The Recapitulation
It has recently occurred to me, more than ever, how incredibly useful and important the recapitulation is. Actually, I partially have firefox to thank for this (because of some private conversations we’ve had). That, and the fact that I’ve once again realized the futility of trying to force myself to eliminate a feature of my inventory. Perhaps everyone is different, but for me it’s next to impossible for me to use “willpower” to stop myself from doing anything. Denial only causes me to focus upon my “self” more than ever. And basically, I’m just running around in circles repeating the same useless mistakes over and over.
Therefore, I’m beginning to feel that the recapitulation has taken the lead, as basically the most important of all the techniques. The recapitulation is what opens up all of the other techniques.
It reduces and removes self-importance, personal history, inner dialogue… and all of these seem to improve dreaming. (I’ve been having more vivid and strange dreams lately, but I attribute this more to the fact that I’ve been recapitualting every day than anything else.)
And of course, as Florinda (the first) mentioned in The Eagles Gift:
“Controlled folly is the basis for stalking , as dreams are the basis for dreaming .”
“In the absence of self-importance, a warrior’s only way of dealing with the social milieu is in terms of controlled folly.”
“These [the recapitulation techniques] are the mandatory preliminaries of stalking. Unless stalkers have gone through the preliminaries in order to retrieve the filaments they have left in the world, and particularly in order to reject those that others have left in them, there is no possibility of handling controlled folly, because those foreign filaments are the basis of one’s limitless capacity for self-importance.”
And one more note… At one of the Tensegrity workshops I went to, an instructor mentioned the fact that doing the magical passes without doing the recapitulation will only give us more energy to act like our normal selves.
D5 Creation
Yikes! I’m going to quit the passes right away … because mostly I am a complete jerk.
…
well, anyway, lately I have noticed how very, very much of my time I spend angry (mostly at students for not studying — i’m a teacher).
[To be angry with people means that one considers their acts to be important. It is imperative to cease to feel that way. — don Juan]
(I don’t think my efforts at ~stopping anger have been frenetic and fruitless, however)
Anyway, though, I do recapitulate the day every day. As far as the ‘big’ recapitulation … well, I’m working on my list. It’s slow going.
Am I doing ‘okay’? — fear of syntactic commands aside. Am I allowed to still ‘pretend’ to be working on being a warrior and eliminating self-importance even though it will take me a very long time to recapitulate?
Te energy recovered from recapitulation is very very small compared with the nergy used in make the recapitulation.
Will be more easy only live the present without fear and doubt?
Recapitulating for me has brought energy from my past into my present allowing me to align my intent with my actions.
As far as willpower is concerned “Success should come with a great deal of effort but no obsession or morbidity”. We take the inventory and throw it away right, I mean, the inventory is there because we command it to be there, it’s abstract in the sense that it’s not intrinsic to what’s being percieved. I think the act of denial and the act of Willing yourself to do something are very similiar. To me the only difference they share in one you have the element of self-importance. When you make what your doing into a big deal you fight it and it becomes a wrestling match you are bound to lose, and it feels like you are dening something. When you reduce self importance you open up the possibility of intending it away like it was nothing.
Hopefully you’re joking! That certainly wasn’t what I had in mind when I relayed that comment. It’s a combination of the two (recap and passes), in fact a combination of all the techniques that will more than likely help the most.
Well of course you’re doing OK! (actually I have no idea).
It will take all of us a long time to recapitulate, the rest of our lives I’d assume. But it’s the act of doing it that can be so releasing (and refreshing). I actually find it immensely pleasurable when I go into my “little cave”. Even short periods of doing it yields great results. I think my problem in the past has been the emphasis. At this moment, I’ve realized that if I don’t have time for anything else, I will find time for this. For me it has become the most important.
I couldn’t agree with you less! 🙂
It definitely takes more energy (for me) to try and reshape my current inventory by sheer force or reason (or by any other means), than it does to revisit the source of that inventory and use the power of breath and intent to release my connection to the past.
If the Spirit moves the assemblege point when all doubts are removed, then why does that take YOUR energy?
If you remove your doubts and as a result of that the Spirit moves your assemblege point to the position your (Will?) chooses, will that enable you to convince the person you are trying to effect, thereby removing their doubts and allowing the Spirit to act on them?
Does the act of recapitulating use sexual energy?
If you have been forcing the inventory for a while does that make it harder to move the assemblage point during the act of recapitulating?
Is it more important to go slowly trying to remember every single detail during a session of recapitulating, even to the point of back tracking if something new is remembered about a specific event. Or should one take one’s time but not so much that you spend to much time on one event and just save it for the second pass?
Is it wrong to ask so many questions or is it better to just find out for one’s self?
Am I bugging anybody and/or do you prefer I ask questions in more of a conversational format? 😀
I have the same questions, smellyfart, & I appreciate your asking them, after all, what good is this board if we can�t ask questions & try, in good faith, to help each other out & if nothing else, as warriors wish each other well.
I�ve got my list to the 3rd level:
Residences
….List of Residences
……..Time markers (3 to 10 per residence)
At this point I�m ready to list memories but I have a few questions of my own first:
….1. Should I make my box first?
….2. Should I complete my list of memories before starting recapitulation or should I list a few, deal with them, then list a few more and so on? Iââ?¬â?¢d hate to bring up old memories only to have to wait until my list is complete (which could take months) in order to deal with them.
Also, unfortunately, I live in the city & have no yard. The only place where I would have any privacy is in my attic ââ?¬â?? not exactly the ideal setting.
.
You don’t need a box anymore.
The attic would be a perfect place. i used to recap in my walk-in closet!
Where did you learn that a box is not needed anymore, Bratsche?
From a friend of mine who was told by either Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, or Carol Tiggs. i can’t remember which one.
It used to be done, but it is no longer necessary. From what i gather, it is a recent change. Don’t know why. Maybe because it creates importance on the actual procedure? And now the Recapitulation can be done anywhere at any time.
Wow! this sight is poppin again. ER, don’t mention it Old Dogg. I live to ask questions. 😆 So here’s another one to all: I know DJ reccomends recapping parents last BUT are there exceptions for Special people. I want to nip my drain of energy in the preverbial bud.
Yes, I’ve definitely heard that too at a Cleargreen workshop. It is also mentioned in an interview or two somewhere. It is in fact possible to recapitulate while riding a bus, washing dishes, working, walking, etc. However, it is important to do so in a completely inconspicuous manner. Might be hard washing dishes with your head swinging back and forth anyway.
I have heard that for the deep recapitulations it is good to find a small space, such as a closet or bathtub or box in order to put pressure on the luminous sphere.
for me bigest challenge is to make the recapitulation interesting. It is so boring, so long and so “attention thing”. my ineternal dialogue sound like this:
i dont have time for this
its so slow
its enough its enough go to sleep
of course after calm breathing aprox 0.5- 1 hour I begin to recapitulate in inner silence.
then everything goes ok.
so the hardest part is to breathe one hour and wait silence to come :)) some kind of threshold.
I think part of the problem is that we read books and assume, because we’ve heard the words before, that we know what they mean. Will, in Castaneda’s books, is not anything like willpower or determination. One acquires will when one can grasp items with the luminous tentacles from the abdomen. When we think of will, we think of effort, and using the tentacles is not an effort. It’s more a recognition of what is. It’s like how CC had to will himself “up” after ingesting the little smoke. His efforts were to no avail.
As I mentioned in the dreaming/sexual energy thread, when we try to change, we are merely pitting the self against the self. The self has decided that the self should change. The self makes the effort. This isn’t going to happen.
Smellyfart has the gist of it, saying the difference between will and denying is self-importance. I’d go a step further, or shorter, and say it’s self. But same thing, really.
We have to be careful not to make recapitulation another doing. This is why, IMO, cada dia struggles for a 1/2 hour to an hour before any good recapitulating happens. If the self has decided you should recapitulate, you’re going to be in for a wrestling match. The recapitulation doesn’t have to be interesting. That’s feeding the self. You just have to remove the self from the equation. Maybe just recapitulate at a specific time each day so there’s no choice about it, no ‘I want to’, or ‘I don’t want to’.
The recapitulation is an incredible tool, one of the best, IMO. But much can be “short-cutted” just by using your reason, and by that I don’t mean thinking so much as seeing the way things are. Everything in our lives that has happened “to us” is an interpretation based on our beliefs and ideas of life and ourselves. It stands to reason that these ideas are not absolutes. That the life that we think happened to us isn’t the only version of the story. And take it a bit further, there is no absolute us/me to whom this life could have happened to – there is no story of me. Just drop it.
I know, easier said than done. But I have to say it.
For me, the reasoning of these facts alone makes me pretty unstable, flexible, fluid. Doesn’t it for you? Maybe it’s not fair to think that I am only reasoning as I have had some direct encounters with the actuality of this so it’s sort of after the fact reasoning.