Saturation and Kinesthetic Memory
In our times, people need saturation, just as the shamans of ancient Mexico needed it: they wanted to get to their inner silence as quickly and as effectively as possible. They didn't have twenty-seven generations of accumulated discipline behind them.
BULLETIN TO THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE SEMINAR AND WORKSHOP ON TENSEGRITY THAT CLEARGREEN SPONSORED IN THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES AND WHICH TOOK PLACE FROM AUGUST 23 TO AUGUST 27
September 2, 1997
Different questions have been raised by the participants of the August seminar and workshop. The one I consider to be of great urgency is one related to what was done during the first two days of the seminar, in which all the Six Series of Tensegrity were performed, each as a single unit. They wanted to know what was the practical value of those two days of steady practice, and what was the role that those long forms played in the teaching of the five series of magical passes for not-doing.
The idea of saturation, as it was explained in the workshop and seminar--i.e. bringing to the conscious level the kinesthetic effort to remember as many magical passes as possible at one time--was a concept fully exploited by the shamans who founded don Juan Matus's lineage. In more recent times, the trend was to fragment those long series and use the fragments separately as specialized tools for a concentrated onslaught on key issues. For example, the shamans who were don Juan Matus's cohorts believed that it was superfluous to load their kinesthetic memory with so many movements when only one of them was sufficient to bring about the results that they sought.
Their reasoning was sound, but it parted from a slightly different cognition: they had the discipline and the unbending purpose of realizing their journey to infinity. The average participant of the seminars and workshops on Tensegrity doesn't have that preparation.
In our times, people need saturation, just as the shamans of ancient Mexico needed it: they wanted to get to their inner silence as quickly and as effectively as possible. They didn't have twenty-seven generations of accumulated discipline behind them.
The long forms supplied them with the means for this saturation.
Therefore, the long forms were as important to them as anything could be. In terms of the preparation needed for executing the magical passes for not-doing, all I can say is that they sharpen the kinesthetic memory at the same time that they dull the internal dialogue: the surest, most effective way to get to inner silence.
My recommendation is that the participants of the seminar, or all of those interested in Tensegrity, should practice the Six Series of Tensegrity, each as a single unit, either in groups of practitioners, or alone. The magical passes for not-doing that were taught in the seminar, should be practiced sparingly, and with infinite care. They are magical passes, and have to be treated as such. They have the capacity to affect energy, and this capacity must be used slowly, at the same time that useless behavioral patterns are eliminated. The effect of the magical passes on the internal structure has to correlate with the strength of the external structure in order for the magical passes to be most effective. This was an axiom by which the shamans of ancient Mexico lived.
Carlos Castaneda