Encounters With The Nagual: Part 1 - Chapter 08. Recapitulation.

Encounters With The Nagual - © 2004 by Armando Torres.

Part 1 - Chapter 08. Recapitulation.

When revising my notes, I discovered that another topic Carlos repeatedly referred to in his talks was the concept of the recapitulation. He claimed that it is the exercise to which sorcerers dedicate most of their time.

Once he remarked that, 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 at any time, and to recover our totality.

Carlos said, "It is never too late. While we are alive, there is always a way of conquering any kind of blockage.

"The best way to recover the luminous fibers we have lost is by calling our energy back. The most important thing is to take the first step.

"And for those who are interested in saving and recovering their energy, the best way open to us is the recapitulation.

"A sorcerer knows that if we do not go for our ghosts, they will come for us. For that reason, a sorcerer leaves nothing unresolved. He recounts his past and 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 old knots of intent.

"Sorcerers say that the average person lives their life from a distance; as if it were a memory.

"We spend life hooked and hurt by something that happened thirty years ago. We carry a burden that does not make sense anymore. We scream at others, 'I do not forgive you!'

"But that is not true. It is ourselves we do not 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, and reconciling ourselves with our energy. We will thus have dissipated 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 can not escape having been born from a boring intercourse, nor from our having invested most of our luminosity in making children, nor from our having maintained tiring relationships.

"But we can recapitulate. That cancels out the negative energetic effects of past acts.

"Fortunately, in the realm of energy, things like time and space do not 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 and subject 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. It is a basic practice and is 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."

In another lecture, Carlos referred to a kind of luminous stagnation, which he described as a fixation of our attention that blocks the flow of energy.

He said that this happens when we refuse to face facts, and try to protect ourselves by hiding behind evasive actions. Or when we leave pending matters unresolved, or make commitments that tie us down.

The consequence of that kind of stagnation is that the person ceases to be himself. When being pressured by the chain of decisions that he has made during his life, he can no longer act in a deliberate manner and he becomes entangled in the circumstances. This situation can escalate to the point of mental or physical illness, and can only be resolved through recapitulation.

Carlos maintained that, in essence, 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.

Carlos said, "The warrior begins rewinding his day. He reconstructs conversations, deciphers meanings, remembers faces and names, looks for shades and insinuations, and dissects his own emotional reactions and those of others. He does not leave anything to chance, and grabs the memories of the day one by one. He cleans them through his breathing.

"He also analyzes entire chapters and categories of his past life. For example, he examines 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 somewhat 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. And instead of stalking them in silence, we judge them and interact with them viscerally. That is pitiful. A warrior takes advantage of an opportunity to recall because those memories, seemingly random, are warnings from our silent side."

Carlos pointed out that to recapitulate, no special conditions are necessary. We can try the exercise any time or any place whenever or where-ever we feel moved to do it.

He said, "Warriors recapitulate when they are walking down the road, in the bathroom, when working, when eating, or whenever it is possible. The important thing is to do it."

Carlos added that it takes no definite posture. The only requirement is to be comfortable so that the physical body does not 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 and 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.'

Somebody asked him if it is necessary to breathe from right to left or vice versa.

Carlos replied, "It does not matter. It is energetic work and there is no fixed required pattern. What counts is the intent.

"Breathe in when you try to recover something, and blow back all that does not belong to you. If you do that with the totality of your history, you will stop living entangled in a chain of memories.

"Instead, you will be focused in the present. Seers describe that effect as facing facts as they are, or as seeing time objectively."

Someone asked Carlos what we have to do with our memories once we locate them; whether it means to examine them with some psychoanalytical method, or something like that.

Carlos answered, "It is not necessary to do anything in particular. Memories will find their own course, and luminosity is reordered by itself through the breathing. Just try it. Make yourself available to do it and the spirit will tell you how to do it.

"Recapitulation starts from inside, and sustains itself. It is matter of silencing the mind, and then our energy body will take control by doing what is a delight for it to do.

"You feel well and comforted. And far from draining you, it gives you rest. Your body perceives it as an inexplicable energy bath.

"But you should have the correct attitude. Do not confuse the exercise with a psychological question. If what you think you need is interpretations, then go to a 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. Recapitulation is about understanding, and putting our existence in order by seeing it as it is without remorse, reproaches, or congratulations, and with total indifference in a spirit of fluidity and even of humor.

"Understand that 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 our strongest investments which are our 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."

Responding to another question Carlos said that recapitulation does not have an end. It should last until the end of our days and beyond.

He said, "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 is a daily practice, we must not see the exercise as a routine.

He explained, "If we do not recover the totality of our energy, we will never achieve the power of our decisions. There will always be the background noise of a seemingly 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, and 'You' decide what you want to make of yourself."

Another question concerned the effects of recapitulation on awareness.

Carlos maintained that the exercise has two main effects. He said, "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.

"Recapitulation liberates him from the obligation of memory, and from the burden of feelings. It leaves a residual energy that a warrior can invest toward enlarging the frontiers of their perception.

"A warrior begins to appreciate the real thing and not the interpretation of it. For the first time, that warrior comes into contact with the consensus of sorcerers which is the description of a reality inconceivably integrated.

"It is normal that a warrior at this stage begins to laugh at anything, because energy provides happiness. Thanks to the recapitulation, a warrior is happy, overflowing, or jumps like a child.

"On the other hand, the warrior begins to become a fearsome person, since, having their luminosity intact and their life clean, decisions will no longer be an obstacle for them. A warrior will decide what is necessary the moment they want 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 they would take unnecessary risks; endangering both their own security and the security of others.

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

Carlos went on to say that the sorcerer who has managed to compress the thickest part of his energy is in a state where he or she may intend a feat of perceptual prowess. They can intend a copy of their life experience in order to deceive death.

"That is the final objective of the recapitulation-- to create a double, and get ready to leave. You do not 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, sorcerers pick up the fibers which drained their attention, and they return to others they have known all the attention the sorcerer had taken from 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."

In another talk, Carlos referred to a method designed by the new seers which can be helpful in the exercise of recapitulation.

He stated, "One of the tasks of sorcerers is to constantly analyze the insinuations of the spirit. For this purpose, sorcerers often use a book of memorable events. This is a map of those occasions when the spirit had intervened in their lives, and forced them to make decisions whether voluntarily or involuntarily."

Carlos explained that 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.

He said, "This book 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."

Carlos was requested to give us some examples of this kind of event.

He complied, saying, "Although signs of the spirit are a personal matter, they are extraordinary events that in general mark people's lives; like being born, choosing a career, intertwining your destiny with another person, or having children.

"Also, illnesses and serious accidents are spiritual events, because they establish a nexus with death.

"Or for those who have the fortune of finding a conduit of spirit in a person who is a nagual; and that is, certainly, the most memorable possibility of all.

"The interventions of intent are precursors, and are very significant memories for a warrior. 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 the memorable events, and to synthesize them-- to extract the personal stuff, and leave the magical essence.

"When properly done, one's collection of the interventions of intent becomes what the new seers call their abstract centers of perception. This is a matrix of intent which a warrior has the duty of deciphering."