Cleargreen Night Session – Saturday, December 7, 1996, Dance Home, Santa Monica
Surprise Session
This was a surprise session, for which we had received a call only a couple of hours before.
Castaneda at first went around the room, coming up to several of us and jokingly claiming that he did not know where to start. “What should I say?” Castaneda initially wondered where Florinda was and did not seem to want to get much into things before she got there. Florinda arrived a few minutes late with Ellis.
Castaneda started with his impressions of “the Reverend Osgood.” He went up to Talia asking, “Have you been saved?” Talia made the sign of the cross in an effort to keep him away.
Jim Chigger Story
“I saved the life of this guy, a black man, ‘Jim Chigger.’ The guy was trying to become an actor and I told him he had to change his name. I told him, ‘You know Chigger, Jim Chigger, that’s not going to work.’ When I saw the guy later, the man said he was doing very well: ‘You know I took your advice and I changed my name. I’m now Tom Chigger.’ I told don Juan about Jim Chigger and don Juan suggested that I become Jim Chigger myself. I did for a couple of months. I’m sort of autistic, so I sort of get stuck in grooves. When New Yorkers have this condition, they pronounce it ‘artistic.’ I continued obsessively in this character for awhile until I finally had to stop. But I still do it once in awhile. I do it to Kylie, and to Talia, who doesn’t like it. Kylie said she likes it. And Carol hates me when I’m doing ‘Jim Chigger.’ She becomes ‘Jane Chigger.’”
Accumulating Silence
After showing us the silence position, Castaneda said, “You need a lot more silence. I can’t just tell you to follow me. I don’t have that authority. It needs to come from you. And you need more fluidity and flexibility for it–you are still too rigid. So this position will help you accumulate moments of silence you need to help give you this flexibility.
Getting Too Specific About Sorcery Practices
“People ask me to explain exactly each kind of movement we are teaching. There was an engineer in the Sunday class who asked, ‘What’s the trajectory of the head.'” Castaneda made some funny motions to illustrate an appropriate response. “Or people ask about the recapitulation breath: ‘What do you mean by “fanning”?’ Then they demonstrate–‘This could be fanning,'” he mimicked an exaggerated movement of the head from side to side, “‘and this could be fanning.’ They are obviously not doing it, or they wouldn’t ask, because those things don’t matter.”
Things that Hang Us Up
He talked about the various things that “hang us up.” “We could all tell stories about how people misunderstand or mistreat us. Ellis will tell her story about how I always misunderstand her, every night. Maybe she’ll wait until the Sunday class, where she has allies.”
Florinda said, “Watch out. She can give away freebies too” [meaning from the store].
“We get hung up on various things, like the way we get disciplined. I was sort of lucky because I was pretty much left on my own most of the time, to amuse myself, and therefore was not subject to much of the discipline and control that most kids experience.
“For example, we are told that we are ‘going to be grounded,’ and it strikes terror. We don’t even know what it means, really, but they say, ‘Do that and you’re going to be grounded!’ Or Ellis used to be told, “You’re going to go to bed without any dessert. Go to bed now and you won’t have your ice cream. That gives us chills, terror. How strange that that hangs us up. Or Rita has these sisters who terrorize her. I ask her why, because I’ve seen them and they are just these bent over, feeble old ladies. I asks her, ‘What is it that so terrorizes you?’ She says they squeal or whine ‘Chingada!’ at her. That hangs us up?”
Sitting Dowel Practice
“Get a cushion, pillow or folded towel to place under your seats–or your ‘b-b-b-b-buttocks’ as the British say,” he joked, explaining “Margarita knows a lot of British people who have a hard time saying that word.”
Castaneda showed us how to sit with the soles of our shoeless feet touching and leaning forward with our elbows placed in between the two tendons by the knee. We grasped our hands loosely around the ankles with the thumb pressed into the notch by the Achilles tendon. “Buy dowels that are an inch and 3/8’s thick, and have them cut at the yard so they are either fourteen inches or sixteen inches, depending on how tall your trunk is. Rest your heads on them, after smoothing the surface of one end, and put a wash towel on top of the end to rest your head there. You can use this position to acquire moments of silence.”
While we sat in silence, we could hear someone whistling, rather creatively, outside. First it seemed disturbing, but Castaneda advised us, “Let the whistling take you . . . follow it.”
“Do the sitting in silence position every night. Do it compulsively and persistently.” He imitated someone telling him, “You know, I’ve done it for a week now. Are you sure this is going to give me results? Well, five days really, but it’s been like a week. It’s been like an eternity.” He also joked “You may sweat, so you’ve got to have a towel for the dowel, or you could end up getting a puddle on the floor. Some people could be sweaty for an hour. Other people can go off after a few minutes.” He joked that we should be “artistic” about it–meaning, from his reference earlier in the hour, “autistic,” or really compulsive.
Movement Instruction – Pass to Open Up to Something and Pass for Gall Bladder
After the period of silence, he showed us a movement with the fists: the left fist below the belly button and the right fist placed at the solar plexus. You circle the fists around the belly button. “This can be used to open yourself to something you really want to experience, or to close yourself, so as not to take in something.”
The last movement he showed was a slight movement upward with the right shoulder, up and down, very lightly. “For the Chinese, this motion is connected with the gallbladder. That’s where the Chinese think the soul is.”
Carol Tiggs Speaks and Gives the ‘Eye’
Carol came up to speak in the last fifteen minutes. Castaneda had told us early on in the hour that, “Carol Tiggs is going to have some comments.”
Carol said, “The workshop was very strange for us. The three Witches didn’t have the energy; there was a hurdle, and we didn’t get across it. But thanks to the Blue Scout, who is not here tonight, but who opened the way, we crossed the barrier and we are now with the Nagual. When I have to say or present something, generally the Blue Scout isn’t there, which you may have noticed, because we have this peculiar relationship. She’s definitely my daughter, but [and she sort of hung her head for a moment] Nury is also my mother. And yet I’m also her mother, and in the world of the sorcerers there are these complex and inexplicable relationships.”
“I want to invite you to follow, to cross with us. For that purpose, I’m going to take certain of you as representatives. This new direction is going to require silence. All the questions–‘Do we do it this way? Do we do it that way?’–and all the research–are not appropriate to this new direction.”
She took Carola, Fabricio, Grant, Ellis and, finally, Talia, to give them the “sorcerer’s eye.” She had the rest of us sit down in the “silence position” that Castaneda had just given us. We had a few moments of silence and she instructed us to inhale and exhale deeply. She had us slowly open our eyes and raise our heads. Then she thanked us.
New Direction After Workshop
Castaneda concluded, “The workshop was very weird, and we are still not fully recovered, but it created this new flow. We did not have the energy, we had not known how to cross this barrier–we were somehow stuck–but It opened a way, provided that we go in this direction. So we are now going in this direction, this pragmatic new direction.”
“We have the Sunday class tomorrow, and we’re going to work on collecting more silence. And Ellis will call you for class [meaning further night sessions] when it’s available.”
[Florinda, Taisha, Carol and other Cleargreen personnel were there, with the exception of Nury Alexander and Tycho Thal. From our Sunday group, the others on hand besides myself were Nina Blake (later Haley van Oosten Alexander), Thorton Chavez, Marcos Conal (later LeRoy Robinson), Paul Gutsmuths, Larry H., Teme I., Darby Romeo (later Wilkie) and Greg Shores.]
[As we were leaving, Castaneda took my arm in his and asked how I was doing in the aftermath of my car accident, when I had been rear ended exiting the freeway. He asked, “How is your neck?” I told him I was doing very well, and that the workshop had been wonderful. I told him Miles had been working on me and that the accident wasn’t too bad, maybe because I was in good condition from the Tensegrity.]
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