Tensegrity Seminars

Maui - March 1995 [ 1995 Index | Previous | Next ] To:   The Ixtlan Mailing List Date:   Thu, 3 Oct 1996 18:18:26 -0400 These notes were written shortly after the seminar in 1995 for my own use. I did deliberate whether or not to change some of the content but decided against it as they relect my own self reflection at the time. As they were typed, a few pertinent comments were inserted, given the developments of the year that followed, a year following what was thought, would be a one-of-a-kind event, that fortunately for us, was a beginning... VW FLORINDA DONNER'S LECTURE AT MAUI This lecture was given the first night of the Maui Tensegrity seminar. Because of my being so tired that night (it was Friday and I had flown in from Florida) I began to fall asleep even before she came into the lecture hall. The place was beautiful and they were playing music by Vangelis which seemed to perfectly match the mood of excitement and awesome mystery coming from the participants gathered for this extrodinary event. I was determined to remember the lecture even if I was asleep and set myself up to remember what I could the following day in my notes. When Florinda came into the large and dimly lit convention hall, everyone started to clap so I was awake for the beginning but fell asleep again. It seemed a bit out of place at the time for people to clap for them. But what the hell else were they going to do, boo them? Florinda Donner is a very short woman who exudes a great deal of energy which tended to be on the nervous side. She used note cards and I did not really like her as I did taisha Abelar or even the Chacmools. I would later come to realize more about her and about my own stupid tendency to judge and assume. As she talked I had the feeling that this person was so far away and different. She seemed fierce and somewhat aggressive. During the lecture Florinda made jokes about her height and how she had to compensate somewhat by being aggressive. I thought that I would not like to get her mad at me or meet her in some dark dream if she was in a bad mood. She seemed to be the type to have little or no patience for idiots. As I had these sorts of thoughs, it seemed another part of me was realizing and asserting that this being was not at all as I was judging her, that to judge her in any way, was to totally miss the boat, to occlude any truth that might come through. The lecture began with comments made about her height, about her being short with one inch heels. She spoke her name or better, declared it. She said she had to because Florinda Donner was a dream. She indicated that she had to make an effort to maintain the situation of the lecture. This focus and need to speak their names was repeated each time one of the group giving the seminar spoke. At another time, Kylie said that they spoke their names not for our benefit but for 'It's' benefit. It, being the Intent or Intent, the Nagual, the Spirit. Florinda talked about three rules regarding perceiving and perception. She talked about our tendency to anthropomorphasize. She said our boring patterns and our boring repetitions drain us of all our energy. These patterns are mostly set by the age of three. Florinda deferred commentary regarding stalking to Dr. Abelar and made some comments that indicated that she could become quite irritated by Dr. Abelar's manner and/or behaviors although her admiration and affection for her were most notable. She commented that practices like gazing, walking, etc. were mostly ways to trap or fixate attention, (which they are indeed). The recapitulation was discussed as a means to unveil our method of manipulating the world, socially. that is, she said that most people have but a single way of dealing with people and situations that they encounter in life. Very complicated people, she said, have maybe two ways of dealing with the world. Florinda indicated that the recapitulation was necessary for uncovering our patterns and our ways of snaring ourselves, of feeling important, and of wasting our precious energy. She said that Taisha Abelar would not agree entirely with her on some things. Florinda said that the recapitulation was, for her, a tool to see those patterns so that we could begin to free energy but she did say we had to always practice it. She also talked about the need to suspend judgment, giving the example of how a women at a Mexico lecture came up to her to complain about the Tensegrity. The person said that they had come all the way from South America (Argentina, I believe) to learn a bunch of stupid movements. The woman's comments were mostly "I", "I", "I", "Me", "Me", "Me"!!!... her entire focus was on her self-reflection. Unfortunately, that's how it is for most of us, at least for most of the time. i caught myslef, during the Tensegrity workshop, commenting to myself about the movements' similarities to Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Yoga, etc. etc. Having practiced these disciplines for a long time, the tendency was to just file them or categorize it into something familiar, which also served to make me feel important, yuch! So I had to repeatedly remind myslef to suspend judgement. When I did, I enjoyed the teachings much more and discovered then, that, indeed, these movements, no matter their outward or superficial similarities to other things, were in fact, as alien as they could be, beyond the comfortable "known". Even there during the workshop I could feel the effects, and by the Omega workshop in New York, a couple of months later, extrodinary things were happening. Florinda talked about the Flyers or beings of non-organic energy, that eat us like we eat chickens. Just as chickens are totally oblivious to their fate, we go about our silly business without a clue that we are fodder for these things. We are in a chicken coup and are stupid morons, or self important apes who waste our chances. This information was shocking and true. Maybe some of the participants might have been annoyed, but upon due consideration, I found her diatribe to be refreshing and to the point as I'm sure many there did. Florinda said that she was not trying to deliberately insult us. She was only repeating what they themselves had been told by the Old Nagual, as she called don Juan Matus, to be clear on whether she was talking about him or Carlos Castaneda. This led to comments about a weird, but very funny tendency the warriors of the old Nagual's party had, to talk in a low monotone voice, like they were retarded. They would do this to repeat or to emphasize in a humerous fasion, what was being talked about. Florinda demonstrated the voice and would do it throughout the lecture with the audience really getting a kick out of it. She did it in New York too but didn't give an explanation for it so i wondered then what some of those people thought. It was very funny and provided one of many personal glimpses into their highly unique world each seeming to be like gems of sorts, for so long had there been the desire to be near any of them or to encounter them. This gathering, then, was more than was incredible, like a dream come true (no pun intended). Florinda added that Carlos has been pretending to be retarded for the past three years and that, because of this, he would never really be retarded. In regards to Tensegrity, Florinda mentioned that Carlos taught it when he was around. She also emphasized, as the Chacmools would later in the seminar, that Tensegrity was not a fixed thing. The movements were always changing. In some of the workshops, people would ask questions about specifics such as how many times a move was repeated or about the exact wording for the move or a part of a move. Kylie and the others made the point throughout the workshop that the verbiage was, to a great degree, mnemonic devices to help one remember. When they made comments such as, for example, "raise your arms and extend out into infinity", a person might ask about how one should visualize "extending out into infinity", etc. and they would respond that, of course, words really didn't explain anything about what we were doing and to not get all tangled up in descriptions. Tensegrity is always changing, Florinda said, because Carlos is always dreaming. However, at other times the Chacmools as well as Taisha Abelar, would say that the Tensegrity came from four strands of magical passes each given individually to the four diciples of the old Nagual. These passes, they indicated, were combined into the Tensegrity. The passes we were being taught were components or key joints from much longer passes, some being hundreds of movements in length.. So, Tensegrity had a beginning and has been growing with the efforts of the group. Really, the passes stretch back to the ancient sorcerers and to their fixations, which were on the morbid and obsessed side. When one practices the sorcery passes, then, one is hooking into the intent of all those ancient sorcerers and of those coming after them. An awesome prospect indeed! One of the reasons, Florinda commented, for giving the seminar, was to pay back the Spirit. (I add here, after reading this, and after having been around them more, that there was something, what I though was my mind, telling me, urging me, that her statements about paying back the spirit were all lies and deceptions and to be angry, something like the 'good conscience/bad conscience tug-of-war thing, which I now realize is the flyers' mind). Florinda said that Carol Tiggs came back after ten years and that Carlos had found her in a book store when he was giving a lecture. When he saw her there at the lecture, Castaneda reportedly just stood there babbling as he looked at her. so Castaneda gave a few lectures in that bookstore (the Phoenix Book Store in LA) to pay them back. (The owner reportedly told a friend of mine who asked - that Carlos Castaneda spent most of his time playing golf - perhaps his own flyers mind). The return of Carol Tiggs, the nagual woman, brought a new mood to the group. During his lecture, Carlos saw Carol's glow in the back of the store. She had returned after ten years! For wo hours he just babbled through the lecture, so shocking was this development. I later would be struck by Carol's very youthful appearance. While Florinda and Taisha are strikingly vital and energetic, as is the new nagual, Carlos Castaneda, Carol appears to be actually younger. Being gone, out of our time perhaps, for ten years, could have this effect according to sorcerers' lore (see Silvio Manuel's dissapearance). This event, Florinda said, was a perfect example of what they meant when they say that the sorcerers' world is constantly changing. Someone asked about La Gorda's eye (as described in the Second Ring of Power). Florinda siad that she didn't know anything about this. There were a few questions along these lines, that Florinda seemed to get a little bit flustered over. She did say that La Gorda died in her arms. She was apparently nervous at times but her obviously high degree of energy as well as the novel pressures of giving the lecture could have had a lot to do with her demeanor. Also, I found it more assuring, not less, that she was not trying to bullshit or to hide her feelings and reactions. She was shooting from the hip and that was for sure. Florinda told us about Carlos being a three pronged nagual (which she pronounced "no-all" which is an aberration on the Nahuatl pronunciation of "Na-wa-'hl'.) is interested in the abstract and further, being a man, he uses words to build or cone, towards knowledge. men, Florinda pointed out, CONE towards knowledge (A), while women open up towards knowledge like an inverted cone (V). Men, she continued, are interested in and tend towards structures. women have a second brain, their wombs! They are, therefore, much better off having this extra and power-filled energetic site or center. Women dream from their wombs. Someone asked about celibacy and sex. Florinda exclaimed "Ah ha!!, I was waiting for that one!" She said that if one is obsessed with sex, wanting it, then by all means, go ahead and do it! Enjoy it! She was a bit uncomfortable talking about it, it seemed, but in a funny way, giggling, etc. Florinda did say that, if one was to have sex in the best manner possible, energetically speaking, it had to be done out of real and pure affection. On the more serious side, Florinda said that women defend to the death something that they don't even have..... the social order. This led to comments regarding the flyers and their eating habits, which is to say....us! They eat us down to our heals leaving us nothing but our crummy self-reflection. She reported that a well off, sick, crazy young friend of theirs, was always insulted by Carlos Castaneda because he alwyas opened himself up like a balloon to be popped. This guy, however, took a picture of a flyer. It was leaping over a sea of people gathered at the pyramids in Tenochitlan. They were there to see the Dali lama at the pyramids. She said that 'intent' somehow allowed the picture to be taken. the figure was gigantic and appeared to be leaping over the crowd, from one pyramid to the other. There, at that gathering, with all of those people pouring out their emotions and self-relections/importance in the form of their devotion and longing, the flyers were gorging themselves on their awareness'. So much energy was available to them that they somehow or another crossed the boundaries of perception to be caught by the camera which was one of those that take a series of pictures with one click. That picture was the middle picture and was the only one with the image of the flyer upon it. the flyer looked to be agigantic man leaping above the heads of the crowd. The flyers attach to us and eat the sheen of our awareness down to the ground. But Florinda asserted, for those whose awareness is regrown through discipline, that is the fluid discipline of warriorship, the flyers do not eat them. They do not like the taste of discipline. It is unpalatable to them. Following the warriors way makes us taste bad, like a dirty chicken, to them. florinda said, possibly in response to a question, that there were inorganic awareness' present in the hall we were in. Some, she said, appeared brownish, grayish, likes puffs or spirals. She said that she could see them but we could not because 90 percent of our energy went into holding up our self-reflection and self-importance (don Juan used 98% she said). Florinda explained the three types of people or personalities: Piss (always helping and secretly loathing), Farts or Know it alls, and Pukes or persons who help but make you pay. It is important for every one of us on this path to acknowledge what we are, even if we are bored fucks on top of being either a piss, a puke or a fart. Bored fucks, which most people are, are people who were conceived during boring sex, sex without great enthusiasm and energy involved. florinda said that she'd seen just about every movie there was. She loved movies so much that the other sorcerers had a nickname for her "the Movie Whore". She mentioned that she used to practice Shotokan karate at college. A fascinating story was told abou t an experience Florinda had when she was still an apprentice. She was driving the VW bus along a street in LA when she saw a woman just outside her window looking in at her. This being stood right outside even though the VW bus was moving along the road. Even when Florinda would speed up, she stayed right along side. The strange woman's hair was black. florinda had the idea, she knew, that it was dyed and explained our insistence and tendency, even in the face of the unknown, to judge and explain everything. The woman, in addition to her (dyed) black hair, had big crooked teeth. She appeared leathery too! Florinda said that she sped up the bus to get away but the woman remained alongside until finally, she just vanished. Florinda related other manifestations, where she was perceiving awareness' which crossed somehow into this realm. One was that of a creature that looked like a cat but had a rabbits back end and big teeth. She joked about seeing things with big teeth. Floinda talked about old Florinda of don Juan's party of sorcerers. She would wear a robe of energy. Florinda would always see it as something like a bathrobe that old Florinda would wear with one of her breasts hanging out. Don Juan and old Florinda would jokingly ask Florinda how shw liked old Florinda's robe. She could only comment on how audacious or scandalous they were or something like that. The old nagual would ask old Florinda to take off her robe in front of Florinda. Then Florinda talked about how, one day, she saw that Florinda had never had a real robe on at all. It was her interpretation system that influenced or distored her seeing of the sheer energy robe of old Florinda. Once, Carlos talked about how old Florinda's energy was on power itself. he said that she could just tap you and bruise or hurt you very severely, she was so powerful. Related to the energy robe and seeing for women is the womb and its advantage in assisting women in dreaming and perceiving. Women can suspend judgment and belief more easily. Florinda told us that the old nagual had four names and four different personas because he was a four compartment nagual. He was don Juan Matus for Carlos, John Michael Abelar for Taisha, marialano Aurialano for Florinda, and Dilas Grau (I'm not sure of this last name) for Carol Tiggs. Carlos has three names. Florinda related how the women of don Juan's party would dote on him. She joked that he couldn't even go to the bathroom without them. They adored him though as the nagual, the one who brings freedom, abstract and total freedom. they were, of course, free from the mundane assertions such behavior would normally conjure in the day to day world. This led Florinda to discuss how men are more fragile than women. They are, energeticallly but alsosociety sets it up for them to be pampered needlessly. Florinda talked about how women are ingrained with the need to help the poor baby men. At the airport they saw these men in suits, business types, trying to get coffee for themselves. They were there without their wives to get their coffee for them, poor babies and Florinda described how they felt that impulse to go over there and help them! She also mentioned how, on the plane, she was cramped and had a stiff neck. She spent the time planning her speech and an ally rubbed her neck. (I noticed at Maui and at the next workshop at Omega in New York, that Florinda used cards. At UCLA she did not and was a quite nervous but ended up giving as great or even better a lecture on our state as beings that are going to die). Florinda also descirbed ushers, those allies (or anything else i.e., omen/spirit) that usher us int any unknown or new thing. She descirbed one of her ushers. One day she was ironing, naked as was her usual custom when she felt what she perceived as a furry dog rubbing between her legs. it was an ally rubbing up against her, an inroganic being! Florinda went on to say, in response to a question I think, that allies were not bad or good, that there really is no good or evil. We are navigators of infinity, navigators of perception. She said that Carlos Castaneda was "really out there" and that they, the women disciples were doing everything they could to keep up. Florinda described the chacmools as energetically, fierce guards and warriors. Florinda emphasized that the warriors' path was something a person really had to do alone, that no one could help us except to maybe cushion us. She talked about true love and affection. She said that we did not know how to love anything but ourselves. There is, she stressed, a need for one, as a warrior, to write a blank check to accept whatever our charges do to us. Once we stop judging, there will be nothing there, nothing for people to push against. Florinda said that we were all petty tyrants and that mothers are the biggest petty tyrants. When asked about loosing one's edge she said that women loose more in having children than men do, but men do loose some too. And, that we can reclaim our lost energy by cutting the connection to children. In other words, we really free them too and that children don't then loose their edge but are set free. So in essence, she said we have to get it back, but in a nice way. Besides, she said, we don't love our children anyway. Florinda seemed bubbling over with vitality. She was practically jumping up and down. Florinda had a bit of difficulty understanding some of the questions posed to her. It appeared that this was definitely a new experience for her. I fancied that she had not been among humans or perhaps not quite human herself, for some time as if she was not used to it. Nevertheless, her energy and knowledge were incredible! Florinda said that it would be very easy for them (the four disciples of don Juan) to fly off into the unknown. That it, the whole affair is so easy and that is why ists so hard to accomplish. She mentioned that don Juan and Generaro were so focused that when one was not there, that they didn't know you existed and that used to make her mad before she knew that don juan was energetically so hard. She realized that to trust the nagual meant to trust him with one's life totally. given the chance to do it again or not, she said that, certainly, she would do it again, only with more discipline. Florinda emphatically stated that she and her group were totally and completely given to the sorcerers way of life. She said that the reason that we the audience, were there, was because we were not happy and/or we were missing something in our lives. She said that she would be a fat wife or something horrible like that, hating her husband and her kids if it were not for this path. she said there is another side to us. That first and foremost, we are perceivers. as babies, we are and we can learn to percieve twin worlds. that we can go and live and die in other worlds. It was possible, and she was there to say it was. Florinda stated that there were two forces (in the universe) and that the inorganics were as aware of us as we were of them, which was to say, hardly at all. She said that she now takes for granted that there are beings or awareness' such as allies and that it is possible to interact with them. Florinda stated that we are predators and we are also preyed upon. Eating meat, she said, or being a plant predator didn't matter, that one was still preying on awareness'. In turn, we are also preyed upon by the flyers. Florinda said that sorcery changes and heightens one's awareness in weird ways, like the senses. She said that Carlos Castaneda can find chocolate anywhere. Florinda said that she loved to read as well as watch movies. She said that Carlos doen't read anything but the Enquirerer. The double, florinda indicated, was particularly sought or achieved by nagual people who had double energy. florinda said that don Juan Matus was not of this world but could operate within it. He was a businessman and dealt with lawyers. She said that she went out socially with him. She never met the nagual Julien but heard lecherous tales about him. She said that old Florinda was very wealthy. Don Juan too, had money but she didn't know what name he had it under. Florinda Donner told us about how old Florinda took her to this house with gold bricks in the floor. Old Florinda told Florinda Donner that the house was hers if she could find it again. Florinda said that don Juan gave them all nicknames and hers was "Greed". She said that old Florinda left her a cachet of jewelry in dreaming. She said that Carlos Castaneda was not very well off at all. She told the story about some Italian writer who could not get an interview with Carlos so he just made it up (the interview) which included scandalous deeds such as Carlos Castaneda, the California guru, living with women 'servants'. In reality, Florinda said, Carlos Castaneda gives away his wealth a lot, supporting people in Mexico as well as the rest of them. She said that sorcery provides but one must, in turn, give it away to get it once again. One must not be attached. Florinda said that the earth will be here, or continue to be here and that we must care about it if we care anything about ourselves. In answer to another question regarding Christian Beliefs, demons and other religious ideas about demons and spirits, Florinda said that they may have been allusions to inorganics, or partial/distorted perceptions/interpretations of them. But also those concepts, she stressed, were examples of our tendency/insistence to compartmentalize our knowledge. Someone asked about her statements in "Being in Dreaming" about the old nagual saying he would "blow you to him", in regards to Carlos. She replied that that was an example of how the spirit works, how it evolves things. Florinda responded to another question with the answer that we didn't know what true affection was. That we only liked oursleves. Florinda said that the mere presence of the nagual was enough to shift their awareness'. The slap on Carlos' back was merely to tell him that he (don Juan) was doing something. She said the rest of them did not use power plants. Defining magic, Florinda stated that magic was in how we do or say "White House". Saying this, we don't just envision a white rectangle, but intend all kind of aspects making up its complex and relative reality. Therefore, she urged , why not use this power to intend as we do in everyday life. She said that she had learned to use intent, to intend things. This power or its use, begins with a crucial moment of silence. We must let that moment grow, she emphasized. Florinda told the story of how she and Taisha Abelar disappeared into the nagual, or another layer of the onion, or another bona-fide other world, for nine days even though they experienced it as being onl three days. Carlos Castaneda had told them upon their return, that if they had been gone any longer, that he would have had had to do something. Florinda misunderstood someone's question about whether she ran into other people in her dreamin. She said that she ran into people all the time because this world was only a peel of the onion and that other worlds, with people, existed in other layers, so to speak. When in those worlds, she said, she would notice that something wasn't right. Florinda said that she was being dreamed by Carlos Castaneda, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs and vice versa. She described the chacmools and their role as quardians. Florinda described a nagual as a double man with two balls of energy, each with two compartments. the old nagual, in accordance with this energetic makeup, then had four separate personalities and the four disciples had access, each, to one of those four personalities. The four of them learned four differnt series of magical passess designed for their individual makeup. These were amalgamated into Tensegrity. The magical passes were discovered by sorcerers through dreaming. Sorcerers, when dreaming into heightened awareness, wanted to replicate the well being experienced there in their ordinary waking awareness. Originally, the passess' mood, was dark and foreboding. The passes now, Florinda told us, were filled with light and delight. She gave the definition of the term Tensegrity. She said that some passes had three or even four hundred movements. These (the 12 basic passes plus the stellar hatch/Maui gift pass) were key units of longer passes. The seminar, there on Maui, like the passes, was filled with light and delight. Here at the beginning, having no idea of what was to come (the videos and more and more seminars), or even knowing if there would even be another lecture, seminar or appearance, it was very weird when it ended. On the final day, a Sunday, we reviewed themovements with the Chacmools. At the end they had a short question and answer period. Then it ended and they walked out and were gone. It seemed that there was a kind of stunned silence. People tried to mill about and talk but with their departure, we were left with just a room full of people. I walked out of the beautiful Ritz-Carlton Hotel into the exquisite Hawaii midday. I had never been to Hawaii before and it seemed a little ironic, how the events of the seminar, Taisha, Florinda, the Cahcmools and the brush with Castaneda's world, completely overshadowed even the beauty and allure of this tropical paradise. As I began the two mile walk back to my hotel to wait for my evening flight home alone, familiar feelings of sadness of self-pity, really, began to well up. But something stopped me. for once I had the presence of being to realize that I was in a position to choose either self-pity and sadness or elation and joy of the moment. I choose the latter and held on to it. [ 1995 Index | Previous | Next ]

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