Thought Form Recapitulation
I remember reading about recapitulation in Carlos Castaneda’s books and thinking that it sounded like something that I would like to try. A few years ago I attended a 10-day ‘Silent Power’ intensive that was geared to this process. I have found it to be a very useful tool, both personally and professionally.
Negative ‘internal dialogue’ is the brain’s response to conflicts, which arise from unresolved experiences that have an underlying emotional component. The brain naturally organizes similar thoughts together. Each memory strand has a baseline emotional component. Memory strands of similar emotional memories are linked together in a chain. Following the path back to the time before the pattern began brings new awareness to the pattern, and can help bring resolution and a new sense of well-being.
In brief, the thought form recapitulation process not only restructures how the brain thinks when in automatic and unconscious modes (i.e. the tapes we play over and over), but it also resolves the underlying emotional conflicts that created our ‘internal dialogue’ in the first place. Through resolution of these conflicts the ego stops its defensiveness and becomes silent. The “I” that comes from the karmic ego is replaced by the dharmic or transcended ego, (which doesn’t need to defend or prove anything).
Recapitulating these strands of memory helps us get to the bottom of the conflicts that underlie them. These underlying conflicts must be resolved in order to silence our ‘internal dialogue’. This is done by traveling back to the time before the pattern began. These recurring patterns can be “core beliefs”, such as statements that we heard as children, or any of the “core emotions” such as sadness, pain, anxiety, anger, shame, frustration, helplessness, aloneness, self-pity, worry, grief, doubt, jealousy and so on. Fear is often an underlying issue.
Recapitulation helps you see the underlying emotional/mental pattern as you trace it to its origin and beyond. It brings awareness to the patterns that keep us ‘re-acting’ to life instead of being present in the moment. Using the recapitulation breath we contact the strands of thought that are connected on the in-breath and release them on the out breath. We simply trust what shows up as we trace these patterns back to their origin and before. When you reach the time before this pattern began there is often a break-through when you realize the illusion that you have been living under. This new awareness replaces the original delusion and we are able to retrieve energy that has been caught up in keeping it in place.
Initially recapitulation is done in pairs. However when the process has been learned sufficiently, you can easily do it by your self.
