Topic: Recapitulation

[Firestarter]

Snagged this from somewhere:

Recapitulation



  Recapitulation is a technique used to regain energy lost in the world. It is a technique associated with stalking [cc6, Florindas chapter], but it is very important to dreamers as well [cc9]. The basic premises (axioms about the world) on which the theory behind recapitulation is based is as follows:
 
1.  By acting and interacting in the world a person binds up alot of energy. There is an exchange of energy between people, and this locks up alot of energy. The greatest source of such energy expenditure is in sexual encounters.
2.  This locked up energy can be restored by a special technique called recapitulating.

This is, however, not the only explanation/reason to why one should recapitulate. Another reason given in 'The Eagles Gift' [cc6] is that recapitulation is a key to freedom given to every living creature. The Eagle is, according to what Castaneda tells us, the force in universe from which everything emanates. Awareness is given to to us from the Eagle, and when we die our awareness returns to the source and are 'consumed'. By recapitulating our lives, the Eagle may accept this as a substitute for our awareness. The Eagle only wants our life experiences. This is called "the Eagles gift". Victor Sanchez draws the conclusion that the 'seeing ones life passing before ones eyes', reported by people believing they are about to die, is the natural form of recapitulation [The Teachings of don Carlos]. Castaneda says that when we die, we enter, for a short moment, into the third awareness to be cleaned, before the Eagle consumes us.

Recapitulation also serves the purpose of making one aware of the routines and patterns of ones life.

The Technique

The technique is described in a number of places, and there actually seems to be different descriptions in different places. There have even been some diversity between the team around Castaneda about the direction of the 'fanning' movement of the head.

The clearest description in my opinion is the one in 'Art of Dreaming', chapter eight 'The Third Gate of Dreaming' [cc9, p148]: 
   

" Don Juan had given me very detailed and explicit instructions about the recapitulation. It consisted of reliving the totality of one's life experiences by remembering every possible minute detail of them. He saw the recapitulation as the essential factor in a dreamer's redefinition and redeployment of energy. "The recapitulation sets free energy imprisoned within us, and without this liberated energy dreaming is not possible." That was his statement. 
Years before, don Juan had coached me to make a list of all the people I had met in my life, starting at the present. He helped me to arrange my list in an orderly fashion, breaking it down into areas of activity, such as jobs I had had, schools I had attended. Then he guided me to go, without deviation, from the first person on my list to the last one, reliving every one of my interactions with them. He explained that recapitulating an event starts with one's mind arranging everything pertinent to what is being recapitulated. Arranging means reconstructing the event, piece by piece, starting by recollecting the physical details of the surroundings, then going to the person with whom one shared the interaction, and then going to oneself, to the examination of one's feelings. 

Don Juan taught me that the recapitulation is coupled with a natural, rhythmical breathing. Long exhalations are performed as the head moves gently and slowly from right to left; and long inhalations are taken as the head moves back from left to right. He called this act of moving the head from side to side "fanning the event." The mind examines the event from beginning to end while the body fans, on and on, everything the mind focuses on. Don Juan said that the sorcerers of antiquity, the inventors of the recapitulation, viewed breathing as a magical, life-giving act and used it, accordingly, as a magical vehicle; the exhalation, to eject the foreign energy left in them during the interaction being recapitulated and the inhalation to pull back the energy that they themselves left behind during the interaction."

-The Art of Dreaming

 

[Firestarter]

Theres even a wiki on it:

Recapitulation is a term coined by Carlos Castaneda in his book, The Eagle’s Gift, published in 1982. In The Eagle's Gift, Florinda, one of don Juan's apprentices, teaches Castaneda about the process and purpose of recapitulation. She explained that recapitulation consisted of "recollecting one's life down to the most insignificant detail" and that when a woman's recapitulation was complete she "no longer abided by the limitations of her person."[1] She further explained that in the process of recapitulation one recounts all the feelings they invested in whatever memory they were reviewing.

Florinda told Castaneda that recapitulation often began with a list of items to be recalled. One then proceeded to work through the list one item at a time staying with the item until all of the emotions around the event had been felt. The recapitulation was done with the breath. While recalling the event, one inhaled slowly, moved their head from the right shoulder to the left. The next breath moved from left to right and was an exhalation. The purpose of the breath was to restore energy. When breathing from right to left one would "pick up the filaments they left behind" and when breathing from left to right they would "eject filaments left in them by other luminous bodies involved in the event being recollected."

Following Castaneda's introduction of the term recapitulation, Victor Sanchez, author of The Toltec Path of Recapitulation: Healing Your Past to Free Your Soul, published in 2001, also wrote about a technique by the same name. For Sanchez, recapitulation is a procedure of self-healing. It is done by reliving the events on one’s past. The damage is caused by repetitive emotional conflicts. When these conflicts persist they drain one’s vital energy. Sanchez says he developed and adapted techniques of recapitulation described in his book from procedures he learned from his time with the Wirrarika people, whom he calls the surviving Toltecs.[2]

Lujan Matus, author of The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception, regards the traditional method of recapitulation as being too rigid whereby it can actually hinder the practitioners ability to establish a direct connection with spirit. He takes an alternative approach to the recapitulation technique which is less structured and more spontaneous in its application.

According to Kristopher Raphael, author of The Mastery of Awareness, Seeing Through the Eyes of a Jaguar, published in 2003, emotional charges blind one from perceiving reality as it truly is. Recapitulation is used to discharge one’s emotions so that they do not react and one can perceive clearly.[3]

[Jahn]

According to Kristopher Raphael, author of The Mastery of Awareness, Seeing Through the Eyes of a Jaguar, published in 2003, emotional charges blind one from perceiving reality as it truly is. Recapitulation is used to discharge one’s emotions so that they do not react and one can perceive clearly.[3]

How nice!
I wrote/translated and published the Swedish edition of Kris book.

[Firestarter]

Oh that was cool of you to do that for him Jahn!