A few quotes from article with Florinda from Carlos party

[Mornings Son]

When you first came across Castaneda, he was working as a cook in Tucson as part of
a task assigned to him by don Juan. Did you have an assigned task?
Florinda: My task was to finish school, get a Ph.D., and continue to study. From
the sorcerers point of view it is useless not to utilize what the world has to
offer. The way the rational mind has been developed, and works, is one of the most
exquisite things we have. To negate that is criminal. It is very important to be
very well trained both from the perceptual level and the rational level, for we can
only reject something, or find its flaws, if we understand it to perfection. I had
always thought, "I don't care." Why should I go through with my academic education
if I'm not going to use it?" the sorcerers made me see how important it is to embody
rational knowledge the same way I embody sorcery. We cannot reject it, because the
best that man has to offer is his intellectual achievements. All the people of this
group have upper degrees, because when you plunge into the darkness, if your mind is
not so keen and so well trained from a rational point of view, you cannot make sense
out of what you find in the darkness. Even if the object is to understand it from a non-rational point of view? Florinda: In order for us to make sense as human beings, we have to be rational.
If you have a keen intellect you can very easily go from one stage to another. From
don Juan's point of view, we are "reasonable men," but not "men of reason." That is
our own fault. We have the capacity for incredible intellectual possibilities. We
haven't really profited from them because we don't take it's possibilities at
face-value. The world of the sorcerer is a sophisticated world; it is not enough to
understand its principles intuitively. One needs to absorb them intellectually.
Contrary to what people believe, sorcerers are not practitioners of obscure,
esoteric rituals. Sorcerers are men of reason. They have a romance with ideas. They
have cultivated reason to its limits, for they believe that only by fully
understanding the intellect can they embody the principles of sorcery without losing
sight of their own sobriety and integrity. This is where sorcerers differ
drastically from other people. Most people have very little sobriety and even less
integrity. That is quite a difficult change for most people to comprehend.
Florinda: Yes, because what we are trying to do is reduce our involvement with the
world by changing our routine ways of interacting and being in the world. You see,
we always want to be the protagonist, we always want to be the "I." Every story,
everything we see, everything we perceive, everything we tell, is always through the
"I." If you can curtail the "I," and truly see as a witness, it is more enchanting.
The enjoyment of experiencing the ability of a human being is gigantic. Any kind of
normal situation becomes an event, becomes a story. It is very interesting to let
the other person be the protagonist.  


https://www.facebook.com/notes/mabon-ka ... 2771014108


correct reference is:
http://www.nagualism.com/florinda-donne ... blend.html

(Edit: merged separate and consecutive posts by the same author into a single post.)

[Mornings Son]

correct reference is:
http://www.nagualism.com/florinda-donne ... blend.html

[Billy]

A nice compliment to Mornings Son quote from Tales of Power:

"Their reason makes them forget that the description is only a description, and before they realize it, human beings have entrapped the totality of themselves in a vicious circle from which they rarely emerge in their lifetimes."

[Guest]