Category: Toltec Mythology

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.

The Mitote

The “mitote” (me-toe-tay) as described in The Four Agreements, refers to the cacophony of voices in your head.  They are all talking but none of them seem to listen.

The mitote is driven by all those false beliefs, self importance, fears, layers of denial and justifications.  As you become aware the mitote can appear to be an endless stream of useless chatter talking over itself.  Try to turn it off in the beginning and you get a lesson in humility.    As you learn to observe it with neutrality, which is a critical step in dissolving the mitote, you find that it often tricks you by pulling your attention into the conversation.

Yes,,, it is a matrix of illusions.   But you can keep it all straight when you are aware that the truth is simple, so simple that it doesn’t need words.

Mayan Calendar Prophecy of 2012

Hi Gary, There has been a lot of speculation on the doomsday theory of 2012 that many say was prophesized by the Mayans and other ancient cultures. Seeing as you would know more about Mesoamerican civilizations I was wondering if you can offer some insight on this theory or the significance of 2012 on the Mayan Calendar.  Thanks, Adam.

The cycle of the Mayan Calendar and the 2012 Apocalypse.   What does it mean?

The end of one of the cycles for the Mayan calendar is in 2012.  It was customary in the ancient Mesoamerican tradition to periodically let go of all the old traditions, beliefs, and myths, of the past at the end of each cycle.   Collectively as a culture they dropped all their baggage.  They took a careful look at everything in their culture to determine what worked the best and what didn’t work.  With scrutiny and skepticism they tossed outdated theories, methodologies, customs and practices and adopted a new way of life.

In this way their entire society took a leap forward in culture, science, architecture, agriculture, medicine, and spirituality.  Most civilizations creep along in growth, attempting to keep the old structures but making changes to them.  The result is out dated systems, bureaucracy, red tape, and superstition with changes built on top of them.

We often build systems to last but not with the flexibility to change and adapt with the circumstances, or new discoveries.  The wise men and women of ancient time understood that everything changes.   They understood that to evolve their society they would have to change their systems also.

Imagine doing that today.  Imagine a periodic overhaul of the legal system, education system, environmental policy, health care, and energy policy.   Imagine taking the best of what we know about what works in these areas and applying it 100%.  Most importantly this means dropping what doesn’t work well without any resistance from the old paradigms.   This is what they did.  They were masters of detachment and it allowed them to make giant leaps forward in their society.

To outsiders it would appear as the end of the world.  It would appear to be the end of the world of beliefs that people operated by.  It would mean dramatic change by letting go of all the beliefs, ideology, habits, and customs that you were accustomed and attached to.  Your world and your life would change dramatically.

When people describe Mayan prophecy of 2012 and refer to an apocalypse I have to wonder what the fears in their mind are projecting.  In letting go of the world of habits that we are familiar with it is uncomfortable.  We get comfortable with the familiar, even if it involves inefficiencies, hardship, and suffering.  But dramatic changes in your world doesn’t mean that it has to be bad.

What if you did this same process in your personal life?  Would the end of your virtual world of beliefs and emotions of suffering be okay with you?  Would the end of what doesn’t work about your relationships, career, attitudes, internal dialog of thoughts, and unhappy emotions be a challenging shift?  Certainly it would but the Mayans and Toltecs were not afraid of change.  They knew they would adopt the best of what worked in these areas and continue on.

One of the difficulties of letting go of our old world of beliefs is that it is very difficult to imagine life with out them.  In fact, in many ways it is impossible.  While we are enmeshed in old paradigms we are unable to see how our new life will work.  The wise men and women of ancient Mexico knew this, and so they didn’t even try.  They consciously challenged and overcame their fears that would have them cling to habits of the past.  They practiced letting go without knowing exactly what their future would be.  It was an act of faith.  It was a supreme act of detachment that ensured their freedom from fear and emotional suffering caused by attachments to their past.

In this approach to change we do not know what the coming world will be.  We could even say that it does not exist because it hasn’t been created yet.  With this perspective we more completely dissolve the past and live in the moment.  We sidestep the mind’s tendency to project beliefs from the past into the our mental future.   By saying that the world will end as we know it, we free our self from these projections of the mind and the limiting paradigms they contain.  This gives us greater freedom to create with more choices in our new life.

To help accomplish this supreme act of detachment the Mayans and Toltecs even structured their language to describe it as the end of the world.  They refrained from talking about or even imagining that another world would exist… until they built it for real.   This is one of the artful processes of their language and spiritual practices that helped them be present and live in the moment.

The truth is that we have an opportunity to do this kind of change ritual everyday.  Each night we lay down to sleep and let go.  However, most people live the next day in just about the exact same patterns as previous days.  How many patterns of emotions, thoughts, and relationship drama, do you live out today that you have done before?  The Mayans, Toltecs, and other traditions set times and created practices to consciously make these changes so they did not fall asleep in old habits like these.

The prophecy of the Mayan calendar that the world will end in 2012 is a metaphor.  However if your mind is fertile ground for fear, you will use the idea to create fearful stories and beliefs.  To be aware of how your mind generates fear with stories of the end of the world is an opportunity to detach from them.  And you don’t have to wait until 2012 to do so.

The audio program in Self Mastery provides a series of exercises to help you identify and change old patterns of behaviors, emotions, and beliefs.

What is the Mitote?

The Mitote (me-toe-tay) referred to in The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz is a lot like blogs on the internet. People are pouring out the thoughts in their head and filling virtual cyberspace with opinions, ideas, rants, and their personal knowledge. It is an overwhelming volume of words that other people read, form opinions about and then write words about them in their blogs. Then more people read those opinions about opinions and write their opinion.Very seldom do any of these add any real value to one’s life. Even when good writing has a chance to have an impact, the reader isn’t likely to hold their attention and awareness with it long enough to have a real impact. Their undisciplined short attention is overwhelmed against the onslaught of more information and opinions to surf.

In the same way the mitote in the mind is like those layers of opinions. It is the cacophony of voices that make up the incessant thinking in your mind. The world of your imagination is filled with opinions, information, description, rants, judgments, and victimizations.

It has developed such a momentum that when you will your self to be still long enough and step back from them, you can’t help but notice them. You will likely be surprised at how loud those voices are. And usually right after that moment of awareness where you detach from the mitote and observe it, you form an opinion, or make a statement about what you observe.

And in that moment of forming an opinion or making a descriptive statement about the mitote, you have just lost your attention to the cacophony and contributed another layer.

Control Folly

JW. asks about Control Folly

So I’m battling with this idea of controlled folly. ( I think I know what you would say, don’t believe in controlled folly, lol). Do you have your own personal idea of what that is? I have a couple of interpretations of what that means. One would be to live in a state of love and grace while still respecting peoples fear boundary’s. Another would be to extract deeper meaning from what people say while still acting like there is little meaning in the way things happen.

Thanks for your time Gary, I always appreciate hearing from you.

JW

Dear JW.

For a Spiritual Warrior Control Folly doesn’t have much value as a practice until they have cleaned their mind of all old beliefs and social domestication. At that point a warrior has the option to act in any circumstance with an infinite number of choices. Any one of his actions is completely unimportant. However if a Spiritual Warrior chooses, he will engage in the experience in a way that is deeply connected and meaningful. That is Control Folley.

To engage in a way that is with complete respect and with unconditional love is just the common sense choice to be Impeccable.

Control Folly is really only something that can be done once a Warrior has cleaned their mind of old beliefs and dispensed with all their old habits.  Until then a person can too easily delude themselves into believing they are making a choice.

Gary

The Day of the Last Judgment

Judgment Day

Beyond the Opinions of Right and Wrong is Heaven

Judgment Day Is When You Judge Your Self For the Last Time
In the Mystery schools around the world there are similar themes of a Judgment Day. Often it is interpreted to mean the end of the world. Perhaps it means something else.

In Egypt the story is told in hieroglyphics of the pharaoh on the day of his last judgment. He stands before the 40 judges and his heart is weighed against a feather on a balance scale. If his heart is lighter than a feather he may pass through and enjoy the paradise of the next life with Isis and Osiris.

In the Christian Mystery school there is a similar view of being born again. After being born again the world will be completely brand new. If we studied the mythologies around the world we would find similar themes. So often this theme is interpreted as meaning that the body has to die in order to live in the “next world”. So often this is a mistake. Rumi writes of this world when he says, “There is a field out beyond right and wrong. I will meet you there.”

The Last Judgment is when you judge yourself for the last time. From that moment forward your life begins brand new. You will no longer see yourself or the world the same way. You no longer look to see if someone is right or wrong, or to be right or wrong. Your mind is once again child like in its purity. The way it was before it learned to judge itself with ideas of being bad or good.

Childlike does not mean being innocent. We have garnered too much experience for that. It does mean that we are wise. Wisdom is in that field beyond the knowledge of right and wrong. In that field the heart flourishes because it is not busy with being right or afraid of being wrong. Wisdom is the awareness that love and compassion are the only righteous answers. Wisdom is the field where Rumi stands waiting for us.

On the practical side, when we go to deal with our inner voice of judgment, we find that it can be a tricky force. To stop our judgments we must be come aware of them in order to change them. As soon as we notice ourselves in judgment, we tell ourselves we shouldn’t do that. And what do you know, our inner judge has judged us for our judgments. The inner judge then just might go further and judge ourselves for judging ourselves for our judgments. The inner judge, as ridiculous as it is, can stack these up until we forget how it started.

My favored approach to dealing with this judge of nonsensical logic is to laugh. Seriously, laugh. Try it. When you really see the silly nature of the inner judge, it’s hard not to. Don’t take your judgments, or yourself, too seriously. Instead, be child like and laugh. This will bring you closer to being born into a brand new world. Like a child, without the weight of judgments your heart will be lighter than a feather.

Inorganic Beings and the Parasite

In his book The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz describes what he calls the parasite. This concept, and others similar to it such as “inorganic beings” often bring up questions in people’s minds. Someone sent me such a question and I decided to post my answer below. I hope to bring some common sense awareness to the issue and dissipate some of the superstition and fears around it. (please be patient with the grammar as English was not this person’s first language.)

DEAR GARY,

AS I AM NEW TO THE TOLTEC PATH, I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU A QUESTION.

IT´S ABOUT INORGANIC BEINGS

I DID A SEARCH ON THE NET AND FOUND THAT SOME PEOPLE TALK ABOUT ANGELS, ALLIES, FRIENDS, AND INORGANIC BEINGS. SOME SAID THAT THEY TAKE ALL OUR ENERGY, AND WE ARE LIKE SLAVES TO THEM, WE GIVE THEM ENERGY THEY GIVE US INFORMATION ABOUT OTHERS DIMENSIONS.

OTHER SAYS THAT WE HAVE TO FEAR THEM. THEY ARE ALL POWERFUL. I FOUND ONE GUY WHO SELLS CRYSTALS WHICH TAKE ALL THEIR ENERGY BACK TO US. HE SAYS THEY ARE LIKE VAMPIRES AND DEMONS AND WE CANNOT DO ANYTHING IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD WITHOUT THEM. THERE’S A LOT OF THINGS WHICH SEEMS THEY ARE GODS, AND WE SLAVES.

COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT INORGANIC BEINGS?

THANKS, JORGE
FROM RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
(SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH)

__________

Hello Jorge,

Carlos Castenada mentions this in the Active Side of Infinity. Don Juan describes it as the “topic of topics.”

I’ve let this question sit in my mailbox for a few days deciding what to do with it. Just the name “inorganic beings” conjures up mystery and for many that means confusion. Confusion leads to guesses, assumptions, and wanderings of the imagination in speculation. Sometimes this can lead to superstition and fear. The more you write and speak about it the more attention, discussion, and distortion people are likely to stir up. It’s not my intent to stir up fear and superstition but rather to dispel it. At the risk of more confusion and distortion I decided to publish my response anyways.

When we make explanations about these energy beings they are generally done in metaphor. It has to be done in metaphor because that is what words are. Abstract terminology like “energy, entity, dreams, taking our energy, gods, slaves, and power” all add to the confusion, and often create superstition. That superstition can lead to fear. Fear is the big demon that sucks your energy. Of course once you have fear of some “entity” that can not be seen you then might want to protect your self as a reaction to unknown threat. Trade your money for a crystal to protect your self and you have compensated for your fear. You sill have your fear, but you have put your faith in the idea that the crystal will protect you so you balance it out emotionally with a feeling of safety.

And so the chain reaction of personal power bleeding events goes.

In short, inorganic beings exist. Don Miguel Ruiz even refers to them as a “parasite” that eats our energy and doesn’t’ give us anything back. Ekhardt Tolle refers to the “pain body” as behaving as a living being.  In the West we might be more familiar with the term “ego” or the term collective unconscious is used by psychologist.  It’s no different than what we are used to, but since the culture has a different language we don’t know what they are referring to and that can cause confusion.

Fears are one example of something inorganic that you can feel possessed by. Very simply you can consider your mind such an energy being. All the voices in your head talking have taken on a life of their own. The mind is not you and for most people it doesn’t obey your wishes. It keeps chattering even though you want it to be silent at times. Very simply it is a living being with a life of its own and for most people it is not under control.  A simple test of this is to sit still and do your best to quiet your mind.  When you do that you will see what I mean.

In heightened states of awareness you can see the field of energy that don Miguel calls a parasite. They can look like clouds of smoke, or fog that surrounds a person’s body. It is a cloud of beliefs and emotions that distort a person’s perceptions.  If you were talking to someone and you didn’t believe a word they said, you might say, “They live in a dream world.”  We’ll imagine that that dream world that surrounds a person is the belief system of their ego and that it looks like a field of fog.  You can visualize that field of illusions in someones mind a different way, but this is the way I visualize it.

What does your ego or parasite eat and how do they get our energy? They principally eat our emotions, and our faith. Faith is a life force energy or one type of personal power that we can express.   When we put faith into a conceptual idea or an opinion we give it life in our mind. When we believe thoughts in our head, we give them power and life. They become bigger. The more we believe them, the bigger and more powerful forces they become in our life. When we believe strongly in something that has a lot of emotion we can then react to those beliefs and that emotion.

When we put enough faith in those conceptual ideas in our head we start acting upon them. Those beliefs start dictating our actions. For example if we believe: “Inorganic beings can suck our energy, then we will fear them. If we get this crystal and wear it we will be protected.” These are just conceptual ideas, and if we believe them they become alive in our mind. We are in effect giving life to conceptual ideas in an effort to keep other conceptual ideas at bay. The conceptual ideas tell us what we have to do to protect ourselves from other conceptual ideas. These are just assumptions. We give up our free will to these assumptions, opinions, beliefs and fears. That is how humans become slaves to these beliefs in the mind.

Years ago different societies created grandiose ideas that they believed in as a society. Because everyone believed in them together they became gods over large numbers of people. There was Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, etc. The people put their faith and emotions of love and fear into those conceptual ideas. Those conceptual ideas became powerful forces in their life. They were gods that the people served but they were not real. They only existed as conceptual ideas in people’s mind. Yet the faith and emotion they created around these gods were real. The amount of faith and emotion invested by humans made these gods powerful.

Years later, nobody believes in those gods and because nobody puts their faith in them they have no power. Because no one believed in them they could no longer exist. If you don’t want to be under the influence of inorganic beings and entities, then don’t believe them. Yes they exist as dreams, but don’t believe in assumptions, opinions, judgments, or conceptual ideas that they convey. Very simply don’t believe in lies. That is all the protection you need.

The challenge is that they can be very tricky and subtle. Today we wouldn’t believe in silly gods of Zeus and Apollo. But we might believe our own opinions. We often believe the voice in our head that is speaking to us. It tells us “I shouldn’t have done that” and we believe. It is just habit. It is a little god in our head that judge’s us that we are wrong, or ugly, or an idiot. It rules our life like a tyrant. The inner judge tells us bad things will happen if we disobey it. We create fear and feed it fear when we think about disobeying that voice in our head.

Often the little gods in our head (“parasite”) are backed up by larger gods of society and culture. Religions and expectations of society support the little gods in our mind and that congruency of assumptions make the little voice appear to be telling the truth. In reality these norms are just conceptual ideas that are accepted and believed by the majority of the people in that culture. If you go into another culture they have a different set of beliefs and to them your beliefs look like silly superstitions.

Years ago people believed that slavery was an acceptable way of treating people. Very recently apartheid was an acceptable social norm in South Africa. You can see that apartheid is just a conceptual idea. It doesn’t exist as anything more than a set of beliefs. When people change what they believe, apartheid laws no longer have power over their mind. We could say that apartheid was just a dream of conceptual ideas powered by the energy of people’s faith. It was an idea that humans give life to, and then that idea ruled their behavior.

Not all inorganic beings, entities, and dreams drain on our energy. If you listen to the first session of my Self Mastery Program you will notice that I am inviting you to create the emotion of gratitude. By creating that emotion you are developing your own personal living dream of emotion. It is your own god of gratitude. Except that it doesn’t rule you. You create it. What you will notice about this meditation is that I don’t invite or suggest that you believe anything in order to do this. It is a simple exercise of perceiving and expressing. In this way you don’t expend any personal power of your faith but you still benefit with the enjoyment of a beautiful dream of emotion.

By expressing the emotion of gratitude you are creating your own cloud made of the emotions that come from love. We are going to create and feel emotions so why not create emotions that we enjoy. It is your creation and is dependent on you. You created it and you give it life. In return it gives you a good feeling. Because it doesn’t require you to believe anything, it doesn’t drain your faith. That means it is not a parasite. Because it helps to keep your eyes open and enjoying life. It is an ally that helps you stay in love and gratitude.

By staying in love and gratitude you are not expressing fear and feeding the dream of the parasite. The more you practice this exercise, the less you are directing your faith into conceptual ideas that create fear. Expressing love and gratitude will help you to be free of the parasite more than a crystal.

In the rest of the Self Mastery exercises I teach about taking an inventory of your beliefs so that you can identify these conceptual ideas and recover your faith and emotions from those dreams in the mind.

There is no need to fear inorganic beings, entities, the parasite, or any of those things. They are just dreams. As humans we create them. They are completely dependent on us for life. As we become more aware they will no longer be able to hypnotize us with their conceptual ideas. Those beings might be afraid of us gaining this awareness because it will be their end. But their fear is not our fear. It is the nature of the conscious evolution of the humans that we create and dream with more love and less fear.

That is just the evolution of consciousness. In your personal dream of consciousness you can go as fast as you wish beyond fear and into clarity and love. The more you change your personal dream from one of fear to a dream of love, the more your personal dream affects the collective dream of humanity. This is why one of the greatest gifts you can give humanity is to be express love and be happy in your life. If you do this, then when you die you will leave a giant inorganic field of love for the people you leave behind.

I hope this helps.

Gary van Warmerdam