Sunday evening, May 28 – Talks by the Chacmools, focusing on the Blue and Orange Scouts
Table of contents
With a rainstorm threatening, the Sunday night lecture was shifted from the tent to Omega’s main hall. By 8:30 PM, the audience was solidly and cozily packed into this much smaller space.
Florinda’s Introductory Comments
Shortly after 8:30, Florinda came onto the stage to tell us that Carol Tiggs hadn’t made it, despite the group’s ‘dreaming’ and other efforts to get her there over the past few days. She explained that the others had elected her to be the one to give us this bad news because she was the smallest and we were therefore less likely to attack her. She then said that we would be hearing that evening from each of the Chacmools, who were now at the center of the Castaneda group’s “new world.” She said that Carol Tiggs “seems to be the group’s energy source,” and explained that she, Carol Tiggs and Taisha had taken the shape of a “tube,” and were “tubing their energy to the Chacmools.” She said that she and Taisha can tell when they travel that the Chacmools’ energy is different now. Florinda said that the Chacmools’ tales are Tales of Intent.
Nyei Murez – on the Blue Scout
Nyei then came onstage and sat at a table to read to us a statement she had written about the Blue Scout.
“The Blue Scout is Carol Tiggs’s daughter. Carol Tiggs gave birth to her. Her energy has a blue hue instead of the whitish one that most humans have. Castaneda found this blue-hued energy agglutination in the inorganic beings’ realm. The Chacmools haven’t been to that world yet but we feel its presence. The sorcerers’ world has mysterious power that can be lived and experienced but not predicted. The inorganic beings’ world is easy for females to get to, once their awareness has risen to waist level. The discipline this takes is not predicated on routine or practice, but on total inner silence. That is what the Chacmools haven’t achieved yet.”
All the Chacmools assertedly sensed that the Blue Scout is “foreign.” Nyei said that the Blue Scout is the love of her life; “a person and not a person.” She described the Blue Scout as “brilliant, light, slim, ethereal, wolf-like and pretty. She has brilliant blue eyes, ears that hear all, and dresses impeccably but unpredictably. She is skilled at finding the most exquisite restaurant, piece of music, clothing or antique. She hones in on the truth, and is also skilled at letting you know your deepest secret or uncovering your heart’s desire. She’s a mean imitator of Nelida [? my notes are garbled as to the name] and can cook a mean feast.”
Nyei first met Carol Tiggs and the Blue Scout at a Tensegrity workshop to which Florinda had invited Nyei. [Note: this first meeting was presumably pre-1993, before they were using the term “Tensegrity” or giving workshops. Nyei is apparently referring to the invitation-only sessions at which Castaneda taught movements later known as Tensegrity.] Nyei was told that Carol Tiggs was the Blue Scout’s mother. Since Nyei had heard that Castaneda’s clan was into stalking and tricking people and “saw that Carol Tiggs looked only 25 (and seems to be getting younger),” Nyei was insistent that “I wasn’t going to be fooled so easily.” Nyei went up to the Blue Scout and asked her, “You’re Carol Tiggs’ mother, aren’t you?”
“The Blue Scout gets tinier as time goes on. She could be seven years old, and they estimate she might take 50 years to fully mature. She is exact, fastidious and temperamental. Castaneda says she’s a pain in the neck. She angers easily, just like a seven-year-old, when you’re being an asshole, but then forgets the next moment and invites you to go gambling with her to Las Vegas. The Blue Scout loves gambling, and used to bet on the horses while Carol Tiggs was gone. Now that Carol Tiggs is back, she is her mother 100%. The Blue Scout was also gone for about 10 years, from the chronological ages of seven to 17, returning about a year before Carol Tiggs did. During this time, Florinda and Castaneda took care of her.”
The clan allegedly found out that the Blue Scout had returned when they went to Mexico to see Florinda Grau (“Old Florinda”). “Castaneda brought the Blue Scout back to Los Angeles where he enrolled her in school. The Blue Scout was very upset by this development and didn’t move or change position for 24 hours–a sign of her extreme anger.” At the end of this period, however, she supposedly simply smiled and asked, “What do I have to do now?” Nyei claimed she had been in school in rural Mexico, but didn’t know how to read or write. “They enrolled her in junior college, because the high school year had already begun. She is now working on her Ph.D. in social sciences–and somehow assimilates academic material using a totally different process than ouirs. “The Nagual [meaning Don Juan] took care of her during her early years. Where she went [into the Second Attention] she received a strange training that makes her naturally very commanding. As Castaneda says, the Blue Scout ‘doesn’t sweat.’ Wherever she was, they must have pampered her to no end. She can change her speed very fast, and we sense that her speed is accelerating.”
“Although she is working on a Ph.D., she is still like a young girl, and develops terrible crushes on actors. One of her favorites is Bruce McCulloch from Kids in the Hall.” Knowing how much the Blue Scout likes this guy, Castaneda introduced himself to him when he happened to run into him somewhere, and told him, “You have given us endless hours of pleasure.” The actor pulled out the “Z” page from his address book and autographed it “to Scout.” When Castaneda looked at the autograph, he saw that the man had signed it “Kevin McDonald” (i.e., another comedian from the show that Castaneda had mistaken for Bruce McCulloch). “Scout gets very involved when watching TV and, for example, will scream at a character to ‘Go, go, go!'”
“When not pleased, the Blue Scout can be a horrendous creature. Her true nemesis is the Orange Scout, with whom she often fights like crazy. The Blue Scout loves to take everybody to Disneyland and uses it to disentangle her filaments. She has affected the group energetically, often throwing ‘energy darts’ and then retreating. The Chacmools don’t see or speak to her for months, and then she comes in and changes things, and shakes everything up.” Nyei said the following images, which Nyei warned might seem dissociated, were inspired by the Blue Scout.
“The Blue Scout helps us become more durable and more disciplined. She knows other assemblage points and moves us there. She is a flaming blue arrow, and you must gain her trust.”
Nyei also read the following passage about the Blue Scout, “Meet me at the cafe, just beyond the border, just beyond the sky. . . . . You must speak and your silence must only protect your own love and not your heart, which has been given to her already.” [At this point, Nyei was visibly overcome by emotion and her eyes welled with tears. She paused for a moment to collect herself and continue.]
“Strange beloved, agitation of an unknown memory. You dance a tango through our blood. Our blue dream, our butterfly who belongs to no one. For you, intent of everything.”
Nyei concluded by saying that the Blue Scout had given herself the name “Claude.”
Renata Murez – on the Orange Scout
Renata then came onstage to tell us about the Orange Scout. Like Nyei, Renata read her comments.
“Castaneda found the Blue Scout in the universe of the Inorganic Beings. She had fallen prisoner there and couldn’t leave. He did his utmost to free her, a blue unit of energy, that transformed interpretation of her into that of a seven-year-old girl. Castaneda nearly died as a result of the energy expended in freeing her. Carol Tiggs and don Juan brought him back, guided by the Blue Scout. What Castaneda didn’t know at the time was that there was another unit of energy behind the Blue Scout–the Orange Scout–that was also trapped. Castaneda’s effort freed her as well. Don Juan was very concerned, knowing that Carol Tiggs would have to give birth to free the Blue Scout. The matter of the Orange Scout was even more difficult, however, because no one wanted to help. Finally, Florinda said, ‘Fuck it! I’ll do it.'”
“Leperchun” is the only name she goes by, a word Renata claimed means leprechaun in Spanish. Renata said that leprechaun was appropriate for the Orange Scout because she “belongs to the things of the earth.” The Blue Scout, by contrast, “belongs to the air ethereal.” The Orange Scout is “built like a fire hydrant, is strong as a bull, looks like a tiny little girl and is not fat, but is just extraordinarily dense” (energetically). “Both scouts do Tensegrity beautifully, but the Orange Scout also has big muscles. She has a tremendous sense of concreteness–she is ground materialized. The Orange Scout also won’t move a finger unless you feed or pay her. The Scouts won’t allow the Chacmools to teach the public, either, unless people pay them, since their energetic view is, ‘Unless people “pay” through the nose, they won’t “pay” attention.'”
“The Blue Scout used to tell us she was caught in the Inorganic Beings’ realm by her curiosity, whereas the Orange Scout was caught as punishment for her duplicity. But the Blue Scout is also a cosmic thief, even stealing roles and personas. In Phantom Theater, she once stole the role of Jesus and played it to the hilt. A dreaming emissary told them that both the scouts were stuck in the Inorganic Beings’ world as a result of their duplicitousness. The Orange Scout just has to be bold in her thievery, because otherwise the thing in question will be taken by the Blue Scout. The Orange Scout is also ‘Argentinean’–for no explicable reason, because Florinda is not, and the Orange Scout was not raised there. Yet she sings, moves and embodies the tango, channeling ‘Mrs. Gretina,’ a character who sings tango and is alcoholic. When she plays this role she ‘balloons into a big woman,’ when otherwise she’s ‘just a chubby twerp.'”
“The relationship between the two scouts is complicated and intense. When they first see each other, they kiss and dance around together. In the next moment, they may be beating each other. We think they have been doing this for thousands of years. Castaneda said to tell you that the Orange Scout is very attached to me, whom she goes to regularly for advice and help with her school papers. Her physicality brings you into wherever she is. For a moment when I am with her, I find that I am no longer myself. The Orange Scout is younger than the Blue Scout on this plane. Don Juan used to say they were both about 7000 years old or more.”
Kylie Lundahl – on Phantom Theater
Kylie then took the stage. She first wanted to thank everyone who had made the weekend possible, including Tom Valenti, Michael Craft, and the chef and staff at Omega. She explained that they were all reading from notes “because we need to be very precise with our words–because words embody intent, and when we ad lib we end up putting ourselves into it, and we need to get out of it.”
She also explained that “It is important for us to state our names at the outset, in order to draw an energetic line from the unknown to us. Saying our names is a matter of asserting ourselves as warriors. When I state my name, an ‘energetic affirmation’ takes place, establishing that I alone am responsible for my actions.”
“Tonight Carol Tiggs couldn’t come.” She made it to Mexico City, but really wanted to come to Omega to use this workshop as an “echo chamber,” to explain where she’d been during the 10 years that she was gone. “Carol Tiggs hadn’t wanted to go to Mexico–where she needed translation for material that depends on subtlety. But she went there to practice telling the story of her experience. She manifested there, and didn’t return as the Carol Tiggs we knew. That’s why we are all working to bring her back.” Carol Tiggs had taken the Chacmools to Tula–“not the dirty, modern-day city, but a quiet, ancient version–by bringing us into her dream. Taisha did the same with you last night, with the help of Globus and Phoebus. Before last night, the Chacmools didn’t know about Taisha’s inorganics. Whenever Taisha talks, however, there’s always some kind of interference, whether it is trouble with the lights, sound, or something. The ‘insect’ that appeared on the slide of the Voladore last night didn’t fly away . . . it disappeared! The strange ‘insect’ that matched up with the Flyer, like it was superimposed, was Globus and Phoebus.”
“For 30 years the disciples of the old Nagual remained in isolation. The only one who spoke was Castaneda. Carol Tiggs returned, which she wasn’t supposed to do, since, according to tradition, the rule called for the Nagual Woman to go with the previous nagual’s group, and to remain on the other side to help the new nagual’s group across the void. But Carol came back instead of waiting to help them across. This changed everything dramatically for them. The old Nagual’s disciples were now alone in the world, and they opened this world. Tensegrity is a result of that opening.”
“A most difficult thing is to let go of the ego. For that, one needs guts of steel. Don Juan gave his disciples one last legend. He told them a person would come to them who needed no introduction, from the least suspected quarters. Castaneda’s group is already twelve women and four men. They call this person that don Juan predicted the ‘electric warrior.’ He also said that she [they believe it will most likely be a woman] will come ‘at one minute to twelve,’ when ‘all the lights are dim, the musicians are gone, and it is time to die.’ The sorcerers believe we die in order to live (unlike conventional reality’s view that we live in order to die). Many have come into their world but leave because they can’t take it. We doesn’t discriminate. I just heard that one who left us–who had imagined herself to be the electric warrior, and who left because we didn’t give her what she thought was the proper amount of ‘respect’–is about to start teaching her own version of Tensegrity.”
Phantom Theater is an aspect of the sorcerers’ way. “A Theater of the Real came into this line through the Nagual Julian, who had been an actor. Carol Tiggs’s putting the Chacmools inside a bubble (or dream) and taking us to a quiet version of Tula was an example of Theater of the Real. Florinda opens the door with force, and Taisha and Carol Tiggs lead us to other worlds. The Phantom Theater likewise makes the assemblage point of the viewer move to a different place. The scouts created it to help the group ‘slip through’ and leave the familiar. The scouts write and direct the skits. The Orange Scout’s skits are very bawdy, raw, irreverent and funny, while the Blue Scout’s skits are sophisticated and ethereal. The Blue Scout, a great actor, writes great skits for Carol Tiggs, who is also a good actor.”
Two of the men in Castaneda’s group, who are known as the “two elements,” are “a famous writer and director”–Bruce Wagner–and “a prominent Hollywood agent”–Tracy Kramer. “They have been with the sorcerers of this lineage from the beginning, and are known as ‘cyclic beings,’ who are ‘the here and now.’ Because of the force of the scouts, every time they present a show, the people they invite are deeply affected. The scouts give the Chacmools minor roles in their theater. The Theater of the Real is for stalkers. They intend the character so totally real that it is truly frightening. Even though the skits are never meant to give offense, they are written by individuals who have examined our social order from an ‘energetic’ viewpoint. The Blue Scout wrote a skit with me as the mother of a baby who believed her child was a girl. In this particular skit, I gave birth to a huge, grotesque child, played by the Orange Scout. The Orange Scout wore a body suit, diaper and seemed to have no teeth, and rolled around on the floor. I was so frightened by the Scout’s appearance I screamed. The two have a conversation, during which the baby’s diapers are soiled. I take them off and discover a huge penis that the Orange Scout made that was about a foot-and-a-half long and hairy. I had to bend down and kiss the penis, as the script called for the players to worship the new boy child.”
“Another skit that Castaneda enjoyed very much was entitled “Gordito, Gordito.” It was about a young man, played by the Orange Scout, who stuffed herself in a way that made her look incredibly fat. Gordito goes to a clinic to lose weight. The doctor tells him, “We know how to make a male lose weight. We’re going to put you in a room with a healer who will help you.” It turns out to be a naked nymph, played by “one of the other Chacmools.” The Orange Scout runs after her, “and the deal is, if he gets her, he can fuck her. But the nymph escapes and disappears.” An angry Gordito comes back to the clinic, gets a similar routine from the doctor, and this time, when he sits alone in the examining room, out come two naked nymphs. He doesn’t catch either of him. So he returns to the doctor and demands that, “this time, he either lose weight or be allowed to fuck the nymphs.” The doctor says, “We have just the thing.” While he’s waiting alone in the room, out comes this Swedish gay man (Kylie) with a huge penis. He begins to chase Gordito and tells him, “If I catch you, I fuck you.” Whereupon, Gordito finally loses the weight.
Kylie claimed she hadn’t gotten over her role in this skit, “which was when my hair was cut to its current [super short] length. I didn’t want to play this role, but I would follow the Orange Scout and the rest to the end and beyond.” The Orange Scout even calls me “Otto,” and makes me put on a mustache and hat and dance the tango with her. “Whoever comes to the six week seminar will get a strong whiff of her tango. The Orange Scout has tango duels with ‘Al Cerutti'” (Carol Tiggs), who is an insurance salesman, and “who you wouldn’t believe is Carol Tiggs. They intend these irritating creatures so strongly that we have to pay them $175 to make them go away. The scouts won’t do anything unless they’re paid, saying it’s the nature of the universe (although it doesn’t matter the amount–whether many dollars or a penny). All the actors perform from inner silence. The other Chacmools are great actors, and Carol Tiggs is a great ham.”
Sunday evening, May 28 – Q&A Period with the Chacmools, Florinda and Taisha
In response to the first question, Kylie explained that the Chacmools “don’t yet ‘see’ as the books describe. The scouts have returned to the inorganic beings’ world, and go beyond. They are ‘inter-world’ navigators.”A woman asked, “Why do you do as they [the scouts] command?” Kylie said their term for it was “writing a blank check.” She further claimed, “We’re not being controlled but do what they ask out of affection and the sheer delight of it.”A man asked whether the Chacmools knew where the scouts came from. That question seemed to stump the Chacmools, so Florinda came up to answer, followed by Taisha. Florinda said that the scouts are both, in a weird way, “our beacon.” She claimed, “they act from total egolessness; even their appearing to fight with each other is a great delight to us, since the scouts know they can’t live without each other.” [Apparently they found a way by ’97.] The group believes they have some energy from “way beyond.” She claimed, “We don’t know who the scouts’ fathers are.” (In Mexico City, Florinda joked that in the case of her child, the father was “a huge, fat Indian from Oaxaca.”)
A man asked an astrological question about the Mayan calendar and Castaneda’s group’s role “in planetary evolution.” After hearing the rather grandiosely phrased question, Florinda pretended to walk off the stage. Taisha answered “We don’t think there is a correlation between what we do and Earth cosmology. The energy or power we draw on is beyond that, in my opinion. Our discipline is much vaster than the standpoint of ordinary earth and human interpretation. For example, where the scouts come from is way beyond human imagination, like places that have two or three rotating suns. The only answer for us as to what is happening now in our world is because Carol Tiggs returned.”
A woman asked a question about the Death Defier and Carol Tiggs. Florinda responded that the Death Defier, “is riding Carol Tiggs. On one level, she is Carol Tiggs.” In fact, after the Mexico City experience, “we don’t know at the moment whether she is the Carol Tiggs we have always known. We’re trying to bring her back in dreaming, which is very hard when we have to be so much in the world, delivering a workshop for four days.” Florinda then mentioned that the Orange Scout had called her that morning. She commented, “It is a big mistake to call me before noon,” and yet Florinda’s door was being knocked on that morning at 8:00 AM. The Orange Scout just, “wanted to talk to Mommy.” But Florinda was, at first, enraged. In Florinda’s words, “Nothing is colder than a witch’s tit.” She concluded, “The only way we can reach Castaneda or Carol Tiggs now is through dreaming.”
A man asked about the difference between intent and awareness. Taisha responded that “awareness is energy that enables us to perceive. It seems totally impersonal, but is personal. The energy that holds the filaments together is intent. It is an abstract connection that seems personal. The control a warrior has is with his actions; if he does them with abandon but control, then his link [to intent] is strong and pure. Don Juan called it ‘the Selector,’ selecting the filaments that will pass through the assemblage point. It depends on energy though–the more you have the more extraordinary things that the Selector can pass through. For example, intent can use the stellar energy of dead stars. You can intend anything, with integrity, emptiness and impeccability.” Florinda further explained that intent, “on the earth plane,” is also what we do in everyday life (like seeing a distant rectangular building as “the White House”). It is just that “sorcerers intend a different intent.”A man asked how long it took them to recall their Second Attention experiences. Florinda quipped, “Not as long as Carlos.” As a German, she’s “very focused on time.” When Fabrizio drove them to an antique store in town that day, she insisted that they be back by three, knowing that if she didn’t they’d still be there. When they got back to the car, it was one minute to three.
A woman asked about recapitulation. Florinda said that was a question for the Chacmools, “who are on their fifth recapitulation.” Nyei and Kylie both looked at Renata, who said, “I guess I’m nominated.” Renata responded that after one puts a list together, and finds “a private place in which to build the discipline needed for the recapitulation, you take the most recent person on the list and pick a scene in which you interacted with this person. You recreate the scene in its entirety, breathing it all in. It is an inhale and an exhale. It may be helpful to pick old sexual relationships first, because recapitulating those frees a lot of energy. Recreate the whole scene of all the interactions you have had with that person. Once you complete your entire recapitulation list, you should start again with all the interactions you have had in the meantime since you started your recapitulation.”
Nyei added that recapitulation is one of the “arts” discovered and enhanced by the old sorcerers. “‘Seeing’ units of energy void of interpretation made the old sorcerers ‘see’ a cloud-like force that gave birth to every being. They also saw that this cloud of awareness was enhanced during life. They then saw that life was taken when only awareness should be. The force that retrieves awareness is not capable of separating life from awareness. So the sorcerers found that the Eagle could be satisfied by a facsimile of awareness. By doing this, the sorcerers ‘passed through the eye of the needle to freedom.'” On recapitulating, the Chacmools claimed they found their view of their lives changed radically. They advised that the suggested recapitulation steps should be followed, especially for the first recapitulation, “because they greatly hone our capacity to recollect as well as expand our awareness. Recapitulation is the recovery of our energy and the returning of foreign energies. It also displaces the assemblage point slightly, enough to give fluidity. It also empties humans of the stuff that keeps them from being buoyant and light. We may acquire a lot of awareness through life, but without a recapitulation, we won’t ‘sneak by the custom house of death’ with the awareness we possess. With each person on your list, start with your last interaction and eventually go all the way back to your first interaction. Then cross that person off the list and do the next person.”
Florinda then offered that she grew up in Venezuela, where the bridges made a big impression on her, and that while they were watching the nearby river that day and taking in the view from the bridge (which she asserted she had now re-named the “Donner Bridge”), she was inspired to a new recapitulation of memories. Taisha offered that she had likewise seen an inflatable swimming pool in someone’s yard during their drive that brought on “a total recall of a past memory” for her. They suggested we should “breathe that in as well” when such memories suddenly come back to us. Florinda suggested we can also use old photos of ourselves (before we get rid of them) to recapitulate, since they contain lots of memories. Kylie also suggested that music and popular songs can be used as well. Florinda advised, however, that before we start using clues like these to aid in recapitulating, we should takesome months to make a very systematic list of our interactions, to help us acquire the necessary discipline. She claimed that her first recapitulation helped her to understand Heidegger, and even to read him in German somehow, “although my reading ability in German is normally pretty low. The recapitulation opened up synapses that expanded my mental abilities.”
A woman then asked about menstruation. Florinda responded, “It’s wonderful!” [Laughter] “The Yaqui warriors had eight menstruating women make the decisions in war. You should use menstruation, hormonally and energetically, to see how your whole perception changes. Menstruating women dream easier. Precisely because they have wombs they can enter the Second Attention more easily.”
A woman asked a long question about the dominance of women in Castaneda’s clan, their efforts to recover Carol Tiggs, and intent. Taisha responded: “Carol Tiggs’s scarf is here [Taisha was wearing it], because it does link us to her, and her intent is here.” She also indicated that the night’s discussion, revolving around the scouts, Carol Tiggs and the Elements [Bruce Wagner and Tracy Kramer], who are also in Carol Tiggs’s domain, was “all part of Carol Tiggs’ intent. The reason there are only females on stage has to do with the bright part of the assemblage point pointing inwards in females” (in males it supposedly points outward). They’re not much concerned with changing that direction of the assemblage point, except that Taisha did “some turning of her assemblage point when stalking her role as Ricky.” Men who have gravitated to them “often have assemblage points that are so fixed, they can’t move. To go with us, it seems to take fluidity and female energy.” Florinda interjected at this point that once a male makes up his mind to follow the sorcerers’ path, they tend to be much more persistent than women. Florinda claimed that, “Don Juan, being from Yuma, Arizona, spoke English very well and used to use the horrible term ‘cracked cunts’ in referring to the women. But it’s true that’s the basis of their greater abilities. Men usually lead because the male energy provides the sobriety needed to make sense of their navigations. Carol Tiggs’s intent was to return, and that intent had to have existed for a long time. Don Juan knew we would find themselves in our current circumstances, and his intense training of us in a variety of techniques was because he knew we would be needing it.”
Taisha responded to a question about Carol Tiggs and the Death Defier by saying that Carol Tiggs’s merging with the Death Defier was explained in The Art of Dreaming, because of the gift of nagual energy Castaneda made to the Death Defier. “But something even now has changed. We don’t know right now if there is a Carol Tiggs.” Every time she takes them in a dream to old Tula, they claimed, she changes. “On this recent trip to Mexico, she changed further. She’s in transition–re-dreaming or reorganizing energetic units into something else, we don’t know what yet. Castaneda and Carol Tiggs always had the same energy, as don Juan said, but what the Death Defier caused was some kind of total merging of this energy.”
A man asked Florinda how she manipulated her energy to have the Orange Scout born through her. Florinda responded, “The way we do it in the world.” The Orange Scout was “in me energetically. The process was very much directed by the Old Nagual, not that he was there at the time.”
In response to a question about Castaneda having a son, and the impact of children on one’s edge, or having children causing a hole in one’s luminous egg, Florinda claimed that a child, especially the first born, “does take the edge. This does make it harder [to pursue the sorcerer’s path], but not impossible. Castaneda never had a son. He was given a boy to raise, but that child was taken away from him when the child was six-years-old. And Castaneda contributed a great deal of energy to the birth of the Blue Scout.”
In response to a question about petty tyrants, Florinda said they “help us, like one that the disciples had, that they complained to don Juan about. A petty tyrant forces you to change. This is just like writing a blank check. The defending, judging, should make us ask why do we always want to fight for no reason at all?” Florinda explained that she is aggressive, “I want to be always right and to fight for no reason at all. My parents and brothers always talked loudly and aggressively, and I had to talk over this.” Taisha added that “once you have a certain level of energy, these things just don’t make you react anymore. This energy gives you a ‘cloak of confidence’ to treat these situations in a different way. As energy rises, there is other stuff that bugs you, and gives you new challenges. Don’t repress or deny, that doesn’t work. Use new filaments in your luminous egg if you have the energy, and use your intent,” she advised.
Kylie interposed that “these creatures” [meaning Florinda and Taisha] are “far away” from the level that we’re at. “During the transition to where they are, you still see yourself reacting but can’t stop it. That’s where ruthlessness comes in. You have to persist. None of us know how to persist and persevere at that point, we just have to continue. When your buttons get pushed, look for where that place is in you. Fighting, sorcerers can see, is an energetically useless maneuver- it’s just ‘two blobs bumping against each other.’ In the beginning you have to force it [your ruthlessness with yourself], but something begins to guide you if your decision is final.”
A woman asked about controlled folly. Taisha explained, “It’s like a game. Controlled folly is a way of viewing the world that sorcerers use. It’s a ploy. The universe is a complete mystery that we’ll never unravel, and we have no control over our destiny. Sorcerers use that as a different filter from our usual way of viewing things. They know that our lack of control over our destiny means there’s not going to be a pay off of any sort, so their actions are not ‘investments.’ Sorcerers call this ‘folly’ because what we do is ultimately meaningless. But there is ‘control’ because you can do a thing as well as you can–that’s your control. This approach helps keep one unstuck. If you act from the point of controlled folly, you are going to give it everything you have and then move on, with no attachment. This means detachment from benefits and expectations about possible results of your actions.” Florinda added, “If we take seriously the premise that we’re going to die, then nothing can hurt us.” She mentioned that at a workshop they did some months ago in Mexico, a woman showed up wearing a surgical mask. She had just had an operation that gave her a new kidney, and had extremely low energy. Florinda claimed they saw “a dark spot on her that is a sign of impending death. Her brother later told us that her body was rejecting the transplant. Within a short time she was back in the hospital, dying, and literally gave up–she finally knew she was going to die. As a result, something happened. When we saw her again in Mexico City last week, she looked great. Her stomach cancer has disappeared and her new kidney is growing.”
Florinda claimed that Florinda Grau used to tell her, “If you beat me, it’s a matter of ego. If I beat you, it’s controlled folly, because to me, it doesn’t matter.” Florinda also quoted a line from a poem that Castaneda apparently likes very much, “We drown in a cup of tea.”A man asked if there was a way to stop our energy from dissipating in current interactions. Taisha advised just to “keep current” in our recapitulating.
A woman asked how the Chacmools came into the sorcerers’ world. Kylie responded that Florinda got sick on chocolates in Norway, and “I was completely taken with her. To me, Florinda was like some sprite from a German forest. As I listened to Florinda, I recognized something I always hoped was true,” i.e., that there was “a being that wasn’t duplicitous. It pulled me. Florinda passed out in my arms, and Castaneda says that’s the moment when I began to guard her. Florinda left, but I followed her to L.A., not even bothering to pack.”
Nyei claimed her introduction to the group was “a three-fold story: I was introduced to them twice. I went to a lecture by Florinda, but I was late, and was told by others there that I had nearly missed her.” Nyei then realized she’d have been there much earlier [meaning she had had a prior opportunity to be introduced to them], but was “lost in trying to become a genius poet, and had to get burned out on that first. By some great luck I found Florinda. Then Taisha and Kylie came and stole me from my parents’ house. Florinda had invited me to a Tensegrity class. I felt an energetic change on one level immediately. Taisha and Kylie came to help me ‘move some things,’ and before I knew it I was out of my parents’ house and going with them–they weren’t just moving furniture, they were taking me too. Once I arrived with them, they ignored me completely and told me to recapitulate.”
Renata said she wished she had “as noble a story as Kylie’s.” She said that when Carol Tiggs “came back,” Castaneda found her in Los Angeles at a bookstore [the Phoenix Bookstore in Santa Monica]. “By a twist of fate, I was sitting next to her. They had taken everyone’s name at the lecture, and that’s how I happened to get word when Castaneda started Tensegrity, and that was my ‘ascent’ into their world.” (The others, apparently detecting the self-important sound of the word “ascent,” quickly advised Renata that she meant “descent.”)
A woman asked the Chacmools how long it took for their awareness to rise after they began practicing Tensegrity. Kylie claimed it “took awhile to not have the desire to notice whether we were getting results. Carol Tiggs says, ‘Stop checking the pots.’ If you keep checking whether you’re getting anywhere, you are holding back. So I don’t really know when the shift came.” Florinda commented that she knew with Nyei the moment that something happened in her work and the shift was made. When the assemblage point starts shifting in recapitulation, you are in “that prior place again. When you get back in that position, you’re not judging anymore, or being psychological about it. You’re using the assemblage point to put it back in that position, and shifting the assemblage point ever so slightly.”
A man asked a question about the Nagual Lujan, and the differences between the four lines of passes they had been taught. Someone [my notes don’t indicate who, but I think it was Taisha] responded obliquely that “a dreamer uses units of dream to propel themselves, while a stalker uses units of everyday life.”
A man asked, “What’s the rule of the three-pronged nagual?” Florinda responded dramatically, but somewhat jokingly, “There are no rules!”
In response to a question about gazing, Taisha said there are many different kinds of gazing, including “quick glances leading to over stimulation. Gravel is really good for gazing, or shiny objects that catch your attention. One’s focus gets naturally dispersed, without the prejudice of seeing the world as objects.”
A man asked the difference between the intent of Tensegrity and martial arts. Taisha replied, “The intent of Tensegrity is to move the assemblage point, to call back the energy body, and to make us unpalatable to the Flyers while our awareness rises. The intent of martial arts depends on what martial arts we’re talking about; they may have a self defense or combat intent. Martial arts practices began as meditation techniques but were quickly turned into a martial practice. Since the intents are very different, it is important not to mix the two.”
A woman asked, “As you recapitulate and lose your persona, or as you dream, does your body change on a cellular level, and does it then become harder to return? And what stage of dreaming are the Chacmools at?” Taisha responded that when you are in other realms, “you go with your total being. You have to come back. Our ‘hunting ground’ is this world. The more work we have to do, the better chance we have to hone ourselves as sorcerers. We can’t just retreat from everything. When you are changing, your intent is to raise your level of awareness. But that has to happen here, in the world.”
In response to a question about the jobs they work at, Florinda claimed her current job was as a translator, and that “I write about sorcery, feminism and phenomenology, and take care of the Chacmools and the Orange Scout. The Chacmools work at Toltec Artists.” Taisha said she has another persona who is a professional “who does accounting and bill paying and investments. It took me years to train for this. When I get back to Los Angeles, this person has to kick in to deal with a lot of work. I also cook and clean.” Florinda jumped in to say that Taisha, “doesn’t clean.” Taisha continued, claiming “All of us do mundane things, but they are transformed, becoming true pleasure.”
A man asked whether they paid attention to the phases of the moon. From their initial looks, one gathered they generally don’t. Florinda offered that “when there is a full moon, the Chacmools and I all stand with our hands back at kidney level and shout for ‘intent.'”
A woman asked whether any of them were in relationships when they came into the sorcerers’ world and, if so, whether the relationship survived. [Laughter] Florinda responded, “How could it? We are truly solitary beings. And no, we don’t have a relationship with Carlos.” She said they all go to the movies together, and that their interactions with each other are pretty mundane. “We don’t sit around asking each other what process we experienced.”
A man asked about the role of academia in their world. Florinda responded that Castaneda thinks that “only by training the mind to its limits can we make sense of the world out there. Academia played an important role for us too simply because it’s Castaneda’s ‘mood.'” Taisha and Florinda claimed to be very interested in phenomenology. Only Florinda was interested in feminism. “To truly be in the world, one can use professors as petty tyrants,” Florinda suggested. Florinda claimed that she and Taisha usually wrote each paper twice: “once for ourselves and once for the professor.”
A man asked about the significance of the cover art on the first Tensegrity tape. Florinda said she “thought it was obvious.” She, or someone else, quipped, “Three eggs, and stuff around it.”
Someone asked Florinda whether she was really wearing clothes or not. She said she had “thought about practicing the sheer robe of energy on you, but one needs sandals for that, and I didn’t bring any. You can’t do it wearing socks.” Florinda also said at some point that she and Taisha had adjoining apartments.In response to a question about time, Florinda claimed that the last time she and Taisha went into ‘dreaming,’ together they were talking to Castaneda in his living room. While Castaneda was talking he saw them disappear. “He waited nine days for us to return. We thought we were only gone three days. He told us if we hadn’t returned on the ninth day he would have gone into ‘dreaming’ to find us.” They assertedly had been “shopping for nine days,” and Florinda claimed it was “pure hell.” Taisha said, “I enjoyed it.” Taisha explained that “to hold the dreaming position of the shopping mall, we have to do all the little movements of shopping and checking out the merchandise over and over, like ‘Ricky’ [one of her stalking assignments] did when he had to be obnoxious, twisting and chewing on the straps of purses and pulling on everything. To maintain the shopping mall, I would piddle for hours with cosmetics and other little things to prolong our stay.” [When asked how they pay for items there, Taisha responded, “Universal Credit Card!”]
Taisha explained that when you wake in a dream and feel you’ve awakened, “the tack is to keep from waking out of the dream. You do whatever is pertinent to the dreaming place you find yourself in to prolong the dream.” Florinda then said she was joking about hating the shopping experience. She claimed, “Going with Taisha anywhere is a great pleasure.”
In response to a question about the Tensegrity passes moving the assemblage point, Nyei said that for the Chacmools, “the assemblage point dropped and came into the center of our physical bodies as a result of Tensegrity. Before the Blue Scout showed us that was a possibility” (i.e., bringing the assemblage point into the physical body in a harmonious way), “the old sorcerers used to force it to go inside, which always created a furrow.” Florinda explained that the assemblage point of a baby is “inside the physical body, but when they become socialized, it moves outside their physical body to the back of the luminous egg.”
A woman asked about the effect of an abortion or miscarriage on a person’s luminous egg. They responded that “It does make a hole, which heals but leaves a scar.”
Kylie tried to conclude by making a disclaimer she said they needed to make about Tensegrity and Castaneda. She said, “No matter what others offering ‘tensegrity’ workshops say, they’ve never worked with Castaneda or others in their group. As to Victor Sanchez’s book [Teachings of Don Carlos], it’s insane for someone to think they can take Castaneda’s work and give it a better interpretation.” When someone asked if that meant that Castaneda never gave Sanchez an interview, she responded, “No, Castaneda never met him.” She emphasized that “no one is authorized to teach Tensegrity except the three Chacmools.”
As to a question about people getting together in practice groups and comparing our notes on the Tensegrity passes, they agreed that would be useful.
As to the final question about when the teaching of Tensegrity began publicly, they said that the first workshop had been at the Rim Institute two years earlier. Then there was one that same year in Hawaii, and none after that until Esalen. “Then this year we had workshops in Mexico City, Los Angeles, Boulder, Hawaii, Argentina and Mexico City again.”
The session then concluded and we, the audience, headed into the cold and gently misting night air.
©️ 1999 and 2024 by Richard Jennings, all rights reserved
Related Links:
