Tensegrity Seminars

Los Angeles (4) - August 1997 [ 1997 Index | Previous | Next ] To:   The Ixtlan Mailing List Date:   Sun, 28 Sep 1997 01:10:05 -0400 (EDT) LA WORKSHOP, August 23 to 27, 1997 by Randy Stark and Vincent Sargenti DAY FOUR (morning, afternoon, evening) Tuesday . . . Carol's Second Day For the first time, a day began without the usual lecture. There was no podium set up, so participants spread out their mats and waited. De-emphasizing talk and emphasizing action was the mood being conveyed, which was just as well. As Carol had said, the Not-Doing passes pack a punch. The Elements arrived and immediately began teaching the fourth series entitled: The Legs Rule Vitality. On this, the fourth day of the workshop, silence, concentration and focus prevailed. The number of repetitions for some of the passes was grueling. When certain Elements joked about doing them hundreds of times, a more or less unspoken groan went up. Few doubted that if left to themselves, that's exactly what the Elements would do -- put 850 people in the hospital! But they didn't, of course, and their care and sensitivity, like that of the Energy Trackers, in pushing us only so far, was impeccable and finely tuned. There was no pressure to 'keep up'. As a matter of fact, the Energy Trackers and Elements often gave advice on how to deal with pressure on the back, and advised taking things at one's own pace. After a lunch break, and Carol's only lecture for the day, the Energy Trackers taught the fifth and final series of Not-Doing passes entitled, The Wheel of Time. Towards the end of this series the black, inch thick, 15.75 inch diameter rubber-like foam circles were employed. Before the dinner break, attendees stood up and learned the first half of the Juan Tuma and Silvio Manuel dance/passes, which made for a good transition from horizontality to verticality. After dinner, the Elements returned and began a review of the Not-Doing passes with, The Running Man. This session ended the day at 10pm. After lunch, Taisha walked in with Carol and sat in the front row on the floor (participants would not see chairs until the last day). Carol greeted attendees, stated her name, opened her water bottles and began. "The idea of the worshipper is antithetical to the mood of the universe," she said at one point. "The Dark Sea will fulfill the needs of warriors based on their degree of hard discipline," which she further described as, "The ability to focus all of your available energy on the journey to infinity -- to be free to change, to mutate into another more intelligent aspect." Carol mentioned briefly the third type of being they had discovered (the first two being organic and inorganic), which Taisha had described in an earlier lecture as an amorphous awareness, one without a form or 'container'. She spoke of needing to have a deep sense of 'excruciating discipline', that that is what the Dark Sea of Awareness responds to. She then talked about two common themes she hears all the time from practitioners. 1)   "You had the old nagual to tell you what to do. We don't have anyone." Her reply to this was that human beings don't need anyone, they only need to be pointed in the right direction. She talked about being sluggish and how it feels when you are sluggish, what your life is really like. You just kind of lumber around all day and never seem to have enough energy, you're always tired and want to sit down. She said that it's not easy to overcome being sluggish. Like everything on a warrior's path, it takes discipline. You must have a strong desire to be free from Robert . . . which led to the next theme. Carol, with a hilariously feigned look on her face, said in an annoyingly complaining voice: 2)   "If I could see Robert, I would work a lot harder." Her reply was, "The day you see Robert is the day you will be free of him." She paused for a moment to let her words sink in. "He's not intelligent. He's not that bright. He is slow and egotistical." And once you finally manage to get Robert to leave you alone, you will have other predators to deal with. Robert is associated with toe-level awareness. Seymour is associated with waist-level and above. "Seymour is very bright. He is agile and slim. He will shake you from your foundations." After Carlos pushed through an energetic ceiling, they found the new predator, Seymour. What the universe expects is an impersonal response. Beings are tested incessantly. But there's an important distinction between being detached and being indifferent, she said. The impersonal response expected by the universe is not one of indifference. Carol again mentioned the third type of awareness, the boundary-less, amorphous beings, perhaps in the context that one must be detached, but not indifferent, when engaging with them. She said that we have to be seriously fine-tuned in order to face the other predators of the universe after we've thrown off Bobby. "Personal history leaves energetic residue in us that pins us down," she said. "Sorcerers have no hooks in the past. Recapitulation is the process by which they free themselves of any hooks they once had." Carol told the story of a young man Carlos knew who was abused by his step-mother. She said Carlos' friend had been in psychoanalysis for years, and that in the end he still felt he had trouble dealing with mental anguish over the fact that his step-mother had sexually abused him. When Carlos finally asked his friend how old he was at the time of the alleged abuse, he had to drag the answer out of him. His friend finally confessed that the alleged abuse took place from the time he was 17 until he was 21. When Carol finished the story, which she had painted in great humorous strokes, she said, "To the shaman, everything is challenge. Warriors tighten their belts and face whatever comes their way. The Dark Sea supports their complex needs." She mentioned the previous descriptions of Silvio Manuel and described him to the audience once again, adding yet another dimension to his already deeply disturbing character. She summarized her statements by saying that, "The Dark Sea of Awareness does the mutation in the shaman itself." Carol and her cohorts had a list of the old nagual's antics. They would rate items on the list in categories, but don Juan was continually shuffling them around. The old nagual traumatized. That was the traditional way of training initiates for continuing the lineage. "Not-Doing is not overt. It is the interruption of the flow of our natural energy," she explained. "The old nagual did weird things with that interruption." Carol had her own way of categorizing his antics. Some were funny, others were stupid, gross, intelligent, etc. One of the more daring people in don Juan's party was Juan Tuma. "Florinda had her Juan Tuma," she said, apparently meaning they were very close. "He did the most disgusting, ugly thing once," she confided, humorously cringing. "He called it, the not-doing of prudence." Juan Tuma had made Carol look at his scrotum. She said that because of his massive size, when he showed it to her it was about eye level and hung down quite far. She said if he had shown her his penis it wouldn't have been nearly so shocking, but the fact that it was his scrotum was devastating to her. "Not-Doing," Carol told the audience, "is the introduction of cognitive dissonance. It interrupts a vibratory force that holds together our cohesive fields of energy. The passes for Not-Doing are practiced until the bonds of our socialization are broken, then they are forgotten. That's the way it's done, don't ask me why." She said they were now dusting off their knowledge of the passes in order to show us Not-Doing. [ 1997 Index | Previous | Next ]

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