Tensegrity instructors in the Italian magazine "Re-knot." Interview By Dimitri Buffa
article that appeared in the Italian magazine "Re Nudo" No. 34, October 1999. Castaneda did not want the knowledge of Don Juan-the opportunity of freedom, is lost like tears in rain. Tensegrity is the "exercise" of the shamans of Mexico lessons from the Nagual Don Juan Matus. Has been transmitted by Carlos Castaneda, Carol Tiggs, Taisha and Florinda Donner Grau their apprentices and is now used by thousands of people around the world. Men and women who attend several practice groups in many cities around the globe and new practitioners eager to learn these "movements were dreamed" meet in the seminars organized by Cleargreen, the foundation in charge of spreading the legacy of Carlos Castaneda. The author of this article participated in the seminar in Barcelona which took place on 5 and 6 June this year and also obtained information about the San Diego seminar from 7 to 9 August. Brandon Scott Instructors and Darien Donner, met Carlos Castaneda and the witches and they learned the art of inner stillness and elegance, two of the basic teachings of tensegrity which could be described as very original esoteric practices. Tensegrity is the modern version of the magical passes discovered or movement in a state called "Dreaming" by men and women shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times and practiced these moves to increase its welfare state and conscience. These passes were taught to Carlos Castaneda, Taisha, Florinda Donner Grau and Carol Tiggs by their teacher Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico. Don Juan was a nagual the leader of a group of shamans whose disciples taught the magical passes to his apprentices, instructors at the seminars. These seminars are intended to raise awareness of the passes. Re
Knot: A common question for those who attend the seminars Tensegrity is whether there is still some reason for the seminars now that Carlos Castaneda is gone and his cohorts, who were also instructed by Don Juan, have disappeared?
Brandon Scott: Has more sense than ever now teach the magical passes. The attempt of Carlos Castaneda and his cohorts, followers of Don Juan, to teach the magical passes to his apprentices and begin the seminars was to make available of anyone who was interested, the very possibility that Don Juan had given them: the possibility of a journey of awareness. Don Juan told Carlos Castaneda, and Carlos told us us that human beings do not need a leader to perceive energy directly. What they need is someone to just one address. Carlos Castaneda instructed and wrote his books, especially the more recent, including the book Magical Passes. Don Juan was never a "guru" nor was Castaneda. The aim of Carlos Castaneda was not to find supporters, he wanted to give whoever was interested in ways to see energy directly. Castaneda account a story: Don Juan is about to leave, and Castaneda was desperate, take the hand of Don Juan and crying kisses it. "Hey take it easy," exclaims Don Juan, soon going to put a basilica for my sandals! ". The Nagual told us that we are always looking for reasons not to change, an excuse to get out of things. While he was here, many people wondered: "How I can do all this without a Nagual help me? What will happen to me?" "Use the tools! Do work!" He answered. Now that the nagual is gone, the evening is the same question: "How can we do this without a leader, not a nagual? The answer is the same: we ourselves have to find out how. This is the journey of our time, sleep, Carlos Castaneda revolution gave us. When he was present at the seminars, said that the main concern was to attract people's attention and wait for instructions. "I can start dreaming now?" This is part of our nature-Castaneda would say, "when there is a leader we expect him to take our decisions for us. He said that he seriously began to be applied only when Don Juan had left this world. I had no choice, had to come together and put into action all that Don Juan had taught.
Darien Donner: He told us that for the blind and the sailors, nothing is a given. Comparing our journey to those of the sixteenth century Italian explorers. Did they know what to expect? No, Columbus thought he would find India. Even now, the indigenous people of America are called "Indians"! Before leaving, Carlos Castaneda said as Don Juan had told him that he could not carry us with him that we were not ready. However, as he had done, we also had to be filled to the brim consciousness before we leave. We had to live fully in this land before we could leave. This means for us and for practitioners of the magical passes that we must manage themselves, taking responsibility for our actions instead of expecting him to tell us step by step what to do. The Nagual told us that we should have a romance with knowledge. This means doing something that excites us as a means to increase our consciousness. This can be anything such as painting, studying, gardening, something we can passion. Hooking in such activity allows us to have memorable interactions, of which we can learn something that will last throughout our lives. In my case, for example, he told me to stop sitting in my room and it was to learn languages.
Brandon Scott: To answer your question about the disciples of Don Juan: They are here to advise us in our effort to find together with the other practitioners of the magical passes which means browsing without a leader. They stayed for that reason. They will not be in the seminars in person, because they want that practitioners put their attention on raising awareness rather than regarding them as people. Re
Node: Another frequent question is, how is it possible that the magical passes constantly changing?
Brandon Scott: First of all I have to tell you that one of the things that really surprised me was when I taught nagual complicated magical passes, I went to the house and earnestly and diligently practiced and the next day we met, I was ready to proudly show the result of my practice, the nagual instead of seeing my interpretation I taught a modified sequence of which differed from the version I had learned with great difficulty a few days. I was angry and thought: "Why is always changing movements? What is the reason? The truth, as I discovered later, was that he changed nothing, Castaneda was showing me the magical passes in the same way Don Juan had taught, which means he taught many forms for each sequence of moves: For the viewers, the only certainty is change. If we want to see energy as it flows in the universe, we ourselves must be fluid. For it led us to distance ourselves from our rigidity, our pride in "knowing" a sequence of movements, to be the "experts." As soon as we think we are experts, he said, we cease to perceive. Re
Node: During the seminars many people continue taking notes on the magical passes, do not you think that by doing so lose the best part?
Brandon Scott: Yes, take notes while the passes shown prevents us from using our kinesthetic memory, which is the key to practicing the magical passes, Castaneda often ask participants two things: to suspend judgments and avoid taking notes. He used to say that humans tend to turn everything into something familiar. The effect of the magical passes is not familiar, he said. They are magical because they affect energy and physically in a subtle but very powerful. By learning the magical passes directly to our bodies, we must call our kinesthetic memory, something that would not normally do.
Knot Re: But even Castaneda Don Juan took notes while he was teaching.
Brandon Scott: Yes, it certainly did, although much to take notes, he never made reference to direct and practical aspects of the teachings of Don Juan: The magical passes, those strange movements Don Juan ran between the stories he told his apprentices. When Don Juan is gone, Castaneda realized that this was the most important issue, magical passes. So he thought he would avoid causing misunderstanding ten years if asked to stop taking notes. They can take notes with their bodies. Re
Node: The seminar in Barcelona you, the instructors talked about "dreaming together" what they meant?
Darien Donner: For the visionaries dreaming itself is the deliberate and systematic art change our perception. This can happen when we sleep or when awake. The practitioners of the magical passes, instructors and participants of the seminars, have a common dream: To increase our awareness. This does not mean there is a group in the traditional sense. There is nothing to hold on as a group. Just a collection of people who are looking for in the same direction, each one bringing their own weight to hold.
Brandon Scott: When we speak in the seminars of dreaming together, we mean that the participant who fail trials and make the effort, perceive a new way. Many have told us they no longer quarrel with peers at work or conspire against his boss in the office. They no longer have the problems they were accustomed to. Not concentrating on their problems, they have extra energy to a new perception, outside the everyday reality. This is to start dreaming.
Knot Re: What about the warriors and sex, one of the hardest things to carry out this kind of chastity is energy that is required for those who practice Tensegrity. Do you have to admit that this does not encourage people to join?
Brandon Scott: There is nothing to join. No pre-requisites and no group. It's just a matter of energy. Dreaming requires a large amount of energy.
Darien Donner: The seers believe that our best energy is sexual energy, so it's best not to use it recklessly. He recommended the new practitioners to abstain for the simple reason that having sex at the beginning is to merge with someone to a very deep level before having the chance to know our own thoughts and perceptions. The Nagual told us that if someone wants hard sex and she was holding was better to have it. More energy was spent worrying about having sex than having it. But in any case these are decisions that each person must to take for itself and I want to emphasize that there is no moral issue involved.
Brandon Scott: He told us that one of our problems is that we take the relationship with a commercial standpoint. "I will do this for her, if she does this for me." All is well, she's the most wonderful thing in the world until it begins to look at another man. So certainly it is a monster. He said that to engage energy under these conditions, these expectations and confusion, was a disaster. Sex was best left aside until we left the need to control and dominate or be the victim or organize our way and our favor. Re
Node: The seminar in Barcelona, \u200b\u200byou gave explanations on the techniques in the summary, saying that it was also for happy times and not only for trauma in your life. What do they mean?
Darien Donner: First of all I will explain what is the summary. It is a magical pass that focuses our attention on the everyday life and sleep. Is a review of interactions with people we met during our lives combined with a special breathing technique. We recapitulate to be aware of how our life was and how to find new forms of action. When we reviewed every detail of our interactions we focus our attention. We listen to sounds, colors, smells, objects in the room to anything that we can remember. This helps focus our attention on the daily life and sleep.
Brandon Scott: One day I ask the Nagual about dreaming. I wondered when he would start giving me instructions. He asked me suddenly. "Hey, you remember the chair in your office?", And I said, "the office chair?, Why?, Yes, I remember vaguely." "Vaguely?" He cried, if you're sitting in that chair for eight hours a day, how can you not remember? How do you think you can try to keep your dreaming attention if you can not even be aware of in your daily life? He said if we pay attention to the details of our daily lives and in our summary, we could complete the missing items, things that we've missed more than simple details are what make the whole movie. We will be able to see patterns and repetitions that we had not previously noticed. For some of us it means the habit of looking only at the wrong things, what people did to us, so we did not, how we were wrong ... In my life, for example, I was always envious of the other for their lives exciting and I said to myself as I am nothing had happened. Later I realized that I had indeed seen some very intense moments in which I had made important decisions. The fact is that I had forgotten those moments for social image I had of myself I had mastered. The summary allows us to go beyond the social image and has a more detached view, which shamans call "the view from the bridge." Only with this view true change is possible.
Knot Re: Could you go deeper into this concept of change?
Brandon Scott: Yes, the concept of change can be described as finding new ways to perceive, perceive ourselves, our colleagues, all around us. Not the correct way to perceive, but new forms. This is a way to exceed certain limits that we had unconsciously accepted in our lifetime. Look at me for example, I had accepted from the outset that I was not able to speak to a group of strangers, that I was "shy." I never imagined that one day I would dare get on a podium and speak to more than seven hundred people.
Knot Re: I guess that has to do, without saying that scientific proof of the theories of Castaneda, is virtually impossible?
Brandon Scott
: Carlos Castaneda told us that the assertion of the shamans of his lineage are fully verifiable. All we had to do to verify it was giving us body and soul to look. He told me the story of when he met an almost mocking famous scientist said, "Well, all that shamanism is false, right? You can not test me? And the nagual replied" How can you prove the laws of gravity? "" Of course I can, "said the scientist," but would have to enroll in courses 1, 2 and 3 ... of physics. "" Yes, "the nagual said," is the same thing shamanism, you should enroll in courses 1, 2 and 3 ... of shamanism.
Re Node: I have to do something more mundane and prosaic question: Some people complain about the price to attend a seminar that continually rise in price. What do they have to say about this?
Darien Donner: First of all we want to say that it is not necessary to attend the seminar to learn the magical passes: The book "Magical Passes" can keep them busy for some time. And the first series of the book is also on video. The nagual told us that each impeccably practiced magic spell was a step that would lead us into infinity.
Brandon Scott: Charles and his colleagues used free magical passes taught in small groups for ten years. Nobody practiced and the movements were taken as a novelty of its kind. The four trainees of Don Juan realized that the people who pay to be taught, pay more attention. Today around the world there are people who practice Tensegrity constantly and they have obtained a real change in their lives. Before leaving the nagual said they had given him new hope in the human spirit. And it was where he put his efforts before he left this world. To pay the human spirit. He wanted to pay the infinite things that he had received and seen: A particular scene from the movie "Blade Runner" was very significant for him. It's almost the end of the film, when one of the main characters who had traveled far and wide in the universe is about to die. Before he died this person has some of the most amazing and bizarre experiences he has lived and seen in his time. "All these things are lost in time," he says, "like tears in rain." Carlos Castaneda did not want the knowledge of Don Juan-the opportunity of freedom, is lost like tears in rain. For him there was another possibility, and he became a real option open to whoever was interested and willing to act.