Seminar - Esalen Institute - November 1993 - Big Sur, California
These are the relatively meager notes that we have from one of those first three workshops that were held in 1993; before there was a gap of 15 months before the next workshop.
Carlos, Taisha, and Florinda only gave lectures at small venues in 1994.
original source - http://sustainedaction.org/_nagualist/_NNL4/Eight_Esalen_Not-Doings.htm (defunct)
Taisha and Florinda with the Chacmools and the Little Sisters at the Esalen Institute in November 1993.
At the Esalen Institute, November 1993, Taisha gave these eight examples of sorcery not-doings:
-Visualize the fibers of your energy body. On one side (the right side), grab the fibers and hold them tight. Feel what the energy is (behavior, habit, etc.), tense your muscles and let go of it. Repeat on the other side.
-The match technique: This is used to stabilize the assemblage point. Light a match, holding it upright, and gaze at the flame. Then while still lit, gaze at the match while holding the match with the head down (do this when the match is almost burned out) then douse the flame in water.
-To stop internal dialogue: Touch your index finger to the depression between your eyes, just above the brow ridge on your skull, at the bottom-most point of your forehead. Grab a fiber or filament (visualize this) with your index finger and your thumb and pull it out, then let it go.
-For concentration: Put your hands together just below the navel and move them up your body, keeping your hands together, to your forehead. Repeat.
-Make or construct items of materials or things these items are not normally made of.
-Visualize and feel a wall, a very hard wall. Push any unwanted feelings, energies, thoughts, etc., out of yourself. Pierce the wall with feelings, energies, thoughts, etc. and feel yourself break through the wall as you pierce it.
-With your hands together, in a prayer fashion, and your thumb tight against your index finger, place your hands on top of your head, fingers pointing up. Bow to the sun, pointing your fingers at the sun. Do this three times.
-When in the shower, isolate each muscle starting at the top of your body. Tense the muscle, then relax it. Work your way down your body to your feet doing this technique.
After giving us these sorcery not-doings, Taisha said, “It's not what you do, but the intent with which you do it.”
—
I wanted to make a point, that as far as I remember, was not made in the first three newsletters. At the RIM institute, Florinda told us that don Juan and his party DID NOT make the jump when they left the world. They are stuck in the world of inorganic beings. They did not intend to be in this world and they don't have the energy to leave. She said there were too many of them, in the group, and they were too heavy. She said that Carlos' group, Carlos, Carol, Taisha and herself are going to join them and hopefully supply the needed energy for all of them to leave the world of inorganic beings. If Carlos' group fails to help them, then all of them, don Juan's and Carlos' parties will be stuck in the world of inorganic beings. Everyone in attendance, including myself, became very melancholy at this point. If don Juan couldn't make the jump how could I possibly try?
(Reddit comment thread on why they said in this workshop that don Juan was “stuck”)
Florinda also addressed the issue of power plants at this same lecture. She said not to use power plants, they are harmful to the energy body. Carlos was given them because he was very dense. Florinda said that the luminous egg changes shape from the use of power plants. Instead of being egg-shaped it becomes bell-shaped. The luminous fibers at the bottom, of this bell shape, are dense and stuck in this position. At this point, almost everyone in attendance was very concerned and wanted to know if they were bell-shaped. She said this bell shape is irreversible.
31 Comments
Why do I have the memory of someone saying that don Juan and his cohort are living as little red bugs, who apparently have a live of ecstasy?
Is that from a book?
From chapter 6 of The Second Ring of Power:
La Gorda said that the Nagual had once pointed out to me a very special red insect, in the mountains of his homeland. She asked me if I remembered it.
I did remember it. Years before don Juan had taken me to an area unknown to me in the mountains of northern Mexico. With extreme care he showed me some round insects the size of a ladybug. Their backs were brilliantly red. I wanted to get down on the ground and examine them, but he would not let me. He told me that I should watch them, without staring, until I had memorized their shape, because I was supposed to remember them always. He then explained some intricate details of their behavior, making it sound like a metaphor. He was telling me about the arbitrary importance of our most cherished mores. He pointed out some alleged mores of those insects and pitted them against ours. The comparison made the importance of our beliefs look ridiculous.
"Just before he and Genaro left," la Gorda went on, "the Nagual took me to that place in the mountains where those little bugs lived. I had already been there once, and so had everyone else. The Nagual made sure that all of us knew those little creatures, although he never let us gaze at them.
"While I was there with him he told me what to do with you and what I should tell you. I've already told you most of what he asked me to except for this last thing. It has to do with what you've been asking everybody about: 'Where are the Nagual and Genaro?'
"Now I'll tell you exactly where they are. The Nagual said that you will understand this better than any of us. None of us has ever seen the guardian. None of us has ever been in that yellow sulfur world where he lives. You are the only one among us who has.
"The Nagual said that he followed you into that world when you focused your second attention on the guardian. He intended to go there with you, perhaps forever, if you would've been strong enough to pass. It was then that he first found out about the world of those little red bugs. He said that their world was the most beautiful and perfect thing one could imagine.
"So, when it was time for him and Genaro to leave this world, they gathered all their second attention and focused it on that world. Then the Nagual opened the crack, as you yourself witnessed, and they slipped through it into that world where they are waiting for us to join them someday. The Nagual and Genaro liked beauty. They went there for their sheer enjoyment."
The "stuck in the world of inorganic beings" narrative was, we assume, meant to spur us onward as a public group by establishing a goal.
Save the previous generation.
Not a bad idea! If enough people (eventually) learn to silence their internal dialogues.
Which is looking to take MUCH longer, as a broad plan, than they had any right to suspect....but is still understandable, given the differences in circumstances.
Yeah, in The Eagle’s Gift
I suspect those not-doings are better for women.
The men will just pretend and delude themselves.
They need to visually see those things before they can use that kind of technique.
The proof is, no one learned. Not even one. Using the advice of Taisha, Florinda, and Carol.
Plus, you'd rapidly give up if there were nothing to see along the way.
So during that 17 month gap they were preparing, based on their experiences in those first three workshops in early-to-mid 1993, how they were going to best present what they themselves had been taught.
I assume, amongst other things, they were working out how best to present the magical passes. How much of what they had each learned practicing martial arts should be incorporated in between the individual sorcery movements, so they flowed between each other.
As opposed to being singular, and very individualistic and ritualistic, movements.
And in that December 1994 issue of Nagualist Newsletter, you write about being contacted by someone named Tracy at Cleargreen, who basically told you that they didn’t need any help:
Oh, how the situation changed between then and now!
To think that a measly three DVD’s, and prohibiting people from taking notes during or making other visual aids after, was a good strategy for preserving what they spent so much time presenting……
Too bad people didn't have cell phones back then. We wouldn't have lost any of the passes! Even if they didn't allow cellphones in class, people would immediately recorded the movements at the breaks, worried about forgetting.
But time travel is totally possible!
The problem is, as I've come to notice, the same garbage that constructs our dreams at night (a heavy but attractive women you saw, obsessions over which food coloring to use in your chicken marinade, a fight at work), also color silent knowledge videos in the air.
Without a clean link to intent, you'll just time travel to "franken worlds".
Meaning, bits and pieces of your own recent obsessions, pieced together into a place you can actually walk around in, but which isn't historically accurate.
You have to have absolutely nothing that you're adding to it, so that the only thing that can guide what "assembles", is what "was".
I do believe we'll get there though.
Akin to this shadow “gazing”?
I’ve had good success with this specific Esalen not-doing from Taisha, when I’ve been particularly distressed by my inability to silence my inner dialogue. When my focus is, seemingly, inexorably pulled back to my inner turmoil
Or the desperation!
I find it breaks that viscous cycle by initiating a physical activity to take one’s attention away from it, and is thus a true not-doing.
Or to interest one’s double in what you’re doing, and call for assistance. I’m not sure which.
But then I’m a touchy-feely kind of guy, who hates noise, avoids confrontation, and is near panic-stricken with existential anxiety, most of the time.
And not that manly, either physically or neurologically, like many men of these last few decades.
https://thegrowtheq.com/the-crisis-of-masculinity/
https://www.yourtango.com/self/gen-z-soft-boys-running-the-show
https://medium.com/@sotirise/why-arent-men-masculine-anymore-17272091e8f5
https://www.medichecks.com/blogs/testosterone/why-do-gen-z-and-millennial-men-have-lower-testosterone
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/02/16/did-falling-testosterone-affect-falling-crime/
Well, I suppose I overdo the "men are bad" thing a bit...
Ultimately, since they seem to have more energetic mass, those are who you want to lead you off into the second attention, as a "real place".
I've got Cholita, but she always ditches me in there.
In the real world, she walks 30 feet behind me, no matter if I slow down or not. Doesn't want anyone to think we're together.
In dreaming realms, she's 50 feet ahead of me most of the time. Showing off.
You and Cholita have been (I’ll say) “partnered” for a long time. She may brush you off a lot, but you’ve been her protector, for decades. Maybe she’s waiting for your energetic mass to break trail for her into the second attention?
I’m always torn between laughing at your tales, or feeling like, oh dude, you got it bad for this girl….
Carlos also picked up stray women. As did don Juan.
I think maybe it's a sorcery thing.
Having women around ain’t a bad thing. Especially if they like you.
This. It changed my life. Got me back on course. If I ever meet T, I will hug her.
Interesting……Why do you say, you’re not very manly? I can identify with alot of the points you write, but I’m also very much a man.
What is manly in 2025, Banging cheerleaders, chugging beers, fixing cars, chopping down trees and giving the bros wedgies?
Certainly altering ones perception to ADVENTURE into the second attention, the unknown isn’t for men, or is it?
Did you want engagement on this topic?
😂
The point I was trying to make was mostly that Dan’s all men are “dense cave men attempting to bonk others on the head to assert dominance” is laughably reductionist.
Stuck in the 20th century “mad-men” masculinity mindset.
lol Cheers!
I like cavemen! The neanderthals and denisovans were likely superior to humans.
We just don't have enough relics yet to see how developed they were.
Wood and furs don't hold up well.
But stones do.
The Neanderthals even had a glue manufacturing factory in Gibraltar.
It was "Spear Superglue".
And a fat rendering facility elsewhere.
Alternate backup of the source text:
http://archive.today/Z3kvn
Correction: it was actually closer to 17 months until the next full workshop. The one held in February 1995, in Santa Monica, was a "mini-intensive workshop."
Apparently this place was a native American site:
Origins & Founding
Development & Influence (1960s–1980s)
why are they stuck in the inorganic being world? Why can't they leave?
Did the jump require the inorganic world as an in between?
Again, we assume she said this to leave a little opening to “enlist” people in a theoretical rescue attempt. If they were convinced of that need, and heard no more of it so had no doubts, putting in time and actual effort to reach silent knowledge and regularly move their assemblage points…it wouldn’t matter if they latter discovered they weren’t actually trapped there.
They would be “tricked” (motivated, actually) into working hard.
Results are really all that matters to a sorcerer, and not the initial reasons for getting there, which (in us) are nearly always suspect.
Interesting. Some of these remind me more of green zone exercises from other methodologies.
Ooo, I actually like staring at candle flames makes me feel grounded! I am excited to try the technique of placing my finger between my brows and plucking an energy fibre. Did that just now, and yes I do feel quieter inside. Thank you.
Pray to the Sun as well. Even while lying down. Or at night. It's there, just on the other side of the Earth. Or the moon. It's light comes from the Sun. Got me jazzed too, bro. lol
Jesus Christ. Thank you for posting this. This makes so much sense. I've been doing almost all these things without anyone teaching them to me for almost a decade. They just "feel" right. They saved my puny life. Raised me up, out of a degenerate life. Restored most of my energy. I fell right back into sorcery and my love for most things Castaneda. Let this be a lesson for all. Nothing is an accident or random. Nothing. The spirit will force you where you belong, one way or the other.
Would you be kind enough and name some arguments for your stated opinions. Don Juan said that Destiny doesn’t exist. Therefore, I am having trouble with your comment. Could you please elaborate?
I'm not referring to destiny. I'm referring to signs. Signs the spirit is guiding us. Agreements and omens. Listening to your heart. They are everywhere if we are paying attention. I never mentioned, nor inferred anything about destiny. Destiny or not destiny has zero interest/value or use in this world. The whole concept should be abandoned.
Well, you clearly stated that nothing is an accident or random, which implies some higher order i.e. destiny/fate.
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The notes for the forehead filament pass, after it was later titled "Dispelling Unwanted Thoughts."
https://reddit.com/r/castaneda/w/tensegrity/stalking_tensegrity/dispelling_thoughts