not just words, but the energy of others that infects us as we live their fears and dramas instead of pursuing our own truths.
How, then, can we overcome our limitations and free ourselves from this unhelpful chain of energy that we have become a part of?
THE STEP OF AWARENESS
“To escape from prison, one first has to know one is in a prison”, wrote Gurdjieff. Self-awareness, then, is the first step to freedom. We have to make conscious the myths of ourselves that we have bought into so these attachments can be released.
The shamanic traditions call this recapitulation: the revisiting of key life events and the dramas surrounding them so we can see the stories we have become part of and begin to let them go. A contemporary example of the process might look like this:
The Pure Essence of Self
Imagine in your mind’s eye the moment before your birth, a time when you were pure spirit, uncluttered by social definitions and no stories about you yet existed. Who were you then? What was your face before you were born, as the Zen masters ask?
This spirit made a decision to be born. It had a purpose, a mission to fulfil, in making this choice. What was it for you?
Knowing who you were and what your soul purpose was (and still is) and then comparing this with the way your life is now reveals where you are giving away power and the attachments you have made to your story.
The Conception Journey
As Castaneda explains it, a third of our energy comes from conception and gestation in the womb. The pure energy that we were becomes coloured by that of our parents and theirs before them. This is