The AverageMan & The Trump Card of Sorcerers

[Nagual LoneWolf]

Interesting material UnknownPoet.

[lisablueeyes]

From Practitioner Observation:

                            Tensegrity Seminars
                                      
Los Angeles (6) - August 1997
   [ 1997 Index | Previous | Next ]
   
   To:   The Ixtlan Mailing List
   Date:   Tue, 2 Sep 1997 00:04:46 -0400 (EDT)
   
   LA TENSEGRITY WORKSHOP AUGUST 23-27

 New Conception of Not-Doing
   
   Just 9 months ago the sorcerers were voicing a different definition of
   sorcery, and recommending dissonant behaviors like moving around in a
   swivel chair on our bellies. Now, Carol Tiggs defined not-doing as an
   "interruption in the natural flow of energy." Anything that obstructs
   our usual behavior patterns, even for an instant, is a not-doing. The
   interruption itself is not-doing. The unusual behaviors that entertain
   or shock us are only the result or byproduct of a not-doing. They
   believed that they had wrongly focused for years on the outlandish
   behaviors, and had missed out on the essence or kernel of not-doing.
   Now the new not-doing passes focus exclusively on encouraging this
   subtle interruption.
   
   This is an example of something I really like about the sorcerers.
   They don't claim to know it all. Their understanding evolves and
   changes with the times in a very hermeneutical fashion. They don't
   fall back onto dogma and the literal truth. Nothing is sacred,
   everything is open to pragmatic interpretation. As warriors, they keep
   on their toes, and are running all the time, like fugitives from the
   predators.
   
   The Not-Doing Passes
   
   The clan has had many names for the ineffable, including *Spirit* or
   *It*. The current favorite seems to be the Dark Sea of Awareness. I
   very much like this impersonal but beautiful/terrible image-provoking
   term. The strategy behind many of the not-doing series is to exploit
   the only awareness left to us humans: the narrow fringe on the bottom
   of the luminous cocoon. Many passes involve splashing or dipping into
   the stream of awareness that runs through the bottom fringe. They say
   that the bottom fringe is connected directly to the Dark Sea of
   Awareness. I feel refreshed as my toes dip into the stream of
   awareness while performing these passes, and then smear the awareness
   onto other parts of the body.
   
   The not-doing passes were performed lying down on mats. We were able
   to see the instructors on several projection screens that were
   distributed around the periphery of the Hall.
   
   The not-doing passes are clearly aiming at a deeper level than the
   previously taught series. Even the mood and tempo were shifted. The
   not-doing passes are performed very slowly, both between reps and
   between passes in a series. The instructors often waited for more than
   2 minutes between passes while the whole room was poised in silence.
   The reason for the slowed tempo is so that the practitioner can avail
   herself of the highly sought-after lull.
   
   The Lull
   
   The Lull or pause is the pearl sought by the practitioner of the
   not-doing passes. It is a moment, or even just an instant, the length
   of time doesn't matter, wherein the mind ceases and you go away to
   somewhere else.
   
   Most of us experienced the Lull during the practice. I spent much time
   staring at the ceiling of the Hall. The ceiling described an
   interesting pattern. It was a grid with slanted recessed squares. A
   light was in the center of each square among translucent tiles. My
   eyes became lost in the details of the ceiling. For a while I mused
   that the pattern was the surface of a Star Wars type spaceship.
   Sometimes I found myself walking on the surface of the spaceship. The
   people lying on their mats were like insects hanging from the ceiling.
   
   One Lull produced a fantastic vision and a bona fide journey to
   *somewhere else*. I was watching the ceiling as usual. Suddenly, the
   space opened up and I saw a Mezzanine level in the Hall. The sorcerers
   were peering down at all of us over a rail on the Mezzanine. Then all
   the sorcerers were doing something together in a room, and I watched
   them from a distance. This memory of this Dreaming returned to me at
   later times during the workshop when Florinda mentioned that she
   couldn't make fun of Taisha because certain people were present in the
   Hall, and when the announcement was made that Carlos was *here* in
   some mysterious sense. Were the sorcerers actually among us in the
   Hall, observing the effects of mass as we practiced the movements?
   Were they Dreaming the workshop?
   
   Where's Carlos?
   
   That brings us to the question so rudely posed by a gentleman during
   the Q/A session given by Taisha and Florinda. Where was Carlos? I had
   been to 3 previous workshops, and had seen Carlos at each one of them,
   so it was not a big issue for me. For the many first-timers, it was an
   issue. I had thought that Carlos would not be able to stay away from
   an intensive LA workshop, but the energetic tides were just not right.
   Someone suggested maybe he had a cold. How mundane.
   
   Theatre of Infinity
   
   Wow! Wow! Did you think that these people take themselves ever so
   seriously all the time? The Theatre of Infinity will blast that
   conception. Prunella Fitz-Moritz, the alluring red-headed
   transformation of Carol Tiggs and hostess for the theatre, assured us
   that this was not acting, but actual transformations of persona. For
   in the world of sorcery, all acts are final. Some skits were extremely
   funny, as in "This Girl is Mine" starring Tiggs as another bombshell,
   "Farleys' Day", "The Hunter and the Hunted", and "A Lesson for the
   Unenlightened Ones". "The Marionettes", which traced a love affair
   between a robot-like man and woman, hit extremely close to home. The
   best one-liner came from the lips of host Lorenzo Drake, who knelt
   down at the edge of the stage to say to a woman in the audience "I saw
   you on the mat earlier." Lorenzo asked us all if we were feeling
   empty; why not watch the 24-hour sorcery channel on cable in our
   hotel? Indeed.
   
   Sorcery paradigms: Cynicism vs. Suspension of Judgment
   
   Everyone seems to eventually view these workshops with one of two
   perspectives. The cynic sees the cost as too high, the bookstore as
   too commercial, the profusion of movements as a gimmick to induce the
   unwary consumer to keep returning for more. The practitioner simply
   suspends judgment, and goes along for the ride. The movements are
   performed to perfection in the way they are taught, and the answers
   are sought from the end results of practice and experience. I do not
   judge either the cynic or practitioner, although the practitioner is
   closer to my heart. As the sorcerers say, "I never thought I'd live
   forever, so let's do it."
   
   Postscript: Santa Monica Practice Group
   
   On the evening following the workshop I attended a practice group in a
   dance studio on Santa Monica Blvd. From 35-40 people were in
   attendance, a figure that was probably inflated by the recent
   workshop. This workshop was no nonsense practice - not much
   socializing here. We practiced the 6 long forms many many times to
   exhaustion. This practice really helped to cement my kinesthetic
   memory of the long forms, most of which would have faded without the
   practice group.
   
   I heartily recommend these practice groups to those who can't afford
   to attend a lot of workshops. They really help!

[AVGEMAN]

I think this is the last remaining animated gif of this left on the web. I remembered it from a few years ago. Took me a while to find it.


http://thoushallnotcensorart.com/moveme ... ingMan.htm

I remember a seminar I went to and this struck me as to the RunningManNotDoingPasses:
from:

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


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


http://thoushallnotcensorart.com/moveme ... ingMan.htm

[glance left]

Great gif lol...yeah, that's exactly how they're done. There's some variations, but that the basic sequence. It's a strong series of passes...I always get a massive boost from doing them. Sometimes so strong, I end up laughing spontaneously

[rosygyro]

UnknownPoet008 wrote:Ah, there is always theory with action.



Certainly a warrior strategizes every action.



But what is her driving strategy?


there is no pre-meditation in action!
warriors do not pre-meditate action.
Strategy may be to be aware and fluid to powers flow.. but no more!
we cannot prove too much of the world to risk having expectation.
strategy or much of habitual strategy is based apon expectation of the world behaving in a certain way!
a not-doing of strategy perhaps.
RANDOM

[Guest]