Resent-From: [email protected] Date: Thu, 06 Apr 1995 13:38:17 EDT
From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Maui Workshop, pt. 3
Reply-To: [email protected]
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Following are additional notes on the Maui Workshop held on March 24-26, and a personal comment. Florinda Donner-Grau and the Woman With Enormous Teeth One night, when Florinda was a student in Los Angeles, she was driving Carlos' VW Microbus, waiting for a light to change on a dark street. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye she saw a woman dressed in black grab her driver's side door handle. The woman's eyes were wild. She grinned dementedly at Florinda, her expression distorted by enormous protruding teeth. Frightened, Florinda screamed and jammed her foot on the gas pedal. She took off down the road, but the woman ran alongside, keeping up with her. Now terrified, Florinda sped up, accelerating to 80 miles per hour. The woman kept pace, running and holding onto the door handle for a long time, until Florinda finally looked again, and she was gone.
She immediately went to see don Juan. She told him about the woman and what had happened. Don Juan seemed concerned. He thought for awhile, and then, in a serious voice asked, "Was the woman farting?" Florinda was stunned. She made don Juan repeat his question. He asked again if the woman had been farting. Florinda was not only unhinged by the question, she was greatly annoyed with don Juan for not taking her very serious situation very seriously. "No, no," don Juan insisted with a straight face. "A woman running that fast must have been farting." No matter how annoyed Florinda became with him, even shouting that he was a senile old man, don Juan persisted questioning whether the woman had been farting. Eventually, Florinda gave up and told don Juan that if he wasn't going to take her situation seriously than neither was she. "Good," said don Juan. "When confronted by the unfathomable, a warrior either makes a joke about it or he takes it seriously, and it destroys him."
The Blank Check of Sheer Affection Florinda described the motivating force behind the behavior of people in don Juan's group, and now in Carlos'. She called it a "blank check of sheer affection" that they had given to each other. She recalled Carlos' describing don Juan as always giving 100% of his attention to anyone who talked with him -- more, Carlos' pointed out, than anyone in the social world ever gives to anyone else. The reason that sorcerers can give this intensity is because they have retained a greater amount of abstract awareness than ordinary people, who usually are preoccupied only with themselves. Issuing such a check is also a tremendous warrior's challenge. Florinda declared that she had given Taisha her check of sheer affection but, although Taisha was beautiful and brilliant, she had a horrendous side to her personality and was not the easiest person to get along with.
A Personal Assessment I was impressed with the organization and execution of the Maui workshop, not so much by the workshop coordinators at Axiom and the hotel, as by Florinda, Taisha and, especially the Chacmools. The Chacmools put great energy into everything they did, which included not only directing the Tensegrity passes but also shepherding Florinda and Taisha in and out of the auditorium, where we surely would have trapped them for hours asking endless questions. Whatever else they discussed, Florinda, Taisha and the Chacmools focused on Tensegrity and the Recapitulation. It took a six thousand mile trip and a confrontation with these people for me to realize that Carlos is now the Nagual, no longer an apprentice, and that no matter how much his early books have meant to me, he is offering a new energy and direction, and Tensegrity and the Recapitulation are the avenues to it. --Sandy McIntosh
2 Comments
So maybe Florinda, Taisha, Kylie and Carol don't have it as good as we here think they must, what with having known (except Kylie) don Juan's party and all. Must be very isolating if you think about it (so don't think about it 😉), knowing that there are likely no other people in the world as far along as you are.
That is if any of the crop of apprentices that were there in parallel with Carlos are still alive and kicking. Several were younger than him, as I recall. They could be around 80 now.
Carlos spoke about "blank checks" once or twice, maybe just so we'd notice when he gave us one.
Howard Lee is an example. He put Howard on the map, by mentioning HYL in "Fire From Within".
Howard decided to cash it by creating his own workshops.
But one thing about a blank check from Carlos was, he didn't bother with how you cashed it.
He gave me two.
I'm trying to decide if there was a third, but it's difficult to judge a sorcerer. Sometimes they're stalking and you just happened to be handy for it.