Subject: Recapitulation Info
To: [email protected]
Date: 11 Nov 1994 12:00:00 -0500

RECAPITULATION

The information in this file was compiled by Jack Schryver. 11/16/94.

"... a recapitulation is the forte of stalkers as the dreaming body is the forte of dreamers. It consisted of recollecting one's life down to the most insignificant detail. Thus her benefactor had given her that crate as a tool and a symbol. It was a tool that would permit her to learn concentration, for she would have to sit in there for years, until all of her life had passed in front of her eyes. And it was a symbol of the narrow boundaries of our person. Her benefactor told her that whenever she had finished her recapitulation, she would break the crate to symbolize that she no longer abided by the limitations of her person.
She said that stalkers use crates or earth coffins in order to seal themselves in while they are reliving, more than merely recollecting, every moment of their lives. the reason why stalkers must recapitulate their lives in such a thorough manner is that the Eagle's gift to man includes its willingness to accept a surrogate instead of genuine awareness, if such a surrogate be a perfect replica. Florinda explained that since awareness is the Eagle's food, the Eagle can be satisfied with a perfect recapitulation in place of consciousness.

... She said that the first stage is a brief recounting of all the incidents in our lives that in an obvious manner stand out for examination.
The second stage is a more detailed recollection, which starts systematically at a point that could be the moment prior to the stalker sitting in the crate, and theoretically could extend to the moment of birth.
She assured me that a perfect recapitulation could change a warrior as much, if not more, than the total control of the dreaming body. In this respect, dreaming and stalking led to the same end, the entering into the third attention...

Florinda explained that the key element in recapitulating was breathing. Breath for her was magical, because it was a life-giving function. She said that recollecting was easy if one could reduce the area of stimulation around the body. This was the reason for the crate; then breathing would foster deeper and deeper memories. Theoretically, stalkers have to remember every feeling that they have had in their lives, and this process begins with a breath...
Florinda said that her benefactor directed her to write down a list of the events to be relived. He told her that the procedure starts with an initial breath. Stalkers begin with their chin on the right shoulder and slowly inhale as they move their head over a hundred and eighty degree arc. The breath terminates on the left shoulder. Once the inhalation ends, the head goes back to a relaxed position. They exhale looking straight ahead.
The stalker then takes the event at the top of the list and remains with it until all the feelings expended in it have been recounted. As stalkers remember the feelings they invested in whatever it is that they are remembering, they inhale slowly, moving their heads from the right shoulder to the left. The function of this breathing is to restore energy. Florinda claimed that the luminous body is constantly creating cobweblike filaments, which are projected out of the luminous mass, propelled by emotions of any sort. Therefore, every situation of interaction, or every situation where feelings are involved, is potentially draining to the luminous body. By breathing from right to left while remembering a feeling, stalkers, through the magic of breathing, pick up the filaments they left behind. The next immediate breath is from left to right and it is an exhalation. With it stalkers eject filaments left in them by other luminous bodies involved in the event being recollected.

... 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. In order to practice controlled folly, since it is not a way to fool or chastise people or feel superior to them, one has to be capable of laughing at oneself. Florinda said that one of the results of a detailed recapitulation is genuine laughter upon coming face to face with the boring repetition of one's self-esteem, which is at the core of all human interaction...

Florinda said that her benefactor considered the three basic techniques of stalking- the crate, the list of events to be recapitulated, and the stalker's breath- to be about the most important tasks a warrior can fulfill. Her benefactor thought that a profound recapitulation is the most expedient means to lose the human form. Thus it is easier for stalkers, after recapitulating their lives, to make use of all the not-doings of the self, such as erasing personal history, losing self-importance, breaking routines and so forth.

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Don Juan knew that he had reached a complete impasse, and that to die like a warrior was the only action congruous with what he had learned at his benefactor's house. so every night, after a frustrating day of hardship and meaningless toil, he waited patiently for his death to come.
He was so utterly convince of his end that his wife and her children waited with him - in a gesture of solidarity, they too wanted to die. All four sat in perfect immobility, night after night, without fail, and recapitulated their lives while they waited for death.

(p 212) "I died in that field," he said. "I felt my awareness flowing out of me and heading toward the Eagle. But as I had impeccably recapitulated my life, the Eagle did not swallow my awareness. The Eagle spat me out. Because my body was dead in the field, the Eagle did not let me go through to freedom. It was as if it told me to go back and try again.

(p 214) "... With great discipline - especially on the part of the oldest boy - they had recapitulated their lives with me. Only the spirit could decide the outcome of that affection."

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"It entails a total change," she said. "And that is accomplished by the recapitulation: the cornerstone of the art of freedom." ...

(p 46-47) Patiently she explained that the recapitulation is the act of calling back the energy we have already spent in past actions. To recapitulate entails recalling all the people we have met, all the places we have seen and all the feelings we have had in our entire lives - starting from the present, going back to the earliest memories - then sweeping them clean, one by one, with the sweeping breath.
... Before I could make any comments at all, she firmly took my chin in her hands and instructed me to inhale through the nose as she turned my head to the left, and then exhale as she turned it to the right. Next, I was to turn my head to the left and right in a single movement without breathing. She said that this is a mysterious way of breathing and the key to the recapitulation, because inhaling allows us to pull back energy that we lost, while exhaling permits us to expel foreign, undesirable energy that has accumulated in us through interacting with our fellow men.
"In order to live and interact, we need energy," Clara went on. "Normally, the energy spent in living is gone forever from us. Were it not for the recapitulation, we would never have the chance to renew ourselves. Recapitulating our lives and sweeping our past with the sweeping breath work as a unit."
Recalling everyone I had ever known and everything I had ever felt in my life seemed to me an absurd and impossible task. "That can take forever," I said, hoping that a practical remark might block Clara's unreasonable line of thought.
"It certainly can," she agreed. "But I assure you, Taisha, you have everything to gain by doing it and nothing to lose."

..."When you recapitulate, try to feel some long stretchy fibers that extend out from your midsection," she explained. "Then align the turning motion of your head with the movement of these elusive fibers. They are the conduits that will bring back the energy that you've left behind. In order to recuperate our strength and unity, we have to release our energy trapped in the world and pull it back to us."
She assured me that while recapitulating, we extend those stretchy fibers of energy across space and time to the persons, places and events we are examining. The result is that we can return to every moment of our lives and act as if we were actually there.
I asked her if the order in which one recollects the past matters. She said that the important point is to re-experience the events and feelings in as much detail as possible and to touch them with the sweeping breath, thereby releasing one's trapped energy.

(Chapter 5; p 50-51) ... But as she pushed the writing materials toward me, she said that I should begin making a list of all the people I had met, starting from the present and going back to my earliest memories.
"That's impossible!" I gasped. "How on earth am I going to remember everyone I've ever come into contact with from day one?"
"Difficult, true, but not impossible," she said. "It's a necessary part of the recapitulation. The list forms a matrix for the mind to hook on to."
She said that the initial stage of the recapitulation consists of two things. The first is the list, the second is setting up the scene. And setting up the scene consists of visualizing all the details pertinent to the events that one is going to recall.
"Once you have all the elements in place, use the sweeping breath; the movement of your head is like a fan that stirs everything in that scene," she said. "If you're remembering a room, for example, breathe in the walls, the ceiling, the furniture, the people you see. And don't stop until you have absorbed every last bit of energy you left behind."

"How will I know when I've done that?" I asked.
"Your body will tell you when you've had enough," she assured me. "Remember, intend to inhale the energy that you left in the scene you're recapitulating, and intend to exhale the extraneous energy thrust into you by others."

... Clara explained that we must start the recapitulation by first focusing our attention on our past sexual activity.
"Why do you have to begin there?" I asked suspiciously.
"That's where the bulk of our energy is caught," Clara explained. "That's why we must free those memories first!"
"I don't think my sexual encounters were all that important."
"It doesn't matter. You could have been staring up at the ceiling bored to death, or seeing shooting stars or fireworks - someone still left his energy inside you and walked off with a ton of yours."

(Chapter 6; p 57-58) It took weeks of brain-racking work to compile the list.
At the entrance of the cave, she gave me some instructions. "Take the first person on your list and work your memory to recall everything you experienced with that person," Clara said, "from the moment you two met to the last time you interacted. Or, if you prefer, you can work backward, from the last time you had dealings with that person to your first encounter."
Armed with the list, I went to the cave every day. At first, recapitulating was painstaking work. I couldn't concentrate, for I dreaded dredging up the past. My mind would wander from what I considered to be one traumatic event to the next, or I would simply rest or daydream. But after a while, I became intrigued with the clarity and detail that my recollections were acquiring. I even began to be more objective about experiences I had always considered to be taboo.
Surprisingly, I also felt stronger and more optimistic. Sometimes, as I breathed, it was as if energy were oozing back into my body, causing my muscles to become warm and to bulge...

(p 62) ... "There is a way to change," she said. "And by now you are up to your ears in it; it's called the recapitulation."
She assured me that a deep and complete recapitulation enables us to be aware of what we want to change by allowing us to see our lives without delusion. It gives us a moment's pause in which we can choose to accept our usual behavior or to change it by intending it away, before it fully entraps us.

(p 64) ... through the recapitulation, we can become empty of thought and desire...

(p 66) "As you continue to recapitulate, the entrance of the realm where humanness doesn't count will appear to you," Clara went on. "That will be the invitation for you to go through the dragon's eye. This is what we call the abstract flight. It actually entails crossing a vast chasm into a realm that cannot be described because man isn't the measure of it."

(Chapter 7; p 73) "... The purpose of recapitulation is to break basic assumptions we have accepted throughout our lives," Clara explained patiently. "Unless they are broken, we can't prevent the power of remembering from clouding our awareness." ... "The world is a huge screen of memories; if certain assumptions are broken," she said, "the power of remembering is not only held in check, but even canceled out."

(Chapter 9; p 91) Clara had advised me never to wear shoes while recapitulating because, by constricting the feet, they impede the circulation of energy.

(p 98-99) ... "Although, isn't recapitulating a kind of psychotherapy?" "Not at all," Clara disagreed. "The people who first devised the recapitulation lived hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. So you certainly shouldn't think of this ancient renewing process in terms of modern psychoanalysis."
"Why not?" I said. "You have to admit that going back to your childhood memories and the emphasis on the sexual act sounds like what psychoanalysts are interested in, especially the ones with a Freudian twist."
Clara was adamant. She stressed that the recapitulation is a magical act in which intent and the breath play indispensable roles.
"Breathing gathers energy and makes it circulate," she explained. It is then guided by the preestablished intent of the recapitulation, which is to free ourselves from our biological and social ties.
"The intent of the recapitulation is a gift bestowed on us by those ancient seers who devised this method and passed it on to their descendants," Clara continued. "Each person performing it has to add his or her own intent to it, but that intent is merely the desire or need to do the recapitulation. The intent of its end result, which is total freedom, was established by those seers of ancient times. And because it was set up independently from us, it is an invaluable gift."
Clara explained that the recapitulation reveals to us a crucial facet of our being: the fact that for an instant, just before we plunge into any act, we are capable of accurately assessing its outcome, our chances, motives and expectations. This knowledge is never to our convenience or satisfaction, so we immediately suppress it.
Clara said that this moment of direct knowing was called "the seer" by the people who first formulated the recapitulation, because it allows us to directly see into things with unclouded eyes. Yet in spite of the clarity and accuracy of the seer's assessments, we never pay attention to it or give the seer a chance to make itself heard. Through a continual suppression, we stifle its growth and prevent it from developing its full potential.
"In the end, the seer inside us is filled with bitterness and hatred," Clara went on. "The ancient men of wisdom who invented the recapitulation believed that since we never stop subduing the seer, it finally destroys us. But they also assured us that by means of the recapitulation, we can allow the seer to grow and unfold as it was meant to do."
"The purpose of the recapitulation is to grant the seer the freedom to see," Clara reminded me. "By giving it range, we can deliberately turn the seer into a force that is both mysterious and effective, a force that will eventually guide us to freedom instead of killing us.

(Chapter 12; p 134) "This is what you've been doing for the past months with your recapitulation. You are retrieving filaments of your energy from your ethereal net that have become lost or entangled as a result of your daily living. By focusing on that interaction, you are pulling back all that your dispersed over twenty years and in thousands of places."

(Chapter 15; p 170) ..."The sash supports us while we recapitulate. You're to wrap your stomach with it and tie one end of it to the stake I planted in the ground inside the cave. That way, you won't fall over and bang your head if you doze off or in case your double decides to wake up."

(p 176) ... "The cleansing breath you do while recapitulating will eventually allow you to remember everything you have ever done, including your dreams..."

(Chapter 21; p 240-241) ... I had recapitulated before, except that this time I was to do it in the tree house... Under Clara's supervision, I had recapitulated in a dark cave. The mood of that recapitulation was heavy, earthy, somber and often terrifying. My recapitulation under Emilito's guidance in the tree house was dominated by a new mood. It was light, airy, transparent. I remembered things with an unprecedented clarity. With my added energy, or the influence of being off the ground, I was able to remember infinitely more detail. Everything was more vivid and pronounced, and less charged with the self-pity, moroseness, fear or regret that had characterized my previous recapitulation.
Clara had asked me to write on the ground the names of each person I had encountered in my life, then erase it with my hand after I had breathed in the memories associated with that person. Emilito, on the other hand, had me write the names of people on dry leaves and then light a match to them after I had finished breathing in everything I had recollected about them. He had given me a special device to incinerate the leaves, a twelve-inch metal cube with neatly perforated, round, small holes on all sides. Half of one side of the box was fitted with a glass, like a tiny window. There was a sharp pin in the center of the underside of the lid. On the side with the window, there was a lever that slid in and out where one could fasten a match and strike it from the outside against a rough surface inside the box after the lid was closed.
"In order to avoid starting a blaze," Emilito explained, "you have to pierce the dry leaf with the pin on the lid so when you close the lid, it will be suspended in the middle of the box. Then look inside the box through its little glass window and, using the handle, strike your match and place it under the leaf and watch it burn to cinders."
As I gazed at the flames consuming each leaf, I was to draw in the energy of the fire with my eyes, always being careful not to inhale the smoke. He instructed me to put the ashes from the leaves into a metal urn and the used matches into a paper sack. Each of the matchsticks represented the husk of the person whose name had been written on the dry leaf that had been disintegrated by the particular match. When the urn was full, I was to empty it from the top of the tree, letting the wind scatter the ashes in all directions. I was instructed to lower the pile of burnt matchsticks in a paper bag on a separate rope and Emilito, handling the bag with a pair of tongs, would put it in a special basket he always used for that purpose. He was careful never to touch the matches or the bag. My best guess is that he buried them somewhere in the hills, or perhaps tossed them in the stream to let the water disintegrate them. Disposing of the matches, he had assured me, was the final act in the process of breaking the ties with the world.
... After eating breakfast in the tree house, I usually went back to my recapitulation, which, once I had been freed from the dread of uncovering something unpleasant, was now more than ever like an exciting adventure of examination and insight. For the more of my past I breathed in, the lighter and freer I felt.

(p 245) As I was seated on a sturdy limb with my back resting on the tree trunk, my recapitulation took on an altogether different mood. I could remember the minutest details of my life experiences without fear of any coarse emotional involvement. I would laugh my head off at things that at one time had been deep traumas for me. I found my obsessions no longer capable of evoking self-pity. I saw everything from a different perspective, not as the urbanite I had always been, but as the carefree and abandoned tree dweller that I had become.

(p 248) "... The tragedy is that most of our energy is trapped in nonsensical concerns. The recapitulation is the key. It releases that trapped energy and viola! You see infinity right in front of your eyes."

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"You are not yet ready for a true merging of your dreaming reality and your daily reality," he concluded. "You must recapitulate your life further." "But I've done all the recapitulating possible," I protested. "I've been recapitulating for years. There is nothing more I can remember about my life."
"There must be much more," he said adamantly, "otherwise, you wouldn't wake up screaming."
"... The recapitulation of our lives never ends, no matter how well we've done it once," don Juan said. "The reason average people lack volition in their dreams is that they have never recapitulated and their lives are filled to capacity with heavily loaded emotions like memories, hopes, fears, et cetera, et cetera.
"Sorcerers, in contrast, are relatively free from heavy, binding emotions, because of their recapitulation. And if something stops them, as it has stopped you at this moment, the assumption is that there still is something in them that is not quite clear."
"To recapitulate is too involving, don Juan. Maybe there is something else I can do instead."
"No. There isn't. Recapitulating and dreaming go hand in hand. As we regurgitate our lives, we get more and more airborne."
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.
Because of my academic training, I took the recapitulation to be the process of analyzing one's life. But don Juan insisted that it was more involved than an intellectual psychoanalysis. He postulated the recapitulation as a sorcerer's ploy to induce a minute but steady displacement of the assemblage point. He said that the assemblage point, under the impact of reviewing past actions and feelings, goes back and forth between its present site and the site it occupied when the event being recapitulated took place.
Don Juan stated that the old sorcerers' rationale behind the recapitulation was their conviction that there is an inconceivable dissolving force in the universe, which makes organisms live by lending them awareness. That force also makes organisms die, in order to extract the same lent awareness, which organisms have enhanced through their life experiences. Don Juan explained the old sorcerer's reasoning. They believed that since it is our life experience this force is after, it is of supreme importance that it can be satisfied with a facsimile of our life experience: the recapitulation. Having had what it seeks, the dissolving force then lets sorcerers go, free to expand their capacity to perceive and reach with it the confines of time and space.
When I started to recapitulate, it was a great surprise to me that my dreaming practices were automatically suspended the moment my recapitulation began. I asked don Juan about this unwanted recess.
"Dreaming requires every bit of our available energy," he replied. "If there is a deep preoccupation in our life, there is no possibility of dreaming."
"But I have been deeply preoccupied before," I said, "and my practices were never interrupted."
"It must be then that every time you thought you were pre-occupied, you were only egomaniacally disturbed," he said, laughing. "To be preoccupied, for sorcerers, means that all your energy sources are taken on. This is the first time you've engaged your energy sources in their totality. The rest of the time, even when you recapitulated before, you were not completely absorbed."
Don Juan gave me this time a new recapitulation pattern. I was supposed to construct a jigsaw puzzle by recapitulating, without any apparent order, different events of my life.
"But it's going to be a mess," I protested.
"No, it won't be," he assured me. "It'll be a mess if you let your pettiness choose the events you are going to recapitulate. Instead, let the spirit decide. Be silent, and then get to the event the spirit points out."
The results of that pattern of recapitulation were shocking to me on many levels. It was very impressive to find out that, whenever I silenced my mind, a seemingly independent force immediately plunged me into a most detailed memory os some event in my life. But it was even more impressive that a very orderly configuration resulted. What I thought was going to be chaotic turned out to be extremely effective.
I asked don Juan why he had not made me recapitulate in this manner from the start. He replied that there are two basic rounds to the recapitulation, that the first is called formality and rigidity, and the second fluidity.
I had no inkling about how different my recapitulation was going to be this time. The ability to concentrate, which I had acquired by means of my dreaming practices, permitted me to examine my life at a depth I would never have imagined possible. It took me over a year to view and review all I could about my life experiences. At the end, I had to agree with don Juan: there had been immensities of loaded emotions hidden so deeply inside me as to be virtually inaccessible. The result of my second recapitulation was a new, more relaxed attitude.

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The Art of Stalking True Freedom: Taisha Abelar in Conversation with Alexander Blair-Ewart, Part 1. Copyright Dimensions Magazine.

(p 29-31) ... And now we consider it (recapitulation) really the fundamental technique in sorcery of all the techniques we learned for moving the assemblage point. The recapitulation is really the best one for modern man, and the reason we put so much emphasis on it - Don Juan put the emphasis on it, too - is because anyone can do it. You don't have to be a "sorcerer's apprentice" or anything like that. Just any individual with minimal interest - they don't even have to be absolutely devoted or anything, but have some curiosity - can start this. It is a technique for erasing the idea of the self, or what the self is, in terms of all the memories and associations with people that one had during one's lifetime. And it's not just an idea. I mean, I say idea, but it's an energetic idea, because when one interacts with persons, energy is exchanged, of course. A lot of it is lost or left in things. Through concerns or deep emotions, it's left in the world and in people. And the strategy - because it is a sorcerer's strategy - is to regain that, to bring it back, so you can have it all with you now, in the present. Why leave it floating around in some mysterious past that kind of holds you fixed in the place where you are?
So what you do is you sit, you find a place where you have some quiet and solitude, preferably a closet or big box or even a shower, because you want an enclosed space - the sorcerers used to have their recapitulation boxes, where they would bury themselves, or be in a cave. I started mine in a small cave. Something that encloses the energetic body, so that there's some pressure put on the luminous self. Before you sit, you make out your list. You have a list of everyone that you've ever met, encountered, had anything to do with throughout your life. So this takes some doing, and some remembering. This remembering, in itself, sort of loosens the assemblage point. So, it's kind of like a preliminary exercise. By going back in your mind and remembering everybody that you've ever known, you work from the present backwards, and you write down all the people that you've worked with, your family, your associates, everybody that you've had anything to do with. Actually you make two lists. First of all your sexual experiences. Anyone that you've had any sexual dealings with. And sorcerers always say you start there, because that's the fundamental energy that's lost out there, and if you retrieve that, then that will give you the boost to do your other people.
So you have your two lists, and then you sit in your recapitulation box, cave or closet, and you start the breathing. The third element besides the lists and the box or the place is the breath. And the breath is very important, because the breathing is what disentangles the energy. And this is already set up by Intent. Our interaction with others is done with our energetic body, and the breath moves the luminous fibres. You start on your right shoulder, where you put your hand - actually I describe this in my book pretty well - but you start on your right shoulder, and when you have set up the scene of people and places in your mind, you've situated everything and you've visualized it to perfection in all its detail, then you have your chin on your right shoulder and you breathe in, turning your head to your left shoulder, and then you exhale moving your head back to your right shoulder, and then you bring your head to the centre. You sweep it; it's like a sweeping of the scene. You just sweep the whole room or person or place, whatever. And you pull back whatever was left out there and you exhale whatever of that other person's energy was left in you. You exhale it and give it back. In a sense you detach yourself from that particular encounter. And you do this with everything.
After you've done it with your whole life, you detach pretty much from your remembered past. This is not like an analysis, by the way. It's not meant to be like a real self analysis, but you can't help seeing in the way you act and behave and what is expected of you, a pattern forming, an absolute pattern emerging. And with the breath, you break that pattern. So what you essentially want to do is move into formless, patternless behavior, which is the way a sorcerer acts...
Now when you do the breathing with the recapitulation, by moving back into the past, moving forward into now, and that intense concentration that is needed to sit there and visualize these things, that shifts your assemblage point minutely. And whoever does the recapitulation will see that. They'll see that oh, god, I'm doing this again, and ten years later doing it again. The same kind of relationships, again, the same type of man, the same type of woman. We know somebody who says he always picks difficult women. (laughter) I don't know what that means, but it's true. It's like this person is doomed to have difficult relationships. So patterns get repeated, no matter what they are, and whoever recapitulates will see that.
...You can use any minor meditation techniques. I wouldn't say go heavily into Oriental meditation techniques, because you're already doing the recapitulation and you don't want to get fixed into any form. All we're doing now as abstract sorcerers is a minimal of technique so that we can get away from the self. We don't want to get heavier in the area of ego and ego enforcement, and "now we're meditators", or "now we're ..."

(p 32) ... So when we recapitulate and detach ourselves from everything that's ever happened, we're floating. The assemblage point becomes free. It can move, and very harmoniously. It can move without the aid of drugs, without the aid of some external person or Nagual.
... But a stalker begins here in the everyday world, and that's why this recapitulation is really for everyone. They begin here, right wherever anyone is. That's where they start. And they start with their list and their place, they sweep the past, then they make themselves quiet internally, so that they don't accumulate more of the debris, using certain gazing methods... Or just sitting quietly - you don't even have to call it meditating - just shut off the internal dialogue.
... it's really an ongoing process, because after you've finished all the sexual encounters, then you do everybody whom you've encountered in your life. Then you can go back to certain themes. Like you notice that there are still things like when you're working, or something happens during the day, you notice oh boy, that gave me a jolt, that really bothered me. Then you can see why did it bother you, and you can use certain themes. Like wanting to be liked seems to be so common. Everybody seems to want somebody to like them, support them, approve of them. That has to go, but that's a very strong driving force that keeps us in line, because as long as you still have that, it's just like the carrot being dangled in front of your nose. Whatever it is that somebody dangles out there that your body would react to...

(p 33) ... So when I say recapitulation, it has to be tried and tested in the everyday world. You can't just escape into the desert and do it, and then feel good and that's the end of it. You have to get back in with people and see. Get back with your mother, with your father. What do they do to you for you to react like the little girl, the little boy that wants mommy to do his laundry, to take care of his tummy?"

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The Art of Stalking True Freedom: Taisha Abelar in Conversation with Alexander Blair-Ewart, Part 2. Copyright Dimensions Magazine.

(p 26) ... that's one of the killers of neophytes, the idea that they have to have a solitary journey, a solitary quest, because the recapitulation is done in absolute solitude. But people think, well, they can meditate together, do things together, as long as they still have a group consensus. But you see, it's that very group consensus that prevents the subtle movement of the assemblage point.

Castaneda's Clan (Magical Blend # 42, April 1994)

(p 58) Florinda: ... I've done four recapitulations of my entire life to date and I find something new each time. And what I find is that not directly but indirectly we always try to be the hero ourselves.

(p 59) Carol Tiggs: ... By recapitulating you light up in your awareness exactly the energies (or reality) that was constructed so that you can begin to perceive the patterns and programming that control you.

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Being-In-Dreaming: An interview with Florinda Donner. Magical Blend #35, April 1992. Copyright Magical Blend Magazine.

(p 22-24) One of the first exercises all sorcerers do - one that I did not do for years because I didn't believe in it - is a recapitulation of their lives with all the people with whom they have had any kind of interaction. They start working on the present and work toward the past, and, of course, they end up with their parents. They don't, however, make a psychological interpretation. Sorcerers want to feel how they have interacted, what kinds of emotions they felt. As they go further and further back in time, they realize that the repetitiveness of their way of perceiving or interacting is so horrendously boring that there is nothing special about them.

Taisha Abelar interview in Magical Blend #40, October 1993. Copyright Magical Blend Magazine.

(p 49-50) The recapitulation is a method of bringing back all of the energy trapped in the world in order to have it available to use for other things. It enables one to see that the reality to which you're born isn't the only reality, but merely a fixation of energy.
...The recapitulation enables you to move that point by using a psychic process of extending your breath to call back any energy you've left throughout your lifetime.
...The recapitulation is the fundamental means of storing energy. First, you make a list of everyone you've known in your lifetime, every person you've ever come across. That, in itself, is an endeavor of intense concentration. Just making the list loosens up things and enables you to focus your attention on something specific. When you have your list, find a place that puts pressure on the energetic body, like a closet. Sit comfortably and begin with the first person on your list. Work backward, recapitulating or visualizing all the situations in which you encountered this person, those interactions in which energy was exchanged. See yourself interacting and going through all sorts of energetic maneuvers in order to maintain the situation. We all construct our reality energetically. Even when we're just driving down the street, we're constructing...
Through recapitulating, you take back energy of the past that is lost in your personal history and hangs behind you like a comet's tail of debris. To disentangle yourself from your remembered pasts, start at your right shoulder and, moving your head from right to left, breathe in. Then, turn your head back again and exhale, sending everything back that you no longer want to be connected with. Then bring the head back to the center again. You don't have the sensation with every image, but you breathe everything out deeply, sending out lines with each breath. When you have pulled your energy back, breathe that in as a clump and proceed on until there is no more energy left there. The scene will be vacuous, empty because there's no energetic component in it.
Q: What effect does recapitulating have on your life?
You'll find that your attachment with your family and friends will be lessened. You can still interact with them, but you're no longer attached to them because you won't have that energetic dependence upon them.

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The Secret Life of Carlos Castaneda. Copyright March 1994 Details Magazine.

(p 213) CC: The recapitulation is the most important thing we do. To begin, you make a list of everyone you ever knew. Everyone you ever spoke to or had dealings with.
Q: Everyone?
CC: Yes. You go down the list, chronologically re-creating the scenes of exchange.
Q: But that could take years.
CC: Sure. A thorough recapitulation takes a long time. And then you start over. We are never through recapitulating - that way there's no residue...
Q: You re-create the scene...
CC: Start with sexual encounters. You see the sheets, the furniture, the dialogue. Then get to the person, the feeling. What were you feeling? Watch! Breathe in the energy you expended in the exchange; give back what isn't yours.
Q: It almost sounds like psychoanalysis.
CC: You don't analyze, you observe. The filigrees, the detail - you're hooking yourself to the sorcerers intent. It's a maneuver, a magical act hundreds of years old, the key to restoring energy that will free you for other things.
Q: You move your head and breathe -
CC: Go down the list until you get to mommy and daddy. By then you'll be shocked; you'll see patterns of repetition that will nauseate you. Who is sponsoring your insanities? Who is making the agenda? The recapitulation will give you a moment of silence - it will allow you to vacate the premises and make room for something else. From the recapitulation you come up with endless tales of the Self, but you are no longer bleeding.
... Fucking is our most important act, energetically. See, we've dispersed our best generals but don't try to call them back; we lose by default. That's why it's so important to recapitulate your life.
The recapitulation separates our commitment to the social order from our life force. The two are not inextricable. Once I was able to substract the social being from my native energy, I could clearly see: I wasn't that sexy.

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Taisha Abelar Lecture at East/West Bookstore in Menlo Park, CA (NNL #2)

She said the most important thing one could do was the recapitulation - devotedly - for a year or two. Then one might be ready to undertake the path of sorcery.

(NNL #3) Once you have restored your energy by the recapitulation there is no need for chanting or special rituals to move your assemblage point.
After the recapitulation and not-doing, then you can see.
Recapitulation. There is no method. There is a method but it is not important whether you move your head from right to left or from left to right or set aside a regular time or a lot of time. What is important is the unbending intent to recapitulate. Then the spirit will guide you into the right form and time and amount of practice. With intent, time will set itself. When you make the right intent, you will have 27 generations of sorcerers behind you. They did not all practice the recapitulation the same way, but their intent will hook you support you and guide you. The intent out there to recapitulate is constant but the method varies. Therefore:

1. Intend it.

2. Have an integrity about it - don't brag or compete (competition is the worst thing in the world, it is a primary support for the third cornerstone of everyday reality, the sense of self-importance).

3. Discipline order harmony. Don't be random unless you intend it. Most people make a list and work backwards.

4. Breath. Direction not important. What is important is using the breath to pull the energy back.

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Carlos Castaneda Lecture #1 at Phoenix Bookstore in Los Angeles (NNL #2)

Recapitulation helps us drop self-importance in the presentation of the self. "Cloak of confidence" is developed by recapitulation.

Carlos Castaneda Lecture #4 (NNL #2)

It takes forever for death to take us back -- to dissolve our experiences. Sorcerers beat the odds. Recapitulation gives death a facsimile of our awareness. "It" will let you go. "Try it."
Act! Make a list of people and recapitulate. Direction of head is not important. Breathe and reformulate the memory. This will increase your energy.

Taisha Abelar Lecture at Alexandria II Bookstore in Pasadena, CA Oct. 92 (NNL #3)

Recapitulation - make list of everyone you've known, begin with the latest person and work backwards. Breathe in over right shoulder to left then exhale back (rotating the head back) - visualize and breath you can do it in the world.
You can recapitulate your dreams or recapitulate in your dreams. If awake, normal recapitulation, start at right inhale to left, exhale to center. In dreams, inhale clockwise, exhale counter-clockwise in center. There are layers of recapitulation.
After recapitulating there is only NOW. This permits discrepancies - coming and going from the consensual universe.

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Taisha Abelar Lecture at Gaia Bookstore in Berkeley, CA Nov. 1993 (NNL #3)

Abelar thought she was perfectly normal, unchanged by the recapitulation but by the end without her even being aware of the process she had shifted 1/2 of her awareness to the energy body. Abelar explains that you do not feel different toward the world after a recapitulation; it is just that once you are done you no longer get so upset by the "little things" that used to bother you before.
Recapitulation gave Abelar a fluid assemblage point.
How to Do the Recapitulation: there is no right or wrong way. It has been called to our attention that Donner and Castaneda use different directions for the breathing. It does not matter which way you go, the point is to gently jiggle the assemblage point being your shoulder blades by turning the head. The most important thing is to allow intent to guide you in your dreaming or into moving the assemblage point; something will harmonize what you do.

- so you might start with a particular technique but then develop and refine it according to the dictates of spirit.

- do not hurt your neck by sweeping too far.

- when you have experience you can recapitulate while walking or doing the dishes, just sweep up little bundles of energy from relived past experiences and send back the little hooks other people have left in you.

- start by sitting, quieting the mind. Take someone from your list (of everyone you have ever known) and then visualize a scene with them when you get enough detail (you may or may not have emotions associated with the scene?) you do the fanning breath. You work backward from most recent people to earliest people.

- when you recapitulate, unhook the old extraneous stuff first; don't start with current relationships or you may sever them. (In answer to a question) don't start with your mom, this is one of the big relationships and save it for last.

- recapitulation does not mean you won't love someone anymore; in fact you may love them for the first time when you are done, since there will no longer be unfinished business, old baggage between you.

- put yourself in the scene you have visualized then breathe it in.

- gently sweep.

- don't get a sore neck.

- see the energy, the filaments (this is something you might see or sense but will get better with as time goes by especially as you have more energy to work with as a result of the practice.)

- feel with the breath.

- exhale and let go (break off from the matrix of the social structure.)

- no moral judgments or narcissism.

- sometimes body gets involved - jiggle the fibers.

- turning the head jiggles the point behind you.

- can do while doing the dishes.

- energy body will make itself known to you, heard by you and teach you how to breath (in your own way.)

- so just recapitulate; it is the most important; activate the energy body and something will guide you.

Q: recap the dead too?

- even the dead.

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