Sunday, May 4, 1997, at Dance Home in Santa Monica 1 ?3 PM PDT
by Corey Donovan

[On hand from Cleargreen were Talia, Kylie, Grant, Tycho (the "Orange Scout"), Rylin and Margarita, along with Thurney.]

Castaneda began, "What’s the word? Tell me! You have to tell me because whatever papers or things you gave to Ellis, I didn’t get. Our dear Ellis . . ."

Daniel asked, "When you are trying to be silent and thoughts come in, what should you do about the internal dialogue?"

Castaneda responded, "Internal dialogue is when you are thinking about yourself, just churning." He acted it out, "'I should have said that, and then they would have done that. How could she have said that? I can't believe they acted like that!' That's internal dialogue. Other stray thoughts that come up--they'll come, let them go. If you don't fuel them and feed them, they won't stay. You're not supposed to force the silence. You're supposed to accrue the moments of silence. Don't just do it for a little while and then think you've got to rest." He mimicked someone saying, "'Whew! God, I've done it for three minutes already. I've got to take a break!"

"J__'s an engineer. With his training, once he's empty, he'll be able to reach out for engineering solutions and new concepts. They're there, but you need some training to be able to understand and use the answer you're getting. One of the naguals didn't have the training that J__ does, but he was interested in forms, geometric shapes and design. He would go into the Second Attention and return with these objects, or the design or concept for them. There was a roomful of objects that he had created. He made these chairs that were like barstools. They were strange looking, but they were the most comfortable chairs you've ever sat in. And the minute you sat in them, they would swivel 180 degrees so that you were looking into this void. The room was always dimly lit.

"I sometimes would stay in that room. There was a little mat in the corner on the floor, and I would often stay there because it was such a powerfully abstract place. It wasn't like one could get a comfortable night's sleep there, but it was like being one-to-one with the abstract nature of the universe. When I stayed there, I would see these green lines intercrossed with pink lines, forming a checkerboard kind of pattern. The lines never converged, it was always a checkerboard. But by focusing on them, the lines would take me away, to other places.

"Other people saw the green lines. When Carol was there, she would see this lake. Since she was deathly afraid of water, it made it doubly frightening for her to see this void, this emptiness in the form of a lake. On the other hand, there were people who sat in that chair in that room and didn't see anything. So it wasn't so much the objects or the chair that did it to people. It depended on how 'silent' they were and what they were ready to perceive."

"You know, people have written letters complaining that they weren't getting attention, or they weren't getting hugs, and they talked to someone else who was getting hugs. They were the same people--Talia has the letters--that wrote before how their life had been changed and things were now so much better for them. But now they're writing complaining, and saying 'The Nagual is having sexual relations with some people.' Where do I have the time to do that?"

He then pointed to a number of us, including Daniel Lawton, me, Ralph and Pablo, saying that we had "changed." And he pointed to Keith--saying, "Keith has been heavily involved with Ellis, but he's real strong and it hasn't affected him." Finally he pointed to David Worrell saying, "David. The tall one. He stands over there and he never speaks. That's just wonderful. He's changed a lot too."

"You're so close. I'm just trying to keep you going in the right direction."

"I once asked someone to be the usher, because her fibers were evenly spread across her shoulders. Many of you had your fibers down at genital level, and a few even down at feet level. Now you generally all have them up around the torso. Hers were straight across and I thought it might be a sign. But she said, 'I can’t be the sacrificial lamb.'"

He imitated himself asking, "'What?!!'" He claimed she responded, "'I can’t "do it" with forty men. Maybe I could do it with you . . . maybe. But I'm not going to do it with forty men.'" He mimicked himself again responding "Huh?!!" She somehow got the idea that by being the usher she was going to have fuck all the guys in the Sunday class. To come up with something like that, something so gross . . . . When someone is so grossly wrong in their interpretation, you just have to turn away."

"You know there was a problem at the end of the Mexico workshop? The authorities were set to close it all down on the last day because there were Americans working there in place of Mexicans. Travis had taken care of all the forms and paperwork, so it was a ludicrous situation, especially because the Witches weren't being paid to be there, but someone was creating problems. I'm not going to tell you any names, but you would never believe where they got the information. A form had been faxed, including all the details and who was there, by way of the Mexican consul in Quebec." [Castaneda seemed to be implying that François, who was thrown out of the group when it was discovered that he was secretly living with Castaneda's doctor, Angelica, had had something to do with generating the complaint through his former home in Quebec.] "I can't imagine the anger that drove this person to whatever they did. The authorities showed up and were going to shut it down unless some payment was made. The payment they asked for was $1,000 for each one of the Americans that was speaking. So Taisha quickly had most of the group run and head for the airport. So there were only five Elements there on Sunday," which is why they couldn't review some of the passes that others had taught, and ended earlier than they had previously announced.

Castaneda opened the floor for questions. J__ asked what time of day we should recapitulate.

"Don't recapitulate for eight hours. Whenever you recapitulate, do it with a real clear head; with a clear and strong intent to be there and burn up that portion of your life. Do it every day, as intensely as you can, and then stop. Don't try to do it for long stretches."

J__ asked whether we should do passes in the morning and which passes we should do when. Castaneda responded, "It's good to do passes in the morning. Do the men's passes first thing in the morning. Those are the ones that really work up a sweat and get you going. Do the left-and-right-side passes at the end of the day, maybe right before going to bed."

"When should we do the Westwood passes?"

"You can do those any time. Those are good during the day, or in the evening. You can trade off between those and the Heat series."

Daniel asked if there was another technique for reaching inner silence, like the dowel technique, that one could do and not be so conspicuous in one's day-to-day activities.

"Yes. It's something I would have forgotten to mention. That's why I like the questions because I don't even think of these things, but your questions bring things to mind. You can take two small dowels, ?or ?inch around, and a couple of inches long, and fit them on the left hand in between the first and middle finger and the middle and fourth finger. The middle finger is the important one, so on either side of that one. Slot them in there and hold them and press the thumb on top to initiate it. I went around with sticks there for years, so my hands always smelled like eucalyptus. Do it on the left side. The right side doesn't really like it and gets kind of agitated by it. It's really for the left side."

Talia mentioned a story about a man cutting off his hand because he had seen "666" on it. Now she'd read that he was suing the health workers for sewing it back on, claiming that he had been prevented from "eliminating the evil hand" that is now inescapablly attached to him."

J__ asked Castaneda about his having mentioned before about the "cones" [referring to an energy formation Castaneda had claimed to see on some of the Energy Trackers following the Long Beach workshop] and whether we should "erase" them.

"No. That's not for you. You don't have the cones yet. Wait until you have the cones."

"Don’t be creative. That’s Bobby."

Toward the end he mentioned that Talia was going to engrave gold rings with "FF" for "Flyer Fighter." He told us, "But, if people ask you what it is, don’t tell them it’s for fighting the flyers. Tell them it stands for ‘fucking forever.? She’ll sell them down at her workshop."

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