LET GO, RENEW, RECAPITULATE.
Defining the goal of the seeker is a necessary provision for the benefit of the seeker. Whether we know it or not, the seeker is seeking no goal. Even if we have heard such a thing we have to make sense of it in our lives. One of the reasons we cannot make sense of such a simple formula is that our currently held worldview is conditioned to conform to specific personal responses. Hence, we tend to operate through this conditioning and respond to the conditioning as if it were the only response available.
We do not need to invent anything to gain our freedom - methods abound and have been plenty for thousands of years. It is not for shortage of proven methods that we continue to seek.
It is a fundamental flaw of ordinary attention that we respond in accordance with our conditioning. Recapitulation, like the majority of methods for recognising or attaining our freedom, directs us towards that part of attention that is not bound to conditioned response. Recapitulation does not create anything new. Rather, it takes away that which obstructs the view of what is there already, behind our current individual and worldview.
The first part of the process includes all parts of the process. At every stage, throughout the whole process and ultimately for the rest of our lives, there is the possibility to gain or accept our freedom. In the Toltec tradition this is becoming a warrior, accepting the Eagle’s gift. It is the realisation of our unbound freedom, the acceptance of the challenge of real being, responsibility, maturity. In the first stage, the work is directed at scanning the memory, observing, noting. Famously, it is the list-making process. It is recommended but not essential.
The energetic process of release makes use of non-ordinary attention that reveals the conditioning at increasingly deep levels. There is and is not magical intent in the notion of ‘non-ordinary attention’. The non-magical view implies states of stillness, with the mind focused - this develops non-ordinary attention and that is sufficient for the process to be efficient. Where the mind is not still, non-ordinary attention is developed through other simple and natural methods, both during preparation and the releasing process.
Throughout lies the agreement that we are no longer concerned to discuss, or assess the nature of that which is found. It is revealed in order to be let go of. The past is not brought into the present and somewhere that agreement has to be reached in order for the process to be effective.
“The deeds of mortals in the temporal world appear before their eyes at the moment of their death”
After the release of stagnant energy that has accumulated follows a period of restorative work to ensure, as far as possible, that the same patterns do not repeat. It is an active process relying on both the mental, rational and contemplative aspect of our being as well as the magical, indescribable unlimited side of Being.
If we were to use the analogy of a car, the machine itself is the vehicle, the method is the driving - the means of getting from where we are to where we might be - so why can we not simply get to the destination? There is no shortage of answers, descriptions concerning why we are as we find ourselves. Gurdjieff described our state before our quest really begins as sleep - sleeping beings, believing ourselves to be awake, replete with negative emotions. These negative emotions are not just the obviously negative states of self-pity, difficulty, anger and so on, but are all the states that arise in us without real wisdom, in the absence of what he called real will.
In the analogy of the car, we can’t always get moving because there are some essential pre-requisites that must be in place before we can get moving. In some cases, it might be that the hand brake is still on, or that the key does not fit in the ignition, or that sometimes we are not sitting in the right seat, cannot reach the pedals. Many healing therapies begin by illustrating the problem. You are not in the right seat, or you have not released the handbrake. The appraisal of the problem never provides the answer. To know the problem is not the overcoming of the problem.
In the Buddhist traditions this is very clear. It takes but little practical exposure to the Buddha’s teachings before we come to accept that attachment to impermanent phenomena is the root of our unhappiness. Even accepting that truth, the energy of attachment has still to be resolved to the point that it no longer obstructs our path to progress. At that stage our perception of the goal - or even of it existing at all - changes.
We might call recapitulation the modern seeker’s attempt at reviewing dependent origination - the Buddha’s teaching of karma and the means to understand and release its hold. Taoist meditation includes, at one of its highest levels, a similar practice, the conversion of residual phenomena in the mind stream. These are advanced practices, glimpses of which are opened to us through recapitulation. In the same way that dependent origination leads us to the possibility of seeing there is no beginning (and thus no cause), recapitulation can take us to the point where we abandon cause as a source of our difficulties and instead direct energy towards releasing the obstacles, whatever they might be.
The Buddha did not teach a strictly mechanical law of causality and this factor plays an important role in the recapitulation process. While there are apparently obvious causes for our conditions, behind these apparent causes lies the real potential of our freedom and it is that potential - what Castaneda called (unlimited universal) Intent - which we seek to harness.
At one level, recapitulation does direct the seeker towards the obvious pattern of cause and effect. This is the apparent path in recapitulation. The hidden path is more subtle and has a more powerful potential as a healing tool and as a tool to liberate what the Toltecs called the light body (the luminous cocoon described by Castaneda after don Juan).
In the 2009 recapitulation programme there are distinct levels. One level is the obvious level of cause and effect. Working on that level has its limitation because it binds us to cause and effect. Yet it is the application of non-ordinary attention that can render this part of the process more potent. Regardless of our inherent ability, if we undertake the ‘ordinary’ side of the process we have made a big step.
For the Toltecs, the oriental concept of maya describing the illusory world tends to be more positive yet without any assertions. For the Toltecs, the concept of illusion is a magical potential, especially when it comes to the healing process. This is a big step - often the term and general understanding of maya as the illusory world is negative. We adhere to things that have no substance: this causes us suffering. But inherently there is nothing negative about illusion. It is our attachment to that which has no substance that causes the negativity, the suffering. The Toltec approaches the matter taking the negative and making use of its positive implication. Illusion is magic. And we make use of that magic in our healing recapitulation.
The non-ordinary attention techniques in this recapitulation process are the real offering in this work. It is the means by which we transcend our ordinary abilities to deploy a method. It is because the individual is constrained by his or her perceived limitations that they often remain stuck. We cannot rely only on the non-ordinary perception - it must be founded upon a certain discipline and structure. The discipline of recapitulation involves the investigation of apparent cause and effect as far as we can discern it in our lives, dependant on memory recall and our perception and our responses.
This programme is unique in that it begins to harness some of the energetic releasing tools and methods that are available in oriental practice. The energy body is loosened - the compacted memory is loosened - the stagnant energy is released in ‘real time’, in a process that concurrently can give rise to strong mindfulness of where the energy is stubborn. It is both an examination of what is arising, of what is being released and what is refusing to release.
Inevitably, the process of long term memory recall, undertaken in a systematic way during the preparatory stage, in a particular way with a particular goal, moves energy in our being. We might feel light-headed, we might feel as if we have arrived somewhere, at some conclusion. But this would be to consider a plaster dressing as the healing. It is the beginning of the process.
We cannot know the goal and that is emphasised in this offering. Whatever you have read about recapitulation, whatever you think the technique to be, when you begin the energetic healing, you cannot know the result. Even if you launch yourself towards a goal, if you are sincere in the way in which you work, the energy of the process guides you to what we might describe as the prescribed goal. Not the goal we choose, but the goal that is prescribed by the whole ensemble of the process. This process will also make use of collective energy through the period of preparation and natural energies during the retreat.
Participants will be offered the first preparatory module during January 2009 for the recapitulation retreat that is taking place in April. It will be possible to join the programme up until the issuing of the third study module in March, but participants are likely to connect more profoundly with the process and to experience the benefits of this work more deeply if they join at the beginning of the programme.
It is by any measure a momentous work - and to seek to undertake it in a short space of time adds to the challenge. This should not deter prospective participants. On the contrary, it is a rare opportunity to undertake one of the great works. In such a short time frame, what we are proposing is more like a Matisse than a Michelangelo - but the individual takes away a process-based experience that may provide the foundation for many months of further intense work if so desired. You can choose the level and volume of medicine you take to some extent.
It is said that this process of recapitulation naturally arises at the point of death. We might glimpse the process in moments of extreme danger. A purposive, non-accidental approach to the work is a big step. It’s the means to get into the car and drive it, and maybe to find later that the car has been renewed or that there are now new possibilities that were not present before. There is enormous energy potential that is released through the process and this energy is redirected first towards healing and then towards growth and personal responsibility and then, to borrow don Juan’s term, towards personal power. I prefer the term ability.
Participants can expect to have their own prescriptive process in place that will serve them for many months of the journey. It also opens us to the possibility of becoming real warriors in the sense of beings who recognise that real love, or real joy, unattached, is the true function of being. For those who do not see the purpose of life, who have not really been satisfied by their grasp of the underlying code of the process of being, this recapitulation provides the clue - and what you will find is not just the clue, but you will understand the nature of the provider of the clue. And that may come as a great relief; to find that relief benefits all beings in ways that we cannot imagine.
At some point of the process we might feel elated and light-headed again, and then we must undertake the task of ensuring that the healing is pure - that we do not repeat the same patterns, that we do not fall into the same holes. If we do fall into the same holes, it will not cause us the same distress, or if it causes us distress it does not cause us distress for so long, or we cease blaming others or conditions for what is essentially a condition that none of us can avoid - ignorance. And we accept that ignorance is nothing personal and has nothing to do with learning.
These are some points that I hope will encourage you to consider embarking upon this challenging and rewarding process.
INVITATION TO ACT!
So much energy is used in the defence of the presentation of self in everyday life. Recapitulation makes us aware of the factors we are defending, opening the way to releasing the grip of the past.
It is a stalking or tracking practice in the fashion of don Juan Matus, most famously the teacher of Carlos Castaneda, also the teacher of many other known and less well known personages in the Nagual’s party.
Inherently, it must arise to be successful in meditation. The forms for release may be different; the process at an energetic level is the same. Layer by layer, through insight or through non-ordinary attention, that to which we are attached falls away.
As a means to restore and build energy this process or practice must arise. Happiness, ease, contentment - these often elude us until we have let go of the past and all that we defend about our self. What we defend and repeat prevents our growth and transformation.
In the Toltec tradition, the work is in four parts:
- Prepare for recapitulation
- Undertake the energetic process of recapitulation
- Undertake specific individual remedial acts
- Instigate and carry out periodic review and application
During the 2009 recapitulation programme precise details will be given in advance for the preparatory stage. Uniquely, the preparatory stage will be scaled, dependent upon the effort and commitment of each participant. The energetic practice will make use of some of the tantric (“method”) practices of the Vigayan Bhairav Tantra, as well as other practices that serve to assist the process of releasing, smoothing and sealing energy that has remained stagnant. Many of the exercises were designed for going beyond ordinary consciousness, hence the suitability of these for the recapitulation process: we cannot go beyond ordinary consciousness when we are attached to a particular self-image.
We defend the ideas we have about ourselves, our dreams, our aspirations, our uniqueness, our need for love, for attention, for praise; we defend our suffering, our self-importance. With our energy, repeating the same schemas over and again until eventually we wilt under the strain of so much repetition of the same song, the same manoeuvre. Willingness to let go is essential: recapitulation provides a method that ensures progress.
Properly undertaken recapitulation helps us to keep our energy harmonious and to maintain and increase that harmony. During the various stages of the process, the internal dialogue is shut off. This invariably triggers memories, stagnant energy and attention to surface. Shutting off the internal dialogue opens the door to our healing as we allow the benefits of silence to permeate and allow the natural ‘magical’ awareness of the left side to perform its work. In another tradition, that magical awareness is just pure attention, uncluttered, the clear mind state, the light body where, if uninterfered with, the deepest healing takes place.
Everyone has a trick or a hinge in his or her presentation of self. Gurdjieff called it ‘chief feature’. Much energy is expended in presenting and defending the self as feeling self-important and deprived. Discovering the trick or the hinge plays a great part in releasing the energetic configuration.
Among the many things we learn when we undertake the recapitulation process is that what we might think the hinge is, it is probably not that. That realization releases the sadness we carry, the sadness that is embedded through the silent and unexpressed knowledge that what we think is usually not it. Put another way, often the story we repeat is not ‘true’.
