Table of contents
Saturday, February 22, 1997
Dance Home, Santa Monica 6:15 – 8:15 PM
I walked in with Florinda, Talia and Castaneda behind me. We didn’t start right away. I handed Darby the astrological chart I’d done for her while Castaneda was talking to her, Nina and Bruce. Castaneda acknowledged me and motioned me into the group.
Cataneda Needing Energy & Carol Being Kind of Lost
Castaneda began, “I’m looking for a strand. Energetically I couldn’t make it last night, and nearly didn’t make it today either. It’s a battle. I keep searching for a way. Then I come here and lose it. I need to be pushed forward. I need lots of energy to keep following the path that was pointed out to me. Carol has loads of energy. She could help, but she’s kind of lost herself. She’s caught in an eddy.
Taisha will follow me wherever I go, but she’s not leading. She’s really not contributing energy. She says, ‘Oh, you want to go there? Okay.’ So it’s really just me and Florinda who are desperately searching in every direction for some inkling, some soft spot, some place to go. I need energy. [He alternately got very serious and then would make a joke.] I’m going to make a T-shirt–‘Energy search.'” Bruce motioned him to come with him, “I know a place where you can get some fast. Let’s go.” Castaneda responded, “Bruce’ll get me more energy, and he’ll take a 10% fee. A 10% energy fee. But I could live with that.
‘I Could Live with That’
“That’s such a strange expression, ‘I could live with that.’ It’s like ‘Let’s kick ass,’ it’s one of those overused things. What does it mean?
‘They Live’ Movie
“You know the movie They Live, when they have the wrestling match to get the guy to put on the sunglasses so he could see the beings who are in control, who are flashing the subliminal messages ‘Don’t Think,’ ‘Reproduce’? I don’t have the energy to fight anymore, to battle people to put the sunglasses on.
Carol stays up late at night watching movies. What’s worse is she’s renting movies. She claimed she wasn’t renting them.” Florinda interjected, “They come to her.” Someone else joked, “Inorganic lending services.”
Open to Our Ideas for Energy
Castaneda continued, “Maybe I’ll have to do something else. If you have any ideas, pass them on to me. If they come from silence, they’re not ego. Don’t censor them for being weird, just whatever they are. Pass them on to me. Or you can hand them to Talia. We can do it anonymously.” He put his arm around me and said, “Maybe I’ll start a law firm with Richard. I’ll be a lay lawyer, a lay counselor.
“I’ve changed myself a lot, but I need to change more. And I need to fix my eyes. Sometimes I can see fine, but I just can’t hold it there.”
At the end of this gathering with just a few of us, Castaneda said, “This reminds me of a story I heard about a guy who was drunk and wandering around. He got stuck in a ravine. He just decided to say, ‘Shazzam!’ He said it once or twice, and suddenly there were all these Texas Rangers to help him. So it worked. When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. You have to be down to nothing to find a way out. I’m down to nothing, so who knows what will happen? You have front row seats.”
Then he went over and talked to Carola, saying something about how she has no Flyer speaking to her, and that she doesn’t have obsessions, and isn’t pulled by a strand.
Dinner with Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Michael Caine
When we reconvened as a group, Castaneda told us, “Years ago I had this horrendous dinner that Michael Korda set up for me with these three huge guys. They were all Paul Gutsmuths’s height, but twice as big: Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Michael Caine. These guys each drank a full bottle of scotch and it didn’t affect them. But they had this hardness around the mouth. The liquor loosens that up so they can appear before the camera. But they’re alcoholics.
Strand of Alcoholism
I saw the strand but I didn’t really reflect on it until recently. The strand of alcoholism. That’s why it’s hard for these guys to move their mouths and say that they’re alcoholic. Margarita Nieto is an alcoholic. She drank so much she just couldn’t function anymore.” He imitated her mouth doing the same thing. “She doesn’t drink anymore. She can’t get near it or smell alcohol, ’cause she’ll grab a bottle and start drinking. What can you do when you have this obsession, this pull that the Flyers put in you?
“Margarita’s sister is an alcoholic too. She can’t stop, and she just keeps going downhill.
Other Obsessive Behavior
“I have a friend who is a professional eater. She doesn’t even like to eat. She’s just sort of compelled. I couldn’t believe it. I took her to dinner once and she ate the lasagna methodically, row by row, then all around the plate. She basically licked it clean. All the relishes were gone–all that was left on the plate were the olive pits. She ate the cilantro and every kind of garnish. I just pick at things when I eat. I’m not a good eater–a professional eater.
“Memmo is obsessing about his kids, his wife and his situation. He looks to us as an island of solace. He’s crazy. What an island to pick! We’re hardly an island of solace at all. He’s better off going and talking to his mother. We’re no island of calm. We’re hardly an island at all.”
“Chickens lay eggs until the sun goes down. Seeing that, people who raise chickens leave the illumination on, the lights on around the clock, and the chickens keep laying until they wear themselves out. Then they sell them for poultry. If you look at the supermarket poultry, it’s arthritic. Look at where the articulation is–it’s all hard and arthritic. That’s what we eat. What we do to chickens, that’s like the obsessions, this extraneous strand, this foreign energy strand, that makes people drink or have other obsessive behavior. It’s just like that.”
Florinda Speaking Up for People He Picks On
He said something sharp to Talia, and Florinda started defending her. Castaneda commented, “Gee, you stand up for everybody. You must be on retainer. You must be getting a percentage from people.” Nury spoke up, “Think how many of us would have been out in the cold if it weren’t for Florinda. She’s spoken up for all of us.” Castaneda responded, “Yeah, she has.” There was spontaneous applause from all the Cleargreeners for Florinda. Castaneda imitated her speaking up to him, “You don’t understand, you don’t have the conception. You don’t know what they’re going through.”
Movement Instruction
We did neck stretches. We also did brief shoulder rolls. We did a couple passes we’d done before, then he had us put two fingers to our temples and a third pressing in on the jaw. He went around checking some people’s temples. “If you have a loose area in the temples, that indicates a lot of ch’i.” According to Florinda, Carol had one. Then he had us do a new breath, where the arms come out and around, while you make chewing motions. Then you swallow with your hands at the top, and exhale pushing the hands all the way to the back and leaning forward.
Leaning Right Side of Top of the Forehead Against One’s East Wall
“We don’t have the logistics yet. We don’t have the teams. I was going to get a bunch of sticks for everybody, but I lose the momentum. Something pulls me out.” He showed us how to lean slightly against a wall. “Find the east and south-facing walls where you live, and lean the right side of the top of the forehead, where the hairline is”–Castaneda called it the “occipital,” but Miles wouldn’t confirm that designation–“against the east wall. Just do that this week, until next Saturday, lean against the east wall. Later on, there’s a ratio. Three-two-one. Do three minutes leaning against the east wall, then two against the south wall, one against the west wall, and just a half minute against the north wall. That’s the one to be careful with. North is the direction of death. But the east is very good for us, where the sun rises. That brings us good energy.”
Frontal Assault Movements
Castaneda then showed us three “frontal assault” moves. We started by parrying circularly to the right with the right hand, then thrusting forward with the back of the left wrist, moving the left foot slightly inward. Then strike out palm forward with the right arm, twisting in with the right foot. Then parry down with both hands in front of the body. Then strike forward with both arms, basically pushing your opponent over. He indicated one could be really mean and stand on their foot and push them over.
The second frontal assault was parrying down, pushing the opponent’s arms down with both hands, and then hitting three times with both palms, toward the eyes, then above the chest, and then, with the fingers pointed outward, toward the ribs, which he indicated were really delicate, “We don’t even have ribs as strong as lamb ribs.”
The third assault move was called “passing ships.” As someone is coming by you use the left elbow and raise it to block them, then grab around the left side where the carotid artery is and grab their hand and pull them down that way. “You can render a man unconscious with just a few seconds on the carotid. That’s what takes the blood to the brain, so that’s the important one to get.”
Turning Down a Woman’s Offer to Warm the Bed for Him
“I was with this horrendous professor on an academic trip. This woman offered to warm the bed for me with her body. I responded, ‘No, I don’t do that.’ The professor told me, ‘You’ll be struck down for that.'” Castaneda commented, “He’s such a Catholic.” Kylie couldn’t understand why the guy had said that to Castaneda after he’d declined the woman. Castaneda explained the guy was a big ladies man, so the idea that Castaneda would turn the woman down was just appalling to him. Castaneda commented, about Kylie, “The light comes on one side here, and twenty minutes later she starts laughing.
Slur on Germans
“The problem with Germans is that they don’t have a sense of humor.” There were some groans. Florinda told him, “There’s not just one little shrimp here anymore. There’s five of us, you can’t say that. Then there’s Hans and Juergen.” Hans and Juergen are apparently a couple of characters that two of them do in Sorcery Theater. Someone asked if they could see Hans and Juergen now, and Castaneda said, “No. We don’t have the paraphernalia. But we’re going to have Phantom Theater soon.” Florinda said, “We could do it here, during a two hour session.” Kylie suggested, “Yeah, we could cover the windows.” Someone suggested they cover the windows with trash bags.
Edie Story; Ruthlessness
“At UCLA there was this woman Edie, who was very pushy and kind of annoying. She’d written some kind of proposal. John Tish was on the committee and hadn’t voted for her proposal. She confronted him, ‘You didn’t support me.’ He was trying to be a nice guy and he said, ‘Gee, I’ve got superior authorities to deal with.’ He kept making excuses. Finally she kicked him in the groin. She really wrecked him up. It turned into hydropelotas. He was in the hospital for a week.
“I was driving somewhere and somebody came to a fast halt by me. This Edie leaned out and looked at me and said, ‘Carlos, I don’t have time to talk to you. Fuck you! They’re chasing me.’ Then she sped off.
Now I’m ‘Edie Castaneda.’ I’m like that. I don’t have time. I can’t advise, I can’t help Memmo. It’s fuck you! They’re after me. They’re chasing me. And I speed off. That’s an image that’s just burned into my mind.”
Conclusion of Movement Instruction
At the end, Castaneda summed up all the things he’d shown us that evening. He added, “The leaning against the wall, you can also do it on the left side. Rest only against the temporal lobe. The pressure there very quickly brings silence. With slight pressure on the shoulder–the tendency in doing it is to put a lot of pressure on the shoulder, which you can’t do.
Workshop Planning: ‘You Can’t Just Repeat’
“In Mexico we’ll do the Men’s Passes. I’m going to add to them. We’ll do the Preparing for Intent Passes, and maybe half of the Heat Series, and the Left and Right Passes. But we can’t do exactly the same thing. That’s too boring. I can’t do it. People lose attention. There have to be slight variations to keep people’s attention. Otherwise you’ll start doing it by rote, thinking you know it, and then not paying attention, and that will affect me. So there will be some changes.
“For Europe, I’ve got to figure out who goes, because not everybody can go. We’ve got to figure out who makes sense. The Energy Trackers are in good shape, and two of them speak Spanish. We’ve got two or three German speakers too, and Gavin speaks both Spanish and German. Quite a few of the men speak Spanish. But Fabricio was also putting the thing up, and that’s too much. He and Grant had too much pressure, too much for them to do to be setting it up and leading passes too. That was a mistake.
‘A Lot of People are Eating on Cleargreen’
“Cleargreen supports a lot of people. A lot of people are eating on Cleargreen. We intend it to be entity with a certain force around it and a certain configuration. But Talia is worried about contracts and subcontracts,” then he imitated Talia’s nasal mumble, “‘And there are these taxes.’ And I don’t even have a team together. This is all premature.
“I question myself. I wonder if I should keep doing the stuff that I’m doing. Should I be putting my energy in another direction, like going off? That has more interest. But there are certain things that I need to do. Like I need to train Nyei how to speak without sounding like her father. I’ve got to get Frank out of her. I’ve realized Frank is a Canadian.
“Over 75% of you already, you’re going to be inorganics.” He imitated “men,” with a twitching lip, “That’s me trying to suck milk from my mother. The Flyer keeps us as boys.
‘Don’t Have Secrets’
“Don’t have secrets. No secrets. Get them out.” He acted out being a confessor, taking our secrets, and wanting more information.
[Cleargreen was all on hand, except Ellis, who had to attend her mother’s 80th birthday party. Rita, Rosa and the big Mexican guy were late. Of the Sunday group, it was the usual five of us–Paul, Greg, Darby (later Wilkie), Nina (later Haley) and me–plus Marcos (later LeRoy).]
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