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: The Seventh Step

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Today, I will review the first six steps in learning to become a shaman that I channeled while dreaming with the women shamans of don Juan’s lineage, back in the fall of 2009, before going on to the seventh step.

First, however, I wish to address two points. Although I am writing, to a certain extent, about shamanism, I am really writing about having a spiritual, energetic experience. So, I ask that you suspend judgment as to the terms I elect to use, which, in my opinion, do not really matter. I could just as well have asked to dream with Jesus, or Buddha, or Jeanne, or any other guide and, if I had done so, I believe I would have gotten the same answers, though possibly in slightly different words, but maybe not. The steps that were offered to me are evolutionary practices, related to growth and exploration, daring me to let go of this world and enter another, the very thing that we will all be confronted with at our deaths, no matter what spiritual practice we elect to follow, and even if we don’t have one. I happen to be curious about what comes next. I have always been interested in reading and hearing about people’s experiences in near-death, out-of-body, comas and dissociative states. Where did you go? What did you encounter? Who did you meet? What did it feel like? How did you get back?

The second point I would like to stress is that, in my experience, as soon as I open the door, as soon as I send out an intent, I have an experience. I know that everything is possible because of the experiences I have had. Certain books have the power to take me right into an experience simply by cracking them open. The books that have this kind of power, for me, are any of the works of Carlos Castaneda, Florinda Donner Grau’s Being-in-Dreaming, Taisha Abelar’s The Sorcerer’s Crossing, William Buhlman’s Adventures Beyond the Body, and a charming book by Preston Dennett called Out of Body Exploring. By asking to dream with the women shamans I gave myself the opportunity to have an experience. I am most likely to receive an experience if my intent is “unbending,” as don Juan stressed to his apprentices. Carlos writes of Doña Soledad in The Second Ring of Power: “She wanted to know if I had correctly understood don Juan when he said that anything is possible if one wants it with unbending intent.” (p. 31)

So, having made those two points, I recount the first six steps of energy practice, previously written about in lengthier form, that I learned from the women shamans:

1. Know the difference between the two minds, the conjuring mind and the knowing mind. (Read about this step HERE.)
2. Understand the value of repetition. (Read about this step HERE.)
3. Contend with all the parts of the physical self. (Read about this step HERE.)
4. Allow for dissolution of ego. (Read about this step HERE.)
5. Wait for the right moment then shift. (Read about steps 5 & 6 HERE.)
6. Remember what transpires in dreaming.

Now I present the seventh step in learning to become a shaman. As usual, I slept with the dreaming pillow on my lower abdomen, just below the navel. During the night of October 26, 2009, I wrote the following in my journal: Abolish, get rid of, all energy glitches so that energy is not lost or siphoned off.

So what does that mean? First, I want to tell you a little story about a book that Chuck read last week and that he wrote about in his blog on Must be the Season of the Witch. The book is The Second Ring of Power. In his blog, he described the decrepit condition of the book and how he was reading it, taking each page out and placing it in a pile. By the time he was finished reading, the hard cover binding was empty and the pages were in a neat pile on a table in our den. I began reading it at this point and, as I read, I placed the pages back into the binding of the book. Now I am halfway through the book and it is halfway to being put back into its original form. I have just finished reading the chapter where Carlos meets La Gorda and learns about the biggest energy glitch of all time, the hole left in us by our children, which continues to drain us empty of energy until we die, perhaps long before we really need to. The only way to stop this drain of energy, this energy glitch, is to close it up by completely detaching from our children and letting them go off on their own journeys. I believe this is the main energy glitch that the women shamans instructed me to get rid of. This type of energy glitch appears as a dark hole in our sides, in both men and women, by those who can “see” such energy. These holes can be there because of children we have actually given birth to, biologically, and also children we have become deeply attached to for other reasons, because of marriage, adoption, fostering, etc. The more children we have in our lives the bigger the holes; one side for girl children, the other for boy children.

For me, and for most women, this may be the most difficult and painful energy glitch to close up. I use the analogy of Chuck reading the book, essentially emptying it, and me filling it back up again, one page at a time, as a process of detachment and reclamation of the energy we give away in raising our children. First the book must not be so special that it cannot be read in this way, that it cannot be allowed to change form. Our children must not be so special to us that we cannot allow them to become who they must become. We must be able to dismantle our old books, our old ideas of who we want our children to be, how we want them to be, and what perfect form we desire for them to fit into, especially the desires and fears we really have within ourselves but are projecting onto our children, and, finally, we must let them go out of our lives. Our children must become no more than the empty hard cover of the book once the pages have been ripped out, and we must allow ourselves to be the same.

Once we are empty, having dismantled the book, having let the children become separate beings, having detached ourselves from them, having let them go, we can now begin the process of putting the book back together for ourselves, taking back our energy. Once the pages of the book are replaced, once the energy that we had previously given over to the raising of our children —in the worrying, the wondering if they are making good choices, safe, doing what they should be doing, acting wisely and right; wondering if they are fearless and powerful, or depressed and sad; wondering did I screw them up, did I do everything for them, etc.— once this energy is replaced, we can then begin the process of closing up the holes in our sides. This is the task that La Gorda gave Carlos, and it is the same task the women shamans gave me. I now pass it along to you as the next step in learning to become a shaman, or in other words, learning to become energetically detached, spiritually whole, complete.

As Jeanne mentioned in her message this week, don Juan taught about energy, as does she. This is also what I learned about from the women shamans: energy. By using my unbending intent, I asked them to dream with me and teach me something. In all, I was given twelve steps. Next week I will move onto the next. In the meantime, watch for those holes and glitches and take back the energy.

See you in dreamland!
Love,
Jan

NOTE: The books I mention are available in our STORE.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: When the Time is Right!

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Today, I present the next two steps in learning to be a shaman that I learned last fall from dreaming with the women sorceresses of don Juan’s group. As I mentioned in my first blog regarding this process, I had been re-reading the books of Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner Grau when I decided to do some experimenting at night, wondering if I could, by setting my intent, contact the women sorceresses of that group in dreaming. Over the course of a few weeks, I did, indeed, succeed in receiving, through what I consider to be dream channelings, a pragmatic set of practices. Each night I placed the heavy dreaming pillow that Jeanne had gotten at a Tensegrity workshop on my lower abdomen and asked to be taken on a learning journey. After reading Chuck’s essay on The Womb I realize that I was offering myself the opportunity to access the “knowing” that he wrote about, the knowing that all women naturally have. Here is the 5th step, as I dreamed it during the night of October 24, 2009 and as I wrote in automatic writing in my journal:

I am an old woman bored with the excuses of others, unimpressed by laziness or other reasons for non-doing. I listen patiently and I cause SHIFT. I shift the atmosphere with a FLICK! I conjure up a storm to shake them awake.

I wrote this in my journal the following morning: When I wake up from this dream, having written the above during the night, I am aware that holding back and non-doing are important, until it is the right time to shift, then take quick action and SHIFT! This is the fifth step in the shamanic process. (End of journal entry.)

With a busy day of travel ahead of us I was unable to write more at the time, but I do remember processing this with Chuck as we drove. I was struck by the utter boredom that came over me in the dream as I listened to the empty excuses that people were giving for not evolving or changing. At the same time I knew that non-doing, not attaching, was also key, that being patient was proper because we will all have to shift at some point, whether by personal choice or for reasons that are totally out of our control. In the dream I am an old woman, and I seem to have some power, like nature itself. As an old sorceress I know it is not my place to force shift, until the time is right.

In this dream, I learned that by staying in a place of non-doing and detachment, patiently observing and waiting, we place ourselves in alignment with the flow of nature. There comes a point when we know it is time to shift. That moment is as instinctual as breathing. If we are in the right alignment, aware and in balance, then we are able to enact the necessary shift for ourselves. Otherwise the shift will be forced on us. In the dream, I knew the exact moment when this was right, it was time, and I took quick action, without hesitation, because I instinctually knew it was right. I was like nature in the dream, actively creating a shift with a swift flick of my hand, shouting: SHIFT! The process of non-doing, in this case, is actually achieving the place of no pity, the term from the shaman’s world, that Chuck has also written about. By non-doing, by withholding reaction and being patient and detached, by watching and waiting, I achieved this point of no pity, which also allowed me, in the dream, to know when the moment of shift had arrived. As a follow-up to this shamanic teaching dream, I dreamed the following the next night:

I dream about my mother, bored, boring, complacent, living in a nursing home, having resorted to childish behaviors, reverting to an infantile existence. I have no attachment to her. I am completely detached, merely an observer standing in her room at the nursing home. I turn from her lying in her bed and look out a large picture window overlooking ancient water gardens. There are many shallow pools and ornately carved fountains, sculptures, and benches surrounded by stone walls and walkways. I calmly enjoy the beauty of it as I talk to one of my brothers about the fact that I cannot help my mother. No matter what I offer her, no matter how many attempts I make to give her evolutionary life, she continually chooses infancy. (End of dream.)

I am struck by this dream underscoring the lessons of the night before, the place of no pity, of non-doing, and of detachment, but in this case leading to knowing that I cannot force a shift on a person who does not choose to evolve. By nature and her own choices a shift occurred in a person who was once an adult, but who now (at least in the dream) is living out her final years as an infant in a nursing home. In these two dreams, my instinctual knowing, stirred by dreaming with the women shamans, is in play. By remaining in alignment and flowing with the moment, with nature, I am fully aware of appropriate action.

After this dream, I fell asleep again and dreamed another shamanic practice. I swam up into consciousness briefly and noted: Remember what transpires in dreaming. When I woke up in the morning, I knew that this was the sixth step in learning to become a shaman and I knew this meant: remember what happens in dreaming life and in waking life, because you cannot always be sure which is the dream.

I humbly offer my dreaming experiences as examples of the power of intent. During the weeks I dreamed with the women shamans I received answers in fairly straightforward and easily decipherable language, and I am amazed, as I read back over the pages of my journal, how the process unfolded. I admit, I do trust the process of setting intents. If I am consistent I get results; partly, I think, because I trust that I will be responded to in some fashion. If I allow myself to trust; innocently but without attachment to the outcome, as the shamans say, the response I get will be the right one. I seek to keep my intent pure and good, to keep it evolutionary, without either negative or positive overtones, without hints of doubt, and I am consistent in repeating my intent daily until I get results. As a result of this practice, I do believe we can all, men and women, access the natural power within us to learn what it means to truly evolve.

I am struck, again, by the synchronicity of what I am writing about, what Chuck chooses to write about and how Jeanne’s weekly messages all seem to align. On Monday, Jeanne spoke about remaining aware of how shift happens, of the role of nature, and of your own energy. Honestly, we really don’t plan these things!

Keep dreaming!
Love,
Jan

Jan's Blog

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

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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