Warriors' Notes for July 1997
~ Workshop Notes: Page 5 ~
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Subject: Our Gesture to It
The Seattle workshop was held in The Student Activities
Center in Central Seattle Community College. It began at 9:00am sharp when
Kylie and Reni entered the room. They appeared lighter than ever
before, stronger, harder, much more relaxed and from the heart. Their
sense of humor and kindness was immediately evident. The entire day
was very relaxed and loose yet focused. They were extremely friendly
and nurturing to any student who asked a question or raised a point.
Kylie gave a 22-minute talk about Tensegrity while Reni sat on the
floor with the audience. She started out asking questions about how
many people had never been to a workshop or done any Tensegrity
before. It seemed to be nearly a third to half of the room. It was a
small group of maybe 200.
The room was a basketball-oriented gymnasium on the
second floor of the building. The scent of chlorine and a higher humidity
was immediately evident as you entered the building as there was a
swimming pool on the ground floor. The Gymnasium has a two-story high
ceiling with grayish blue streaming banners all around the four sides
of the large room. They had big yellow squares on the ends of every
third banner that said in black letters: SEATTLE CENTRAL. The gym had
large, modern-looking windows on three sides that let in a lot of
natural light. All the windows were etched with large Ancient Mexico
type images. The north side had no windows. It was a very light and
open space. The stage was set up in the center of the room.
Kylie's lecture was very concise and to the point.
After giving the general information about who Carlos Castaneda is and
about what Tensegrity is she described the original four lines of magical
passes as they were given to Carlos, Carol, Florinda and Taisha. She
said that the passes were tailor-made for the individual energetic
configurations of each of the four disciples of don Juan. She said
that each of the four energetic lines of passes affected each
individual disciple specifically in the energetic centers where they
needed it. Each line of magical passes were custom-tailored for each
of their body styles and energetic configurations, as well as their
energetic strengths and weaknesses. Kylie described the original
passes as four energetic lines of force that were handed down to
Carlos, Carol, Florinda and Taisha by the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage.
She went on to talk about the secrecy that had always
surrounded the passes and how they were taught to each of the four disciples
of don Juan. She mentioned that the subject of the magical passes had
never been talked about in any of the books and that they were so
secret that Carlos himself had not even realized that the passes had
been taught to him. She told the story of how don Juan told Carlos
about the passes. The story is the one where don Juan tells Carlos
that he is way too chubby and that he should really take the magical
passes seriously and practice them. And Carlos says, "What magical
passes, don Juan?" Kylie went on to describe how the Passes had only
been referred to in the books as don Juan cracking his joints. She
said that Carlos, being so very thorough, would always try to imitate
his movements but could never get his joints to actually crack. She
made a few gestures as to how don Juan would look as he were doing
this. Her movements were very forceful and direct as if she were
going to crack her joints. Something in the way she moved was
jolting, magical. There was a sense of flair and power in her
two-second demonstration of don Juan's movements.
Kylie then said that Carol Tiggs' return was what made
it possible for them to come into the picture. She said Carol's return
was an unprecedented event that opened up doors of energetic
possibility, doors had never been opened before in the entire history
of don Juan's lineage of sorcerers. The return of Carol Tiggs made it
possible for them to come, to be present into the Nagual's world or
group. She said that they (Kylie, Reni and Nyie) did not truly
understand what this meant for a long time and that they took it all
rather lightly, she said that for a long time they did not comprehend
the true gravity of the event. Kylie described how Carol had
physically disappeared and was gone for ten years and that to this
day Carol is still trying to unravel the mystery of where she
actually was. Kylie emphasized that this was a real event that
actually took place.
She continued by saying that the possibility of such
an event taking place was not part of the taxonomy of our world of
everyday life, that we had no parallel for it in our highly taxonomized
inventory of possibilities. That ever since we were born we were
told, in very definite terms, we were given the elaborate taxonomy of
what the world is and we were brought up to disregard all else, all
other possibilities. She described how absolutely all of our
available energy is employed in upholding that inherited, highly
taxonomized view of the world and that we have no energy left, no
other energy is available to us with which we could consider other
possibilities. She said this view of life is final and that it goes
uncontested for our entire lives. She further stated that because of
this we live in a dead world, a world closed-off from the flow of
infinite possibility. Because of this we are unable to perceive
energy directly as it flows in the universe or to witness it's
ceaseless flux. Our endless categorizing and taxonomizing closes us
into itself and renders us incapable of considering the possibility
that someone like Carol Tiggs could go somewhere else for ten years
and then return. She said again that Carol really was physically gone
and that she was not in this world for those years. Driving the point
deeper still.
At this point Kylie returned to the idea of seers and
how they are able to perceive the universe as millions of conglomerate
fields of energy. She digressed further, to the idea of how the original
four lines of magical passes appeared to the seers as "these four
massive lines of energy." She said that each line contained perhaps
hundreds of intricate movements designed to redeploy and redistribute
the energy encrusted on the outside shell of the luminous egg and
return it to the vital centers. She said, "if you could imagine each
one of our categories and taxonomies as being connected to us by a
little line of energy." She, ever so daintily, made gestures of
drawing an abundance of tiny, little lines in front of her. She said
that, "you would be able to see how all these categories, these
schemes of taxonomizing the world, actually build a prison around us,
around our perception. And it is this prison that holds us in within
it to the death. . . and it is a death that is unnecessary. It
doesn't have to happen. But we are incapable of perceiving any other
possibility, incapable of becoming aware that there is way out,
because we don't have the energy available to consider the
possibility. All our available energy is already being employed in
maintaining our categorizing and taxonomizing prisons."
She continued talking about how the energy that we
have at birth is enclosed and cannot escape or be taken from us or given
away to someone else. It is simply being redistributed within the luminous
sphere. It is either dissipating and being encrusted on the outer
portions of our luminous cocoon, where it is not available to us or
it is being redeployed to our vital centers where it is available to us.
She said that as we grow older, we succumb to the
globally held agreement that all of our energy must become encrusted on
the outer shell of our luminous egg. Once it is no longer in our vital
centers, we are dead, gone. She said that since all of our available energy
is being employed in the upholding of all our elaborate categorizing and
taxonomizing schemes, in maintaining our "Taxonomizing Prisons," it
easily becomes encrusted as we agree to grow old. We then become
weaker, fall prey to disease and the luminous egg becomes brittle,
cracks and we die.
She briefly mentioned how we are affected by the
agreements that have been made without our being aware. "I wasn't there
when these agreements were made. Who says that we have to grow old and
allow our energy become encrusted, to lose our vitality. Who said this?
I wasn't there. They said? Who the hell is they? Why do we have to
honor agreements that we had nothing to do with?"
"Tensegrity frees the encrusted energy on the
periphery of the luminous sphere," she went on, "and redeploys that energy
to the vital centers where we then have access to it. "Once we begin to
redistribute the encrusted energy and free it, to redeploy it to the
vital centers, it becomes available to us so that we are then capable
of perceiving previously unconsidered possibilities." We are able to
consider the possibility that we ARE capable of extricating ourselves
from our prisons of taxonomy and endless categorization. We find that
we are capable of it by way of inner-silence.
Tensegrity allows us brief moments of inner-silence
and as we persist in practicing the magical passes we accumulate enough
of these moments to tip the scales. The doors of possibility open up.
The possibility that Carol Tiggs left the world of everyday life and
returned ten years later is capable of being taken seriously. We have
the available energy with which to deal with it, to consider the
possibility. Right now most of our energy is encrusted on the outside
of our luminous spheres where it is not available to us. Tensegrity
is the act that gives us back our energy! If you do the Tensegrity
movements, you will return the energy to your vital centers and it
will become available energy.
"So let's do it!" Kylie smiled, " Let's get moving!"
We were shown three passes in the morning that I had
never seen before and then went on to cover all the passes from each of
the three videos, in order. At the end of the day we were shown another
three passes that were quite familiar, the last of which was The
Female and Male Winged Warrior. I never take notes so I can't be of
much help to anyone trying to remember exactly what was what in
regards to specific passes. Everything is to the best of my
recollection and I apologize in advance for any errors on my part.
During the lunch break I fell asleep on the floor of
the gym. I woke up when Kylie and Reni entered the room. As a result of
that Reni's lecture on The Mood of the Warrior is stored at a much deeper
position and I am unable to recover it completely at this time. I
will touch on it only briefly.
After lunch Reni took the stage for about ten minutes.
She introduced herself as Renata Murez and said that they always state
their names for magical purposes. She used a little notecard to speak
from and seemed a little less at ease speaking then did Kylie. She
covered the area of the mood of the warrior, talking about how to do
Tensegrity, the mood required to do Tensegrity correctly. She
mentioned that when she first came she carried a huge chip on her
shoulder that she wouldn't allow any one to see it, especially herself.
About 3:40pm we took a break and Kylie and Reni
remained on the stage talking to workshop participants. I didn't feel
inclined to join them but eventualyy I went over and listened to Reni
talking with a group of perhaps 30 people and they were talking about a new
book by Carlos Castaneda that has already been delivered to HarperCollins.
She said that it is basically the Purple Book from The Long Beach Workshop
but that it will have photographs and a lot of other stuff that wasn't in
the purple book. She didn't know when HarperCollings was set to release it.
Also during the break, I wandered over to where Kylie
was also talking with a group of maybe 30 or 40 people. She answered some
questions about the recapitulation. She said that it is definitely
necessary to write the list out on paper and to adhere to it
chronologically until you have done a complete recapitulation of your
life as much as twice through. She said that we need to have that
rigidity at first. She continued to field comments on it and then she
said something that rang in my ears all the way home. It stuck a
chord in me with something Dan Lawton had mentioned during the lunch
break. He mentioned something along the line of: Carlos said that it
has become evident that many of us are here for the wrong reasons.
And that some people in particular had left because they were here
for the wrong reasons.
Kylie stated during the break that we shouldn't do
the recapitulation or any of this because expect to get anything out of
it. "We are always asking ourselves before we do anything, "What's
in it for me?" she said, "We have to learn to act impeccably, simply
for the hell of it. Simply because we like the way it feels to be
imbued with available energy. We shouldn't do it because want to be
great warriors or for any other reason like that. Because all of that
is foolish. We should, for once in our lives, just do something
solely for the hell of it. We should do it as an abstract gesture.
We should act impeccably as our gesture to It."
Tomorrow is promised to no one.
Vini
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