Tensegrity Seminars

Maui - March 1995 [ 1995 Index | Previous | Next ] To:   The Ixtlan Mailing List Date:   Sat, 1 Apr 95 09:36 CST At the risk of possibly duplicating someone else's efforts, I'm forwarding parts 1 and 2 of my notes on the Maui Tensegrity Workshop held on March 24-26. The workshop included lectures by Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar. (Carol Tiggs did not attend, much to the annoyance of Florinda, who thought she wasn't taking their project as seriously as she should have been.) Most of Saturday's sessions and all of Sunday consisted of practicing the twelve Tensegrity passes included in the video and learning several new breathing exercises and a major movement devised especially for the Maui Workshop. This report recounts a topic discussed by both Florinda and Taisha, and outlines the story Taisha told to conclude her lecture. In the second part (which I'll post as soon as I can compile it) I'll recount lecture topics that affect our understanding and practice of Tensegrity, and I'll include information given by the Chacmools for their implementation. Voladores: The Flyers Florinda and Taisha discussed the Voladores, or Flyers. These are a species of inorganic being whose food is human awareness. These minions of the Eagle munch on us to the extent that the only day-to-day awareness we have left is used for self-reflection. According to don Juan, the Voladores have munched us down to our feet, literally. We are like fat chickens in a chicken coop waiting to be consumed. The more egomaniacal our self-concern, the better we taste to them. However, we can produce an awareness that is rejected by the Voladores, awareness developed through discipline. Such awareness is unpalatable to them, and we can keep it. Taisha described herself as having retained enough awareness to extend from her feet to her knees, which allows her to perceive fantastic worlds. Carlos has developed even more, and don Juan's awareness covered his entire body. His ability to perceive was likewise enormous. The Voladores are essentially impersonal energy, but predatory like all beings in the universe. In order to convince us that the Voladores are much more than mere metaphor, Taisha showed us three photos, two incremental enlargements of the first, displaying an enormous Voladore, a black shadow on the Mexican mountains, leaping between pyramids. The figure looked human with arms folded as if praying, knees bent. The occasion for the photograph was a spring festival at which hundreds of Tibetan Buddhists and Christians participated. The quantity of available awareness generated by these groups was so bountiful that the Voladores actually became visible to photographic film. When she was a doctoral student in anthropology at UCLA, Taisha took on a research project involving old age and death. By this time, she had learned to see inorganic beings. She discovered that senior citizens homes were infested by Voladores, munching on the awareness of the residents. Funeral homes and cemeteries, Taisha added, are also popular places with the inorganic. At one point, after Taisha had been working on her assignment for some time, she came home to find her apartment overrun by Voladores that had followed her home. They flew around the room like big black bats. She had to ask don Juan to help her, and he was able to get rid of them, somehow. Eventually, she built up enough awareness based on discipline so that the Voladores were no longer interested in munching her. When she asked don Juan to explain this, he replied that she would be surprised to learn just how fast word gets around in the Second Attention. Taisha Abelar and the Other Side of the Coin As a young apprentice Taisha begged for the attention of don Juan and the other sorcerers. She would enter a room where they were talking and sit quietly, with a pathetic, impoverished look on her face, until someone noticed her. More often then not, none of them acknowledged her presence. She carried on like this for some time until don Juan decided to do something about it. Since she was already begging for attention, don Juan reasoned, she should assume the role of a real beggar and live on the streets, making her living by pleading for money and food. Don Juan suggested that this was the only way to cure Taisha of her neediness, and, perhaps, if she were lucky, she would find "the other side of the coin," the complement of the beggar's life. Taisha took on the assignment with energy, even constructing a mannikin with a penis on which to sew her costume. She worked on it with such obsession that it came to life. By accident Florinda found it walking around. Don Juan had to store it in Emilito's room, along with the collection of other weird things from the Second Attention. Taisha spent her days sprawled on the steps of a local church. At one point, a woman entering the church bent over to talk to her. She offered to take Taisha home with her, bathe her, feed her, and sew her new clothes. Taisha refused, fearing that the woman would discover she was not really a beggar. Each week thereafter, as the woman entered the church, she would repeat her offer. Finally, after several months during which Taisha had truly become the dirty, mentally unstable beggar she had been pretending to be, she accepted the woman's offer. Although the woman was wealthy and could have ordered a servant to attend to Taisha (who by this time smelled horribly), the woman took care of Taisha herself. She washed Taisha, (who put up a fight, since in her looniness, she had developed a real fear of water), fixed her hair, and gave her new clothes. The woman seemed to take a great deal of time making sure everything fit and that Taisha was comfortable. Once this was done, the woman walked Taisha to the door, telling her that she had done her best for her, and that Taisha was never to come back again. Taisha remembers the woman with much affection, since it was through her that she first witnessed the impeccability that is on the other side of the coin of begging. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Following is the second part of my report on the recent Maui Workshop. Since both Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar, as well as the three Chocmools discussed Tensegrity I've combined their comments below. Before we are social beings, we are perceivers. However, we spend perhaps 98% of our available energy on self-concern. We are obsessed with personal questions, such as: Do I look all right? Am I too thin or too fat? Is my hair okay? Do I sound all right? Will he or she like me? Will I like them? and so forth. Answering these questions, we produce plenty of awareness for the predatory beings in the universe to munch on, and we make of ourselves a delicious meal for the Eagle (the force that devours all sentient life) when we encounter it at death. Our view of the world is selective. Although the fabric of our existence is full of holes through which we might perceive fantastic worlds, we lack the energy to lift the confining grid through which we perceive. And even the things we do perceive, we do not perceive fully. For example, we can imagine a white house but we cannot smell it or taste it. Why not go all the way and learn to perceive the magical worlds that are available to each one of us? Freedom is possible with a fully grown awareness. The Recapitulation and Tensegrity sorcerer passes are practices we can use to enhance our awareness and prepare us for the abstract flight. The Recapitulation trains us to remember more and more about our past interactions with people so that by the time we have recapitulated to age three (say), we have seen the old familiar patterns repeat themselves ad nauseum. By doing the Recapitulation we recapture all the energy we expended in past interactions. The Tensegrity passes are bodily maneuvers designed to move energy in order to increase the awareness of our energy body. Once we begin to recapture energy and reduce our overwhelmingly petty self-concerns we will have been cultivating silence, a cessation of the internal dialogue, and will encounter abstract energy. The universe is filled with abstract, impersonal energy. The reality of what's out there waiting for us, as don Juan put it to Carlos, is "something wholly impersonal." Yet, we should not feel threatened by that. Energy, whether personal or impersonal, is energy. Several of the twelve basic Tensegrity passes deal specifically with releasing our pettiness and gathering energy from recondite sources, such as the energy the fills the universe from dead stars. They are also concerned with enticing our doubles, with which we were born, back to us. (According to the sorcerers, we may be here, but our energy doubles may be far away from us, "in China.") Following are suggestions for perfecting the passes: 1.  Each pass should be accomplished with great precision and with the whole body. For example, in "The Lobster Strike," the whole body should shake each time the arms and hands jut out. The arms and hands should be fired off like arrows. Carlos said that if we really were doing the passes correctly we'd only be able to accomplish one or two. 2.  In passes such as "The Axis Breath," "Infinity Breath," and "The Antenna," when something intangible is being grabbed and released, we should concentrate on grabbing the energy and when we release it, following it out into the blackness of space. Once it has disappeared into the blackness, we should break eye contact in order not to pull it back down to us. 3.  When pushing, pulling or grabbing energy we should really push, pull and grab with great force. 4.  Although some of the passes have changed slightly since the video was made, it is more important to perfect what you have to work with. If we perform the passes with perfection, the energy body will take us the rest of the way, will be our teacher. The nature of sorcery is that it is always changing. In addition to practicing the twelve basic movements, we were taught several breathing exercises designed to give us a boost our parents could not give us at birth. In the opinion of sorcerers, must of us are "bored fucks," that is to say, at the moment of our conception our parents were just going through the motions, maybe even watching TV. We lack a great deal of energy that these breathing passes may help us regain. We were also taught a major pass, "Opening the Window for Abstract Energy," that I felt was both beautiful and profound beyond words. In order to learn these passes it is probably necessary to see them demonstrated. At the end of the workshop two Chacmools, the cousins Reni and Nyei Murez demonstrated a pass called "The Tensegrity of Affection." Rich Jennings, in his description of the Los Angeles workshops, elaborated on this one, so I won't repeat what he wrote. My impression of this long and complex pass was that it was like watching a classical piano sonata performed by two persons instead of two hands at the keyboard. It was divided into four parts, each one with a specific intent. The end result was a display of affection that was very moving, and made a fitting formata to the weekend. Many questions answered by Florinda and Taisha in Maui have been answered fully in recent interviews (see issues of _Magical Blend_, for example). There was only one question that I'd never heard asked before. I was so stunned by it that I forgot to write down the answer. The question was "In the parallel universe of the Second Attention are our credit cards still valid?" Perhaps the answer was a recommendation that it might be better to pay with cash. The Chacmools will be presenting a three month class in Los Angeles, featuring the longer Tensegrity movements. Classes should be two nights per week. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Following are additional notes on the Maui Workshop held on March 24-26, and a personal comment. Florinda Donner-Grau and the Woman With Enormous Teeth One night, when Florinda was a student in Los Angeles, she was driving Carlos' VW Microbus, waiting for a light to change on a dark street. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye she saw a woman dressed in black grab her driver's side door handle. The woman's eyes were wild. She grinned dementedly at Florinda, her expression distorted by enormous protruding teeth. Frightened, Florinda screamed and jammed her foot on the gas pedal. She took off down the road, but the woman ran alongside, keeping up with her. Now terrified, Florinda sped up, accelerating to 80 miles per hour. The woman kept pace, running and holding onto the door handle for a long time, until Florinda finally looked again, and she was gone. She immediately went to see don Juan. She told him about the woman and what had happened. Don Juan seemed concerned. He thought for awhile, and then, in a serious voice asked, "Was the woman farting?" Florinda was stunned. She made don Juan repeat his question. He asked again if the woman had been farting. Florinda was not only unhinged by the question, she was greatly annoyed with don Juan for not taking her very serious situation very seriously. "No, no," don Juan insisted with a straight face. "A woman running that fast must have been farting." No matter how annoyed Florinda became with him, even shouting that he was a senile old man, don Juan persisted questioning whether the woman had been farting. Eventually, Florinda gave up and told don Juan that if he wasn't going to take her situation seriously than neither was she. "Good," said don Juan. "When confronted by the unfathomable, a warrior either makes a joke about it or he takes it seriously, and it destroys him." The Blank Check of Sheer Affection Florinda described the motivating force behind the behavior of people in don Juan's group, and now in Carlos'. She called it a "blank check of sheer affection" that they had given to each other. She recalled Carlos' describing don Juan as always giving 100% of his attention to anyone who talked with him -- more, Carlos' pointed out, than anyone in the social world ever gives to anyone else. The reason that sorcerers can give this intensity is because they have retained a greater amount of abstract awareness than ordinary people, who usually are preoccupied only with themselves. Issuing such a check is also a tremendous warrior's challenge. Florinda declared that she had given Taisha her check of sheer affection but, although Taisha was beautiful and brilliant, she had a horrendous side to her personality and was not the easiest person to get along with. A Personal Assessment I was impressed with the organization and execution of the Maui workshop, not so much by the workshop coordinators at Axiom and the hotel, as by Florinda, Taisha and, especially the Chacmools. The Chacmools put great energy into everything they did, which included not only directing the Tensegrity passes but also shepherding Florinda and Taisha in and out of the auditorium, where we surely would have trapped them for hours asking endless questions. Whatever else they discussed, Florinda, Taisha and the Chamools focused on Tensegrity and the Recapitulation. It took a six thousand mile trip and a confrontation with these people for me to realize that Carlos is now the Nagual, no longer an apprentice, and that no matter how much his early books have meant to me, he is offering a new energy and direction, and Tensegrity and the Recapitulation are the avenues to it. Please forward any comments or corrections to my e-mail address. -- Sandy McIntosh ([email protected]) [ 1995 Index | Previous | Next ]

Unauthorized use, copying, or re-posting of this page without permission from the author is prohibited. Links are acceptable.