06-03-2007, 12:00 AM
In my experience, practicing magical passes had greater influence in tonal than in Dreaming. What happened is, they helped the "flow of tonal", that is, the essence of action to evolve. With complex movements one needs to engage sides of his tonal s/he haven't been using so far which makes her/him as some sort of witness of new powers within. I've never attended any cleargreen workshop. I think the individuality in my part, the lack of influence of any instructor has actually led to such an impact on me by those passes. In the world, there are various reflections on them, some like them, other curse them. In my opinion, the problem is in expectations which usually goes along organized workshops or similar gathering. I also think, that CC and Co. made a mistake when associated descriptions and "what they do to you" to the particular movement. For instance, at the beginning I did a lot of passes for Dreaming which slowly grew into expectation that I'll better Dream, thus came the disappointment when I didn't. I wouldn't say that passes for Decision make you master in making Decisions, it's rather that stirred energy and the fluidity, the attention on bodily involvement helps you to bring the Decision with this "new" source, rather than thinking about it, which was the usual way of making that decision, if you know what I mean. The point is in change of perception in practitioner, actually, the usage of new sources to perceive reality which are hidden within the body. You don't lean on the mind so meaningfully as before.
Some people here called me few years ago and wanted me to teach them tensegrity. It was about ten of them, sometimes more or less. So, every Tuesday we would gather and practice passes. But, the problem was, first day I told a little theory about Castaneda and passes in general and most of the questions were "what these passes do to you?" It was hard for me to reply because I always like to emphasize the abstraction in them, rather than description. But no one likes abstraction, they wanted facts (which is the reason I believe CC did it in his MP book, to attract more people). So I gave them "facts". But, "the facts" destroyed the abstraction and killed the magic. So, the passion was gone quite soon. They lost it and couldn't perform at home, just when I was there, it was mess, they couldn't remember a thing, would yawn in the middle of it. After a while, only two left and they came out of habit. Finally, I said thank you and closed it.
In my experience, the magic in passes is in their fluidity, in performance of senseless movements which one cannot associate with anything familiar and yet you do them. I agree in the explanations that passes redeploy one's energy. I think the greatest power in them is confrontation with our mind which is the strongest against it. That is why it is easier to practice in groups than alone, the group forces your mind to accept the flow, rather than to embarrass itself in stubborn declining of the magic.
I believe this is the reason why the strongest problem for one is to begin with this practice from the book. The fortress of the mind is too big to cross! Therefore, one must be a trickster and find the magic, to trick the analytical mind. I think the best way to do this is to witness it by yourself, to be there physically, like I witnessed it with my friend Tony.
Therefore, my advice is for anyone who cannot learn from the book - go somewhere find the group, make it as a mission, a task and witness the feeling. If you find the group and like the magic, your body reacts with passion - half of the work is done. But, if there is no passion, you leave the group empty, feeling nothing - don't practice tensegrity, it is not for you. Find something else, do Thai-chi, yoga, kung fu, whatever, make it as a mission till you find what. But, don't cling on its description, I never did yoga in order to reach Nirvikalpa Samadhi, but to explore, to Dream, to Stalk, to loose the human form - to be abstract in any sense. Whatever you do - make your own Intent of doing it!
I did perform passes in dreams several times. Once, I was taught by some woman in dreams and she gave me entirely new way of doing them, which was fascinating. It included a lot of bending, writhing, ending the pass on the other side of the room. Later when I did them this way in real, they appeared very fluid, like dancing and the most important - each pass was different totally inventive, I could never repeat it again. Quite nice :-)
Some people here called me few years ago and wanted me to teach them tensegrity. It was about ten of them, sometimes more or less. So, every Tuesday we would gather and practice passes. But, the problem was, first day I told a little theory about Castaneda and passes in general and most of the questions were "what these passes do to you?" It was hard for me to reply because I always like to emphasize the abstraction in them, rather than description. But no one likes abstraction, they wanted facts (which is the reason I believe CC did it in his MP book, to attract more people). So I gave them "facts". But, "the facts" destroyed the abstraction and killed the magic. So, the passion was gone quite soon. They lost it and couldn't perform at home, just when I was there, it was mess, they couldn't remember a thing, would yawn in the middle of it. After a while, only two left and they came out of habit. Finally, I said thank you and closed it.
In my experience, the magic in passes is in their fluidity, in performance of senseless movements which one cannot associate with anything familiar and yet you do them. I agree in the explanations that passes redeploy one's energy. I think the greatest power in them is confrontation with our mind which is the strongest against it. That is why it is easier to practice in groups than alone, the group forces your mind to accept the flow, rather than to embarrass itself in stubborn declining of the magic.
I believe this is the reason why the strongest problem for one is to begin with this practice from the book. The fortress of the mind is too big to cross! Therefore, one must be a trickster and find the magic, to trick the analytical mind. I think the best way to do this is to witness it by yourself, to be there physically, like I witnessed it with my friend Tony.
Therefore, my advice is for anyone who cannot learn from the book - go somewhere find the group, make it as a mission, a task and witness the feeling. If you find the group and like the magic, your body reacts with passion - half of the work is done. But, if there is no passion, you leave the group empty, feeling nothing - don't practice tensegrity, it is not for you. Find something else, do Thai-chi, yoga, kung fu, whatever, make it as a mission till you find what. But, don't cling on its description, I never did yoga in order to reach Nirvikalpa Samadhi, but to explore, to Dream, to Stalk, to loose the human form - to be abstract in any sense. Whatever you do - make your own Intent of doing it!
I did perform passes in dreams several times. Once, I was taught by some woman in dreams and she gave me entirely new way of doing them, which was fascinating. It included a lot of bending, writhing, ending the pass on the other side of the room. Later when I did them this way in real, they appeared very fluid, like dancing and the most important - each pass was different totally inventive, I could never repeat it again. Quite nice :-)