As Lent approached in the winter of 2005, my teacher Ramin decided that it was time to do a bit more recapitulation. A couple of wonderful, powerful, women (Adriana and Eva) had joined us in our Toltec work, and they expressed interest in going through the process. Ramin’s suggestion was that we meet daily at 5:00 am (except for Sunday) during the period of Lent to perform an intensive recapitulation exercise. Since I live 25 miles north of the rest of the group, it meant that I had to start driving at 4:15 in the morning to get there in time to pick up Adriana and meet with the rest of the group at Eva’s apartment.
Ramin found four large cardboard boxes for us, which we could use as our recapitulation boxes. They could fold up out of the way during the day. There was just enough room in Eva’ small living room to fit our boxes once the furniture was moved out of the way. For forty days (excluding Sundays) we met in the dark of the morning to meditate, sat in our boxes and recapitulated, followed by a discussion of the things that came up for us during our recapitulations.
Since I had already gone through this process in a very organized and systematic way, it seemed that a new approach to finding significant events was in order. Ramin and I decided that my approach this time would be to just take whatever event came up rather than trying to identify them through a systematic searching. The idea was that whatever was important at the moment would become obvious, and it was no longer necessary to search for them. It turned out to be a great approach, everyday would bring some new significant event to light, and there was never a problem with having something important to work on.
Since I was focused on important events, rather than energetic connections with people, I found the sources of many more of my personal agreements with myself. Instead of accidentally finding them as I had previously done, these agreements were often the reason that the selected events were important. The importance seemed to be intrinsically connected to making decisions that were to become my agreements about life.
After about a week of this activity I started to feel an entirely new way of experiencing the world. I found myself falling totally and completely in love. It was as if I had just fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. However, the love wasn’t directed at anyone or anything, it was a strangely detached sort of feeling. I felt it with everything around me, and at all times. It was as if I had taken some sort of powerful drug that made me get out of my mind. I am certain that we all felt this way. We would finish our recapitulation for the morning and sit to talk about what had come up. We would talk, and sit to meditate, maybe listen to some music, read poetry or do exercises dreamt up by Ramin such as act out events, dance, sing or whatever came up. Some days Eva’s young son Danny would wake up and join us in a bit of wrestling and clowning around in a four year old way. Nearly every day we found that we had gone past our allotted time and were late for the schedules in our day. I would have been perfectly content to spend the entire day being in the glow of energy that we created. I was in total and complete bliss at these times.
At about the mid-point in time Ramin decided that we needed to work with water, so we went to the local gym and got passes to use their swimming pool. They opened their doors at 5:00 AM, which was just right for us to start swimming. We would be in the pool in the dark of the morning with the rain falling on us, meditating and recapitulating as we slowly swam back and forth. It was a magical experience. At one point we were blind folded and left to float in the deeper pool in our meditation. After some amount of time we could tell that others were in the pool with us, in fact a lot of others because it was an aqua-exercise class. The exercise teacher put on the music and started calling out exercises. As the students followed, the water waves jostled us around. We drifted in between the exercisers, or stayed along the edge of the pool. I am sure that we must have been quite a sight for them, drifting in our nirvana as they were working away, dancing in the water to the music. We would finally join in with them, and it seemed to be fun, and funny, for us all.
By the time we finished the 40 days I had been completed and totally shifted into a new place – which seems to be permanent. We spent our mornings somehow snuggling our energies together. It was as if all of our energy fields had expanded and were intertwined with each other. By the time that we were finished, it felt like that was a permanent way to relate to people and things, just enjoying the interactions of our energies.
Revisiting all of those experiences and re-evaluating my agreements seems to have changed my entire relationship to my understandings about the world. I find that when the old agreements come up I don’t believe them any longer. Even if they were not addressed during those mornings, I still don’t believe them because I learned that they are made from nothing. They are just beliefs and assumptions that were often wrong, or not even there. I take the position that they are interesting points of view, which I may or may not adhere to. I have a choice about how to react, rather than having to react based upon ghosts from the past. I have not lost that feeling of love; it is with me at all times, sometimes it gets so strong that it is difficult to do my day-to-day activities.
Most of the time I now feel strangely connected to the world (and the universe). I find that I feel a part of the earth, the trees, animals, people, even the air and water. It is as if I am a part of a whole, that there really isn’t a distinction between myself and others. It comes up sometimes as feelings of compassion, love, concern, or just being happy to relax in the presence of the world. Those days, and those wonderful friends, helped to shift me in ways that I will be forever grateful. It’s not that I don’t get frustrated, angry, frightened, sad or depressed – I still experience all of these emotions. However, now they do not have the same importance, they are not who I am – I am somehow stronger, freer and in love – even in the midst of these other emotions.