Los Angeles - August 1995
To: alt.dreams.castaneda
My Three Weeks With Carlos Castaneda
Keeping in step with the current energy of open communications I have
decided to give a personal account of my experiences at the August LA
Tensegrity seminar. Unfortunately I do not possess the writing skills
necessary to really capture the magic that I felt being in the presence of
Carlos Castaneda. It was a real pleasure to be able to spend three weeks
with the man whose writings have so profoundly affected my life. Enjoy!
When I first received a notice about the LA Tensegrity workshop I felt
that something very special was happening. I had not attended any of the
other Tensegrity workshops and felt that this was the one for me to
attend. My intent was to go there to learn some new tools to help on my
path not to meet a bunch of celebrities. I was however intrigued with the
possibility of meeting Carlos Castaneda for energetic reasons. At the
time there was planned to be three different workshops and because of work
issues the first workshop was out of the question. When I called to make
reservations for the second secession I was disappointed to find out that
the last two secessions were canceled. However, I was informed about a
commuter section called the B. Group that was going to be held Thursday
through Sunday. I hung up the phone thinking that I would be unable to
attend this workshop. Once I started considering my options I realized
that I could work Monday through Wednesday each week and fly back and
fourth to LA. This was an expensive option but I decided to do it anyway.
On the evening of Tuesday, August 1 at about 9:00 PM I turned on my
computer and sent out some E-mail. I left my computer on and laid down to
do some reading. I read for a while and accidentally fell asleep. The
next thing I knew it was 2:00 AM. I got up and decided to read my E-mail
and this newsgroup before I turned off my computer. I was pleasantly
surprised to read that Carlos had shown up for the first class. I turned
off my computer and decided to do the 12 basic Tensegrity passes. At
about 3:30 AM I went to bed and immediately fell into a weird dream. I
saw Carlos speaking to a group of people and every time he would move his
arms with hand gestures people in the audience would convulse and shriek.
Towards the end of the dream Carlos started yelling out strange words that
sounded like some ancient Toltec language. People in the audience went
crazy every time he said one of those words. I woke up thinking that
Carlos was going to be talking directly from his energy body to the
participant's energy body at the workshop. I did not think that my dream
was necessarily an accurate rendition of what actually happened on that
energetic plane.
I arrived in LA in the afternoon of Thursday, August 3 and quickly made my
way to Culver High School. I made it through the registration and waited
in the empty cafeteria. I had a funny feeling that Carlos and all the
women were going to be there. Promptly at 7:00 PM Carlos, Florinda,
Taisha, Carol and the Chacmools entered the cafeteria through a side door.
Carlos jumps up on the stage as if he was twenty years old and say's
"High I am Carlos Castaneda." I already knew that he was a small guy but
I had never pictured him as a Seventy year old. He started talking about
the first time he had meet Don Juan. He was very animated and often he
would say something funny and slap his right thigh while keeling over
laughing. I could not help think that he was just like Don Juan.
I was standing on the right side of the stage in a crowd of people. As I
listened something strange started to happen to me. I could feel this
pressure slowly building up on my body. Then my heart started to pound a
little bit. Carlos was talking to the audience while Carol, Taisha and
Florinda seemed to be looking over in my area. I am not an amateur to the
ways of sorcerers and quickly realized what was happening. A few seconds
later my heart was about to beat out of my chest and I began running out
of breath. I could feel a bunch of energy welling up on the back side of
my cocoon out side of my body. Finally I could not take it any more and I
let out a gasp of air. At the same time the energy that was welling up on
the back of my cocoon exploded and shot up above my head. Some woman who
was standing in front of me turned around and gave me a dirty look. I was
doing everything in my power to maintain my cool. Just when I was about to
pass out and hit the floor the sorcerers backed off. The test of a
lifetime had came and went and I did not pass. Noticing my success with
loosening my assemblage point, they were trying to see if I could exist in
their world without it tearing me apart. I could not and if they would
have pushed anymore I probably would have died. I would have loved to of
passed such a test but I have nothing to be ashamed about. They did not
pass the first time either but circumstances are a lot different now.
Although I had many opportunities during the three weeks to talk to the
sorcerers about what happened to me I chose not to.
Carlos continued to lecture on the ideas behind the magical passes and I
acted like nothing had happened. A little bit later he brought all the
women in his group up on the stage and introduced them. For me it was a
very magical moment and one that I thought that I would have never gotten
to see. Carlos finished lecturing and left the cafeteria along with the
other sorcerers. The Chacmools finished the night with teaching Tensegrity.
Carlos did not attend the next night's class and that ended up being the
only one he would miss for the remainder of the workshop. By Saturdays
class it was clear that Carlos had seen something from the spirit to tell
him to participate more heavily with the workshop. During Saturdays class
he pulled small groups to the side and taught the essence of Tensegrity by
reducing it down to very basic movements.
Carlos ended up giving all three of the Sunday lectures as well as giving
an hour to hour and a half lecture each day before we learned new magical
passes. I did not take any notes but I will try to highlight some of the
concepts that he talked about in another post. For this post I want to
highlight a few moments that had special meaning to myself.
Carlos warned us that during the next three weeks he was going to say
things that might be disturbing to some people. He said that if at the
end of the three weeks if anyone wanted to tell him to "go blow his
barracks" that it would be fine with him. He laid down the ground rules
of no personal questions, no trying to get discovered and no telling him
about personal dreams (especially the ones that have him in them).
During the second week of the seminar Carlos kept telling us about a 10
year old girl in his life that has to make a decision concerning life and
death. The girl that he was talking about was one that he pointed out
during his first lecture as a cyclic being. I assumed that she was the
blue scout. I did not really understand what he was talking about until
the second Sunday lecture. He explained that for some time now the girl
was thinking about leaving his group to go live with her grandparents. I
guess that this option was presented to her by Carlos to allow her free
will. I imagine that the pressures of being in his group were a lot for a
little girl. Her biggest complaint was that they would not allow her to
eat tamales whenever she wanted. Sometime during the second week of the
seminar he discussed the matter with the girl. Carlos told us that when
sorcerers look out at the horizon they see an amber glow with many swirls
in it. When a hole opens up in that amber glow it means that what ever
issue the seer has pending must come to a final decision. The hole of
finality opened up while he was discussing the girl's decision. So Carlos
was forced to give the girl an ultimatum. She had to decide to either
stay with them and live or go live with her grandparents and die. Carlos
was associating death with her decision because for him a normal life is a
death sentence. When Carlos was talking about this subject to the
audience he became very emotional. The girl made the decision to go live
with her grandparents just before the lecture. She said that she wanted
to stay with them until the end of the summer then go live with her
grandparents. Carlos told her no. She could only stay until the end of
the seminar. Carlos told the audience "I can not impinge my will on her.
I can not believe that she does not know what she is doing. She is going
to her death and for what? Tamales!" Carlos said that she requested them
to not remember her as the little girl that was too stupid to make the
right decision. Carlos confessed that this situation bugs the hell out of
part of him but he is quickly turning it into an empty story just like all
his other stories. After Carlos told this story I noticed that some
people were visibly shaken. The Spirit had timed this situation perfectly
so that all the seminar participants could get a first hand view of
finality in the sorcerer's world.
When I was back at my home between the second and third week, I started
experiencing this deep sense of disassociation. It was like nothing in my
ordinary life mattered any more. I knew that being around Carlos was
causing me to feel this way. At the beginning of the third week Carlos
told us that something incredible was happening. He was seeing people's
energy body returning. Carlos explained that the energy body gets
separated from us at birth because it is driven off by the actions of the
Fliers. Don Juan always told Carlos that his energy body was in Japan.
It took Don Juan many years to help Carlos bring his energy body in to the
point that it was superimposed upon the physical body. Carlos said that
who in his lineage would have believed that just in a period of weeks so
many people's energy bodies could have returned. He said that the
combination of doing the Tensegrity and having his energy body talking
directly to our energy bodies caused the reunion. He said that sorcerers
teach their students by bypassing the rational mind and talking directly
to the energy body. When the energy body unites with the physical body
then half the battle is over. Carlos told us that we had become the
germination of his lineage. He said that his task was to explode the
knowledge of his lineage and it was happening. Carlos said that he was
the traveler and as the traveler he is going to extend the same challenge
to us that Don Juan hand made to him. That challenge was to meet again
out there in the unknown. He had been successful at meeting Don Juan and
he is positive that many people in the audience will meet him again.
Carlos said, "We will meet again. I am sure of it."
The last hour of Carlos' lecture on the 20th of August was simply
incredible. He was intentional trying to invoke a very specific mood in
the audience. A mood that sorcerers require of longing and quiet
desperation. His description of the death defier was awe inspiring and
his story of meeting his father was absolutely riveting. Here is
approximately how it went.
Carlos began to talk about the death defier. He reviewed for us how in
1725 the death defier on his last dying moments cornered the nagual
Sebastian and extorted energy from him. Carlos then explained in
technical terms how the Death Defier takes energy from the Nagual. Carlos
recapped his nine day ordeal with the Death Defier that he had written
about in The Art of Dreaming. Carlos explained how the Death Defier is
just a man, a human just like us, and his struggle to survive is one of
human possibilities. Very emotionally, Carlos explained how whenever he
talks about the Death Defier he is nearly brought to tears. The Death
Defier has been fighting for his life every moment for over 7000 years and
he is human. He first escaped death by becoming a sorcerer but he got
trapped by the inorganic beings. After thousands of years of being
trapped by the inorganic beings he figured away out, thereby escaping
death for a second time. Then for thousands of years he survived by
manipulating his assemblage point. Then in 1725 he was near death because
he had used up all his energy reserves. He then cheated death for a third
time by extorting energy from the Naguals in his lineage. Now that Carlos
is the last of his line the Death Defier has devised a method beyond
comprehension to cheat death for a fourth time. An emotionally moved
Carlos explained to us how the Death Defier's story is a part of all of us
and it has meaning to our own fight for freedom. How many of us want to
live so desperately that we could fight every moment for over 7000 years,
grabbing and searching for any little piece of knowledge capable of
carrying us onward?
After he finished his discussion about the Death Defier he began to tell
us about his real father. Carlos' father and mother were very young when
they had him. His mother was around 14 and his father was about 16. For
some unexplained reason Carlos was raised by his grandfather. Carlos only
saw his father a hand full of times when he was a child. His father would
come to the farm with a bunch of guns and screw around with them.
According to Carlos his father could not hit anything. Carlos held a lot
of resentment towards his father for abandoning him. This resentment was
compounded by the fact that Carlos' grandfather taught him to go around
trying to get people to feel sorry for him because he was an orphan.
After many years of working with Don Juan, Carlos realized that the only
was for him to completely recapitulate his resentment towards his father
was to go see him and bury the hatchet. Carlos said that his real last
name was Ovalle (I am not quite sure of this). He went to his father's
house who had a family of his own by then. Carlos became very quiet and
sullen when he began to tell this next part of the story. Carlos went to
the front door and knocked. A woman answered the door and Carlos said
that he was an old friend of Mr. Ovalle's. Carlos' father came to the
door and greeted him. His father very courteously invited him in and they
sat down. Carlos was awestruck with how warmly his father had received
him. His father told the woman to bring them some tea. His father said
"Please you must tell me who you are and where we had met." Carlos said
"Well if I tell you who I am then I will not have to tell you where we
met." Carlos then told his father that he was his son. Carlos then went
on to get to know his father for the first time in his life. All the
years that Carlos had hated his father he assumed that his father hated
him back. He quickly learned that his resentment of his father was a
unilateral one because his father barely remembered him. Carlos said that
his father was an exquisite man who was very well read. His father even
had Carlos Castaneda books on his bookshelf. He never told his father
that he was Carlos Castaneda. His father invited him to stay for dinner
and Carlos accepted on the grounds that he did not tell his family that he
was his son. Carlos had dinner with them and later on it became time for
him to say good bye. At this point Carlos was pouring all the emotion
that he could into this story and the audience was completely captivated
by him. Carlos hugged his father and held him by the forearms shaking
them in great affection while saying good bye.. His father's wife
remarked that of all his friends she had never seen any of them treat him
so much compassion. She said that they must have been very good friends.
Carlos' father had a little girl and Carlos hugged her to say good bye.
Carlos knelt down and held her by the shoulders and said, "I wish that I
would have had a father as nice as the one that you have." Carlos then
stopped himself and left. He told the audience that is what sorcerers do.
They go just far enough then they stop.
Carlos then held the palms of his hand towards the audience and said
"During the last 3 weeks I have given you my best." Then the greatest man
that I had ever met in my life turned and walked off the stage and out the
door in total silence just like he had entered three weeks ago. The
audience continued to applaud for several minutes after he had left. I
left there in silence also. I do not think that I could have talked to
anyone even if I had to.
During the three weeks Carlos was everything a nagual should be. He gave
us lots of practical knowledge. He ruthlessly attacked a lot of the
participants cherished beliefs. He refused to tolerate any bull shit
questions. He never catered to anyone or sought anybody's approval. He
was extremely animated when he was imitating people. He tried to instill
a sense of quite desperation in us with his touching stories. He refused
to become a guru or to take responsibility for us in any way. He was
often funny and very witty. He was always detached and at ease. He
sincerely wanted us all to succeed and believed that we could.
Practical Actions
Meaty Worlds
Prefacing Energy
Here is something tangential to prefacing energy. Carlos said that Carol
Tiggs has been bouncing an idea off him for years concerning the
socialization of humans. Carol claims that of all the worlds available to
sorcerers this one has the highest degree of socialization. She also
claims that the socialization of humans is so intense that when sorcerers
travel to other worlds it exerts tremendous forces on that world to
conform to ours. She claims that the beings of those worlds are forced to
take on human characteristics in their presence.
Beings That Are Going To Die
Finality
Appointments With Infinity
Bored Fucks
Seeing Animals And Plants
Religions
Shamanism
There Will Be No Limelight For Carlos Castaneda
John
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