Good Morning! A new day and a new week full of adventure begins! May today’s message aid you on your journey. It’s really Monday March 24, 2014 and not the 23rd as I incorrectly stated in the recording. I take that as a personal message to be careful of what I say, to have the facts right and to not speak until I do! May your own process unfold well!
Here is the message:
An eager workshop attendee once asked the Nagual, Carlos Castaneda, “Should we recapitulate what’s happening right now?” Carlos hesitated, then said softly, “Not yet,” with no further explanation. I knew in that moment that Carlos was saying that the luster of the myth we were all participating in would fade once recapitulated. He wanted us to enjoy the energy we were in for just a while longer. Isn’t that what we all seek when we fall in love, to enjoy the energy of it just a little while longer?
The truth is that once we have sat upon the immovable spot, as we sit beneath the Bodhi tree of our recapitulation, the energy and allure of the old illusions are released from our newly enlightened selves. We are freed from the terror, longing, and both negative and positive beliefs of old energetic attachments. We are able to walk out of the myths that once governed our lives into whole new worlds of possibility, real worlds of possibility.
Carl Jung recognized that all lives embody a core myth. If we look around to the cast of characters we were born into and the formative events of our lives, we can begin to identify the myth we were born into. Perhaps it’s our karmic challenge to solve a problem that has held us in check for eons. How could it be possible to be freed to new life if we have not cracked the nut of an old problem—our mythical nemesis? There is no escape from an unsolved problem; we continue to meet it everywhere. If we are convinced that we are unlovable, no amount of attention will convince us otherwise. If we are to be loved, we must first free ourselves of our attachment to the myth of the ugly duckling.
This requires recapitulation. We must be able to be present to all the truths to free ourselves from the myth we have been captivated by. Those truths might include that the mythic giants who conceived of us in this life were, indeed, quite flawed mortals without a clue. We’re all equals now, outside the myth of familial promise in the nursery; equal beings who are going to die; equal beings trying to crack the mystery of our myths, seeking new—real—adult life.
The violent, unrefined destructive energies of new life are boiling beneath the surface of spring. Birth is an aggressive, violent process—let’s bust any romantic myth to the contrary right now. The energies of earth quake beneath the surface, the intensities of storm surround us. Right now, at spring’s awakening, we all sit upon the immovable spot.
If there is to be new life, the rigid ground of myths that no longer channel life must be cracked. New life promises Abundance, the 3 of Cups, the first Tarot card that I pulled on the first day of spring as I contemplated writing this blog. However, the rigid structures, the myths we have clung to, must be sacrificed, the Hanged Man, the second card I pulled. We must allow our ego attachments, the myths we cling to, to be busted by the living waters rushing beneath the surface. Like a crucified being, we must sit upon the immovable spot of recapitulation that will allow the truths to set us free to new life. To achieve this we must allow for clear and truthful communication, The Magus, the third card I pulled, the winged messenger of Mercury, to deliver the truth clearly, to allow the Rites of Spring to be performed, busting through the old myths, bringing new life in abundance.
Mythbusting,
Chuck
We’ve had some warmer days, hints of spring in the air. The snow is melting. I can actually see some brown grass and the earth that has been buried under two feet of snow for so long, now ready to receive some sunlight. The red wing blackbirds are back. The robins are mating. The bluebirds are flitting about. Nests are being constructed. There is movement in the air around us, stirrings of new life. It’s time for us to stir ourselves out of our winter habitats and habits. Time to get our flow on. Time to get our glow on.
During my recapitulation, I discovered that even a tiny physical shift could change my perspective, my attitude, my dreams. Simply rolling over in bed at night and sleeping on a different side or in a different position would often mean the difference between waking up in dark moodiness or light exhilaration. Not only that, but my dreams changed from nightmares to positive experiences, my mental outlook shifted, and my creative energy revved. Movement, I soon discovered was the main key to shifting my process in a new direction. Though I often felt that my recapitulation was in control, I discovered that I had plenty of control over my life in simply making a decision to move. Movement became a major factor in creating a new reality for myself.
From the time I was a kid, I noticed that when I was active I had better energy. Running around, playing tag, dancing, swimming, all caused my depression to lift and I’d feel alive. Soon however, I’d return to the sedentariness of my shyness, my perceived inadequacies and my sense of self-worthlessness. The glow dimmed as the depression swept in again and took me back into its numb world.
It took me years to even realize that I was depressed, and more years than that to realize that something else besides my own inability to be happy on command lay behind it. Now I view my past as my catalyst to new life, not in a negative way at all, but really a lifelong companion seeking to wake me up and get me moving. Now I move into the flow of life with renewed energy, with a far broader outlook. I see things differently now. I’ve got my flow on and where my depression used to be, my glow walks beside me now.
Even in the darkest of winter and on the coldest of days, Chuck and I bundle up and take a walk, shaking up our molecules and getting our energy vibrating. The way we feel is directly tied to our physical bodies. We can partake in changing things for ourselves by paying attention to what happens when we sit and then when we move.
We can notice that when we’re sedentary our energy sits right down beside us and takes a break. But if we’re active, our energy pops right up and gets happier, more creative, has a fresher outlook on life overall. When we’re more active we begin to see things differently and life comes to greet us in a different way too.
Sometimes just getting some fresh air into our lungs is all we need to get us flowing more naturally and easily with what life brings us. And once we get ourselves moving, we do get our glow on!
Here is a link to the beautiful Melanie singing: Babe Rainbow
Looking forward to spring!
Jan
Here is the channeled message for this week! As Jeanne points out, stay innerly calm and focused, and wait for messages from the deeper self before taking action. Sounds like great advice!
While reading Felix Wolf’s The Art of Navigation, I’m ignited with sudden clarity regarding cognitive dissonance. Describing it to Jan, I crisscross my arms overhead in an abrupt gesture to demonstrate the clash of dissonant energetic currents. At the exact second that my arms cross in the air above my head, loud crashes impact each of the two large living room windows. A cardinal hits one, a blue jay the other. Momentarily stunned, they each fall to the ground and then fly off. I took this dramatic synchronous event as a sign to write this blog.
Felix Wolf, a fellow traveler whom I’ve never met, has also deeply immersed himself in the shamanic world of Carlos Castaneda. Though Carlos ended his shamanic line, the energetic permutations of his knowledge vibrate in new ways throughout the world. For Felix it has emerged as the art of navigation, for me it has been the clinical application of recapitulation.
What comes alive for me in Felix’s writing is the emphasis the Nagual, Carlos Castaneda, put on using cognitive dissonance to achieve the coveted state of inner silence, the springboard to infinity. Carlos explained that the mind, with its modus operandi of rationality, constructs a world with a river of energy that flows in one direction only, its true north being reason. Our internal dialogue, the flow of thoughts in our minds, groups its interpretations of reality along this flow of rationality. What the mind can’t handle is the experience of a thought, fact or event that flows in the opposite direction of its reason. When that happens there is an interruption in the operations of the mind that lands us momentarily into a state of inner silence.
In inner silence we are treated to perceptions devoid of inner dialogue, devoid of the mind’s normal interpretative system. For a moment we step outside the incessant internal dialogue box of the matrix into a world of energy. Joseph Campbell once wrote: “Every now and then, while I’m walking along Fifth Avenue, everything just breaks up into subatomic particles and I think, ‘Well, Jesus Christ, that is what it is.'”
When I was in my very early twenties, Jeanne and I, still in our young marriage, lived and worked in Manhattan. Jeanne, employed by an international importer, had met a young man at a trade show and was smitten with attraction. The depth of her feeling did not go away. What threatened me most was that she was attracted to his spirit. How could this be? I was spirit man!
I allowed these colliding currents of energy to crash. I asked myself the question: “Are Jeanne and I not meant to be together?” Immediately the world grew quiet and I dropped into the most peaceful calm state I’d ever known. I stayed there for a while, utterly calm, no thoughts. I emerged greatly perplexed by the meaning of this experience. I refused the thought that we would end. I awaited the return of my mind to overrun the thought of ending, but I never forgot the experience.
Twenty-five years later, I lay next to Jeanne as she drew her last breath in Switzerland. I was confronted with the dissonance of the person I cherished the most in this world, now dead before me. In that moment, the world went silent and a very deep sense of calm swept over me. It stayed with me for hours.
Several years ago, Jan and I sat in the office with the intent that Jan would channel Jeanne. Jan sat opposite me. As I looked over at her, her form suddenly blurred and before my very eyes she transmogrified into Jeanne; it was like a scene out of the movie Ghost! My reason was overcome by an incontestable contradiction. All went silent and I entered that state of deep calm.
In each of these experiences I was able to hold the dissonant energies together and be transported into the calm of inner silence. However, this is not always the case. Frequently, the collisions of dissonant experiences generate a fragmentation that takes years and deep work to weave together, master, and release to the calms of silence.
In the psychological world, trauma is identified as the mind’s encounter with an incredible disruption to its reason, to its normal expectations of order. This can be the traumatic impact of being in a sudden earthquake or being subjected to unexpected behavior, such as physical or sexual abuse at the hands of a “loved one.” These ruptures in normalcy fragment consciousness, as the normalcy of the mind’s expectations are disrupted, sending one out-of-mind and often out-of-body. In such cases, cognitive dissonance leads to a dissociation that requires a recapitulation to recover the fragmented self and the energy needed to withstand the dissonant energies of the shattering experience before one can release to the deep calm of inner silence.
Shamans spend years recapitulating their lives, piecing together the ruptures in their minds that once led them into states of non-ordinary reality. When we are capable of sustaining the full truth of our own recapitulation experiences—reconciling the dissonance—the mind ceases to be dominant and we reach inner silence with what was or what is, freed from the judgments of the inner dialogue, delivered at last to the place of deep calm.
With recapitulation and reconciliation, we are now capable of seeing and being in the greater reality with deep calm. We are now able to explore dimensions of reality that exist beyond the narrow bands of reason. We are able to participate in infinity, with utter calmness.
May we see our encounters with cognitive dissonance, those ruptures in the continuity of the mind’s expectations, however shattering, as opportunities to accrue moments of inner silence. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico maintain that all our inner silence moments in life accrue until they reach a critical mass. At that point we are capable of living in inner silence at will. Cognitive dissonance—like planes that suddenly disappear without a trace—are opportunities to launch ourselves into an expanded reality through inner silence; a reality we are now charged with evolving into as Planet Reason enters its waning stages.
From the calm,
Chuck