It is time now to take all the lessons you have learned—all the tools and techniques, the discipline, containment, and limitation practices—and not only put them into deeper practice, but to step back and take a clear look at all that you have been granted in your life. Look not at the self with pity or sorrow, nor with self-adoration or inflation, but look upon the self as a journeyer upon a journey. Look upon the journey of your life as a journey of fulfillment, a journey that is showing you just what you need and how to get there.
This is a time of acceptance, for everything is now in place; the only thing missing is your awareness of this. All of you who reside now upon that planet are in a unique position to personally and collectively grow. The big question is, are you fully aware of this? Are you totally alert to the truth of major change being in your own hands?
You are the energy and the catalyst to change. You are the carrier and the deliverer of your own change in circumstances. You are the power and the provider of power. By your very existence you hold all that you need in order to grow, to take yourself to a new level of understanding, and to reach fulfillment.
Life’s journey is, as you already know, a step-by-step process. Today, though you may awaken in a bit of a fog, will become a day of clear skies, meaning clear head and clear insight into the self, if you allow it to be so. If you accept your journey and yourself as transitioning—at all times being pushed to evolve—you will awaken to many truths about the self and the world around you.
Channeled advice and vision is ancient knowing coming to guide you, full of long-ago learned truths that have fallen by the wayside in modern times. But it is guaranteed that most of you will discover your true identity and your spirit’s yearnings explained quite nicely in these ancient truths that in fact lie waiting within all of you.
Do not be afraid to channel your own truth and your own spirit. Do not be afraid of the changing self. Accept the rightness of this changing self as you confront your deepest truths, both your past and present truths. Make a determination of how you wish to proceed, knowing all that you now know, and go in that direction. You will, if you are ready, go there anyway, for your spirit will guide you. Your main task is to accept the offer. Much life is in store for you if you do.
In a dream, I notice that a young boy is missing. I race to the parking lot. I see him in a car with other young boys, the car about to drive off, being taken into who knows what. I notice Mitt Romney in the passenger seat; I don’t see the driver. I reach in and grab the stolen boy.
What are we so afraid of?
In America, the home alarm industry is a totally Mormon-dominated industry. Each summer cadres of young Mormon men, schooled in public relations during a year of service, converge upon America. Knocking door to door, they sell the safety of home alarm systems, home security that promises to protect us from the darkness, the blackness of the night and all that lies lurking to invade our sense of safety.
Akin/Ryan, the likely driver of the car in my dream, promises to protect life, “the innocent,” even the products of “legitimate rape.” These are the images, the themes, the platforms, boldly advanced lately to protect America from its own darkness, the outbreaks in Aurora, et al.
Ultra-protection is the proposed answer to the blackening of America, projected onto the blackness of Obama, the “socialist foreigner” who threatens the security and purity, the whiteness of America.
The blatant shadow of this platform is a witch hunt, the degradation of the feminine, and the legitimization of violence on all levels and against all peoples. Romney the Mormon, as in my dream, takes the passenger seat, leaving the country in the hands of the extremists, and anything goes in the service of protection while the truly innocent are taken to their slaughter.
Shattering is unavoidable...
The truth is that the wounding of our childhood innocence is developmentally unavoidable. We arrive in this world creatures of need, seeking and longing for nurturance and love to enable us to grow. A child looks at the world with the innocent eyes of surprise, wonder, joy, and expectation. From early on there are many disappointments. An indifferent, absent, or simply overtired parent is bound to not get it right, at least some of the time. The child will experience disappointment, disillusionment, sadness, frustration, and withdrawal, as the world does not meet its innocent calling.
Rejected innocence curls up in shame. Repeated rejections harden the shell of shame. Traumatic violations of innocence—intrusions into the body and soul of the innocent—dramatically dissociate innocence into even deeper and more impenetrable protective covering.
This protection of innocence is critical but must be time-limited, because life without innocence is life without life. A high-powered home security system only offers an illusion of safety, for it merely separates us from the darkness that already resides within, reflecting the energy of frustrated, unlived life.
Furthermore, buried, encapsulated innocence is innocence awaiting the completion of a transformational ritual. For innocence to continue to be present at all stages of life it needs to transform. Shattered innocence is the beginning of every shamanic journey, but for the journey to be completed, it must be recapitulated and brought into life, allowed to mature with us. Recapitulation offers the completion of that journey to fully retrieve innocence. As all the protections and illusions of protection are removed, innocence merges and becomes fully available for real life.
Real life in the real world must include facing the predatory reality of life. It’s not about being protected from it. Life is loving and fulfilling, as well as deeply disappointing and shattering. The goal is to live our innocence in the fullness of reality.
In recapitulation, we stay fully present with the shattering impact of assaults to our innocence. We bear the full emotional and physical tension and pain of crushed innocence. We don’t dissociate; we don’t leave our bodies. We stay whole and fully present with our innocence as it suffers. In this way we retrieve our innocence, and once joined we are freed to bring it back into life more knowing, more pliable, more able to flow with the world as it truly is. We become inseparable partners with our lost innocence, fully transformed, mature, alive, and open to life in the now.
Innocence matured...
The shamanic journey of recapitulation is the ritual journey of completion into our blackness, into our night’s soul where we face the full truths of our trials in this world, however horrid. At journey’s completion we emerge integrated beings of light and dark combined, in balance, our retrieved innocence nicely matured, open-hearted and wise.
May we, as individuals and as a nation, take the journey into our darkness, however shattering, and move forward as an integrated whole. The days of safety through segregated security systems left with apartheid. Let’s retrieve not regress.
Many shifts are required in seeking the deeper self...
One of the most important things that I’ve learned in my life and continually utilize is the process of shifting. Shifting might mean deciding not to get drawn into someone else’s drama, even when I feel I might be helpful. Shifting might mean something as simple as making the decision to drive in a different direction from the usual route. Shifting might mean breaking a comfortable routine, allowing the self to encounter something new, even if that something is potentially disturbing or challenging. Shifting might mean asking the self to forego a habit or an emotional attachment, nurturing or otherwise. Shifting might mean asking the self to turn inward rather than project onto another person or situation that which is creating turmoil or incident within. Shifting might mean asking the self to take a big leap into new life, or acquiescing to the inner process, or beginning the process of recapitulation.
The main thing about learning to become a shifter is that it requires action, and action comes from making a decision that, for better or worse, will lead to change. Sometimes shifting means going back and revisiting something that we haven’t quite finished, such as a relationship, an emotional attachment, a fantasy, until we get what we need or learn that what we thought we needed never existed there to begin with. It might mean finally accepting that our dreams are in our own hands, not in anyone else’s, and then making them reality. Shifting—asking the self to move out of one place and into another—offers us the opportunity to experience life differently and more fully.
During my recapitulation process, I discovered that in physical shift, by actually moving my body, I could aid my process. I could cut through stagnancy, repulsive thoughts, physical paralysis, and repetitive behaviors. I could shift out of memories that took over and consumed my energy. But what I also learned was that shifting took work. It required grounding and alertness so that I could maintain enough awareness to know exactly when it was time to shift. It meant daring to allow myself to take back control in situations where I felt I had no control. It meant that I had to forge a steady adult presence that could appear when necessary and make a decision about how to proceed.
This was a growing process that ran parallel to the recapitulation process. So that while I was breaking down and breaking through old stuff—disassembling the protective, defended self I had become as a result of trauma—I was simultaneously building up a strong and independent self, an evolving self. This evolving self gradually learned that it was okay to say no at the proper times, to take back as well as nurture fragmented parts of myself. This evolving self allowed the recapitulating self to have the necessary experiences, even some very difficult and frightening ones, but this self never abandoned the recapitulating self. Even when it was just in the beginning stages of being forged, it had an underlying sense of what was necessary. And so it learned to stand aside so I could have the experiences I needed to have, but at the same time it was busy capturing lost energy, strengthening each time an experience was recapitulated.
Recapitulation affords us the opportunity to become a shifter, in a shamanic sense to know immediately how to act, how to move, how to speak, and how to protect our energy without having to even think about it. For that is the ultimate goal of recapitulation, to recapture our lost energy in the healing process it affords, so that we may have it for impeccable use in this life and in the next. However, to get to that place of being able to act so succinctly and impeccably, we must train ourselves during our recapitulation to become fully conscious and to stay conscious.
Although recapitulation may take us on a journey we had not anticipated, we must forge a self willing to take the journey, not be a slave to it, but a fully accepting participant. Indeed, there are times when in the midst of recapitulation we might feel overwhelmed, taken places we don’t want to go. We might even allow ourselves to go places we know we shouldn’t go. But we must train ourselves to pull our heads up out of the muck long enough to remember that we are recapitulating for a reason, and we must be ready to face whatever that reason is. It might be clear or it might be a mystery, but we must remember that once we begin recapitulation we are surrounded by the ancient intent of recapitulation.
Emergence of a new self...
As we take our journey, we must become conscious of how the unconscious guides us, how intent works, and how we are guided in all sorts of ways through our trials. It is in times such as these, when we might feel helpless, that our shifting abilities are honed. In our darkest hour our greatest challenges come to teach us.
Becoming conscious requires acquiescence. Acquiescence may be the most difficult part of the recapitulation process, but once we clearly speak the words of acquiescence—Okay, take me on this journey, I’m ready to do it—consciousness will naturally arise and lead us to hone our skills. In acquiescence, we will gradually experience that which we thought we might never experience, that which we projected onto others or rejected out of hatred for ourselves, thinking we were unworthy of love, of happiness, of a life worth living.
In acquiescing to our recapitulation journey, we accept that a new self is going to emerge, in fact in acquiescing we intend a new self. We become braver and more daring as we recapitulate, as we hone our fragmented self into a new stronger self. As we dare to face what comes to greet us, we hone the ability to shift out of any potentially harmful attachment or experience. We might suffer a few failures at first, but that is just to awaken our consciousness to the reality of the recapitulation process, letting us know how it will steer us along, helping us to see just where our greatest work lies. Whatever our greatest work is—whether getting beyond self-hatred, self-pity, self-doubt, inflation or deflation, negativity or inertia—our final oath of acquiescence offers us a major tool in honing our ability to shift.
In acquiescing to our recapitulation journey we are accepting that we are part of something bigger, far beyond the world as we experience it on a normal day. We are accepting that there is good energy available to us too, and as we take our journey we find it making its way toward us more often than ever before.
Once we decide to take our recapitulation journey we discover that in conscious awareness, in honing ourselves as shifters in both waking and dreaming states, we become aware of the truth of interconnected energy, aware that we are all part of it, that it flows to us and through us. Such energy exists for all of us, but we must work at achieving such awareness and the means to accessing it. The tools are within.
Simultaneous self experiencing darkness and light...
The biggest and most ready tool is what our unconscious brings to us, and the next tool is our conscious decision to go deeper into our unconscious, into our darkness and our light, for they reside side by side, just as our recapitulating self resides alongside our evolving self.
We are all offered, many times in a lifetime, the choice to either go on a journey with our spirit or to reject it. If we make the choice to reject it, I can state that—based on my own previous life lived during the first 50 years of this lifetime—we will suffer. If we make the choice to join our spirit, we will free ourselves of our suffering and reconstruct ourselves according to our deepest truths, our spirit alive in us, taking us into vibrant new life. This I can state from my own decision to do so, and my own experience since then. As always, it’s a personal choice. Do I stay the same or do I evolve?
There is always support as we take the recapitulation journey. Support comes from without and within, from our guides in this world and beyond, from our spirit’s intent and the intent of the shamans, from our unconscious and conscious selves, from our memories as they challenge us to recapitulate and our evolving selves as they challenge us to trust the journey, to sweep away doubt and judgment, the old voices and the old fears, and to keep going. And that is my intention today, to pass on the energy that urges us all to evolve. Keep going! You’ll get there! Life awaits!
Sending love and energy as you dare to take the full journey to freedom,
Jan
In containment does one learn the deeper lessons of the self. If one but turns inward and allows for truths to surface, one will face both the best self and the worst self. Yet such encounters will teach the true lessons in life, the lessons that all must hear in order to evolve.
It is not a punishment but a liberation to hear the truths of the self spoken in this manner. It is not a chore but a joy to encounter the deeper self and all aspects of that deeper self. It is not painful but freeing to face all that one is made of and know the depths of the self so fully that nothing remains a mystery.
In knowing the self so fully, one becomes an open channel for new adventures in life. One becomes empty, and detached from that which binds the soul to eternal misery, and fully available for other work. But first the inner work must be deeply sought after and fully accomplished. In containment of self is this possible.
Sit with the self daily and contend with the inner world that reveals itself. Release and relief will come to aid you if you let it, and then you will begin to notice the work of the self having effect, taking hold, revealing the mysteries that now puzzle you and keep you constrained.
Seek refuge in containment of self. That is where freedom from everything lies. In sickness and in health turn inward and ask to be shown the truth. Be patient as you wait for your inner process to get underway and gain momentum. Stay with it. Your rewards are plenty.
Thank you Jeanne and all of our guides in infinity. Channeled with love, by Jan.
Those who have returned from near-death experiences report that upon leaving their bodies and entering into an out-of-body state, their entire lives flash before them in a single instant. Every nook and cranny of life lived is relived and reviewed. This is the ultimate recapitulation experience that we will all encounter, an essential component of transitioning from this life to the next.
The Buddhists are particularly cognizant of this experience at death and spend a lifetime honing skills of detachment so they will not get caught in the trappings of fear, regret, or longing for life lived in this world. Lack of preparation for this encounter upon dying is a major karmic variable for future incarnations, according to Buddhist tradition, as one’s future life is influenced by enduring attachment or non-resolution of life lived in this world as one travels through this moment of recapitulation.
Though the Buddhists spend a lifetime preparing for recapitulation at the moment of death, within Carlos Castaneda’s lineage, shamans discovered that recapitulation could be consciously and volitionally performed while still in this world. These shamans discovered that by recapitulating before dying we not only enhance our options upon death, but vastly change our experience of life in this world. Through beginning an early recapitulation we are afforded the opportunity to make ourselves whole, and with our full energy available to us now, achieve fulfillment in this life.
As a clinician, I returned from my journey into the shamanic world of Carlos Castaneda with the knowledge that recapitulation was a tool for total healing. Regardless of the shattering impact of the most horrific trauma, recapitulation enables us to retrieve our fragmented selves and energies, as well as disentangle ourselves from the binding energies of others that have compromised our growth and fuller potential in this life.
Recapitulation is an inevitability. We will all recapitulate our lives when we die. If we can’t face and know the full truth of who we are and the life we’ve lived now, will we be able to do that at the moment of death? Will we be so overcome with fear, regret, and longing that we will have to return to relive it all again?
Excavating and sculpting the self…
The shaman’s gift of early recapitulation offers us the opportunity for deep fulfillment in this life, as well as the evolutionary advantage to advance beyond reincarnation upon completion of life in this world. Furthermore, recapitulation is a magical pass. Magical passes have been performed for centuries in the shaman’s world. Magical passes are imbued with the intent of all those shamans, and anyone who undertakes a recapitulation is supported by the vastly helpful intent set by those shamans.
Here is an excerpt from Jan’s upcoming book, On the Edge of the Abyss, the second year of her recapitulation series in which she experiences this intent: “It’s eerily apparent that no matter what arises in the unfolding of this process, in which Chuck and I are but a small part, there is a sense of everything fitting together. We both remarked on that yesterday, as if we had been thinking the same thoughts. In some way, my dreams always show me where to go next—deeper truths revealed while my conscious self is out of the way—while the memories come in such a way as to suggest that everything is orchestrated. And I sense that whatever or whoever is helping me is worried about my energy. I sense that it wants to keep me whole and safe, deeply caring that I arrive at a place of total healing.”
When we recapitulate we must encounter the full truthful impact of life lived. How could it be otherwise? If we skip over that, we haven’t truly retrieved and mastered our real selves and our real experiences. However, we must keep in mind that we are protected and guided by a power greater than ourselves, by the ancient intent of recapitulation. That intent is that we fully revamp our lives, that we fully sculpt our energetic selves, and that we fully release all the burdens of extraneous energies formerly bound to the experiences of the unknown self. With this now fully-known and energetically-replenished self in charge, we are freed to live life to the fullest and to fully love the life we are living.
