Shamanic Futures

[ArcaneHuman]

Hi. I struggle with recurring "psychosis". I have these recurring delusions (or at least i hope they are delusions). In these episodes i end up feeling like I am evil. It's a very complex and nuanced experience. The world around me feels very fake yet i am responsible for the suffering in it because that is apparently real somehow. It feels like i chose this life in the bardos that preceded this life... with ill intent. It's a very unassuming incarnation i've taken on. i am not overtly hurting other people but my lifestyle surely creates suffering on this planet. But that lack of overt wrong doings is used against me when the "condemnation narrative" as i call it sinks its teeth in. It's like i'm pulling strings behind the scenes... sustaining war and inequitable living conditions... with my mind/ subconsciously performed black magick or something. It's such a horrible feeling. 

These psychotic episodes are intense and i can be easily overstimulated being out in public and get really triggered. So I can barely leave my house for more than a half hour. I feel like i am hyper aware of the destruction happening on this planet. Every car that passes reminds me of how screwed we are if we don't all start to embody love and literal magick. I think about how each of these people i pass require thousands of acres of agricultural land and there's billions of them. I think about people's ignorance and their unwillingness to open their eyes and see that our way of living is outdated and threatens to destroy us. Also why out of all the consciousnesses i could have inhabited... a bird, an ant, a lion, another person. Why am I this very specific human being who overthinks consciousness? What are the chances? Why do I not see through the eyes of others?

So my question is how to heal. I have been meditating every day for over two years. My meditations are consistently profound. i can feel energy shifting and i end up recalling a lot of forgotten memories from my life which feels very promising and grounding through recollections of a simpler time. These memories surface very vividly. Yet still.... the psychosis returns time and time again.

Part of me feels like i need a teacher though. And genuinely wise/powerful teachers are rather rare in these parts. I have underwent a small handful of unofficial initiations but i need someone to work with more closely over a more extended period of time.

I met an indigenous man in downtown Santa FE, New Mexico over thirteen years ago who said to me "i heard what you were saying over there. You're a spiritual warrior. You'll see the sky fill with demons. You'll beat them but don't fight them." He said it like... 30 or 40 times. "you're a spiritual warrior. You'll see the sky fill with demons. You'll beat them but don't fight them"

I've seen a bit upwards of 10 healers and none of this cleared out all the chaos/darkness. 3 of them did their work for free. 

1) One time i went to a woman and she said "you need mothering". She bid me to lay my head on her lap and i felt blanketed in the most loving energy. But no sooner did i silently say to myself "I wish i could stay here forever" that she stood up and said "You know what you need? You need a stick" And i said "oh i left one outside leaning up against the wall near the door"    "I know" she said. Then she left and came back right away with this stick and it was glowing with white light. She handed it to me saying "This is your inner rod of light. No one can give this to you but yourself............. you're welcome." So my way of interpreting that is that either it wasn't really my rod of light..... or she was speaking through a non-dual perspective where she and i are actually the same. that it was myself giving it to myself. 

2)  I was at Alex Grey's CoSM volunteering so i was there before the first event. This man walked in. He was Mexican and like... well over 6'4" tall and his energy/presence just wowed me. anyway... it was made clear that he was a very powerful shaman. Many hours later as the night drew to a close he was walkiing through the crowd of hip looking spiritual young people and out the front door and i asked him "do you have any advice?" He said something like... "meet me here tomorrow morning at 930 AM and we'll talk"

That next morning I talked to him mostly about intrusive disturbing thoughts since that was my main concern at the time. I was looking at his face and it was morphing and changing into these really ugly monsters. Apparently he knew what i was seeing because he said to me.... "When you see those... say Those Motherfuckers."  I said "What are they?"  He replied simply "They're Nothing." Then he led me into a trance state of some kind and at the perfect moment i felt him place the flat of his palm on the sternum of my chest and he moved his hand up and down (right where the Anahata chakra would be) and after ten seconds of this i burst into laughter as though i had just been told the most brilliant joke. To this day i have no idea what i was laughing about.

So yeah... i've come to the conclusion that i could really use a teacher. I was invited to join a western esoteric mystery school but i also feel like i could use a shamanic practitioner. Like... someone who actually knows what they're doing. It's a bit of a catch 22 because i need to heal first before i can travel to a teacher... And hence i continue to meditate daily. 

Also the title of this post "Shamanic Futures" is just a hope that i have for this hopeless world. That people who are healers come together and strengthen each other's ability to comprehend and allow for magick. I often wonder if such a blessing is in the stars.

[Moonshadow]

Hi, Arcane Human, 

I was just talking with someone about how wonderful meditation is but the tragedy is that you put so much work into it without getting your energy back- that exactly is what will help you heal. I once meditated for years, it energized me etc but it wasn’t until I tried recapitulation that I actually began to heal …. Myself. 
 

can I suggest something? Browse through the articles on the caveshamans site and read up on what that is- recapitulation, an act of energy retrieval, and come back with a few questions, we’d all be happy to jump in and answer because everyone here has done it and really got a lot of self healing done that no one could ever give us.

 

Eman

[ArcaneHuman]

Hi Eman

My IRL friend Stacey who referred me to this page has actually been recommending recapitulation to me for a while now. Honestly I tried to pick it up 3 or so times and dropped it after a week or two every time.  

So i guess i do have questions about it. What should I recap? Apparently one should not jump in and recap trauma. So then I just end up recapping whatever comes to mind as i'm recapping and that's why i don't feel motivation to continue the practice because i end up recapping like... buying a pretzel or something. And then something else will come to mind and i'll recap looking at someone's facebook pictures or something. It just seems kind of trivial if i'm not focusing on the moments when i lost significant amounts of energy..... as one would with trauma. 

I also use the stalking practice... or at least my own interpretation of it. That does help and i've done it here and there consistently over a long stretch of time. I remember there were like... 4 key elements according to the article on stalking. One of them was humor. The other ruthlessness? The others i do not remember. Humor is probably rather absent from my stalking. To me stalking is just doing unusual things to break one's habits of self towards the ends of freeing oneself from that small self. for a while when i was stalking i would get this point where i would shrug. That shrugging theme kept coming up. It was like... i was shrugging off something that's a big deal and not recognizing it as a big deal. but yeah... i never got to the root of what this shrugging really meant. 

 

[cammie]

6 hours ago, ArcaneHuman said:

i don't feel motivation to continue

Hey Arcanehuman, 

I also knew about Recapping long before I was able to make a practice of it. I was introduced to it years ago through the Carlos Castaneda books, but it wasn’t something I could seem to really find time for. I don’t think I even understood how to actually go about it. I realized I needed some structure and that’s how I found Shamanscave, by looking up recapping classes. I knew myself well enough to know I would stick with something in a class structure but on my own i might suck at it, lol. But now that it’s a practice it’s one of those things I just do, like brushing my teeth.  It’s a really good place to start and it’s one of those tools for life. 
 

this is a good place to start:

https://www.shamanscave.com/self-healing/the-recapitulation

 

[cammie]

4 hours ago, ArcaneHuman said:

It just seems kind of trivial if i'm not focusing on the moments when i lost significant amounts of energy..... as one would with trauma. 

Right, I understand completely. The thing about it is that you kind of have to peel the layers off and gather your resources. A big tangled knot of string isn’t going to be untangled by yanking really hard on it. You have to finesse and tease the outermost parts first, and be patient. It take time to get to those core wounds. The more energy you retrieve on day to day things, little reactions to events, that persistent shoulder pain, or whatever, the more energy you have to tackle the big stuff. ❤️ 
 

[Moonshadow]

Hello again.

You know, we have a class here that's just about recapping and a new session is starting this Saturday Oct. 2... maybe the timing of your post here is serendipitous, let's say. I think if you are taught how's to do it properly, you'll do it and stick to it. Just 15-20 minutes a day, and within two months you'll start to feel a difference. Six months in, you'll feel like a different person. Stronger. Happier. Free from all the suffering and guilt you seem to carry. Believe me- or try for yourself. I really, really, hope you take it. I think if every human on earth practiced recapitulation our world would be a very different, happier reality.

 

Intending you all the best on your journey towards healing and freeing yourself.

 

Eman

[douglas]

ArcaneHuman,

Believe it or not, your description of "psychosis" and "condemnation narrative" very closely parallels my own experience. The details are different of course, but the impact on your day-to-day life seems almost exactly as I was experiencing my life. I also had some encounters and experiences along the way that seemed significant, spiritual or supernatural things, and yet left me ultimately unchanged (and a bit perplexed). And I tried some practices that seemed promising, made some difference, but did not really touch what needed changing. This "thing" (intrusive thoughts, condemnation narrative, "psychosis") of mine just would not move for me, I could not be free of it.

That has changed. I have a degree of freedom now that seemed impossible a few years ago. And I'm not done yet, I'm going to get free-er still. But if nothing more changed for me, that would be fine. My life is much better and no longer the living hell that it had become. The minutes that I've invested day-by-day in getting my energy back have paid off well enough that I have no complaints about the process.

The recapitulation practice seems almost silly, but it does take some effort and persistence. It's kind of paradoxical. How could doing something like that make me whole when all these other things (and people) could not? I have some ideas about why & how, but they are really irrelevant. What matters it that it works for me. I hope it works for you, if you give it a try again. I think it will.

Wishing you all the best,

Douglas

[Stacey]

On 9/29/2021 at 9:49 PM, Eman said:

Hello again.

You know, we have a class here that's just about recapping and a new session is starting this Saturday Oct. 2... maybe the timing of your post here is serendipitous, let's say. I think if you are taught how's to do it properly, you'll do it and stick to it. Just 15-20 minutes a day, and within two months you'll start to feel a difference. Six months in, you'll feel like a different person. Stronger. Happier. Free from all the suffering and guilt you seem to carry. Believe me- or try for yourself. I really, really, hope you take it. I think if every human on earth practiced recapitulation our world would be a very different, happier reality.

 

Intending you all the best on your journey towards healing and freeing yourself.

 

Eman

i agree arcanehuman, do it if you're able to! this thread is awesome, it seems like your time to shine

[ArcaneHuman]

Eman and Cammie and Doug

Thank you all. So including my compadre Stacey that is now four people telling me to do the recapitulation daily. so i started it today. I actually was recapping some interesting things. i feel like memory recall is important for me because my episodic memory is not very good. I think memory of my life gives me a bit of an anchor to the past in a sense which is important for me. 

Eman, you mentioned the recap class. I'm actually taking the spirals class right now. i missed the first class and am going to try to feel out if these classes are a good fit for me

Cammie, you mentioned Castaneda. Which one of his books is the recap mentioned? I haven't read him in over a decade. Might want to revisit it. I like the string metaphor.

Doug, thank you for sharing. I've actually kind of wanted to meet someone born at the same time as me and see if they have the same craziness going on in their life. lol. Hopefully i can heal in a similar manner to you. Fingers crossed. 

Stacey... i'll read your email in a little bit. HEyo! hi!

[Stacey]

"I think memory of my life gives me a bit of an anchor to the past in a sense which is important for me. "

yes, that statement makes sense! that's why detaching or letting go is hard. we've been relying on our memories this whole time. so it can feel counterintuitive. who will i be if i let go of the anchor? how will i float...what will happen? they're big, daunting questions that are also curious...i think they can open up a lot of space for fresh air, new goals, epiphanies.

"Doug, thank you for sharing. I've actually kind of wanted to meet someone born at the same time as me and see if they have the same craziness going on in their life. lol. Hopefully i can heal in a similar manner to you. Fingers crossed. "

not to say Douglas' healing journey isn't admirable, it is, and you certainly have parallels- but your journey is equally admirable. the beauty of humans is we all have a unique story to contribute and impact the world with. you've been committed to healing for a long time and i'm so excited to see what comes up for you as you test the waters however you decide to here.

"Stacey... i'll read your email in a little bit. HEyo! hi!"

HAYYYYYY😜