Recapitulation

 

In spite of the energy drainage we are subjected to through social interaction, we all have an option, because the sealed nature of our luminous configuration allows us to restart from zero any time, and to recover our totality. "It is never too late", Castaneda said. "While we are alive, there is always a way of conquering any kind of blockage. This is the exercise sorcerers dedicate most of their time to.

The best way to recover the luminous fibers we have lost is by calling our energy back. The most important part is to take the first step. For those who are interested in saving and recovering their energy, the only way open to us is the recapitulation.

"A sorcerer knows that if we don't go for our ghosts, they will come for us. For that reason he leaves nothing unresolved. He recounts his past, looks for the magical joint - the exact moment when he was involved in somebody's destiny - and applies all his concentration to that point, and unties the knots of intent.

"Sorcerers say that we live our life from a distance, as if it were a memory. We spend life hooked, hurt by something that happened thirty years ago and carrying a burden that doesn't make sense anymore. 'I don't forgive it!' we scream, but it is not true, it is ourselves we don't forgive!

"The emotional commitments we make with people are like investments we have made along the way. We must be completely insane to leave our heritage thrown away like that! The only way we can become complete again, is by picking up that investment, reconciling ourselves with our energy, and dissipating the heavy burden of feelings.

The best method the sorcerers have discovered for this is to remember the events of our personal history until we have completely digested them. Recapitulation takes you out of the past, and inserts you into the now. "We cannot escape having been born as bored fucks, nor having invested most of our luminosity in making children or in maintaining tiring relationships. But we can recapitulate; it cancels out the energetic effects of those acts.

"Fortunately, in the realm of energy, things like time and space don't exist. So it is possible to return to the place and to the same moment when the events happened, and relive them. It is not very difficult, since we all know very well where we are hurting.

"To recapitulate is to stalk our routines, subjecting them to a systematic and merciless scrutiny. It is an activity that allows us to visualize our life as a totality, and not just as a succession of moments. However, and although this may seem strange, only sorcerers recapitulate as an exercise; other people only happen to do it by chance.

"Recapitulation is the heritage of the old seers, the basic practice, the essence of sorcery. Without it, there is no path. Don Juan used to disparagingly refer to apprentices who had not recapitulated as 'radioactive'. Don Genaro would not even shake hands with me, and if I touched him accidentally, he would run to wash himself as if I had infected him. He said I was full of dirt and it was seeping out through every pore of my skin. With that comedy routine, he installed in me the idea that recapitulating is an elementary act of hygiene."

To recapitulate consists of making a list of wounds caused by our interactions. The next step is to travel back to the moment when the events took place, in order to reabsorb what belongs to us, and return what belongs to others. "The warrior begins rewinding his day. He reconstructs conversations, deciphers meanings, remembers faces and names, looks for shades and insinuations, dissects his own emotional reactions and those of others. He doesn't leave anything to chance, grabs the memories of the day one by one and cleans them through his breathing.

"He also examines entire chapters and categories of his life. For example, partners he has had, houses he has lived in, schools, work places, friends and enemies, fights and happy moments, and so on. The ideal thing is to attack the task in chronological order, from the most recent memory until the most distant that it is possible to evoke. But in the beginning it is easier to do it by topics.

"A very profitable form of the exercise, accessible to all of us, is the fortuitous recapitulation. If you think about it, we are constantly recapitulating. All memories which conform to our internal dialogue can be called that. However, we evoke them in an involuntary way. Instead of stalking them in silence, we judge them and interact with them viscerally. That is pitiful. A warrior takes advantage of the opportunity, because those memories, seemingly random, are warnings from our silent side."

He pointed out that to recapitulate, no special conditions are necessary. We can try the exercise any time, any place; wherever we feel moved to do it. "Warriors recapitulate when they are walking down the road, in the bathroom, when working or when eating; whenever it is possible. The important thing is to do it."

He added that it takes no definite posture. The only requirement is to be comfortable, so the physical body doesn't demand attention or interfere with the memories. "However, sorcerers take the exercise very seriously. Some use wooden boxes, raised sleeping platforms, closets, or caves. Others build a seat in the highest branches of a big tree, or dig a hole in the ground and cover it with branches. A good practice is to recapitulate sitting on the bed, in darkness, before lying down to sleep. Any means that isolates us from the environment is good for formal recapitulation.

"Once we have located an event and recreated each of its parts, we have to inhale to recover the energy that we left behind and exhale fibers that others deposited in us. Breathing is magical, because it is a function that gives life."

Carlos explained that this kind of breathing should be accompanied by a lateral movement of the head, which sorcerers call 'to fan the event.'

Breathe in when you try to recover something, and blow back all that doesn't belong to you. If you do that with the totality of your history, you will stop living entangled in a chain of memories and instead, you will be focused in the present. Seers describe that effect as facing facts as they are, or seeing time objectively."

"Memories will find their own course, and luminosity is reordered by itself through the breathing. Just try it, make yourself available; the spirit will tell you how to do it.

"Recapitulation starts from inside and sustains itself. It is matter of silencing the mind, and our energy body will take control, doing what is a delight for it to do. You feel well, comforted; far from draining you, it gives you rest. Your body perceives it as an inexplicable energy bath.

"But you should have the correct attitude. Don't confuse the exercise with a psychological question. If what you need is interpretations, go to the psychiatrist! He will tell you what to do, to continue being the idiot that you are. Neither should you try to find a 'lesson'. Stories with a moral only exist in children's books.

"Recapitulation is a specialized form of stalking, and should be undertaken with a high sense of strategy. It is about understanding and putting our existence in order, seeing it as it is, without remorse, reproaches, or congratulations, with total indifference and in a spirit of fluidity, even of humor, because nothing in our history is more important than anything else, and all relationships, in the end, are ephemeral.

"The important thing is to begin, because the energy we recover from the first intent will give us the power to continue recapitulating more and more intricate aspects of our lives. First, it is necessary to go for the strongest investments, which are the most harrowing feelings. Then we go for those memories that are buried so deeply that we thought we had forgotten them, but they are there.

"In the beginning, recapitulating can be hard work, because our mind is not accustomed to that discipline. But, after closing the most painful wounds, energy will recognize itself and we become addicted to the exercise. In that way, each particle of light, which we recover, helps us to gain more. "The moment you begin to prepare to voluntarily unravel the plots of your personal history, you will be taking a decisive step."

Recapitulation doesn't have an end; it should last until the end of our days and beyond. "I stretch my fibers every night while remembering what happened during the day. This way, my list of events stays updated. But once a year, I give myself over to a more complete and total exercise, for which I move away from everything for several weeks."

He warned us that, just because it's a daily practice, we must not see the exercise as a routine. "If we don't recover the totality of our energy, we will never achieve the power of our decisions; there will always be a background noise, a foreign command. And without the power of his decisions, a man is nothing.

"Reliving events is ideal, because it cleans the wounds of the past and clears up any congestion of the energy conduits. In this way, you break the fixation of other people's gaze, you expose the patterns of people's behavior, and nothing can hook you again. You become a sovereign being; you decide what you want to make of yourself."

The exercise has two main effects: "The immediate effect is that it stops our internal dialogue. When a warrior is able to stop his dialogue, he tightens the relationship with his energy. It liberates him from the obligation of memory, and from the burden of feelings, and leaves a residual energy that he can invest in enlarging the frontiers of his perception. A warrior begins to appreciate the real thing, not the interpretation of it. For the first time, he comes into contact with the consensus of sorcerers, which is the description of a reality inconceivably integrated.

"It's normal that a warrior at this stage begins to laugh at anything, because energy provides happiness. Thanks to his recapitulation, he is happy, overflowing, jumps like a child. On the other hand, he begins to become a fearsome person, since, having his luminosity intact and his life clean, decisions will no longer be an obstacle for him. He will decide what is necessary the moment he wants to, and that, to other people, is scary.

"This is also the time when the warrior requires an extra dose of sobriety and sanity, because without it he would take unnecessary risks, endangering both his own security and the security of others.

"Another effect of recapitulation is that it works as an invitation to the spirit, and makes it want to come and live with us. In other words: To remember our past is the most effective method to unite the physical body and the energy body, which have been separated for years."

The sorcerer who has managed to compress the thickest part of his energy is in a state where he may intend a feat of perceptual prowess: Intending a copy of his life experience, in order to deceive death.

"That is the final objective of recapitulation: To create a double, and get ready to leave. You don't have to be a sorcerer to understand the importance of all this. To die in debt is a pitiful way of dying. On the other hand, to have a double to offer the Eagle guarantees that you will be able to continue ahead.

"The fight of sorcerers is heroic. Recapitulating impeccably the content of their lives, they pick up the fibers which drained their attention, and return to those they have known all the attention they have given them. In that way, they arrive at a state of balance which allows them to leave with all their awareness. Their memories, coherent, refined, and integrated, work as an independent being, which serves as a ticket they hand over in exchange for their awareness.

The Eagle accepts that effort as a payment, and steps aside. Our replica is sufficient to satisfy its demand. "Seers see that moment as an explosion of energy which aligns their encapsulated awareness with the totality of emanations out there, and their assemblage point expands infinitely, like a vortex of light."

"One of the tasks of sorcerers is to constantly analyze the insinuations of the spirit. For this purpose, they often use a book of memorable events, a map of those occasions when the spirit intervened in their lives, forcing them to make decisions - voluntarily or involuntarily."

The advantage of this technique is that when we write, we detach ourselves from things and events, at least to a minimal extent, and thus we are able to focus on them with more objectivity. "It is not about describing our daily routines, but of being attentive to the strange moments in which intent is manifested. Those are magical junctures, because they produce changes and they put us face to face with the meaning of our existence."

"Although signs of the spirit are a personal matter, there are ordinary events that in general mark people's life, like being born, choosing a career, intertwining your destiny with another person, or having children. Also illnesses and serious accidents, because they establish a nexus with death. For those who have the fortune of finding a conduit of spirit in the shape of a nagual, this is, certainly, the most memorable event of all.

"The interventions of intent are precursors, very significant memories for a warrior, and they can be used as reference points of where to start when one is exploring episodes of personal history. It requires speed and clarity to select them

and to synthesize them, extracting the personal stuff and leaving the magical essence. When properly done, they become what the new seers call abstract centers of perception, a matrix of intent, which a warrior has the duty of deciphering."

by Armando Torres in Encounters with the Nagual: Conversations with Carlos Castaneda, pp. 71-81