Quinta Tonantzin Retreat House Tepoztlan
10.12
Quinta Tonantzin Retreat House, Tepoztlan, Cuernavaca, México.
To morning sitting for 07.15.
Breakfast at 08.00.
Silence visited; for which I was grateful, and enjoyed.
Comments offered from around the tables were stunning. Oh! were I able, and had the time, to present a full report on the quality and breadth of today’s breakfast comments. The rest of my day, at least, might be spent with this. Perhaps someone else on the course will make a report.
Listening organises.
Silence is a good note.
From Chris: (the difference between masculine and feminine): Oh yeah? Oh yeah!
The feminine voice is beginning to be sounded and heard within the GC.
Sandra fought manfully not to speak, but was encouraged to fail.
Aileen saved my life by killing the scorpion, and I learnt from her action the nature of woman.
Robert reported on consulting with Pierre Elliot on what to do with a house (the Red Lion House) of young men; and a comment from a Halveti sheik.
What is to be gained from commenting / observing / reporting an experience; and how that can be undermined by wittering on about it.
Conventional and traditional forms of organisation are falling away. What is to replace these? This is the New World, and part of what we are doing here. But the New World is not tomorrow or a few years from now. We are the New World: here and now.
Work for the morning called.
Guitar Meeting for combined Intro and Kitchen Teams. Differentiation is not made on grounds of personal qualities, but of a capacity to honourably respond to challenge. This is a practical concern: if a beginner is presented with a level of challenge beyond their ability to respond, it may lead to a feeling of failure. A criterion for honourable response: what is possible? + 10-50%. If Beginners are prepared to accept that some challenges presented may be beyond them, but continue to engage in a positive fashion, they are welcome.
Two spontaneous meetings after breakfast, while I was sitting quietly on the edge of the Paradise garden, with a cup of coffee.
One, a man with a background in Zen, who applied for a GC course in 1986 at the age of sixteen, and was declined (eighteen was the age requirement).
A woman of thirty whose uncle, also on the course, and Father ( a drummer) exposed her to KC when she was young, and took her to the KC concert in Monterrey, Mexico.
A third encounter, in the dining room when returning my cup: an attendee had brought a number of KC albums. Would Robert sign these? Robert walked backwards, waving, out the door.
12.36 Kitchen Meeting at 10.30. Practicalities and reporting on the Kitchen Exercise. The matter of Unnecessary Talking was raised. The Sixty Point Exercise is to be introduced tomorrow morning.
Followed by a Guitar Meeting for the combined Intro and Kitchen Teams.
So far, two techniques are currently available to all for becoming rapidly present.
Seven Assumptions For
Work In The Circle.
To circulating in whole and smaller groups: with solo, duetting, tripling, quartetting, quintetting and sextetting circulating-groups.
To the Whizz in two groups, and then one, with Vicious Ferocious Queen Julia setting it in motion.
Until c. 12.23.
T’ai Chi with Luciano at 12.30.
18.32 Lunch at 13.00. Good Silence. Good comments. Volunteers for Chris’ Excellent Adventure were solicited. And met at 15.00 with Excellent and Adventurous emanations from the garden.
The site where Aileen despatched the scorpion I…
II...
… and, Aileen reports, fed a multitude of ants.
Tea at 16.00.
Four Personal meetings beginning at 16.30. Good reports and questions.
Guitar Meeting for all with guitars at 17.45.
An introduction to G natural minor on the top three strings and the Procession Chords.
T’ai Chi now underway with Luciano.
21.47 Dinner at 19.00. A performance of a fifteen-piece Eye Of The Needle. Very moving. It took me back to the Claymont ballroom where EOTN first appeared in 1985.
A strong Silence visiting, embracing, nourishing.
Comments invited from those who have not commented so far on this course, or who have said very little, and all the women. Good comments were made.
As has become conventional, what to do this evening was given reflection over dessert. And then decided: small groups.
My own small group was the Buddies: Curt, Luciano, Leo and Dev, meeting in The Room Next Door.
Luciano, Curt and Leo presented approaches they have been developing.
We discussed how the First Secondary Exercise bears some relationship to the First Primary. In the original presentation, the First Primary included all finger combinations, of two, three and four fingers. The present formulation has become: the First Primary addresses combinations of four fingers, of which there are twenty-four. When these are combined with different strings, there are 256 combinations. But, if any one parameter is changed, then the exercise shoots off in more directions with many more combinations.
The Second Secondary, introduced formally for the first time in a GC context at this meeting, drawing on and developing from Christian’s insights recently presented to me in Caorle, is radically different. The Second Secondary is the exercise of Double Picking. When the Principle Of Graduating Extension is applied, this includes triple and quadruple picking. These we also looked at. The movement from two to three-string picking is where cross-picking beings. So, the Fourth Secondary was also introduced as part of this.
Alternate picking, and cross-picking, have been the basis of my right hand functioning for 53 years, following the original Point Of Seeing of the young Fripp when playing
Dick Sadlier’s Study In 3/4. There is one aspect of Double Picking that, for now, I find profoundly counter-intuitive. Nevertheless, Double Picking strongly resonates with me. Now, it’s down to more practicing.
Returning to my room, I looked at the ceiling.
