make sense in everyday life, but they blossom into true steps of growth when one begins the process of recapitulation with intent, with unbending intent. It is through experiencing each of these steps, through taking a personal journey into the darkness of the self, that these ideas ultimately make total, practical sense.

A recapitulation can take place through many means. One of them is to simply allow the self to go back into memories, to feel, see and experience them as if reliving them once again and then to go back again and again, going deeper and deeper each time. In looking from a different perspective each time, a personal experience may be revealed as it had actually happened rather than as it had been consciously remembered. When memories are revisited in a state of heightened awareness, new clarity and insight may be gained where before there may have been only vagueness or just a shadowy sense that something was not quite right, or there may have been no memory at all because it was effectively blocked by the psyche.

In memories, painful experiences may be replaced with less offensive stories. Safe or pleasant memories may be construed in order to alleviate the full force of the true and often brutal memories. In essence, selective memories can make us feel safe and okay, though they are not the whole truth. The truth often lies deeply hidden. In my own case, I was nagged by incessant feelings that something was wrong with me, but I was not able to fully access what that meant until I was ready and able to handle it.

Recapitulation, as Chuck mentioned in a recent blog, is a volitional action that happens when we are ready. Somewhere along our journeys, our psyche and our body determine that the time is now and prepares us for the moment. When we are thrown or drawn into recapitulation, some deeper part of us is ready, and it is asking us to shift.

In recapitulation, I did learn that I was totally responsible for everything about myself and that if I did not make a move to help myself then nothing would happen to change me or my life. And as I worked through what that meant, in light of where I was at the time and what I had to remember about my past, it empowered me, diminishing my reliance on others and my reliance on staying stuck in certain familiar modes, repeating the same habits and staying in a world that never changed. Although I considered that world to be rather safe, it was not until I was well into my recapitulation that I discovered that it was, in fact, a world of fear that I kept such control of by retreating, withdrawing and hiding, by making safe choices, so that I did not have to confront anything that made me afraid or uncomfortable. In spite of having lived a very full life in many ways, achieving a measure of success, I still had not resolved the inner dilemmas, of what was wrong with me, of why I felt so powerless and unsafe. What was I really afraid of?

So, I would have to say that I did not feel truly safe in this world until I had done a recapitulation of a world that lay hidden deeply inside me. It was purposely hidden so that I could grow up, maintain sanity, and mature into adulthood. I was protected from it long enough to prepare to return, when the time was right, and look with the eyes of an adult at what had happened to me in my past. In returning, I was afforded the opportunity to learn what it really means to take responsibility for the self, for the cards dealt, for the circumstances of life, and to regain the power that I had lost along the way. It took breaking many vows of silence, many pacts, and it also took facing the darkness within, the stuff that had followed me around for a long, long time, just waiting for me to return and remember what it was all about.

So, in the final lesson to “take action,” the women seers are also suggesting that it is our choice to evolve, to change, and to recapitulate too. We are all afforded many opportunities to practice such steps. We read our books and chant our mantras. We do our yoga and meditate ourselves into calmness, but until we really take action on our own behalf, and face our fears, we are just waiting for something or someone outside of us to change, when it is what is inside us that is asking for change. At least, that has been my experience.

Until next week,
Love,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

#685 Chuck’s Place: Boroughs & Bridges to the Truth

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America eagerly awaits its new Idol: Will it be Crystal; will it be Lee? The Tea Partyers eagerly await the opportunity to “throw the bums out” in the midterm elections. We breathe easier because the solid Admiral of the Coast Guard is overseeing BP. Natural gas companies are seizing the moment; offering the “safe” alternative to oil. After all, they blast 7,000 feet beneath the earth’s surface; how could that possibly effect the drinking water, or the cows pasturing on the farms above? Meanwhile, somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, one mile (5280 feet) beneath the earth, the oil continues to flow, unabated. Fortunately, we are “right on schedule” for a final capping off of the pipe, some time in August. There is evidence now that the oil has caught the current and is showing up on the coast of Florida, the same current that flows up the eastern seaboard. Naturally, specimens are being “properly analyzed” to verify their point of origin. Thank God for science!

From a different perspective, I view this broadening, enveloping nigredo, as black gold, perhaps the real next American Idol; the one we will learn to appreciate the most. The tragedy to the seas, to the habitats of many, including our own, is now threatened at an unstoppable pace. Nature itself has taken over now, demanding that we embrace the truth. It is downright heartbreaking to see the amount of destruction to innocent sea life. The entire food chain will be poisoned as a result of this catastrophe and the impact will be felt by all living things. It is evident that the human race, left to its own devices, refuses to face the truth of its destructive behavior to the planet. I call the nigredo “black gold” because it represents, through the magnitude of its destruction, our path to redemption. It is not just a “good” thing that we check our greed, become humble, and assume responsibility for maintaining balance in this world; it is the only means of survival. It is not about convincing anyone or overpowering resistance. Nature has lost her patience; if we don’t capitulate, we perish.

The water, from which we are all born, which sustains all life, will now poison life, until we face the error of our ways and change our gluttonous attitudes toward the planet. But do not despair! Change is on the horizon. No longer must we sit idly by in powerlessness as the forces of greed dominate the show. Nature is on board now, in a big way. Stay aligned with the truth, your inner truth, and join your intent with this evolutionary process, facing and embracing all our planetary truths, which are, from an energetic perspective, “right on schedule.”

Keeping with the themes of water and nature, I turn now more personal, to dreams from my life around the Isle of Manhattan.

In countless dreams, I am lost in the Bronx searching for the bridge to Manhattan. Eventually, I find the bridge. However, it is generally at various stages of disrepair, or under construction, or being dangerously flooded with enormous waves crashing over it as it sways in the wind. Sometimes, I am lost in Brooklyn, unsure of the direction to Manhattan or which subway to take. Occasionally, the current is calm and I can swim across the river.

My psyche, the self, the spinner of dreams, has chosen New York City, with all of its boroughs and bridges, to show me both the fragmentation within my psyche, the location of untapped resources or possibilities, and the status of my ability to both tap into and integrate them.

Psychic fragmentation is often caused by traumatic experiences where parts of the self are cut off from the mainstream conscious self and forced to exist in unknown isolated islands, like, let’s say, Staten Island. Who even knows anything about Staten Island, or conceives of it as being part of New York City? So forgotten are they, complain Staten Islanders, that they have even considered secession from the union of New York City.

Psychic fragmentation can also be the result of socialization, where unacceptable parts of the self are repressed, never allowed access to conscious life; in the place Jung called the shadow. Perhaps these parts are stored in another borough of New York City, such as in Brooklyn or the Bronx.

Finally, there are parts of the self that have simply yet to emerge, yet to be activated, yet to be discovered in life. These resources may also be stored in the outlying boroughs, perhaps in Queens, a royal borough.

The process of individuation is the challenge to gain access to, to claim and integrate, all the boroughs of the self into a conscious unified whole. Integration requires a network of connections that allow easy access to all the boroughs, hence the significance of the condition of the bridges in my dreams. Psychotherapy is the process of building solid bridges to all parts of the self.

The seers of don Juan’s line introduced the process of recapitulation, of reliving one’s life, in order to reclaim all vital energy lost to prior experiences, or that which is lodged in the outlying boroughs. Furthermore, they introduced learning to shift the assemblage point, what they call our major point of awareness, to different positions within our energetic selves to access the fuller possibilities of our innate potential. Their techniques to create this shift are:

1. recapitulation, where we volitionally shift the assemblage point to a different place of awareness, that of forgotten or repressed aspects of life experiences;

2. dreaming, where the assemblage point loosens as the conscious ego relaxes its hold on our point of awareness;

3. stalking, where we shift the assemblage point through volitionally interrupting our habitual patterns by acting-as-if, or by practicing not-doings; and

4. intent, where we access the power of intent to shift our point of awareness simply through intending it.

Both psychotherapy and the practices of the seers offer tools to individuate and actualize the full potential of the self. But remember, union requires open bridges to all boroughs, access to all parts of the self. It requires truthfulness and clarity, without deception or hidden agendas; no cover-ups or idolizations, no capping off of any parts of the self that are spewing black gold until you get the message and take appropriate action. In order to stand in the fullness of self, we must allow nature itself to take over, inner and outer, integrating it with what we already know about the self. The natural flow of events and consequences in our lives, even the nigredo, are integral to this evolutionary process.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck