Energy Body Work, Freedom Now & The Assemblage Point

Freedom Now! The next step in Energy Psychology

...beyond EFT and EMDR

A method you can learn which removes disturbances instantly

 

Recapitulation of your life—how?

 

[Disclaimer

This is an article I wrote in early June ‘07 and sent out to those who are on my email list. I am including it for those who might find it interesting or resonate with it in some way. I am not interested in criticising anyone’s beliefs or practices in any way, and nor am I interested in getting into discussions as to what’s ‘right’ or ‘true’. This is a matter for each person, and is constantly evolving for us as individuals and as a group. In a deep sense, everyone is ‘right’ when they sincerely look for what’s ‘true’, and do appropriate practices to evolve. I am also not so foolish as to think I’ve got the answers – I just hope this might help clarify some ideas for some people.]

 

What is Recapitulation?

Many spiritual traditions have a version of this process of gathering up and sorting the many strands of a life. A recapitulation of a life is a process that happens naturally to most people as they move through their life experiences, as they pass important milestones, and especially as they approach their death, if fear doesn’t take over.

However, the esoteric branches of many traditions have precise instructions for the process of looking closely at a life retrospectively, and for following a series of practices for energetically clearing the ‘tangles’ and ‘bottlenecks’ and unresolved interactions and incidents of one’s life. The result of this can be to develop the ‘art of emptiness’ which is the art of freedom, as a result of going beyond the level of thoughts and desire. All of the traditions consider this a totally necessary practice for real further spiritual development.

 

Rudolf Steiner’s method

Rudolf Steiner was above all a spiritual teacher for the west - some have claimed that he was an incarnation of the Maitreya Buddha. He applied his ‘spiritual science’ in a practical way to cause the development of numerous beneficial disciplines, such as Biodynamics, Projective geometry, the Waldorf School system, art and architecture, and much more. But his main purpose was to bring a method of spiritual development to the west which applied the clarity of a strengthened ‘thinking’ to questions of energy and spirit and human life. One of his main methods to achieve this was the practice of Recapitulation, which first entailed on a daily basis (at the end of the day) the exercise of running backwards through the events of the day in feeling and inner vision. You might say that it was like running the video of your day in reverse but it was not just a visual memory exercise but an exercise in feeling/energetics, in that you drop into the ‘energy body’ on an energy level, a deeper level of ‘being in yourself’ than just a mental approach. (For more on this concept of ‘energy body’ see my site www.energy-body-work.com ). The process is difficult to do at first, but persistence makes it much easier and more complete.

 

Why would you do this?

Part of the reason was the gathering of the ‘kernel’ or essence of one’s life, in the sense of separating the important from the trivial, a way of throwing the events of a life up and letting them re-settle in a revised and clearer configuration.

Part of the reason also is to do a  ‘scrambling’ of the energetic strands of your life, that is, to reverse the human tendency to settle into rigid perspectives and understandings of oneself and the world, a habit common to all of us. This process of ‘scrambling’ is central to the spiritual requirement of remaining fluid at all levels of one’s being. 

Another reason, according to Rudolf Steiner, was that when we physically die, we soon settle in to a period in the afterlife in which we actually do this process for the entire life we have just lived, a recapitulation or re-experiencing of all we have done to others, perhaps even more keenly, for good or ill (which provides a pretty good incentive to behave oneself!). This period lasts approximately 1/3 of the time we were on earth. This process has been dumbed-down and simplified by the Catholic Church as the notion of ‘purgatory’, and is referred to in the Tibetan Buddhist  teachings of the Bardos and their aftermath. Again, all major spiritual traditions have a version of this, if you enquire. It is only the atheist/agnostic tradition of the west that has lost touch with this ancient spiritual understanding.

 

The Toltec tradition

Another tradition that features recapitulation in an altered form is the tradition known as Toltec, or the original shamanic Mexican tradition as described in the books of Carlos Castaneda, Taisha Abelar and Miguel Angel Ruiz, amongst others.

Here the ‘apprentice’ is expected to prepare for the intensive recapitulation process by making an exhaustive list of all the people and events which he/she can remember, in as much detail as possible. Having done so over a few weeks, he then goes through a daily, intensive process of remembering all these events and people vividly and in total detail, while using specific energetic methods to recover ‘lost’ or ‘stuck’ energy which is still attached to those past things, and expelling the energies that have remained in his energy ‘field’ from all the many interactions over the years.

This process is considered essential if anyone wishes to advance spiritually in that tradition.

The results of this process are said to be principally to enable the apprentice to embark on the difficult spiritual journey involved in that tradition. The process of recapitulation is a process of energy management, of energy economy, of making the most of our energetic resources. It removes many illusory ideas, habits, patterns, etc. principally again by ‘scrambling’ whatever is inessential or confused or ‘stuck’ in one’s life. Another way to say it is that it is a process of consciously moving energies through our various ‘energy bodies’, including the physical. Without this process, there will be insufficient energy available, and too much confusion and ‘fog’ to orient oneself in the ‘second attention’, that is, in the spiritual worlds of subtle energies that stand behind this consensus reality in which we find ourselves, and which most people consider to be the whole story.

 

The Freedom Now method

There is a reason why I am particularly interested in this process of recapitulation, apart from its obvious usefulness as a practice in daily life. It is that after 35 years of investigating energies in as many ways as I have been able, a process revealed itself to me recently which I call the ‘Freedom Now’ technique (FN). For over a year now I have been practising it with myself and with friends and clients, and it is essentially a method which allows one to trace any feeling, disturbance, upset, pattern or habit into the ‘energy body’, as a feeling in the body – it seems to be in the body, but is in reality in the energy body. That feeling is in fact the activation of an energy structure which one has developed over the years as a result of some trauma or incident in the past. Having traced the pattern to that energy structure, there is a fairly simple internal process which enables one to ‘scramble’ (i.e., dismantle) the structure. Since it is this structure which is at the core of the issue, more deeply than, say, any thoughts or feelings about it, the process of scrambling the structure usually removes the problem/issue completely in one pass. The fact is that many of our issues are essentially fragile, and rely for their continuance on our habit of ‘running away from’ them – when we turn and take them on in this way, their fragility is revealed.

If  the issue is complex, it may require a number of clearings on different aspects of the issue as they are revealed in turn by progressive ‘scrambling’.

 

This FN  process emerged out of my experience with Energy psychology methods such as EFT and TFT and EMDR over the years, along with other aspects of human energy investigation such as martial arts, meditation, bodywork, and so on. It is the simplest way I have come across to clear stubborn energy patterns (habits, thoughts, stuckness, fears, anxiety, etc.). What it requires is the ability to first ‘inhabit’ one’s own physical and energy body, something which some people do very naturally, while others hardly do it at all. The good news is however that anyone can learn to do it well with some practice. Just learning how to do this can clear up many issues, even without the recapitulation. (There is more information on the site mentioned above on this aspect of energy work.)

 

And finally I realised recently that the process of recapitulation as described above was a process essentially of scrambling the mountain of past interactions and events which we all have. It seems to me that to incorporate this FN  process into the recapitulation process would greatly benefit both. However you look at it, recapitulation and scrambling are processes that can only do you good, and they will keep you fluid and clear, whether you are wanting to clear some stuck patterns or go further in developing your spiritual practices. They will also save you a bundle on counselling and therapy fees, and show you a way to handle your  issues that is much more effective than the usual mental ‘churning’ which habitually occurs.

 

If anyone finds this subject of interest, you can find more in the writings of Rudolf Steiner (‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds’ and other books), and in the writings of the practitioners of the Toltec tradition mentioned below. You can also learn more at the website www.energy-body-work.com, and you’re welcome to contact me. If a person is open-minded, I can teach this method over the phone over 3 sessions or so.

 

The Assemblage Point

I am also researching the methods available for shifting the ‘Assemblage Point’ of the energy body, and getting some interesting and successful results. I will write another article on this soon – let me know if you’re interested. The only problem with that is that it must be done in person.

 

 

References

The writings of Rudolf Steiner, especially ‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds’ which also contains other spiritual exercises.

Taisha Abelar ‘The Sorcerers’ Crossing’ – contains a good discussion of the Toltec version of  recapitulation.

Carlos Castaneda – 9 books beginning with ‘The Teachings of Don Juan’.

Miguel Angel Ruiz ‘The Four Agreements’ and others.

 

© Tim Strachan, 2007