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A Day in a Life: Going Beyond the Ego

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Last fall, on the night of October 23, 2009, I asked the women shamans to give me guidance once again while dreaming. I placed the dreaming pillow on my lower abdomen, over the area of the uterus, and asked them to come to me in the night. “I would like to know the next step in learning to become a shaman,” I intended, as I went to sleep. When I woke in the morning I saw that I had written, in big cryptic dream writing, having successfully roused myself out of deep dreaming enough to pick up my pen, the following sentence: My own need to resolve must guide me to redemption beyond the self.

Upon awakening the next morning, I wrote this in my journal:

After I wrote that in the middle of the night I lay back down and thought: Oh, dissolution of ego self is the next step; resolution of all deeper issues related to the ego. Once again I wrote in a half-awake state, but this time there was no inner battle, no laziness. I simply said: Write this down, and I reached for my book, sat up, wrote it and then lay back down without the usual thoughts that of course I would remember it. This step is the recapitulation step. In recapitulating all inner issues all ego resolves as well, because during recapitulation the ego is dismantled. Redemption, true redemption, is completely ego-free. It is a spiritual state of being, of nothingness. Redemption lies beyond all earthly attachments, ego or otherwise, revolving around the self as special or important. To resolve all needs of self is really an inner desire to evolve. In recapitulation one is confronted with what the inner needs are, with what needs to be resolved. The challenge is to release the self to take the recapitulation journey. Getting beyond the self, both the inner needs and outer needs and desires, etc., to a place of utter calm detachment from self is redemption; it is freedom. (End of journal entry.)

Once again, I am struck by the synchronicity of this blog with what Chuck wrote about on Saturday regarding the warrior’s ultimate challenge, which is to lose self-importance. If we stay within the teachings of the shamanic world we are constantly confronted with this idea that, although we are taught to live our lives a certain way by everyone we encounter as we grow and mature into adulthood, once we get there we are often at a loss for what to do with our lives. It was not until I began the deeply challenging process of recapitulation that I began to decide that who I was really was totally up to me to determine. Until then I had lived within a code of acceptable behaviors, pursuing a life that I thought was right, by someone else’s standards, though at the same time I fought deeply within myself over this capitulation, telling myself that I was different, special, talented, creative, any number of attributes and qualities to keep my ego happy. However, once I entered the shaman’s world, under Chuck’s tutelage, everything changed. I began to see the world from a different perspective, but the funny thing was that I also immediately recognized it; it was somehow familiar. When Chuck talks and writes of the shamans he is referring to the shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s line. In the early seventies, when I first read Castaneda’s three early books, I had the same sense of familiarity with the experiences and worlds he entered, though I could not call up from my deeply buried unconscious what that meant. I knew I was not ready for it, though I had an inkling that someday I would come back to it in some form. Now I have been privileged to experience recapitulation and, as Chuck writes about the world of the warriors shattering as they leave their human form, I too have experienced that shattering. In the process of recapitulation, our own world, as we know it, is shattered.

I have also learned that the recapitulation process is a lifelong process, but, once willingly engaged in, it becomes fascinating. At least that has been my experience. Now, having already shifted my perspective on how I view and react to the world, I recall and relive events from my past with a different attitude, more detached and curious than frightened or ashamed. I would not have been able to achieve this had I not accepted the appointment with my unconscious and unrelenting inner self who, after fifty years of trying to tell me that I had to do an inner journey, was finally paid attention to. And what made me finally pay attention? Well, a lot of things, but mostly it was the restlessness that constantly drove me to seek change, to move, to do something, anything, to calm the unrelenting sense that there was something deeply wrong. Finally the restlessness broke through and I couldn’t stop it this time. I knew I couldn’t uproot my family and make one more drastic move. I knew that this time I alone had to change. I alone had to tackle what it was that would not leave me in peace. This was about me, I finally realized, no one else, and I had to have the courage to face myself. I alone had to enter into my hidden self and ask all the questions that needed to be asked, and to allow the answers to come from deep inside me, pushing aside the normal judgments and the flippant remarks that had sufficed up until then.

When I began my inner journey I didn’t even know what a journey was, much less what a recapitulation was. I knew what a life journey was, but I didn’t know what an inner journey, a spiritual journey was, though I had lived a deeply introverted, creative life. I didn’t really know what a shaman was, either. I was curious about all those words that held such mystery, but the true meaning of them was not to come easy. Until I took the journey that my unconscious self had been pushing me toward nothing would make sense in a real way. Everything would remain as illusive as the works of Castaneda until I elected to go beyond the world as I had always viewed it and lived it and decided to go on an adventure of a lifetime.

Thanks for listening to my dreaming and awake experiences. I offer my process, without attachment, I think, purely as an example of what can happen once the decision is made to go in a different direction. At one time, I was one of the most fearful people you could ever have met, appearing quite calm and advanced on the outside, aloof and flowing when comfortable, but utterly terrified on the inside, always aware that the world was not to be trusted, not safe. Facing my fears was quite a process. I know many who are in the midst of charting their way through their own fears now, and I know it is difficult, but I also know that at each step the burden lightens, the fears fall away, the judgments dissipate. Each step of the past and of the journey, the old one and the new one, become understood as totally valid and necessary. Each step is freeing. Each step leads to redemption of self, from attachment to ego. But the first step must, as the women shamans told me in my dream last fall, come from the inner need to resolve the issues of the self. That is the impetus that must finally be invited in to dismantle the old structures that uphold the old self, the old world, the human form that does not really want to live that way any more.

Until next week. Keep dreaming with intent!
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Dream Teaching

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I woke up this morning and said: “I was being taught all night long.”

“What do you mean, you were being taught?” Chuck asked.

“I was being taught something all night long in dreaming, the same thing repeatedly, but now I can’t remember what it was!” I whined. “Maybe I can call it up later, I’m pretty good at that,” I said, as I fought to hold onto what had vanished as soon as I opened my eyes. Synchronistically, this is exactly what happened last October when I was dreaming with the women shamans, asking them to teach me how to become a shaman and it is what I had been planning to write about today. So, wouldn’t you know, I had another experience to underscore the process of learning to become a shaman. Here is the experience I had last fall, as I wrote about it in my journal on October 23, 2009:

Dreaming was not as successful last night, though I asked for the next step in shamanic practice. Once again I put the dreaming pillow on my lower abdomen before I fell asleep. Whatever I got had something to do with the self, both the body self and the ego self, but it was not clear. Ironically, I fought with my body throughout the night, too lazy to sit up, reach for my notebook and write down what I was getting, clear or not.

“Write it down!” I commanded my sleeping self, but then I would argue: “It’s not clear!”

“Write it anyway!” I retaliated, but still I was too lazy to do so. I figured I would remember it, which I have failed to do, except knowing that it had something to do with the self. Perhaps it was about aligning the body self with the intent to do the work. The lazy body obviously got in my way last night. I will have to give it another go tonight and hopefully I will not have the same issue to contend with, my lazy self. Pretty interesting, I must say!

Later in the day I wrote the following:

Okay, so I get that I was confronted with my lazy self and that is my current challenge. This lazy self must be confronted in order to keep moving forward. This is the avoidant self, the reluctant self, the fearful self, but she is not as strong as she used to be. Now she is more like a slug in the way, not much energy, but still present and capable of sabotaging my progress. This sluggish self was, at one time, the depressed, traumatized self, immobilized by fear and unavailable to truly live until the trauma had been realized. In the old days, before I recapitulated, I remained caught in two worlds, never quite present in either, but now that I am awake I must remain awake and alert. The old sluggish self still tests me as she did last night while dreaming. I argued with her. Contending with this self is the third step in the practice of shamanic work, the whole physical self: the conscious mental self, the body self, the conjuring mind self, the ego self, but I see it as all related to the ingrained comforts of the physical body, the lazy self. (End of journal entry.)

My experience last night was very similar to that of last October. I still have my notebook open beside me as I sleep, a pen stuck into the page and all I have to do is lean over, pick up the pen and begin writing. I argued with myself again last night, thinking in dreaming that of course I would remember, I always remember, I’m good at that. All aspects of the physical self were present again last night, teaching me a valuable lesson; the conjuring mind, the ego self, the lazy physical self all in cahoots to show me that something else is necessary in order to truly do shamanic work, and that is: to get beyond the limitations of the physical self, which will always seek to remain dominant.

The other thing that strikes me today is that the two previous lessons that I learned in dreaming were also in play last night and in my dream of last October too. I was being shown again the workings of the two minds, the conjuring mind and the inner knowing mind that argue incessantly. I knew I should write down what I was getting on both occasions, but I could not get beyond the ego, which upheld its superiority. “Don’t worry Jan,” my ego self said, “you’ll remember!” The second lesson, the value of repetition, was also in action. In both instances I dreamed the same thing, over and over again, but since I also argued with my physical self, I failed miserably to recall what the lessons were. Once again, as I had done last October, I woke up this morning holding onto the fact that I was missing, because of my laziness, a very valuable lesson, but now I see the real lesson as being the repetitive, night-long fight between the two minds. The knowing mind was seeking to wake me up, asking me to shift out of the old lazy self and allow the new disciplined self to take over and push the ego, the conjuring mind, and the lazy physical self out of the way.

Alas! Now I understand the true value of repetition: to force a shift. But shift will only happen when we are ready; when we finally get just what it is that we are being taught or asked to do, when we have repeated the same lessons to the point of mundanity and boredom, until we say, hey, there must be more to life than just this same old stuff! And in the shamanic world the action of shifting is not an action of the conjuring mind, except in learning to know it, in understanding how it works to hold us in our old places, in our lazy body selves, in our comforts, in our egos, in our old places of trauma, until we have learned what they have been trying to wake us up to, in dreaming or in waking life. Pushing ourselves beyond the limitations of the physical, mind or otherwise, is the next step in learning to become a shaman.

Know your enemy. Know your mind, know your ego, know your limitations and then push beyond them. Wake up and remember! These are the real lessons in awareness that I have been taught by the women shamans. Whether you are interested in the shamanic world or not, awareness is the true key to evolving, in this world and in the next. Once again, this is all related to the practice of recapitulation too. The steps I have learned from the women shamans of don Juan’s line are steps in undertaking the process of fully understanding the self, because, in actuality, you have to understand and know the self in order to understand the shaman’s world and be able to maneuver in it. It is the same thing that we will be confronted with when we die. We must be prepared to maneuver in a world where we will no longer have a physical self to rely on, to blame, or to trust. No comforts of the physical will be available. Only our energy bodies will be available, and how will we fare if we do not know them?

Next week, I will bring you the fourth step in the process of shamanic work that I learned in dreaming with the dreamers. Until then, watch out for the conjuring mind! Pay attention to what the body is repeatedly attempting to say instead, as Jeanne suggests in her lessons in inner work; go deeper into the body self. Pay attention to the earthquakes within, as she mentioned in her message on Monday. The body holds more in its silent sinews than you know. And then go beyond to the energy that lives inside that lazy physical house of self and invite it to emerge from its sleepy state and enjoy a little of the energy of the spring with you!
With love and humble attempts to remain aware,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: The Value of Repetition

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Today, I continue writing about my dreaming experiences with the women shamans of don Juan’s line, which I began blogging about last week in Being-in-Dreaming. But first, I must mention that I am struck by the synchronicity of Jeanne’s message on Monday as related to the process I am writing about. Even though my dreaming experiences took place several months ago, as I write about them now Jeanne’s weekly messages seem to be in synch. These evolved beings, the women shamans and Jeanne, are really all talking about the same thing: the process of recapitulation.

As regards Jeanne, I refer to the three stages of detachment reaction that she spoke of the other day as being essential during the process of recapitulation. During my own recapitulation I learned to step back and view how I normally reacted to the events in my life. As the process of recapitulation unfolded I learned that my first reaction, to a memory for instance, always needed to be challenged. Even though I was initially confronted with very familiar, comfortable and conventional responses, I had to find out where they came from. Did they really come from me or were they from something I had been taught, heard, or assimilated from outside of myself, perhaps falsely? Were they spoken in someone else’s voice, having absolutely nothing to do with me? Was I just mimicking something I had not really ever questioned? Was I being judgmental, dismissive, or prejudiced? Was I operating out of fear, denial, or self-pity? Was I getting the memory right from my perspective or was it from someone else’s perspective, long ago ingrained?

The second level, going deeper into the self, was a lesson in finding my own voice, connecting to my own truths and learning to pay attention to them. This level involved interacting with a different me, discovering that I really was that someone inside I had always known existed but never really allowed to be fully present. This was the level of waking that self up and allowing her to speak, allowing her to relive the past, fully aware now, without the veils, the conventions, the old voices. This was the process of continually pushing away the old ideas of self, facing the petty tyrants, and staying connected to the inner self, no matter how painful, how frightening, how annihilating. This was the process of forging a new connection to the inner self and allowing the old self to slowly break down, no longer useful or necessary, as eventually my world changed along with me and the old self became the one who didn’t fit, who didn’t feel right anymore.

By going to the third level that Jeanne spoke of, to utter calm certainty of self, I was able to recapitulate fully and truthfully, detached from the conjuring mind, accessing the knowing mind that I wrote about last week. By achieving this deeper place of recapitulation I was able to fully own my life, my experiences, my actions and reactions, taking them on as my personal truths and experiences, full of meaning for me as an evolving being, detached from expectations and judgments of self and others. From this place I was able to go even deeper, into the unknown that lies beyond the self.

So, you might see, as I suggest, that the first message in dreaming that I received from the women shamans was that first level of reaction that Jeanne suggests we must confront in ourselves, because this is the step in learning to distinguish between the two minds, the outer conventional voices and the inner true voice. Today, I address the second level that Jeanne mentions, which is right in alignment with my second night of dreaming with the women shamans, which I wrote about in my journal on October 22, 2009, as follows:

Once again I asked the female shamans to teach me something in dreaming. Once again I placed the dreaming pillow on my lower abdomen and I asked to be taught the next step in learning to be a shaman and this is what I got (which I wrote in my journal while sleeping, in automatic writing):

The value of repetition.
That which appears
boring and mundane
holds the key to
something important.
Do not dismiss
any signs. (End of journal entry.)

Repetition is one of the facets of recapitulation that I found most annoying. However, going over a memory or studying a behavior countless times, to the point of boredom, was a most essential process. It not only neutralized the memory or behavior, but allowed me to further gain access to the new me. By constantly confronting the old me, the old petty tyrants, the old memories, the old behaviors and feelings, the old ideas of self and others; by constantly reasserting that I was no longer there, no longer that person, no longer thinking, acting, behaving in the old manner and, yes, by facing my own boring self over and over again, I gained surer footing in the new me.

In that second level of reaction, as Jeanne calls it, the women shamans contend that we will find that which is the key to the self. This is the part of the process where we make the connection to our potential self. This is our awakening step, where, as the new self begins to emerge and we chip away at the old self and the old world, we are granted glimpses of what is to come. It is only through repetition, in making the same mistakes countless times until we are totally bored by them, that we truly will change. I learned that change does not happen over night, that it takes a lot of work. It takes daring. It takes confronting the old self, the old petty tyrants, the old conjurers in our midst, facing our issues until we are done with them, completely and fully.

This part of the recapitulation process is where the bulk of the work is done. It is where we meet ourselves in our most vulnerable, our most fearful, our most confused, our most false and our most truthful states. It is where we face our petty tyrants over and over again. It is where we discover who we have become and who we might become in the future if we dare to keep going. If we can do as the women shamans instruct and value the repetition of our lives and our recapitulation process, repeatedly facing even the most boring and mundane of issues regarding ourselves, we will discover the key to where we are going, to something important about ourselves.

In fact, if we can stay with the process of life itself, and not dismiss any signs, but value everything that comes to us, even our need to continually stay in old places, old relationships, old habits, old patterns of behavior we offer ourselves the opportunity to change. And when we are ready to fully recapitulate, we discover that the key is within. To each of us that key offers deep personal meaning, personal revelation, and personal experiences that have the potential to take us far beyond this world, to better balance between worlds, to grant us the daring to keep exploring our selves and all that this world truly holds.

Next week, I will write again about my dreaming experiences with the women shamans. It will also be interesting to see what Jeanne offers us next week, and Chuck too in his blog this week. We tend to speak on similar topics, though without forethought or planning. It’s just the way it works!

Dream, do inner work, ask for help. As you can see, I always seem to get exactly what I ask for, though it may not arrive in the form I imagine. If you care to comment, please feel free.
Love,
Jan

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A Day in a Life: Being-in-Dreaming

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Back in October and November 2009 I began re-reading the works of Florinda Donner Grau and Taisha Abelar, two of the women sorcerers who learned from the same line of shamans as Carlos Castaneda. The women were taught primarily by the women shamans or sorceresses of don Juan’s lineage, while Carlos was taught primarily by the male shamans, though not exclusively. I have wanted to go back to my experiences of last fall because I had some very interesting dream channelings while in the midst of reading about these women. Today, I begin passing along some of those experiences. As I re-read my dreaming experiences I found them fascinating all over again and I hope you too will find something of significance. I also think that some of these experiences tie in with Chuck’s blog regarding becoming a warrior.

On October 14, 2009 I wrote the following in my journal: Yesterday, while reading Being-in-Dreaming by Florinda Donner Grau, I came upon a passage where her dream teacher tells her that all women must turn back into the cage that is inside them to fully discover who they are. I was struck by this mention of the inner cage because Jeanne used it as a metaphor for doing inner work in her message on Monday October 12, 2009: Why Must You Return to Your Cage. As I read this book I am also struck by how familiar what I am reading is and how much sense it makes to me at this time in my life. I have been a dreamer all my life and, as Jeanne always says and did in that Monday message, the challenge is to be a dreamer with awareness. Last night I dreamed of hiking along a crowded path and it seems related to this reading I have been doing, that I am coming out of the crowd now and going in a new direction, on my own. I am fascinated by this process. (End of journal entry.)

Later that day, in the same book, I read about don Juan telling Florinda (though she is not aware of who he is) that the crows flying overhead were a good omen, and to see them as a promise that they would meet again. He described the crows flying as like a painting in the sky (p. 65). The very next day a blue jay appears to me. At first, I assume he is admiring his own reflection in the glass sliding door, but then, as he flies up to the window a second and then a third time, as if to be sure I notice, and as he spreads his wings before me and hovers there for what seems like a long time, I am reminded of what I had recently read. I take it as an omen. In Ted Andrews book Animal Speak I read that the blue jay represents the choice of being a dabbler in the world of spirit and magic or of fully going for it and embracing it and becoming it. I am often afraid of what I will encounter when I channel, fearing that I will fail or that nothing will come, though in the end I do plunge boldly ahead, even though I may be uncertain. Fully becoming and embracing this new me has been a struggle. As I leave behind the old me I must encounter my fears. At the same time, I do not want to be a dabbler. I understood that the blue jay was challenging me to be bold and to love my spiritually evolving self.

At this point, I knew that I had to find a way into the shaman’s world. Instinctively, I knew that I had been in it for a very long time, but that it was time to be in it with greater awareness. A couple of days later I finished reading Being-in-Dreaming and decided to experiment with dreaming. That night, as I lay down to sleep, I took a small round flat dreaming bag, a heavy bean bag type leather pillow about three inches in diameter that Jeanne had gotten at a Tensegrity workshop, and placed it on my lower abdomen, over my uterus. The female shamans say that a woman’s energy is in her womb and that this is dreaming energy. The pillow/bag is an anchor and may also stimulate dreaming, as I see it. My intent was to call the women shamans to me, to have an experience of them, to learn something from them. I had a few dreams right away. I was aware that I was quickly in and out of dreams and that they were different somehow from other dreams.

The next night, I went to sleep with the same intent, to learn something from the women sorceresses and I had this dream: I am at a spa, a place of healing. Part of the healing treatment is sitting in huge hot tubs, old-fashioned concrete slab tubs. I take off my clothes to get into the tub that has been prepared for me when I look around and recognize other people, including a big heavy-set man, a very enthusiastic, good natured, happy man with a lot of energy who I do not know personally but I have seen him around. When this man comes into the room I pull a towel over me because I am naked. My dreaming self does not give a hoot, but my awake dreaming self cares very much. My daughter is also there. She is talking with this man and then I see her going off with him. In the dream I make no judgments about this, but my awake self in the dream wonders what he wants with her, a young girl. When he leaves with my daughter I get into the hot tub to soak. There are other women in the room also soaking in their own individual tubs. It is very calming. My dreaming self makes note of my daughter walking off with the large man towering over her. There is no fear on her part and my dreaming self does not attach, but my awake dreaming self conjures up scenarios and suspicions. I am of two minds. My dreaming detached self has absolutely no attachment to it, not even that it is okay; it just takes note, without opinion. My awake dreaming self immediately gets suspicious and fearful that the guy is up to no good.

When I woke up I was immediately struck by the fact that I had both aspects of mind in the same dream: the conjuring mind and the totally detached mind. They were present in my two selves: my dreaming nonjudgmental detached self and my judgmental attached fearful self. I realized that I was being given a lesson in learning the distinct difference between the knowing mind, the inner knowing self, and the rational, conjuring mind, the ego self. In the dream my inner knowing mind was utterly calm, flowing, accepting and fully acquiescing to everything that unfolded, without attachment or judgment. The conjuring mind, on the other hand, was totally attached, assessing, creating scenarios, busy, preoccupied with imagining all sorts of things. The inner knowing had absolutely no attachment; it was simply present, observant yet knowing that what is simply is.

Upon awakening, I realized that fully experiencing the difference between these two minds was the first lesson in understanding the shaman’s world. In the late afternoon that same day a swarm of wasps hung over the front yard, dancing, twirling, tiny buzzing ballerinas, their legs dangling as they calmly swirled in the sunlight beneath the pine trees. I was struck by their beauty and mass of calm energy, lightly present, barely making a stir. The next morning a flock of large blackbirds flitted about in the same place, holding together in a wave of busy movement, noisy, pecking in the leaves on the ground, chirping loudly, clumsy compared to the wasps, and as they took flight with a sharp loud motion they became a dark angle, a shadow painting whirring in one sweep across the sky, perhaps a sign of more to come as don Juan had suggested to Florinda. At the same time I wondered if perhaps those two sights represented the two minds: the calm and quietly flowing wasps as the detached knowing mind, and the loud blackbirds as the attached conjuring mind. As I write this today, I am also struck by the distinct energy of each of these, the feminine energy of the wasps and the masculine energy of the blackbirds, two energies that we each have inside us. We are encouraged to access and utilize these energies, both by the shamans and by doing deep inner work in Jungian psychotherapy.

As the blackbirds flew off, I sat and ate my breakfast feeling happy and contented, knowing that I was ready to more fully enter the shaman’s world. I had set my intent to take up the challenge of the blue jay and now I knew that, in my dreams, I would be shown what that meant. As I proceeded with this process of dreaming intent in the weeks to follow I received some interesting guidance from the women sorceresses, which I will write more about next time. In the meantime, enjoy the spring, look for signs, ask for help and do the inner work. Oh, and of course: DREAM!
Love,
Jan

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