Author: Gary

Recapitulation

Recapitulation is a breath-work process for releasing the emotions, energy, negative self talk, and beliefs. It is a method for freeing yourself from the emotional baggage you collected in your past. In the recapitulation process you visit emotional memories stored in your mind, discharge their energy, and build new neural pathways so your mind works in a healthier way. Through Recapitulation practices you will reduce and possibly eliminate negative self talk and emotional reactions. In the process you recover tremendous amounts of personal power that allows you to change habits and behaviors in your life.

Changing Memories and Stored Emotions that Cause Reactions

Emotional forces in your memories are activated in a manner that creates feelings that are often unconscious to you. That “look” from your spouse, can activate feelings related to experiences from childhood. At times you may be aware of the feelings, but not aware they are arising from your unconscious memories, or which memories. You won’t know that what you are feeling about an issue today is because your mind has associated it to a past event. All you know is that you have activated something in mind and feel those uncomfortable feelings. Only sometimes will you consciously know what your mind is reminding you of from the past.

Memories exist as a system of neuron patterns firing in the brain. Science has shown that memories are not fixed. The neural patterns that fire related to a memory can and do change over time, but not always. With Recapitulation you consciously change the neural pattern of the memory in a way that removes the emotion, changes the perspective, and even changes the beliefs that were created at that time.

An example of how a memory can change is when something that was embarrassing at the time, becomes something funny that you laugh about later. Another example is when you forgive someone. You change the emotion related to an even and that person, as well as how you interpret that event form then on. Something or someone that was a painful memory becomes something you are at peace with. The Recapitulation process works to accomplish these types of changes. In the Recapitulation process you heal the emotions from events that you remember. You will also find that you can access many forgotten memories into your conscious awareness to be emotionally healed as well.

Healing Your “Emotional Baggage”

If you have had a painful relationship breakup or rejection experience (pretty much everyone has by the time they are an adult) it is possible you are feeling those emotions again and again years later. That neural pattern is wired into your brain to fire off those same emotions when you think of that event, that person, or that time in your life. Your mind can also fire those same patterns when you think of things that relate to that experience.

Havin this emotion and neural pattern in your brain can be an issue later in your life in other relationships. The impact is that you are going to consciously, or unconsciously avoid similar situations related to that pain. You may become uncomfortable about relationship issues, such as, asking someone out, accepting an invitation to a date, becoming committed, or opening up emotionally. You may get nervous about becoming monogamous, moving in together, or marriage. These feelings aren’t necessarily from the current situation. They may be due to your mind taking past experiences and projecting those emotions into your current situation.  The Recapitulation process can help you clear your emotional history of baggage so you have a clearer head, make better decisions, feel better about the decisions you make, and live a happier life.

Emotions Combine To Build Limiting Beliefs

Along with the emotional patterns in the brain, the Recapitulation process can be used to release limiting beliefs created in the past. Emotions can combine with ideas about yourself, other people, and the world to form beliefs. The beliefs you create during times of negative emotions are often false, limiting, and remain at work in your unconscious affecting other areas of your life for years.  These beliefs then produce negative emotions and thoughts in your mind years later such as: “no one is there for me”, “I can’t trust…”, “I’m not lovable…”, “They will leave…”.  This is just one example of the emotional history and belief systems that Recapitulation process can help clear up.

Clearing One Event, or Your Whole Past

We have all had numerous emotional events in our life that have altered our emotional response, decision making, and behavior. In the process we react, wear masks, or put on armor over our emotions. This isn’t necessary if you free yourself from the emotional baggage from your past.

Recapitulation is the use of focused energy and intent on these past events to unwind and release the emotions stored in your body and mind. In the process you change your memories, so they are no longer painful events. You still remember the event, but without the painful emotions, or interpretation and perspectives of judgment, victimization.  Recapitulation has the impact of changing the neural patterns in your brain, so you will think better thoughts, perceive different outcomes, and feel comfortable about decisions and situations that would have bothered you in the past.

The process of Recapitulation involves some simple breathing patterns and focus of your attention while mindfully reviewing events of your past. It typically is done while comfortably laying down. Once you learn the process you can effectively use it while commuting in your car, in a meeting, or even in a conversation. Once proficient, you can even use the technique to help you relax in a meeting at work or to change the direction of a conversation while discussing an issue with your relationship partner.

By clearing the emotional history from your memories and belief system you will be more relaxed, present, and focused. Old patterns of reacting emotionally, negative thoughts, or self-judgments are reduced, and in some cases eliminated. Consider what changes this would have to your life, and if the effort to live in a more relaxed, healthier, and happier way will be worth it to you.

You can purchase the Recapitulation audios from the membership area on my other website. The mp3 audios are then available to download and listen to at your convenience. There are eight sessions. The first four break down breathwork and releasing processes into basics for you to build on. The next four sessions consist of guided practices that help you integrate the Recapitulation process into an effective tool for personal change.

How not to take someone’s anger personally

The following is writing sent from a client as she works through the emotional drama in her relationship. In her writing you will find how she is practicing all Four Agreements.  She takes a solid inventory of what is her half and what is her husband’s half.  She see’s the lies of agreements as something separate from him, and from her.  She is a partner with her husband and the enemy is the emotionally wounded belief system they each carry.  She is detached from believing the words and beliefs while still being present with her emotions.

Her path is to stay present with the truth, and not step into believing the lies from the voices in her head, or his. Some days she succeeds, and some days she doesn’t, but each day she gets better and stronger.

In this assignment, she writes about her experience and emotions from a third person perspective so that she can practice being a neutral observer of her agreements and the voices in her head.  This technique is part of the Self Mastery Course teachings. 

When her husband got very angry and yelled at Theresa, she felt afraid, then angry, then sad, then hopeless. This time, when he yelled at her through the phone, Theresa held the phone away from her ear and did not listen to his rage monster/judge spewing poison at her. She knew that everything he was saying wasn’t true. They were just his judge’s words. The words the judge was getting from the Big Liar’s book of law for his life. All lies. So she figured, “why listen to the words? They aren’t true anyway and they will just tempt me to take them personally and then I’ll feel sad, depressed, etc.” She felt better for not hearing the actual words but she still felt hurt and afraid because she could hear the anger in his voice. She felt rejected. She felt like she felt when her mother was angry with her when she was a child. She followed that thinking and realized that when someone she loves expresses anger, especially in an aggressive way, she felt afraid, which usually turned into fear and defensive behavior followed rapidly by quilt, desperation and an obsessive need to get approval from the angry person as quickly as possible, even if that meant sacrificing her need. She remembered that her needs never seemed to be important to her parents. They were almost considered a nuisance. She felt ashamed remembering how she felt in the face of her parents’ anger toward her: ashamed, not good enough, like she was a bad girl and didn’t even have the right to exist, that she was seriously flawed, something was missing when she was made, she lacked whatever it is that makes people precious and valuable to others, she lacked whatever it was that made people express love and inclusion instead of anger and pushing away.

She knew these messages to be lies from her personal Book of Knowledge. She knew them to be lies from her Big Liar. She realized that the Big Liar told her that she couldn’t live without her parents and since their anger at her meant to her that she was being rejected by them, she felt that her life was in danger. She felt the same way when her husband wasn’t happy with her – whether he was giving his time and attention to another woman, or whether he was expressing his frustration and anger toward her – she realized she felt again that it was actually threat to her physical life.

1.) She decided to break the agreements that she needed another person’s love to be a valuable person.

She is valuable because she is part of the perfection of creation just because God created her as perfect as every other creature and thing that he created.

2.) She broke the agreement that someone’s anger means that she’s bad, or broken or not quite right, or somehow ‘off.’

She realized another person’s anger is their own Liar’s voice possessing them, it has nothing to do with her and she chose to not take it personally. She also realized that her anger is her own Big Liar and has nothing to do with the person she’s expressing to and that person doesn’t have to take it personally either.

3.) She realized that she felt dependent on her husband for all of her life needs such as food, water, shelter, clothing as well as other, non-essentials like fun and vacations. She thought that the underlying agreement was that she can’t take care of herself or her kids without an income-earning husband.

She decided to break the agreement that a she can’t take care of herself. She remembered that she is capable of having a job, making money, paying bills, on her own. She thought that she didn’t have to rely on someone else for all those things. She remembered that she and her husband decided together after their first child was born that she would stay home with the kids because her income earning potential was less than his. They decided this together so she realized that she did not have to feel guilty about not working and supporting the family. They had decided together that it was his responsibility to be the primary bread winner and that it was primarily her responsibility to stay home and raise the kids, take care of the house, etc.

She thought about today’s argument. Her husband brought up that he was picking his vacation weeks today for the coming year. She asked if he could take a week off during Spring Break so that the family could take a warm weather vacation. This request struck a nerve in him and he became irate, slammed the car door and headed to work. She decided her tone of voice and demeanor were calm, albeit a little annoyed, and realized she could have done better so she called him and apologized for handling it badly and then asked the question about Spring Break again calmly and as a request for him to consider taking off a week during Spring Break if it was possible at all. This triggered a firestorm of uncontrolled ranting in him that lasted for minutes and ended with him hanging up on her. While he was expressing his anger, she had stayed calm and tried on a few occasions to apologize for making him angry and suggest they end the conversation but he talked over her, didn’t calm down and hung up on her instead. She tried her best to not make an assumption about why he couldn’t take Spring Break week of and instead ask him if it was or wasn’t a possibility, not to take his anger personally and to do her best and to not use her word against herself. So, she didn’t listen to the Big Liar (his and her own) who tried to make her feel guilt, shame, fear, etc. She used the circumstances instead, to break the above agreements – or at least start to. She suspects that the agreement about needing a husband will take time to break and believe the new agreement – that she doesn’t need a husband for survival, she wants one to share her love with

She decided to do the sun meditation where she draws energy from the sun into her body, remembers the fight with herself supporting herself and gently blowing all the Big Liar’s words back at it and then infusing the entire situation with love, just to try and heal herself and her husband.

She also realized how hurtful angry words – the word used incorrectly, for death – can be and she resolved to try her best to never do that to her husband, or to anyone else that she loved, again.

She is doing her best, and is patient with herself and her husband as they work through their emotional drama.

Some days this is the journey for a spiritual warrior.

 

Self Mastery Course Feedback

Hi Gary,

Thank you for the follow up. I’m writing to give you some feedback. Since reading the four agreements and completing both your courses (Basic Self Mastery Series and Advanced Series), everything has changed for me. Incidentally, I found the four agreements by accident, it was a link on a website called F.O.G personality disorders for help with dealing with people like this (I’ve had several in my life including my mother) This help me see that continual trap I was falling into of freely loving and trusting the good in people only to my disadvantage. I struggled with the four agreements at first and I hunted the web for ways of implementing it for a while, I eventually found you and did both your Self Mastery courses.

A bit about me, I am a psychiatric nurse and also a trained counselor, I’m now aware that I went into these professions not only to help other people but to heal myself. The four agreements has superseded all of my five years of training and I have healed my old wounds.

I cannot put into words how much Gratitude I have for what your Self Mastery course has enabled me to do, I am Moved beyond anything I have ever felt before. What you have done is Beautiful.
Thank you.

It is my intention to meet you on one of your spiritual workshops / retreats and I look forward to giving you a big hug.

I am currently starting to build a new life and I’ve decided to change professions. I’m going to be a writer I’m working on my first book now.  It’s one where all the main characters have different mental health problems. Look out for it in the next couple of years – it will be done.
I’ve liked you on facebook, have a look through so you can see what I look like.
I love you.

Z. B.

Fear of Being Duped By A Spiritual Teacher

Some people write or talk to me about their hesitancy or resistance to taking steps forward on their path of discovery.  One of my favorites is:

There is a fear of being duped by a Spiritual Teacher 

Fear of being mislead by a teacher. Fear of being duped and giving away a trust in myself. What is discernment, what is judgment? When am I doing which?

I find this reasoning kind of funny.   A person is using their fear to guide their thought process away from taking actions.   Why should we trust our fears?  Isn’t it usually our fears that more often mislead us in our thinking and actions?

Often this kind of “fearful thinking” is called skepticism, and often by people who claim to be skeptics.  However, in this case the fear is using this tool of skepticism to be fearful of something different, and keep other fears in place by preventing action.  A more skillful use of skepticism would be to apply it to these fearful thoughts.  Until you apply skepticism to your fears, fears will use that tool of skepticism against your own emotional well being.

To balance challenging your fears of a teacher, don’t go leaping in with both feet towards what any teacher tells you either.  It is reasonable to be skeptical of a Spiritual teacher, or even therapist, just don’t be fearful.  Take your time time getting to know them and see what they are like, and if it is a good fit for you.

You might find some good guidance on evaluating a Spiritual Teacher from Jack Kornfield’s book, “A Path With Heart.”

Chapter 16 is entitled:   You Can’t Do It Alone: Finding and Working with a Teacher

 

 

 

 

 

Personal Power, Faith, Beliefs, and Agreements

Believing is something that you do.
Faith is what you do it with.

Faith is a kind of personal power you have.  You can put it in concepts and ideas in your head and make agreements with it. Or you can put your personal power of faith within your self.

A warrior refrains from the first, and does the latter.

 

 

Spiritual Warrior

A spiritual warriors path is challenging.

In The Four Agreements, Miguel Ruiz calls it a war.  We will lose some battles, that’s okay.  It may feel like a lot, even with the perspective of the victim persona at the time, hopeless.  But it is only one battle.  A Spiritual Warrior learns not to measure progress in the war using the metrics of only one battle.

A Spiritual Warrior learns to retreat, rest, recover, learn from their actions, regroups, then stands up again to take another step on his path.

Even in the process of losing a battle, much progress is made.  The ego has pushed back, and so it is exposed, and we gain more clarity on our endeavor.  The ego can even be weakened.  At a minimum, we become more respectful of our foe, even if it is a dream.  We become more grateful of those moments that are peaceful, and even grateful of moments where we are  just holding our ground against a dream.  And with that kind of experience a number of times we embrace humility, a kind of mile marker on the journey.

Sometimes it is best for a Warrior to realize they have done their best against their emotional reactions and  inner demons of the mind, and to go rest and recover.   A warrior learns there is a time for that too as they become wise.

Sometimes it is best to rest and recover.  It will be necessary to take time to rest or you will not win many of the battles in the war for your happiness.

 

Four Agreements for Kids

How to raise kids using the Four Agreements?  

Dear Gary,

  Upon reading about domestication. I had this awful awareness that I will be placing these walls around my own children’s thought by using positive and negative reinforcement . I was wondering if you had any recommendations how to avoid these patterns or if there are any books out there to help .
Thank you in advance……. Concerned Parent

Dear Concerned,

This is a question I hear a lot and it often comes from a concerned parent becoming more aware of themselves, and how their actions impact their child’s emotions and beliefs that will be with them a long time.  First let’s explain the term “domestication,” which Miguel uses in his book.  It means a system of punishments and rewards used to modify other people’s behavior.  We reward kids with praise, dessert, hugs, and attention.  We punish with isolation in their room, time out, scoldings, anger, and criticism.    As we become more aware as human beings we realize that some of what we say and do to children may affect them emotionally well into their adult lives. That kind of realization makes us much more vigilant in how we use the power of  our word and emotions.

There is much more to this issue of applying the tools of the Four Agreements to your relationships,   so this is only a short overview.

First, the truth is that you have to domesticate your children.  It is best if children learn about the world of punishments and rewards of the world from people who love them.   If they don’t learn of the world of punishments and rewards from you, then the world will teach them those experiences.  If they don’t follow some basic rules,,,, then the police will eventually catch up with the.  Case in point,,, Paris Hilton.

Second.  it is a question of how you domesticate them that makes a great difference.   A child can still learn about punishments and rewards in an environment of kindness, acceptance, and love.

Third: The best way for the child to avoid developing deep sabotaging fearful beliefs is for the parent to live happily, impeccably, and without emotional drama.   A child is more likely to model what is lived around him or her.

Domestication in a loving and aware way is to learn about consequences.  Teach children about consequences,,, and to do that you have to provide consequences, and let them experience consequences.  Some pleasant,,, some unpleasant.   If they don’t learn to do laundry, then eventually they don’t have any clean clothes to wear.  Expecting their parents to do everything for them is not learning to take care of themselves and is not learning about real life.

Consequences can not be avoided.  They are a real part of life.  Yet this has to be balanced with protecting them.  A five year old doesn’t need to learn about crossing the street by themselves through trial and error of consequences.

Consequences is not the same as punishment.  If you yell at me, then I don’t respond to you or talk to you.  That is a consequence of yelling at me or treating me with anger.  I do not engage.  If I yell back at you,,, that is a punishment of anger I am trying to inflict emotional poison on you.  If you have awareness,,, you can choose if you will punish or if you refrain.  If  a parent doesn’t have awareness and personal power, then they are more likely to  just react and punishment happens without choice.  Then later,,, you punish your self for how you over reacted.  So to help you parent, you need to develop your own awareness and mastery. If you are judgmental of people and get angry a lot then a child will learn that to be normal behavior, even if you tell them, not to.

Punishment is not the same as making it personal.    This is an awareness between what a person does, and what a person is.   A good person can fail, make a mistake, have an emotional reaction, and it doesn’t mean they are a bad person, failure, or unloved.   If you correct  a child, perhaps they don’t like what you did,,, but can still love you.  In this regard it is as important what emotions you express with your words, as the words themselves.

Make a distinction between what your children do, and what they are.  This is something that you will need to practice in normal times so that when stressful emotional times happen it will remain part of your awareness and interaction with them.   They are people you love, and are beautiful, even when their actions and behaviors might not always be aligned with what you want for them.  You can provide them consequences for their actions while you love them.   Hopefully in this way they will learn to be wise in their choices, and feel good about themselves no matter the outcome.

For more on honing your skills at communication, emotions, and eliminating your own emotional reactions, I suggest the Self Mastery course and Relationship Course on my other site. PathwayToHappiness.com