Carol Tiggs' Talk at the Los Angeles Workshop 1997 - Evening

Notes by Vincent Sargenti and Randy Stark

Los Angeles Workshop, August 23 to 27, 1997

Standing up after a morning of doing the Running Man series, some participants commented on feeling a bit untethered. There was also mention of popping off into dreams and blank spaces experienced in the sequence of time during 'lulls'.

Carol's afternoon lecture was the last one of the day. At its conclusion, the Energy Trackers came out and taught the next series, On the Run. When participants returned from a dinner break, the Elements taught Unbending Purpose, the third series of Not-Doing passes, to end the day.

After the lunch break, Carol strolled back in wearing a black dress with what looked like white pictographs of some sort on it. She mounted the platform and walked around the podium smiling as she greeted participants and stated her name. Back behind the podium, she took out her notes, opened her water bottles, and launched off into her lecture.

She began with a few words about her identity and the 'identity crisis' her and her cohorts were experiencing. The issue was one that they had all brought up at the beginning of each lecture. They were becoming unknown to themselves.

Carol went on to talk about our being members of western civilization. She said that because we have been brought up and socialized as members of western civilization we always place the blame for things on somebody else. We do not take responsibility for our actions. She said that this is the price tag of being at the mercy of energy and awareness other than our own. All of our social molds have been taken from Bobby, and as a result we have become just like him; petty, sluggish, lazy and unwilling to take responsibility.

She talked again about Carlos' recent breakthrough to a new vibratory level and what it meant for them. She said the implications were staggering and that they may not be able to formulate what exactly it means for some time, if ever. She said again that vibration is key to everything, and that they were learning new things about it and its relationship to everything they knew about energy and awareness.

Carol then related something that Carlos said to her recently that was the most exquisite thing she had ever heard. He had grabbed her by the arm and said very movingly, "I never thought I'd live forever . . . let's do it!"

It has since become an axiom which guides them.

After a short hush and light applause, Carol returned to the subject of the Not-Doing passes.

"The Running man must be known perfectly," she said. "The energetic fact of the Running Man is that one is dipping into the fringe, or into the stream, of awareness. The old nagual said that the fringe of awareness is attached to the bottom of the luminous cocoon."

It is an ankle-high area around the feet, like a skirt, through which we can dip into the Dark Sea of Awareness.

"We have no inventory for energy fields," she went on to say. "They are not part of our socialized cognitive system."

You cannot say that you know what it's like to see energy because the possibility does not exist within our cognition. It is outside the uninterrupted flow of our cognitive experience.

Carol said that scientists and physicists were creating all these very complex mathematical equations to represent something that could not, under any circumstances, be understood through socialized cognitive effort. She said that what they were trying to understand existed beneath and behind, between the 'fractions' of, their equations.

When, through the practice of not-doing, one experiences a 'lull', the whole works stop. There is an energetic halt. Carol explained that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico were experts at making practical use of this 'lull'. She said that it made them move faster. They were able to bring about the halt . . . and then run . . . halt . . . run . . . in a place that existed only between the 'fractions'.

The ancient shamans understood the impetus of people's actions. They knew the Not-Doing of things, how to be calm and listen to whatever is said. To take ordinary daily life situations and turn them around, transforming them into something extraordinary.

Returning to the subject of the Running Man series, Carol said the old nagual maintained that one had to be able to perform it to perfection. He said that in teaching them to perform the passes for Not-Doing he was showing them how to begin stirring the shallow stream of awareness in order to start a new generation of the glow of awareness.

The passes for Not-Doing actually stir the shallow stream of awareness, our only avenue to the Dark Sea. She explained, like a medical professor, that in performing the Running Man and On the Run series we were bringing energy and awareness up, splashing it onto our legs and intentionally bringing it even further up the body to our vital centers (the liver, gallbladder, spleen, pancreas, V-spot, and womb for women). She stressed that this progressive movement of energy and awareness upward had to be accompanied by a sense of increased discipline and behavioral change.

Carol went on to discuss what it had been like for her to 'have all this new energy' from practicing the magical passes, too much energy, and how she had not been able to use it to go in the direction she wanted to, that she hadn't known how to harness it. She told the audience that she stayed awake far too much, which seemed to her like a terrible waste of all this good energy because she wanted to be able to use it for dreaming and other sorceric activities. The old nagual said it was the plight of the western mind to be overly absorbed in a sense of unyielding self-concern. He told her that we've all been reared to only search through a small range of possibilities. Having an unusual amount of energy and knowing how to utilize it was not one of them.

Don Juan told her how stimulants create an acidic condition in the body. He said that this condition was not conducive to harnessing the unusual amount of energy that comes from practicing the magical passes. Don Juan said that acidity -- caused by using too many stimulants; sugar, coffee, etc. -- keeps us awake.

"Do the Running Man instead," Carol admonished audience.

She went on to talk about the On the Run series, and how its original Spanish name meant 'fugitive'. She said that the practice of the On the Run passes create a strange heat or agitation.

Carol said the old sorcerers were obsessed with controlling the 'lull' and the strange force that it is. Her and her cohorts drove themselves bonkers trying to figure out a way to handle it and never did.

"We have to break free," she said, "to go on this journey of awareness."

She emphasized the way the movements are to be performed, saying that, "The jolting style of the arm is the essence."

She described how tendon energy is what actually shakes loose encrusted energy on the outside of the luminous sphere. She told the audience that they need to use intent to focus tendon energy on various areas of the encrusted shell to aid in redistribution of energy to the vital centers. This use of tendon energy is how we can tap the central binding force that holds our entire being together.

Carol continued talking about the Running Man movements and how pass #3 is an example of bringing energy up from around the feet to the vital centers. She said that verticality creates an energy spill on the ground around us. Horizontality, combined with the passes for Not-Doing, helps repool this energy spill and redistribute it to places where it will do some good -- our vital energy centers.

Carol said that warriors weren't built in a day.

(One note of caution in doing the passes, she said, is that the jerk is preferred when it comes to tendon energy.)

Carol stressed the practical functionality Tensegrity practice had for the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage.

"I am here to close the topic of Not-Doing," she continued. "The policy of Tensegrity is saturation. After a while, warriors realize that they don't need anyone to help them. All that is needed is time and determination, and the Dark Sea of Awareness will determine what is what."

Carol told a story of how don Juan gave Carlos something to try. He told him that man is a being deeply connected to the ground. He said there were a multitude of strange energies that ran only along the ground. He told Carlos to find the tallest building he could find and experiment. He said to go up in the building and find a particular floor where these energies ceased to have as deep a hold and then work his way down one story at a time until he noticed a distinct difference.

Carol said Carlos asked her if she wanted to go somewhere with him, but wouldn't tell her where. He took her up into a large building. When they exited the elevator on the 12th floor of this high-rise, Carlos lay down on the floor. He explained to Carol that the ground has unusual energies, energies capable of tapping the binding force. She went into a demonstration of what she felt like and how awkward it was for her to be there with him laying down on the floor in the middle of this office building. She was so afraid that someone was going to come along and see him there.

Carol's demonstration of the anxiety she felt was hair raising. 'What's going to happen to me?' was the theme of it. She was so filled with concern for herself and what others would think that she was beside herself. She was not yet capable at that age of breaking free to see the wonder in what the new nagual was trying to achieve.

"But now," she said with fierce determination in her voice, "after a lifetime of remaking ourselves, we are capable of that and much more. And if we are capable of it, anyone is. Thus we gather behind an axiom of deadly use: I never thought I'd live forever . . . let’s do it!"

Carol then introduced the third and final musical theme of the workshop. It was a bit more up tempo and lighter than the previous two. It's mood seemed to evoke a sense of hope, yet despair. It was more of a dance number that took the rich, heart-rending moods of the previous days and turned them upward and outward, aiming everyone's attention towards infinity.

USELESS HOPE

by Pedro Flores

Useless hope
Flower of sorrow
Why do you persecute me
In my loneliness?
Why don't you let me
Drown my yearnings
In the bitter cup
Of reality?

Why don't you kill me
By opening my eyes?
Why don't you wound me
With unrequited love?

Useless hope
If you see that I'm fooling myself
Why don't you die?
Why don't you die
In my heart?

Useless hope,
Flower of my sorrow,
Why don't you die
In my heart?

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