Category Archives: Jan’s Blog

Welcome!

Archived here are the blogs I write about inner life and outer life, inner nature and outer nature. Perhaps my writings on life, as I see it and experience it, may offer you some small insight or different perspective as you take your own journey.

With gratitude for all that life teaches me, I share my experiences.

Jan Ketchel

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Recapitulation & The Blueprint

Leave a comment

Unsure of what to write about today, I opened The Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda, a great resource, full of quotes from his books about his thirteen-year apprenticeship with don Juan Matus. I knew I wanted to continue writing about recapitulation, that most important aspect of a shamanic journey, the one that starts us on our true journey when we are ready to take it. Here is the first quote I read on the left hand side of the pages I opened to, excerpted from The Second Ring of Power:

The warrior’s way offers a man a new life and that life has to be completely new. He can’t bring to that new life his ugly old ways.

On the right hand page I found this quote, also from The Second Ring of Power:

Warriors always take a first event of any series as the blueprint or the map of what is going to develop for them subsequently.

Both of these quotes are right in line with embarking on a recapitulation journey, as from the first step we are invited to leave our old ways behind and begin not only a new journey but a new way of perceiving and interpreting the world we live in, as well as the world we are leaving behind, while preparing for the world we are about to enter. Because, in essence, a recapitulation journey requires that we leave behind our old selves, shedding them like well worn rags, no longer useful in the new world we are entering. In fact, our old selves, our old voices, and our old ways just don’t seem to fit in that new world, no matter how hard we might try to make them. Eventually we learn that we must totally acquiesce to that new world and find new means of behaving, thinking, and seeing, for without acquiescing we will never fully emerge from the old world and never fully enter the new one, but remain caught somewhere in between, and that is quite a challenging place to be.

During my recapitulation journey I spent many weeks caught between those two worlds as I struggled to make sense of where I was. In finally discovering the meaning of the event that led me into that between-worlds place, in accepting the “blueprint,” as Carlos writes in the above quote, the blueprint itself became clearer. In acquiescing to the inevitable unfolding of the events that would lead me out of that between-worlds state and into the new world, I began to see the greater meaning of my past but also my future. Each blueprint, each series of recapitulation events, became another step forward, allowing me to break through the murky past now made clear and into the present moment, also made clear by the process of recapitulation and learning to see the world differently.

At one point, towards the end of my intensive three year recapitulation, I was aware that I was going to have to reach, yet again, another breaking point, but this time I knew it would be the final one. How I knew this I don’t really know, except to say that I saw the blueprint and knew I just had to await the unfolding of the process. In essence, I understood, because of all the other series of unfolding blueprints that I had already experienced, that it was already laid out and I just had to acquiesce to taking this final leg of my long and arduous journey. Here is a description of the event that precipitated that final breaking point.

I was taking a walk along a path in the woods, slowly strolling along in the shade of the trees on a hot and humid day. At one point I tripped over a root and suddenly lost sight of the path. For a split second it disappeared, and even though I had been on that path a hundred times and knew every root and turn I suddenly became disoriented. In that second of disorientation, a curtain ripped open in the universe and, in the momentum of that trip over the root, I fell through that curtain into nothingness, suddenly lost, fearful and almost panicking. Then I took another step, regained my balance, and seemed to be back on the familiar path again, but everything had changed. I felt like I was now in a dream world.

From having already experienced many such shamanic twists of reality during my recapitulation I was fully aware that something was happening out of the ordinary. I saw it for what it was, a glitch in the universe. It was as if I was looking at everything from a slightly different angle and I couldn’t shake it back into normality again; try as I might. I had inadvertently, without having a choice in the matter, walked right through that glitch into another world and everything had changed.

This was the first time I did not have a choice in the matter, because there had been many other times when I saw the curtain ripping open and was offered the choice of going through it or not, but this was different. This time I was going whether I wanted to or not and that was how I knew I was going to have some pretty bizarre experiences in the days to come. This was the moment of the blueprint.

Whatever the glitch meant, I took it as a gift, thanking infinity for showing me that things could change in an instant, when I least anticipated them, and for pointing out to me not to expect things to always stay the same; even the familiar becomes unfamiliar in the blink of an eye. I knew from that moment on to expect the unexpected.

As I continued walking that day, I immediately recapitulated the moment when I had tripped over the root. I wondered what I had been thinking about when it happened. I also questioned my feelings of fear and panic, wondering if they were related to my past. I had been abused in the woods as a child and I wondered if a memory was being presented to me of something that had happened to me a long time ago in another woods. I also reestablished with my psyche that I was ready to confront whatever came to greet me because I was determined to stick with my recapitulation process, to keep making progress towards a new life. As in the first quote from The Wheel of Time that I present today: I knew my new life had to be completely new, and totally free of everything that represented the old me.

As I recapitulated that moment I realized I had been thinking about some press releases I’d been writing when I suddenly thought: “Don’t! Not now! Don’t think of work; this time is for myself!” I pulled my eyes back from gazing out over the woods and focused down on the path in front of me and that was when I tripped and the curtain wrenched open and I was lost, hurtling in momentary blackness. I felt my heart lurch as if I had suddenly seen something frightening, when all that really happened was that my view of the world before me changed and I became suddenly aware. “Oh,” I thought, “this is awareness; this is having awareness of all that is around me.”

All of a sudden I had utter clarity, I could see everything in glistening sharpness, but it was so unfamiliar that I wanted to shake it away. But try as I might, by shaking my head and trying to clear my sight, I could not. I was caught in heightened awareness, perceiving reality differently for some reason that was as yet unknown. I knew that it was important not to focus on why the event frightened me but instead to find out why the fear still resided inside me. I knew that I was about to embark on another leg of my inner journey and I was ready for it.

What happened subsequent to that event was exactly as I had predicted, I embarked on the final breaking point of my old self, my old ways of thinking, acting, reacting, and being in the world. Over the next month I acquiesced to the culmination of my recapitulation as one event after another occurred, without my say-so, just as laid out in the moment I fell through that curtain. The blueprint for this final phase was that I was going on the journey and I had no choice in the matter.

In another reality I did have a choice in the matter because I had made the decision to begin the recapitulation journey a long time ago. I had already been learning how to accept, how to acquiesce, and how to let go as events unfolded. I had already chosen to change and change I did, sometimes by choice and sometimes without having a say in the matter, but I always knew I was on the journey of a lifetime and I was going to savor every minute of it and accept what came to guide me.

I admit; I was not always so acquiescent. Sometimes I whined and kicked and protested vehemently, but in the end I knew that everything that had happened to me in the past and everything that was happening during my recapitulation was laid out for my benefit and all I had to do was take responsibility for getting myself to the starting point of each event. From there it was just a matter of following the signs and waking up to the truths of who I was, who I had been, and who I had the possibility to become, and sometimes that was just enough to keep me going.

The blueprint of recapitulation events can happen at any moment, especially when we least expect them. As I learned that day when I went for a stroll in the woods and tripped over a root: Expect the unexpected!

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

Sending you all love and good wishes for good recapitulation experiences,
Jan

NOTE: The books mentioned in this blog and other books are available through our Store.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Recapitulation & Walking

Leave a comment

During the summer while strolling around our rural neighborhood with Chuck, in a ten minute span, I related to him three memories in vivid detail, the first sparked by the scent of black locust trees in bloom and each subsequent memory linked by some detail in the previous one. This chain of memories was sparked by what the seers of ancient Mexico would call the usher. In The Active Side of Infinity don Juan instructs Carlos Castaneda to begin the process of recapitulation by walking. Here is what don Juan says to Carlos on page 149:

“Walking is always something that precipitates memories. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico believed that everything we live we store as a sensation on the backs of the legs. They considered the backs of the legs to be the warehouse of man’s personal history. So, let’s go for a walk in the hills now.”

“We walked until it was almost dark,” writes Carlos.

“I think I have made you walk long enough,” don Juan said when we were back at his house, “to have you ready to begin this sorcerer’s maneuver of finding an usher: an event in your life that you will remember with such clarity that it will serve as a spotlight to illuminate everything else in your recapitulation with the same, or comparable, clarity. Do what sorcerers call recapitulating pieces of a puzzle. Something will lead you to remember the event that will serve as your usher.”

In my experience while walking with Chuck the strong smell of the locust blossoms sent me back into a memory that seamlessly led to other memories; the smell of those blossoms was indeed my usher on that occasion. Several years ago while in the midst of my recapitulation I was walking with an acquaintance across a field on a hot summer day when he inadvertently slapped me across my shoulder blades while making a point and although the slap was not particularly hard it immediately sent me into an old memory. Suddenly I was four years old again and walking across a sunny field with the man who had abused me during my childhood. In this state of heightened awareness I was once again a frightened little girl sensing that I was caught in a trap I could not get out of. In one reality I walked next to my acquaintance who, still talking, had no idea that I was no longer truly present but was in fact being presented with an old experience. In fact, I believe the slap across my shoulders, light though it was, actually ushered me into that memory, the force of it just enough to cause a shift of the assemblage point.

Carlos writes often of don Juan slapping him on the back in order to cause a shift in his assemblage point. In The Art of Dreaming he mentions, on pages 15 and 16, the following:

“This was the first time, in my memory, that he deliberately talked about something he had been doing all along: making me enter into some incomprehensible state of awareness that defied my idea of the world and of myself, a state he called the second attention. So, to make my assemblage point shift to a position more suitable to perceiving energy directly, don Juan slapped my back, between my shoulder blades, with such a force that he made me lose my breath.”

Although the blow I received that day while walking with my friend was really just a light tap it was enough to send me off into a dark memory of falling into a black abyss because I was already well into and open to the recapitulation process. In fact, once begun, the memories flew up at me, eagerly asking to be acknowledged, clearly studied and relived, and, finally, truthfully accepted and laid to rest. Carlos also writes in The Active Side of Infinity, on page 160, about the unfolding of his own recapitulation in a similar manner. He states:

“The clarity of the usher brought a new impetus to my recapitulation. A new mood replaced the old one. From then on, I began to recollect events in my life with maddening clarity. It was exactly as if a barrier had been built inside me that had kept me holding rigidly on to meager and unclear memories, and the usher had smashed it. My memory faculty had been for me, prior to that event, a vague way of referring to things that had happened, but which I wanted most of the time to forget.”

In the past I used to get up every morning at 5:30 and run for three miles. I did this for perhaps fifteen or twenty years, but one day I could no longer run. I couldn’t get out of bed and run even one more mile. That signaled the beginning of a new life for me. I learned to walk, and eventually I learned a lot more—things about myself, but things about the world too, not the world I used to see every morning as I ran in the dark, but the world I could not see through the darkness inside myself.

At first I used to walk very fast, still trying to run away from that which sought to catch up with me, all the memories I kept at bay. One day Chuck said to me during one of our shamanic sessions: “Why don’t you stroll? Learn to stroll.” In so saying he pointed out to me my penchant for wanting to always stay one step ahead of the past. In learning to stroll I learned how to slow down so the past could finally catch up with me and teach me what I needed to learn about it.

I had no idea that my own past held such treasures, that my own fears and frightening memories were such gems in disguise. In slowing down, letting them come to me in their own time, greeting them—in the beginning with my resistance and fear and later being open to them—I was able to uncover the jewels hidden inside the black hole of that abyss I saw that day as I walked across a sunny field.

Yes, a slight brush against my shoulders was enough that day to send me into a place I needed to go, just as on that other day last summer the scent of the locusts was enough to lead me to recapitulate, in rapid recall, several other events a lot less remarkable and frightening, but recapitulation nonetheless.

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

Sending you all love and good wishes for good walking experiences,
Jan

NOTE: The books mentioned in this blog and other books are available through our Store.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Shamanic Experience

Leave a comment

One day last week I sat down to meditate in front of a sliding glass door looking out over the deck and into the trees beyond. I focused my gaze on a spot at eye level in the leaves of the large catalpa tree and let it soften. In continually softening my gaze the leaves began to blur, my peripheral vision blurred as well and after a few minutes I was gazing at nothing more than a tiny pinprick of light. At first I did not attach any significance to this light, simply noted it, keeping my gaze on it.

As I concentrated on the point of light it began to float. It began to jiggle and shift in the blurred pattern of leaves. I became fascinated by this light, yet I also warned myself not to attach, to stop “looking” at it and simply let it be. “Achieving inner silence is much more intriguing and important than this pinprick of light,” I smugly told myself. Making a new attempt to banish all thoughts and soften my gaze I noticed that the light was moving again, this time coming towards me and that it now seemed to be something on the glass door.

“Oh,” I said to myself, “it’s just a raindrop!” But as soon as I noticed that, it retreated and was once again a point of light in the leaves. “Oh, perhaps it is just a speck of sky showing through the leaves,” I thought, now somewhat puzzled by what I was actually seeing. This shifting back and forth continued. As I watched in utter amazement the point of light was a tiny bit of sky one second and the next it was a raindrop catching the light on the door.

“Hey, wait a minute!” I said. “What’s going on here?” One minute I’m positive that I’m looking at a drop of water and the next I’m equally positive that I’m looking at a bit of sky. I watch this process with growing frustration and yet I resist the urge to get up off my pillow and investigate close up, aware somehow that this little show is for my benefit.

“STOP IT!” I finally yell out loud. “Calm down! Don’t you get it? It’s both. It is both a bit of sky showing through the leaves and a raindrop on the window and yet it is neither, so let it go!” With that I was able to detach from assigning a label, from creating a logical explanation, from affording it importance, from interpreting it in any way according to the foreign installation as the seers of ancient Mexico call the mind, of putting it into a context at all.

As Carlos Castaneda writes in The Wheel of Time:

“Human beings are perceivers, but the world they perceive is an illusion: an illusion created by the description that was told to them from the moment they were born.

So in essence, the world that their reason wants to sustain is the world created by a description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which their reason learns to accept and defend.”

I let go of all the rules. I let go of perceiving the point of light as anything in particular. I simply accepted its presence, without attaching any meaning or significance whatsoever. I allowed it to be part of my meditation practice.

As I let go, the light grew larger. I accepted it. I entered the light and held myself in its nothingness. In this place I was unaware of self, of light, of breath even. I was utter calm emptiness. I stayed for a moment, suspended, sustaining the nothingness of it, transported into a stillness that was so familiar, so known, so all encompassing that I almost resented leaving it.

As I returned to this reality I gave thanks for my experience, got up and walked away. It was only later that I realized I did truly get beyond the syntax of this world, for when I was done I did not, as I might have at an earlier stage in my life, investigate if there was indeed a raindrop on the window. It didn’t matter. It was the experience alone that mattered: letting go of this world in order to have an experience of another.

In The Art of Dreaming when Carlos is having difficulty understanding how he could possibly perceive what don Juan is telling him, they have the following conversation:

“The problem of validation always played a key role in my mind in those days,” says Carlos.

He goes on to say: “Forgive me, don Juan, but this business of the assemblage point is an idea so farfetched, so inadmissible that I don’t know how to deal with it or what to think of it.”

Don Juan retorted: “There is only one thing for you to do. See the assemblage point! It isn’t difficult to see. The difficulty is in breaking the retaining wall we all have in our minds that holds us in place. To break it we need energy. Once we have energy, seeing happens to us by itself. The trick is in abandoning our fort of self-complacency and false security.”

“It’s obvious to me, don Juan, says Carlos, that it takes a lot of knowledge to see. It isn’t just a matter of having energy.”

“It is just a matter of having energy, believe me. The hard part is convincing yourself that it can be done. For this, you need to trust the nagual. The marvel of sorcery is that every sorcerer has to prove everything with his own experiences. I am telling you about the principles of sorcery, not with the hope that you will memorize them but with the hope that you will practice them.”

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

Sending you all love and good wishes for good experiences,
Jan

NOTE: Excerpts from the books of Carlos Castaneda mentioned in this blog come from The Wheel of Time p. 137 and from The Art of Dreaming pp. 9-10. These and other books are available through our Store.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Somatic Recapitulation Experience—The Body Never Lies

Leave a comment

On Monday, as I was washing the breakfast dishes, I recalled the same day twenty-two years ago, the day before my son’s birth. He was my first child and I was nervous as the estimated date of arrival neared. On that day I stood in our apartment in Tennessee also washing the breakfast dishes. I broke a glass and cut my hand. The cut bled profusely. My grandmother had once told me the story of cutting her arm one day, quite deeply, and with no medical aid or doctor available she simply held the skin together applying pressure until the bleeding stopped, then wrapped it up with a clean cloth and in no time the skin knit itself back together again. Recalling this story at the time, I did the same thing. Not interested in rushing off to have the deep cut sewn up I washed it clean of the dishwater, applied pressure, held the skin together and tightly applied a Band-Aid. The cut hurt badly, but by the end of the day it was well on its way to healing.

Monday, which synchronistically happened to be this same grandmother’s birthday, I looked at my hand for the scar I knew was there, but could not find it. I knew it was somewhere on my right hand on the mound around the base of the thumb. I looked and looked but found no scar. It’s gone?! It didn’t seem possible. “Funny,” I thought, “that a scar like that could disappear.” I finished washing the dishes and went about my day having had this little recapitulation, soon forgetting it, letting it sink back into memory.

Later in the afternoon the heel of my right hand began hurting. It was a deep burning pain. As I worked I absentmindedly tried shaking it off, literally shaking my hand in an effort to stimulate circulation, rubbing it and wondering what I had done to it. Had I bumped my hand, bruised it, burned it? I couldn’t recall any recent injury. Then suddenly it dawned on me, my body was showing me where I had cut my hand twenty-two years earlier! Looking at the spot that was now so painful I found the old scar. There it was on the heel of my right hand, just where it should be, a white scar about an inch long just below my pinky.

My body was once again, as it had done throughout my recapitulation, reminding me that it does indeed hold all of my memories. My brief recapitulation of that day was enough of a trigger, setting the intent that allowed my body to experientially recall that memory more exactly than my mental recapitulation could. I found this little experience most interesting. “Very cool,” I thought, but even more so I appreciated the reminder that our bodies hold our experiences, even the tiniest details, until we are ready to recapture them.

I personally believe that most of the pain we carry, and most illness, is due to our pasts, whether the past of this life or of previous lives, that pain expresses that which is hidden or repressed. Louise Hay, in her simple yet informative book, Heal Your Body, describes her own process of discovering why she had cancer and how she used mental healing to cure herself. Her little book offers insight into the possible psychological causes of many illnesses and bodily symptoms.

Pain is a gift, a signal, a trigger to recapitulate, offering us the opportunity to do deep inner work, to bring into the light that which lies hidden in our physical bodies. When we investigate and reconcile our pain we offer ourselves yet another gift, not only the gift of freedom from pain but also the gift of what that freedom can open us up to. In unblocking our bodies we have the opportunity to become channels, channels of energy.

The other day, my own body once again underscored this truth: that within the body lies everything, not only our personal memories, but access to infinity, to that which we cannot see with our minds but know the truth of by our awareness.

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

Sending you all love and good wishes for fearless recapitulations.
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Balance, Restless Dog & Broken Buddha

Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about balance being important during a recapitulation process, but maintaining balance is of course important at all times. By balance I mean everything from keeping the body and mind healthy with good eating, sleeping, exercise, and stimulating mental activity, to living a thoughtful, compassionate, loving, aware existence in the world, as well as finding a spiritual practice that personally resonates and allows for exploration of the inner self.

For me, balance means all of these things and much more. I’m in balance when I have time for creative work and meditation, even if only for a few minutes during especially busy or stressful times. I’m in balance when I cook, delighting in preparing even the simplest meal with fresh ingredients, and being offered the opportunity to share it in the presence of good company. I’m in balance when I take a few minutes to walk the dog or stroll down the road on a sunny afternoon taking in what nature offers. I’m in balance when I’m focused on a task or project. I’m in balance when I do inner work, attending to what arises during the day to puzzle or challenge me. I’m in balance when I write this blog. However, I awoke feeling very out of balance this morning and with absolutely no idea what I would write about today.

The dog was restless all night. We wondered if she was perhaps letting us know that her time here is almost done. She’s old. Her legs are bad. She’s deaf. When she sits outside in the yard the vultures begin to circle overhead. We’ve been noticing this phenomenon for weeks now, their keen senses of smell and sight picking up on the vulnerabilities of an old animal who would be unable, at this stage of life, to survive out in the wild. During the night I heard the coyotes howling several times and I wondered if she heard them too, calling her to the next world, come to accompany her spirit on its next journey. I worried about letting her out during the night, though she insisted, knowing that they were out there on the prowl.

She has a tendency to wander off. Early this morning I let her out for the millionth time since the night began and went into the kitchen to put the coffee on. Most of the time she goes outside and just stands motionless or wanders around marking her territory then heads back to the front door to be let back in, it’s a predictable routine. This time when I went to let her back in, she was nowhere in sight. Pulling on my rubber boots I went outside to look for her, noticing that the night sky with its brilliant spread of gleaming stars was beginning to cloud over. I saw her heading toward the neighbor’s open garage and set off at a jog, hoping to head her off before they discovered me standing between their cars in my pajamas. Before I could catch her she darted inside. Embarrassed, I darted in after her and coming up behind grabbed her by the thick mane around her shoulders, surprising her. She whipped around and stared at me, as if to say, “What the heck!? What are you doing?” Which is what I said to her.

Stubbornly, almost digging her heels in, she reluctantly allowed me to push, drag, and shove her back into the house. A little while later, Chuck had left for the office and she needed to go out again. By this time I was beginning to feel extremely frustrated, more out of balance at each scratch at the door signaling her desire to go out. This time I put a leash on her and took her for a walk. Upon returning to the house she refused to come back inside with me, though it was beginning to rain. I left her sitting outside, her leash looped around the neck of the stone Buddha we have sitting in front of our entryway. That ought to keep her safe, I thought.

Every few minutes I checked on her. Like the Buddha she sat quietly, sedately, the grand dame, the queen surveying her land, seemingly contented. All of a sudden she got up and before I could get to her she had dragged the heavy stone Buddha off the step. It fell, smashing its head into the step below, severing it from the body. The dog stood there, unaware of what had just happened. I grabbed the leash before she could do anymore damage and just stood there looking down at the beloved Buddha, the calm sentinel marking our door for so many years, now broken.

The Buddha has always been a symbol of balance to me, serene and calm, he sits unmoving, nothing bothers him and now he’s lost his head! “What does this mean?” I moaned, absolutely regretting the moment I had decided he was strong enough to keep our big dog from wandering. What does it mean indeed? I placed the head back onto the shoulders, where it now sits quite comfortably again. You would never know it was broken simply by looking at it.

I pondered the meaning of the Buddha losing its head. Suddenly I saw the significance of it: he doesn’t need his head! In other words, the Buddha is not the Buddha because of his head. He is the Buddha because he practiced losing his head, by sitting in stillness, detaching from the foibles of the conjuring mind. The Buddha is the symbol of mindlessness, empty head, having finally achieved ultimate clarity, enlightenment, and freedom from the temptations, frustrations, and restless activities of this world.

I must face my own attachment to this beautiful stone Buddha. Though the Buddha has lost his head I must not weep. I must be as contented as Buddha. Even now, with head severed by restless dog, he sits perfectly still, keeping watch over our front yard, still presenting me with the utter calmness of balance that I seek. Or perhaps now truly symbolizing what it means to maintain balance in life, that no matter what comes along to interrupt the flow of our lives or knock our heads off we must learn to anchor ourselves in the inner peacefulness and joy of just being.

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

Sending you all love, good wishes, and balance.
Jan