Good Morning Key West

Carlos Castanedain his book, The Eagle’s Gift, published in 1982. In The Eagle’s Gift, Florinda, one of don Juan’s party of warriors, teaches Castaneda about the process and purpose of recapitulation. She explained that recapitulation consisted of “recollecting one’s life down to the most insignificant detail” and that when a woman’s recapitulation was complete she “no longer abided by the limitations of her person.”^[1]She further explained that in the process of recapitulation one recounts all the feelings they invested in whatever memory they were reviewing.

Seems to me you’ve been doing that sort of recap dance ever since I’ve known you!Domingo sometimes likes to poke me about stuff he never once experienced, and sometimes I poke back … He didn’t say anything about a man’s recapitulation, a rather glaring and telling ommission, so I did …

Good evening, Domingo. While I suppose that describes one way to go about it, in early 1987 the angels started dragging me through a life review without my having to put out any energy except for the feelings that came up and the writhing, hollering, crying, cussing, etc. Some years later, my tormentors told me something like, “Well, you can do it now, or you can do it after you leave this life.” I took that to mean if I did it now, then maybe I could do something else later. I came to understand all human beings have this experience in the afterlife, if they don’t have it on this life. A life review, and the emotions, your side of it and the side of it for the other people involved. You may have opened Pandora’s box, Domingo.

I “found” The Eagle’s Gift in a restaurant lending library while I was hanging out on Tortola, B.V.I. in early spring 1996. Of all the Don Juan books Castenedas claimed to have written, which I read, perhaps Castenedas wrote them, perhaps he only channeled them, The Eagle’s Gift seemed the most aimed dead at me. While I do not recall today what you recapitulate from that book, I do recall a description of what I already had learned to call the dark twin everyone has, maybe it was doppelganger, and how to actually vaguely see it by sitting in front of a mirror and allowing your vision to soften and it would appear. I did that exercise many times on Tortola, and my dark twin came every time, but never to the point I could actually clear my vision and see it head-on, for it left whenever I tried to do that. It was darn spooky, and before a year had fully passed I was in a dark night of the soul that was so terrible that I was proactively suicidal every day for nearly 18 months. I came to call it the killer dark night.

San Juan de la Cruz had described a killer dark night like in his commentaries, as the second of two dark nights, which some inward travelers experienced after having the first dark night. Juan said very few survived the second dark night and were in a protected situation being cared for by people who knew what was up. Juan was one who did survive. Even more startling, he used a secret ritual to provoke the dark nights because he was dedicated to doing all he could to merge with God, it was what drove him. I knew of this from having read Antonio de Nicholas’ book, John of the Cross: Alchemist of the Soul, in the summer of 1990. May of the next year brought a dark night that onset in about three days’ time, then lifted 4 years later. It was horrible, but was wonderful compared to the killer dark night to follow. During and after the first dark night lifted, before the killer dark night, I had some amicable correspondence with de Nicholas after his publisher told me how to reach him in St. Augustine, Florida, of all places. Antonio eventually called me after getting one of my letters containing some of my poetry and some thoughts I had about his second book, which he had sent to me – Of Angels and Women, Mostly and The Sea Tug Ellegies for his daughter who had died. We talked perhaps fifteen minutes. He said I had it and theywould try to take it away from me. I couldn’t get a clear sense of what he meant by they, other than it was adverse spirit forces, which he told me not to allow to get it away from me. He said the conflict dated a long way back into old India, but I was not able to get any further glimmer.

I remain convinced I would have killed myself during the killer dark night if something had not stayed my hand. It was only after it had begun to lift and the resuscitation was starting, plenty rigorous itself, that I was told I had been in John of the Cross’s second dark night of the soul, and I had not been told that while I was in it because it was feared I would kill myself. I later came to understand that Juan, pardon my switching back and forth between his native Spanish name and his name in English, like de Nicholas’, you speak both languages splendidly, did not know there could be even other dark nights, which I came to experience. By then I knew the dark night is a super-accelerated spirit passage which by-passes the intellect altogether, runs its course, and then lifts. It is a recapitulation, but mostly you feel it, although there can be spontaneous revelations as the feelings release. Psychiatry diagnoses the dark night as major depression with suicidal urgings and treats it accordingly with psychotherapy, drugs, electroshock and perhaps confinement. None of which but confinement might be helpful, and all but confinement seriously unhelpful to destructive or even fatal to the soul, as the killer dark night is a soul process, accepted by the soul and initiated in the spirit realms, and should not be tampered by ignorant human interventions.

I also recall in The Eagle’s Gift the necessity of going though the truly awful passage of coming face-to-face with the dark twin, getting to know it intimately, and finally it integrates into you and that ordeal is over. I already had been stood in front of the mirror plenty by the time I read The Eagle’s Gift, but there was plenty more of that to go. Beside the killer dark night, 1997-1998, a serious and terrifying dark night onset in early 2004, right after you introduced me to online to a woman up your way, who had many spirit gifts but was untrained spiritual work. I did not go well between us because I was having my own Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde struggle daily, and she was not able, or not willing, to do her own inside work, which very well might have taken her into a serious dark night, as she had plenty inside of her to work through which she may not have been able to do mindfully. That dark night finally cleared around the time my father passed over in late August 2005. I run into the dark night in lots of people who are self-medicating, booze the most popular method, but other mind-altering drugs also popular. Or, they are under the care of a psychiatrist and/or psychologist and/or clinical social worker, etc., and are being treated conventionally and unaware of what is really in play. I concluded years ago that most long-term street people are in a dark night and are making it much harder and even soul-killing by chemical addiction.

I have written a few times before that I was told in my sleep in early 1991, by a voice I already was becoming acquainted with and would hear many more times, “With respect to St. John of the Cross, you haven’t seen anything yet.” Then, I was lathered in horrible, black Evil. I writhed and gasped to escape, and was still trying to escape when I awoke in panic and ego inflation at the same time, to have been told such a thing. I eventually came to understand the horrible black Evil was inside of me, and inside of people dear to me, and in the world around me, and in the spirit, and through all of it was I taken, still underway apparently.

A cloistered monk, Juan recommended ignoring all spirit phenomenon, as there was no way to discern for sure what was of God and what was of Lucifer posing as of God. Juan recommended turning ever back into the darkness, even into the blackness, until finally, if you were lucky, there was nothing left; you had shed and shed and shed and were nada, and then a Singularity was reached, experienced, and you were one with the Christ and it was finished. For me, it was the reverse. I was shown all of the phenomenon were parts of myself, or represented parts of myself, and was led to engage them all. I was shown to expand and expand and expand, to embrace it all, another kind of Singularity. Still a ways to go there (gross understatement). Best summed up in this poem given to me in April 1994, which I found myself pondering again yesterday:

Earth
The sacred prism
through which souls are refracted
into their elemental parts,
purified in Holy Fire,
then one-forged
and sent on their way
to not even God knows where,
simply because they are all
unique emanations of God,
evolving.

Another somewhat kindred poem of sorts in that time frame…

Although he sometimes tries to write fiction, when the tale is told, all characters and people in himself, all plots are stories within, there are no surprises, only his to discover the parts of himself he has lost, forgotten, thrown away, or never even knew where there; perhaps in this way he and God are somewhat alike, they both create to discover just who and what they really are.

That sure sounds like recapitulation to me, while the prism poem seems more like big bang, before the recapitulating and one-forging.

Back in that day, I called the internal work spiritual alchemy. Today, I simply call it work. It is fueled as much by the outside work you read some about in my posts, as by internal goings on. In some traditions, Gurdjieff said it, also the Sufis, it is called The Work. What people do to earn a living, put food on the table, keep warm in winter, is different.

Coming forward to a series of now seemingly related dreams which started three days ago and seem to have concluded in nap dreams this morning, my first cousin Bubba Major, who killed himself early this year after a long bout with depression, told me in a dream that he would have been helped by this information, after the previous dream had wound back the clock. Bubba and I reconnected online after my brother Major went missing March of last year and I started writing about that to my websites, which got around pretty good in Alabama and Birmingham during that time. Bubba told me he read and enjoyed everything I was writing, even though he could not bring himself to accept Major had killed himself. The more Bubba and I corresponded, the more he mentioned life was not going well for him. When I eventually received news he had shot himself, I wondered if I had let him down, not tried hard enough to intervene? I had invited him down and had told him where to look for work down here in the Keys, which might suit his background as a very good golfer. Maybe if I had written something back then of the dark night of the soul, maybe if I had thought to tell Bubba he was in it, that would have made a difference? Maybe if I had told him he would take it all with him, if he killed himself, that would have made a difference? Maybe if I hadd told him of the life review, that would have made the difference? Darn. What was I thinking, or not thinking? Why didn’t I get it what was happening to Bubba and tell him? Was I asleep at the switch? Was I preoccupied? How many times before had I told people they were in a dark night, it was God’s doing, and to try to ride it out? It would end eventually, if they just hung in there. How many times have I told people they can do their life review in this life, or after they leave this life, and they take everything with them but their bodies and worldly belongings?

Ciao

Strangely enough… those who in the name of love would have you freed from your Eva Angelic dictators do not realize that you no longer give a shit about the World as THEY would pretend it to be… and without the blinders of an unconditional recapitulation… without the dark night of the soul, you are nothing… nothing but another stinking corpse who came and left with a whimper and a chestful of regrets!

Have you read R. D. Laing’s “The Politics of Experience”? He sees Schizophrenia as a journey that can lead to a higher state of integration…. if properly ministered and encouraged! A very enlightened psychiatrist… you would have liked him… unfortunately not the typical one you probably dealt with at the beginning of your journey…

Good Night, Sloan!Domingo included these reviews of R. D. Laing’s book:

Get real, Domingo. There is no way you can understand what you have not yourself experienced in any way, based on our many emails back and forth since 2002 as I recall. For starters, knock the re off of recapitulation and you arrive at the word that separates you from me totally – capitulation, surrender, which is the only way to walk with God on this world. All else is mental jerking off, a joke, a lie. Self-worship is another way to say it.

No, I have not read Laing in any way. Although I have heard of him, I did not know he was a psychiatrist until receiving this from you.

Actually, early in my journey, 1986, I met a younger man who had specialized in internal medicine and in psychiatry. He had quit both after being severely crippled on the left side of his body by multiple sclerosis. A deep wound in his female aspect. He taught a personal devleopment class in the massage school I attended in Santa Fe in 1986, the year before the abduction by Jesus and Archangel Michael. He was pretty open to spirit phenomenon and spiritual growth. He was tuned in to looking inside for answers, instead of reacting to the world around you when it punched your buttons and you set out to correct what had punched your buttons instead of delving into your buttons and trying to fix them. He and others I encountered back then, including my new girlfriend who was a Los Alamos scientist, introduced me to the first take the beam out of your own eye concept, which in psychiatry might be called pulling back the projection or transference and dealing with your own shit, instead of trying to get someone else to deal with his or her shit so you will feel more comfortable.

As I said, this fellow and I became very close, and as time passed, and I developed, he came to rely some on me to help him with his own buttons, so to speak. He was the first psychiatrist I treated. Another came along, who also was a Jungian Analyst, a woman, my friend and I met one evening in a restaurant. After chatting a while with her, I said I was learning a new kind of therapy called craniosacral therapy, it was fast and deep. Would she be interested in a demonstration? Sure. So she came over to my studio and got on my massage table, and I used her craniosacral rythym mainstream medicine denies exists to dowse her psyche, and very quickly I knew she had very deep and very serious problems with her father and I took her into that and she got very upset. The time ran out, another guinea pig had showed up as pre-arranged, and I had to ask the lady psychiatrist Jungian Analyst to leave. Next time I saw her in passing, she was very cool toward me. When I finally got around to looking her up at her office where she held herself out as a psychospiritual healer, I asked if she was upset with me? She said yes, she didn’t like people she didn’t know getting so deep inside of her. I said I had warned her that the work I was learning was very quick and very deep before she had agreed to come over for a demo. She said that was her story and she was sticking to it (in so many words).

So now I had treated two psychiatrists, and would continue to treat my friend for a while, including taking him into a kidney infection that was trying to kill him, which his physician and the hospital he was in could barely hold at bay. After we got to the bottom of it, the medicine started working and the malady left him. I already knew from earlier experiences that psychatrists were as soul-wounded and screwed up as every one else, and I treated one more psychiatrist at that level some years later. She, too, bolted after it went too fast and too deep and she saw too much in just one session on the telephone, we lived in different states. Some time before that, my friend with MS and I had parted ways. Perhaps I did not handle that well, but then, he had made a serious mistake that had betrayed our friendship, and he was making life decisions that I knew in my bones were ill-advised, and perhaps it was destined to go the way it went. I had similar experiences treating other Jundian analysts, conventional psychologists, clincal social workers, psychological counselors, addiction counselors, and various kinds of healers and some gurus, and a number of Christian ministers. None were ready to really do the inside journey into their own soul wounding and attendant psychosis and even demonic possession.

And yes, from time to time in my life, before and during the earlier stages of my experiential residency in psychiatry, which is very different from what is taught in medical school, I encountered the kind of psychiatrists Laing decried, as their patient. I agree with what you sent of Laing. Schizophrenia, for example, is not what psychiatry says it is. Schizohprenia is a spiritual disturbance, whether an awakening, I would not categorically say. It comes out of the soul. It is a reaction to inability to cope with this world’s servings and conventions. It is a product of soul wounding. It is an internal attempt to fix the problem that this world caused and has no way of fixing. Same for other mental illnesses psychiatry treats, which are not rooted in birth defects or physical brain damage of some kind, on in chemical poisoning, such as can occur when exposed to heavy metals in drinking water.

Probably it is fair to say psychiatry’s mental illness is a kind of dark night of the soul that never ends because this world does not and often cannot give it the freedom to run its true course. Some mentally ill people need constraint for their and/or other people’s own good. The drugs used, though, are barbaric and cause more problems than they solve, as anyone who has taken them surely knows. I have taken the drugs and know from the direct experience, and from having had quite a few friends who took the drugs. I did my psychiatric residence in the field, like an antrophologist, something psychiatry has cleverly managed to avoid doing since its inception. No psychiatrist should be licensed who has not lived six months on a locked ward and who has not taken for six months every drug he or she prescribes. Meaning, a residency in psychiatry should take about 20 years the before license to “practice” is issued.

Most street people I have known would be diagnosed with some form of mental illness by psychiatry, separate from any chemical addiction which many street people also have. They became street people because they were unable to cope any longer with mainstream ways and thinking. Using the R.D. Laing analogy, to try to force street back into mainstream ways and thinking is insanity. Just as insane as trying to force a person with schizophrenia to not be schizophrenic. Just as insane as trying to force a person who really is in rational congress with angels into not being in rational congress with angels.

I was diagnosed in early 1997 as schizoaffective, a catch-all diagnosis for when they cannot say “for sure” that you are schizophrenic or bi-bolar. Maybe you are both, or a hybrid. I diagnosed my diagnosers as delusional because they presumed to know what they were diagnosing without themselves having had the personal experience with it. Beause I was unusual, because I was not fitting the mold, I must be mentally ill therefore. God only knows what psychiatry would do with the Jesus of the Gospels were he around today, although a very good treatment of that scenario is found in the movie Man Facing Southeast. I think it was filmed in Brazil, perhaps Argentina. Subtitled. You should have no trouble following the dialogue given your many languages. Should be what all psychiatric residents have to watch the very first day of their residency.

As for you and me, Domingo, you do not understand me any more than Castenedas understood Don Juan when they first met. You do not understand me any more than the Pharisees understood Jesus. You do not understand me any more than the psychiatrists who presumed to treat me understood me. In their presumption, they were insane. Is not insanity being out of touch with reality? Is that not the fundamental precept of insanity? You learned nothing from reading Castendas, Domingo, because you cannot learn anything from reading Castenedas unless you have that kind of experience yourself. To understand a separate reality, you have to live the separate reality. To understand the eagle’s gift, you have to live the eagle’s gift, including being marinated in your own dark twin until you are going mad over it. To understand congress with angels, you have to live congress with angels. You live vicariously through what you read, what you discuss with other people. From your ivory tower you cannot possibly comprehend anything until you live it yourself, which was the real point of Castendas’ books.

The Mayor of Key West and the loony tunes he has drawn to him to assist his truly displaced and delusional crusade to “help” homeless people is no different from what R. D. Laing decried re psychiatry. It is no different from Christians sailing off to the so-called Holy Land to kill Moslems in Jesus’ name. It is no different from Christian evangelists going into aborigine cultures and telling them they are going to die and go to hell and burn there forever because they have not been saved by Jesus. It is utter and total insanity. Worse, it is demonic possession. Maybe the angels will have me write about that grim subject more fully, since I seem to have a somewhat different training there than the religious people have, and since demonic possession, like God, is not part of the psychiatric cirriculum. Nor part of your cirriculum, Domingo.

Ciao

I think maybe I added an s to Casteneda, such is life …