Tensegrity Seminars

Los Angeles (1) - August 1997 [ 1997 Index | Previous | Next ] To:   The Ixtlan Mailing List Date:   Tue, 2 Sep 1997 01:25:59 -0400 (EDT) LA WORKSHOP, August 23 to 27, 1997 by Vincent Sargenti and Randy Stark DAY ONE (morning) (Note: The following recollections are far from complete and certain to contain errors. We have endeavored to keep as much interpretation out of this account as possible and to stick to the facts, but can only hope for partial success. Imperfect lenses project imperfect pictures.) Saturday . . . Florinda's Day Saturday morning, August 23rd, the weather was picture postcard perfect in Los Angeles as roughly 850 workshop attendees and hardcore Tensegrity practitioners converged on the LA Convention Center from all over the world. The Los Angeles Convention Center loomed dissonantly against the southernmost area of the downtown skyline -- a gleaming white tubular steel and smoked-glass abstraction, a monument to the Calculus of man's technological madness as expressed in architecture. The workshop was held in this newer portion of the complex of enormous buildings. The old complex is a huge, mammoth rectangular building next to Interstate 110. Everyone who didn't already live in Los Angeles seemed to be staying in hotels on Figueroa street. The Hotel Figueroa and the Holiday Inn were both almost completely taken over by the Tensegrity Workshop crowd with their rolled up blue mats and black foam rubber Wheels of Time. The crowd of mostly familiar faces were buzzing around the registration tables (as much as two hours before showtime) where the work-study people were seated by the dozen to have paperwork signed and hand out the transparent green ID badges that were the key to the magic kingdom. Before going through security (four large, dark-clothed men with black, metal-detecting paddles, a gauntlet of no less than 10 super-conscious guards, and 10 more inspectors at tables for searching bags.) On the other end of the gauntlet, were the most familiar and wonderful faces one can see, the two ladies who look at your badge and let you in. Once through their formidable doorway, one entered a huge rectangular room that seemed as large as a football field, and very possibly was. It had large honeycombed squares of recessed lights in the thick beamed ceiling and four gray and black-trimmed platforms, about a foot and a half high, spaced evenly down the center of a blue carpeted floor. Of the two central platforms, one, the southernmost, had a podium on it. People gathered in front of it, sitting on the floor. Eventually, Grant walked up and welcomed everyone to Los Angeles. The room went wild with anticipation. He made a few announcements, and said that the schedule had basically been thrown out the window. He said that it was very difficult to plan months in advance for an event of this nature because the energetic configurations that the sorcerers operate within the context of make it impossible to say what's what from one day to the next. He stated emphatically that we should all try to bear with them and to make an attempt to be as patient and fluid as possible. He said that regardless of the scheduling, they had quite a treat in store for us. Florinda Donner-Grau soon came out of a side door. She was dressed in a light blue shirt, dark blue slacks and thick-soled black rubber-looking sandals. She started by saying that 9am was way too early for her to read from the wall. It was the first time she had addressed us in the morning, and since she wasn't worth a damn in the morning she had written something to read to us. There were translators for Italian, Russian, French, German and Spanish. (People using this service had portable earphones and were able to receive translations even while doing passes.) One benefit for the translators of her reading, she said, was that she didn't talk as fast. The microphone kept feeding back periodically, but Florinda was in good spirits, tapping the toes of her sandals on the floor behind her as she talked. Before going to her notes she joked about something someone had said earlier as she walked into the convention center. "Oh Florinda, you look tired." But she didn't look tired in the least as she stood at the podium, short blonde hair impeccably brush cut around her flawless white skin and beaming face. She told us the old nagual, don Juan, had given them his very best. He hit them with everything he had. When he realized that Carlos didn't have the energetic configuration or temperament for anything but ending the lineage, he put Big Florinda in charge of pulling them back together and recovering after he and the rest of his party left. They weren't worth a plugged nickel, Florinda said. You couldn't have made a whole person from the four of them put together. She digressed into to speaking about Carlos and said that he has a particular fondness for several Hollywood filmmakers whose movies he watches over and over. She said that among them, one of his favorites is Woody Allen. She humorously said that he has poor taste in her opinion. (Florinda is quite a filmgoer herself, but she never mentioned that.) She told the story of a particular film and asked if we might remember it. It was the one where all these men are dressed in white with big white helmets and are preparing to jump out of the back of an airplane. They are supposed to be sperm and right as they are getting ready to rush out the back of the plane, the leader in front yells, "Go back, it's a blow job!" What happened to them reminded her of that scene in the Woody Allen movie. "That's what happened to us," she said. They had been trained and were ready to jump when suddenly they were told, "Go back, it's a blowjob!" Regrouping afterwards was not easy, especially with Carol Tiggs having disappeared to god knows where. Not long after this, Florinda talked about the sheen of awareness that has been eaten down by the Flyers, and how don Juan described it as El Condoncito, the little condom. The vulgarity of this description annoyed Florinda and she asked him if he couldn't just as well describe it more like a pillow and a pillow case. He said no, it was much tighter than that. Florinda joked that Carlos has made a lot of mistakes in his life and that, over the years, she has been witness to most of them. One of the more recent, and according to her 'imbecilic', things he did was create what came to be known as the Sunday Group, a local LA practice group that Carlos worked with intensively over a period of more than a year. Carlos' temperament is not like don Juan's. She humorously described Carlos Castaneda as the 'ultimate hit-and-run artist'. She said that over a year ago he decided he would try to influence this small group of people and attempt to mold them into serious warrior-practitioners with the force of his charismatic personality, his ability to talk about anything, and his superior energy. Florinda told the Los Angeles crowd that Carlos had made a monumental error in judgment because all he succeeded in doing was to make himself into their 'Guru'. So the Sunday Group was immediately abolished according to Florinda. Her statement signaled the end of the group, much to the surprise of some workshop attendees who were members of it. Later in the week, Florinda's tale of the demise of the group would spark speculation as to whether or not Carlos would be showing up for the workshop at all. Florinda went on to talk about some of the favorite songs of Juan Tuma and Silvio Manuel. She described Silvio Manuel at length as an incredible dancer of tremendous flair and physical prowess. The other sorcerers often preferred not to look at his antics, which were in response to the Dark Sea of Awareness, because they were so outrageous -- like his ability to squeeze himself through a knothole. She said that the songs they were going to play for us were particular favorites of Silvio Manuel and Juan Tuma. She told everyone that when they were apprentices they had heard these songs over and over and over again while in the company of Silvio Manuel. Florinda stated that these same songs were going to be played for us again and again throughout the course of the workshop until we were, "Steeped in the mood of Silvio Manuel and don Juan's generation of sorcerers." The three musical themes of the workshop were available on a CD at the Tensegrity Bookstore during breaks. All of the songs are sung in Spanish by Daniel Santos who, according to Florinda, has a unique vibration in his voice. All three are poignant and moving songs of love and longing. Florinda described how all human beings sense this immense longing for something they cannot completely define. She said that sorcerers maintain that this sense of longing for something indefinable is something that human beings mistakenly project onto other people as a longing for love and companionship, when in fact it is a longing for the boundless affection we would feel in the presence of our energy body. She said candidly that, "It is really a longing for the energy body we feel." Florinda ended her lecture by translating the lyrics to the song she was about to play for us. She said it was one that Juan Tuma especially liked. She admiringly described him for us, her eyes filling with light as she did so. She became charged with a strange energy and awe as she described him as a handsome giant Indian man who sang and danced like thunder! As the song began to play, she walked out of the room to a standing ovation, gesturing for us to be quiet so we could absorb the mood of the music. NOCTURNAL by Jose Sabre Marroquin Through the palm trees That sleep peacefully The silvery moon Cuddles with the tropical sea And my arms Hungrily stretch out Searching for you In the night A flowery perfume Evokes your enrapturing breath And the sweet kisses Of your mouth, And my lips thirstily wait For a kiss from you I feel that you are next to me But it is a lie, an illusion Oh! I spend hours like this And nights like this Asking life For the miracle of being next to you And perhaps not even in your dreams Do you remember me DAY ONE (afternoon, evening) After Florinda's first half hour lecture, the Elements came out and we began learning the new long form of the Westwood Series, a section at a time, repeating it from the beginning after each new part, until we had the whole thing as one long flowing sequence. What were previously taught as individual passes were slightly rearranged in places, and many repetitive moves reduced to three-counts. After practicing the whole thing several times, we moved on to the Masculinity Series, again learning previously individual passes as one long flowing form. We repeated the entire series several times, then broke for lunch. In the afternoon, Florinda strolled back out in a white shirt, cream colored slacks and matching tan sandal-like heels. She said she wanted to demonstrate to us what it 'looked like' to move the attention to another position other than the ME position between the toes, yet still within the fringe of awareness that runs no more than anklebone high around the bottom of our luminosity. She said that we could move our attention anywhere within that fringe and that this was preferable as long as we were able to move it away from the ME position between the toes. She also made an important distinction between moving the assemblage point and moving the 'beam' of attention that comes from the assemblage point and fixates on a particular area or spot within the fringe of awareness. As a word of warning, before her demonstration, Florinda related how she had fallen back and banged her head in a hotel room while squatting on a bed doing this. She explained how we should be very careful when we attempt to do this and she explained herself further by telling us the story of the first time she succeeded at doing it. She was told to sit up on her knees somewhere soft, like in her bed, so that when she fell forward she would not hurt herself. Well, when she finally moved her attention away from the ME position between the toes she fell not directly forward or back but kind of sideways and bashed her head open on a sharp marble-slated night stand. So she admonished us to find somewhere safe to attempt this. She then introduced Miles, telling us that he is an actual MD. She flirtatiously and affectionately teased him calling out, "Oh, Doctor?" as he came up on stage to 'spot' her. Florinda took a second or two of quiet as she leaned her head forward and down, then she went limp and began to fall forward. Miles supported her, of course, and as she became alert once again she spoke with feigned, breathy, feminine passion, "Oh, THANK you, Doctor!" and smiled her classic mischievous smile. She did the same thing again, all the while playfully having loads of fun teasing Miles. It seemed as if she were doing this maneuver for another level of the audience's awareness and not necessarily for their linear minds. There was something horribly incongruous about her demonstration that everyone in the room just allowed to hang in the air. It was obvious that this was an energetic shift of attention and intent that she was making and for now the audience would fail to apprehend anything of it but her falling forward and being caught by Miles. It was kind of like Carol's eye thing where you know something is going on but all you see is the physical first attention side of the event. She repeated the demonstration several times facing different sides of the audience. Her point being that even though our awareness has been reduced to toe level, there are still a multitude of points to shift attention to in that area other than the one we're currently fixated on. With regard to self-importance and the Flyers, part of a story was related about an elderly couple who were friends of both Taisha and Florinda. They are both presently in a nursing home. They were quite wealthy and prominent citizens of Los Angeles at one time. It was mentioned that the couple paid one million dollars a year to be attended to and to live at this facility. Despite their wealth, however, when someone wanted to give the woman a rose bush, the nursing home administrator refused to allow it. Later when a family friend put pressure on the administrator he seemingly acquiesced but still there was no rose bush. Florinda, upon hearing of this, aggressive and German as ever, had someone drive her up to the Santa Barbara area where she had words with the administrator. "Why don't you let her have her fucking rose bush?" she asked. "Well, you don't have to be so crass about it," the administrator replied. "And you don't have to be so fucking stupid!" Florinda shot back. She said the administrator didn't think it mattered all that much because her friend was so elderly and not all there. He was hoping Florinda's elderly friend would die before they ever got the rose bush to her. He didn't want to have to make a decision or get off his behind and do anything. He actually assumed that she would die before he had to, but she didn't, and now the rose bush issue had come back to haunt him. She used the administrator as a metaphor saying that we are all like him to some degree. We all believe that we have more time than we really do. We are all like that administrator who doesn't want to have to make a decision one way or the other about anything. She went on to speak about the Dark Sea of Awareness and the force of Intent, how the two comprise the entire universe as is perceivable to man. A subject that was returned to again and again in the workshop. She gave a fresh and formidable description of the assemblage point and how zillions of filaments of energy converge on that spot to give rise to our perception. She mentioned that we each have a line into the Dark Sea of Awareness through the assemblage point. After Florinda's short lecture, the long form of the Series for Preparing Intent was taught by the Energy Trackers. After many repetitions, we broke for dinner. In the evening, Florinda returned. She was wearing a thin white sweater this time with the same slacks and shoes as in the afternoon. She talked about the different ways don Juan referred to the Flyers, depending on his mood. 'Panchito' in lighter moments, 'Paco' at other times, and 'St. Francis' if he was feeling morbid and morose, "As only a Nagual can be," she said. Flyers are not intelligent or superhuman, they're just there, and they're just like us. All of our ME characteristics are a reflection of them. But once we throw them off, once our sheen, our condom of awareness, rises back up to waist level we see them for what they are. Then, because we live in a predatory universe, yet another entity enters the picture, a type of being that she would only refer to as Seymour; a lean, mean, intelligent and nasty creature. When Carlos was feeling morbid and morose he would sit for hours watching a line of ants on a wall. When someone would ask where he was, the joking reply would be, "Probably out gazing at ants." Florinda gave graphic examples of the two ways in which human beings, children, are conceived. The great orgasmically passionate way (she imitated a woman having a monstrous orgasm), and the hyper-civilized, bored couple way. She gave a hilarious rendition of how the couple would sit in bed reading about politics, perhaps something on taxation, when suddenly the man would notice he has an erection (but only when he happened to look down). He would say, "Hmmm, what do we have here?" Then he would crawl on top and proceed to make love to his wife while she, all the while, is doing bills in her head and thinking of other things. Sadly, most of us are conceived under similar circumstances. We are bored fucks, but the practice of Tensegrity can level the playing field. After Florinda's lecture, the long form of the Heat Series was taught by the Energy Trackers, and day one of the workshop came to an end. [ 1997 Index | Previous | Next ]

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