How to Recapitulate
by Castaneda
Begin by creating a secure sacred space and time for yourself. Since there are no caves available to most of us, do your best in the environment you have. Perhaps you will find a place in nature, a quiet room, at your altar, or you might build a small plywood box to sit in (see The Teachings of don Carlos, by Victor Sanchez, page 80). Whatever you choose, do it with care and with respect for the power of the process you are entering.
Using one piece of your inventory, focus on a person, incident, or other memory. It might be something that is first on a list, or it might be whatever presents itself to you in the moment. Use your breath to pull it toward you. Inhale, pulling, pulling from the past into the present, and begin to feel the experience in your body. The body sensations from the emotions involved are more important than the thoughts or memories about the incident.
Feel your emotional memories and reactions in your body. Experience the incident fully, but without getting lost in the feelings or victimized by the emotions. Feel and know the truth that you believe about the incident. Then become the eagle and fly high. Look down on that moment in your life, and the people involved. See the long stretch of time before and after the incident.
Perhaps you can see several generations of families, and see their pain, fear, distractions, strategies, and their parasites domesticating the participants. The eagle sees the perfection of it all. The eagle sees where the succession of generations upon generations have created the moment of this event.
Perhaps you are recapitulating a time when your Mother punished you very harshly for something you did not do. Or your mate fell in love with someone else and left you. Or your landlord threw you out of the house you just painted. Your boss gave your promotion to someone else. A friend is late again, meeting you for lunch. Your probation officer refuses to believe your true story about why you did not call him. Your mother disowned you because you got arrested for drunk driving. You feel intense guilt because of an abortion.
In recapitulation, we see a bigger truth: That mom was not punishing you because there was something defective about you, she is not a the victimizer, she is simply being the mom that she was. Your mate left because your mate left. The landlord threw you out because he wanted his friend to live there.
Your boss gave the promotion to someone else because she was actually more qualified than you. Your friend runs late most of the time. Your probation officer is overworked, and did not listen to your story clearly. Your mother was afraid of what how her friends would judge her about your DUI. You did your best when you chose to have an abortion.
Your boss, landlord, and friend are just being themselves. The important part is to have the eagle communicate that reality to the part that feels like a victim -- to help the Victim see that they are really just a player in a huge drama, interconnected through time and space, and in that drama you and others came together being just yourselves, and in the shortest little twinkle of time you then passed each other and went away. There was no real victim and no real perpetrator. There is simply the pattern, the interconnection, the action and reaction, the cause and effect.
In the moment the Victim self shifts to the new assemblage point, you will feel the shift in your body. The victim perspective of powerlessness and hurt disappears, and you are set free from this memory. Use your exhaled breath then, to express your intent to release the person or incident, gently and thoroughly, feeling it float away until it is gone.
We call this freedom "forgiveness." It is not the forgiveness we are used to, the one that says "I forgive you because you victimized me and I am spiritually evolved now and I know I should forgive perpetrators, and I hope you rot in Hell!" It is the forgiveness that comes from knowing that there is no victim or perpetrator.
This is the forgiveness that comes when you know there is nothing to forgive.
This forgiveness is the one that cleans the emotional poison from the wounds of the past. The formula is: truth, forgiveness, love. Truth is the scalpel that opens the wound so it can be cleaned. The first truth is: "There is a wound here. I am responding to this situation and acting the way I am because of my emotional wound and my poison, not because of what anyone else is doing to me." That is the first truth. It is the end of blame and the beginning of responsibility as the Warrior.
The second truth is that there is no victim or perpetrator, only the unfolding of the mysterious universe. From that truth comes the forgiveness that isn't forgiveness but simply the releasing of the "victim" assemblage point, which cleans the emotional poison from the wound.
Love, self love, is the antiseptic and bandage that you put on the wound. Your love for yourself keeps that victim perspective out of that experience while the healing is completed. Ultimately, you have a scar you can be proud of, and when someone touches that place, it no longer hurts.
Your awareness opens the door to the transformation which you manifest through your Inventory and Recapitulation. That is the action of the Warrior. When the emotional wounds are clean, you become more and more in control of your attention. You are no longer a puppet, controlled by what other people do or say. You chose your emotional responses and you become a master of your dream.
The door is opened. The Warrior steps through.
Inventory is the memory of everyone you have interacted with in your life… make a list of everyone you have every met that you can remember, as you start this list names will come back to you. You may want to start by making a list of every place you have lived then remember the people there.
<<<Not sure who this was written by.. not CC as suggested.>>>
