Grafting-on to God

Sometimes I've known a person, let's say a woman who was wronged by a man, who was so hurt by the experience that de-facto all men became bad. Evil macho abusers who lived solely to Keep Women Down, unless of course they were white men, in which case they are additionally guilty by race-proxy of approximately every crime of mankind toward one another since the dawn of time. (I should call it the President Syndrome: like whoever is sitting in the Big Chair at any given moment, they are considered daily freshly-guilty of voodoo baby eating, impending environmental annihilation and the wanton destruction of mankind -- and all this before 9am each morning.)

Humans tend to generalize, which itself is not bad, unless applied as a limiting stereotype, which can be. In the case of people who've been hurt by something, this tendency seems more common.

So for example, while not all former czech, long-haired canadian linux nuts are exasperating, the fact that my ex fits that description means that every other man who might is probably not going to get a fair deal from me. I recognize this. Like some kind of Pavlovian Romance Syndrome, it'll never be otherwise, c'est la vie.

Church and Hypocrisy

Back in the days when I sometimes attended church, one of the things I found interesting--because of my general sociology and psychology interests--was how people tend to "blur" the actual issues of church itself (the human social construct) and God (the divine energy with which some people have a 'relationship').

For example, people who had left the church, would sometimes say something to me like, "Well yes, that is because the people there are such hypocrites!" (This should be a given, since at least some people everywhere tend to be; why should church be any different.) But on talking with them, what became clear was that they had not actually just left attending church. Their prayer, their reading, their focus in general related to God, had usually also vanished or nearly so.

The irony here is that the relationship with God is for them, and for God; it has nothing to do with what some other person(s) at church are like. But they grafted on to God their disgust at the social situation.

Religion vs. Spiritual, and 'Agnostics'

Now most people will say--in today's world this is becoming almost a stock answer--"I'm not religious, but I consider myself spiritual." If the person actually IS spiritual; if they spend as much attention or focus, prayer or whatever, on the subject of the divine when on their own (or more) than when in church, then that makes sense.

But many of the people I've known to say this, it's kind of an evasion. Much like 'agnostic', which technically only describes a person who 'doesn't know whether there is a God or not', usually that's not so much an issue of indecision as an issue of not giving a damn either way. As a former agnostic who cared, I see the difference.

And as someone who no longer goes to church--because none of them around me support my personal theology--but who spends a decent amount of time praying and thinking about such things, I see the difference.

All of this is only prep material for the actual point though, which is this: the behavior of people in a church has nothing to do with God.

Remote Viewing Had To Be In Here Somewhere, Of Course

This is typical... and human. For example, I've seen plenty of people too disgusted by the online remote viewing field's issues to bother viewing, because their emotional turn-off simply carried over into the entire subject. I'm sure this can be applied to nearly any topic or issue.

But now getting back to the subject...

Church as a Governmental Construct

Historically, The Church (note the capitals) has had and been a problem in several key ways. Not counting the minor detail of going forth and killing people in the name of love and forgiveness (...), there's a whole lot of financial, political, social, personal and other power-trips involved in the 'structure' of ANY church--which is, at base, a "socio-spiritual governmental construct"--enough of it to make this history and this tendency difficult for some people to overlook or forgive.

The Church--and most every church--has also done an untold amount of good, of course. But the zillions of good works done by individuals, no matter how much more prevalent if sheer numbers are what counts, are generally personal-sized moments of compassion and assistance. For sheer media and enduring legacy, it's hard to compete with the global-sized screwups that "leaders" of ANY governmental-construct can pull off.

As most of this has been made possible in part by the creative theocracy of doctrine and dogma, it goes without saying that all of that is colored by the same emotion.

As a result of Church being, by nature, a governmental-construct, and as a result of its least charming qualities being its most famous stereotypes, and as a result of various doctrines and dogmas supporting both of those, over time I've met more and more people who range from disinterested in religion to fervently against it.

I know people who almost rabidly hate the church, sometimes any church, and by extension, everything about the doctrines that the church(es) hold dear.

Theological Identities - Mine

One of the most mind-crunching things about genuine spiritual experience is that it often has the inconsiderate problem of not fitting into any of the pre-made boxes our culture has designed for it. If it did, my experiences would be things like, say, being of white light, with wings, sitting on clouds, playing harps, and spouting Official Doctrine.

The closest I've come to light beings appeared to be aliens.

The closest I've come to an angel was my blue eyes of soul/faith experience. The only ref I find to this in literature is in occult works, following an Abyss experience (which I also had, appears to be archetypal), in some works it's called the Holy Guardian Angel.

A number of seemingly spiritual identities--or some which had such profound physical and emotional effects I considered them spiritual, one I wondered if it was Archangel Michael--look just like one of the main identities of my 'four elementals of soul'... which also look like The Nordics (alleged aliens)... ok, let's just go with saying this is, at best, a confusing experience-set.

And then there's the creatures, both the little ones and the 'helpers', like I talked about in The Dark and Fiery Coup. And then there's the (demon-like?) creature I talked about in The Immortal. And then... well you know, I could go on for hours, even with the maybe 5% of my experiences I actually have written down and posted somewhere on the internet, which involved other identities.

I onced merged with the number four. It was sex of the spirit. To say this was 'abstract yet fundamental' would be the understatement of the century; I don't begin to have words to describe it. Also, I once slightly merged psychically with a metal recycling bin. Who needs drugs? So even outside the things we assume are merely 'spiritual' -- and this is only because "we can't see them," since if we could SEE the identities we consider spiritual, we'd probably consider them something else, when you think about it -- it is all a bigger cast of characters than most would imagine.

The cosmology of critters, whether demonic or divine, whether local spiritual homeboys or foreign aliens or "inorganics" as Casteneda called one grouping, is very big, and very confusing. Some religions simplify this: everything is Jesus, or it's evil. End of story. I can't really deal with that kind of polarity though. So I'm left simply accepting that there's a long list of stuff that is pretty confusing and I have no real idea what it is, or what it means.

Sometimes I find myself 'tempted' by cat-eyed lizard guy type of aliens (as I think of them, maybe they're entities, who the hell knows?) and usually find myself standing feet planted, legs apart like a sailor, chanting loudly, "I am of Michael!" at them. I always figured this meant Archangel Michael since I've always been drawn to him and used to be a total nut about him, chanting nightly and praying intently and so on. But it turns out that in the Urantia book, Jesus is actually assumed to be an identity which, prior to the whole dwelling in a body thing (and we see how well THAT worked out for him, according to legend anyway...), was allegedly named Michael. Seriously. So there are people who call Jesus Michael. But wait... it turns out the word 'Jesus' is like, the Greek translation of Yeshua, which is actually Joshua -- so some people call Jesus Joshua. Is anybody else confused yet... I suppose you might say as long as they're talking to him, HE probably doesn't have an identity crisis, and psi "intent" being what it is, one assumes their prayers are reaching the right divine post office box.

I really don't know what I'm talking about in all those dreams and OBEs where I find myself yelling that. To me at the time it's simply an overpowering "devoted to / respect for / disciple of" sort of feeling. If it turns out there are 1001 spiritual entities called "Michael," I'd be hard pressed to know exactly which one I was talking about. Michael just seems like THE ultimate authority when I find myself in that state of mind; it doesn't really feel like I'm referring to one of a zillion guys who live on the hill, because rather it's more like, the name feels as penultimately-singular as the word "God".

Mary and Jesus

Now, I once had an experience where I 'met' Mary. As in, the mother of Jesus. And I once had an experience where I 'met' Jesus. Now this would be all well and fine, with a couple of small details, being that:

a) I am not a Christian, and

b) I didn't even believe in Mary as anything more than some woman who had Jesus (I wasn't raised catholic, so had no affiliation with her at all), and

c) In all my years as a christian, I prayed fiercely, constantly, to "better understand the jesus thing," only to finally realize that for years the answer had been, "a holy man, but not at all what the construct of religion has made him out to be." So I didn't really even buy the standard theology about him, which was complicated by:

d) I think there is sufficient archeo-/anthropo-logical evidence, as well as viewing work (not official RV since there's no hard feedback), to suggest that the human Jesus didn't actually die on the cross and he and his mom lived out the rest of their lives quite happily in another city and were buried in crypts still considered in that region to belong to them.

So let's recap: No christianity, no Mary, no belief in Jesus as more than a holy man, and no belief he died on the cross "and was resurrected"--that has to be the important part, since everybody dies, obviously!--suffice to say that my belief systems simply DO NOT SUPPORT the standard theology of Christianity.

But I met Jesus, and Mary, in spiritual experiences, and they are the most mind-blowing, powerful, real experiences imaginable. They literally shifted my perspective overnight. I can't even just say I respect them, only "such a degree of AWE it approaches healthy fear, yet understanding of innate goodness that is nothing to fear" starts on describing it.

So if Jesus wasn't the guy that official theology packages him as--and I do not believe he was--then who did I meet? How did I 'know' it was 'Jesus' at the time? And the same question goes for Mary. Some might say, "Well obviously he was, your experience proves that," but to that I would say, "If praying fiercely for years and getting a pretty clear and ever-stronger intuitive answer doesn't mean anything, then this is all pointless anyway." In my view, the only dichotomy is that the answer I got wasn't what I suspected, and doesn't support the power politic of our culture. And that would be all fine if it weren't for the dilemma that DESPITE this, I still managed to encounter both of those identities, spiritually.

My friend ML has a theory about this. She believes that although they began as individuals, that gradually the hundreds, thousands, millions, by now billions, of people devotedly praying to them, crying to them, pouring massive energy their whole lives into them, have created thought forms that are more real than real--literally, they are alive and powerful in a way that goes way beyond anything we as humans can currently understand. This is to say, that these identities are "based on" the original identities, but are vastly more than that, both in complexity and in power. They are divine and powerful and even godlike in a fashion, but they are not merely "the soul of the dead humans" we knew on earth.

So far, this is about the best framework I can use for the subject. I know that the Jesus and Mary I met 'spiritually' are real; I believe that the Jesus and Mary who lived on our planet were regular, if highly spiritual, people; but I am not 100% certain what these two seemingly distinct yet intertwined aspects of each identity have to do with each other.

It is, much like the aliens vs. entities dilemma, mostly just "damn confusing."

Theological Identities - In General

Now one of the things I notice about how people around me deal with religion, goes back to the start of this essay, and the issue with projecting feelings about church onto God. Since most of my friends tend to be brainiacs, it's not surprising that they've already done plenty of thinking-outside-the-cross about religion. (Yes, I might burn in hell for coming up with that pun.)

One thing I note is how many of them dislike, if not actually "rabidly despise", organized religion, The Church or any church, etc. They point out, and usually rightly, the number of problems with the doctrine and history and likely legitimacy of plenty of the dogma that is used to 'support' the worship or relationship with these identities.

What I see but can't understand though, is why they have forcibly "grafted-on to God" their issues with the human socio-governmental construct of church. Yes, I can agree that the crusades sucked, that half the OT is originally Sumerian, that most the 'divine workings' in the OT are probably basic science people forced into the framework of a divine hand (and in some unexplained-so-far cases, possibly technology more mundane than divine), but that is all about the church, the doctrine -- the human constructs, in other words.

It is not about God, or Jesus, or Mary, or Archangel Michael. All the resentment and disparaging cynical opinions thrown at these identities come from issues related to church or humans -- NOT issues related to THEM.

In my own experience, these things exist as surely as my car and my computer, but less physically--although even more intensively on the occasion when I bother feeling connected. I don't have any issue with them as spiritual identities. I believe in them completely and I have absolute faith in their divinity and goodness and all that kind of thing.

But if I say this publicly, people assume -- whether they are religious or anti-religious -- that I am obviously accepting of all the constructs of formal theology, or I wouldn't believe in them. That if I talk to Jesus or Michael or God or Mary or whatever, that I have "bought into" the tenets of organized religion, and a couple thousand years (or more) of stupidity that to a great degree comes with that doctrine. In other words, that I am "religious".

Even some intelligent people don't seem like they are able to intellectually (let alone experientially) grasp that Jesus-Mary-Michael-God as divine identities, or personal experiences, are completely unrelated to -- or at the least, "not constricted by" -- the theological framework that The Church puts them into. They figure that the identities don't exist. Or, that they do, but they suck as much as the church does.

It is a shame, because I know how powerful and divine these identities are, and I believe that a "relationship with them" would greatly improve any person, kind of like how having a truly awesome role-model and insightful friend does, times about a billion. But they are unable to allow themselves such a thing, because their intellectual side is so busy kicking the tires of the human construct of church and its dogmatic BS, that their intuitive side is unable to allow the relationships that would truly feed their soul.

They make the divine identities in theology the "representatives" for everything the humans do. Ironically, dying-for-human-sins-when-innocent is the very model of the jesus legend [and many prior], and in a reputational fashion, you might say this continues to happen daily.

They have, in short, grafted-on to god all their problems with humans. It's understandable, but I respect people who don't want to be limited by biases that our culture gives us -- whether it teaches us those, or whether we develop those biases through our rejection of what it teaches as an alternative, are no different. Either way, it is still a sort of unthinking bias that has us living our spirituality by default, or ignorance, or don't-give-a-damn-ness, rather than a genuine, truth-seeking intuitive awareness.

Experience with Divine Entities

The issues with people's comprehension of the difference between genuinely spiritual, vs. religious, makes it difficult for me to talk about some of my experiences, because I know they're going to be wildly "interpreted" by people with so many pre-existing belief systems.

It's like knowing that if you post the color blue, it's going to look red to some, purple to others, and black to still others, which makes the idea of posting blue seem rather pointless, if you see what I mean.

So I'm taking the trouble to write this down and mention something about my "spiritual relationship" with "divine entities" because it ought to be mentioned. I don't talk about it much because I feel like it'd just be misinterpreted anyway. But I feel it would be dishonest to not mention it ENTIRELY, as if it didn't exist, when in fact these entities play powerful roles in my inner life. Not as often as they should but that is my doing, not theirs. They have always--always without exception--been present and helpful when called.

When I said in a previous post that the characters on the TV show 'Supernatural' had 'the spiritual depth of Doritos' it's because I've been involved in enough powerful experiences, both good and bad, both with others and alone, to have some very strong feelings about the absolute necessity of an intensely personal relationship with God, or what one perceives to be God or some Aspect of it. What people choose to call it, and how they model it--as 'higher self' or 'holy guardian angel' or 'god on a cloud', is beside the point. The "spiritual technology" is via "personal relationship". How any person chooses to frame or model that relationship is entirely up to them. If they consider some part of their soul linked to something divine and they relate to that by imagining absorbing a red triangle, then hey, more power to 'em, whatever works. The point is the 'relationship'.

Anything that portrays people working with ANY kind of "powerful identities" and does not include that "relationship with the divine" element, is profoundly miseducating the world. I feel I can assure you that anybody who walks into serious ceremonial magick, or serious spiritual warfare in a christian sense, without a profound connection to self-via-God, is going to be someone's lunch. On the outside, they'll still look like the person you knew, but on the inside, their energy will basically be feeding other intents, and their walking personality will become a shell of what its true potential is. (Then again, since so much of our culture seem to be pretty shallow anyway, it's not like most people would notice.)

My Divine

Jesus as a spiritual, divine entity, is real. Unimaginably powerful. Love so pure it's like nothing else.

Mary as a spiritual, divine entity, is real. Unimaginably powerful. In my experience, though I'm sure the possibilities are endless, she was more like a strong protective mother, not the sweet innocent virginal sort; more 'mama bear' in spirit form.

Michael, as a spiritual, divine entity, is real. Unimaginably powerful. In my experience, a hard focus for the typically associated blue-ray things (honor, discipline, protection, and especially "faith"), with a curious tendency, whenever I get too "into" him, to literally pick up my attention and move it back to 'God', as if he feels I'm worshipping him and that's inappropriate.

And God, of course, as something we really don't have any good words for, is real. That oughtta be a no-brainer. I once spent a year as an Atheist. I thought. Every day, I ended up apologizing to God for not believing in him. I finally realized I was doing this, had a good laugh at myself, and realized that God is so innately a part of me that no amount of conscious denial, based on intellectually wanting to be 'cool' enough to disbelieve solely because religion is stupid and my ego doesn't want to be seen as stupid by other ego-centric intellectuals (...) was going to do anything about but inhibit me.

Now whether every person is capable of experiencing such things, I don't know. It's possible that genetics, and even natural intuition, might have something to do with how we physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, process the "God" or "divine entity" experience. And it's obvious to me at least, that a lot of people's spiritual experience is hugely inhibited by their prejudices -- either for a given religious framework, or against religion altogether.

I suspect that less grafting-on to God of personal bias, might allow more intuitive-experience of the divine, in ways, and forms, and identities, and situations, which are deeply impactive, but might not fit in the easy categories we expect.

I like the phrase from the movie The Fifth Element, "I serve life." I consider Archangel Michael my primary model. My internal metaphysics are fairly consistent but outside that realm, inexplicable and often confusing. They start with an Inner Guide sort of model, but are strongly grounded in something with multiple aspects... I have not been nearly as good at interaction as I should be, but now that I'm going to have some more time in my life, I hope to resolve that.

But my relationship with the divine includes such religious entities as Mary and Jesus as well. That I am not a christian, that I don't even believe 99.9% of christian theology (to include a good deal of hebrew stuff), is beside the point. I'm capable of interacting with the identities without needing them to be a given thing (or not) based on what folly humans have built around them. They exist, totally apart from the whole religion thing.

In case anybody else ever got the idea that even IF they felt the need to disregard the human religion stuff, they could still be OPEN to spiritual interaction with divine identities related to that religion, I thought I should have at least one post supporting the idea.

PJ

Russell Targ

Russell has a new book coming out. Headsup for those into his stuff.

http://www.espresearch.com/blindbiker/

Were-World

So for a week I was intensively writing... I'll get back to that shortly, soon as I get off work. It's typical paranormal fiction. Were creatures and so on. And then the last three days I watched some TV shows on amazon unbox -- three episodes of "New Amsterdam," about a soldier in the 1700s made semi-immortal by a native cure, and half a dozen episodes each last night and the night before of "Moonlight," about a young (90) vampire with O The Drama angst and his (of course) hot human sidekick. This is about ten days--well, nights and weekends--of being almost entirely obsessed with creatures that do not exist.

We assume.

It occurs to me that humans, despite that I'm one of them so I wish I were more optimistic about the lot, are unusually oblivious to the world around them. I've forgotten--and watched people forget--uncomfortable experiences within seconds. I've had experiences in full-on "3D and Dolby Sound" that I wrote off as either imagination or 'a dream' instantly because they didn't seem to fit into The World According To Consensus Reality. I've disbelieved accounts from people I would trust to tell me anything with truth, simply because I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I've watched people with lots of psychic experience be unable to accept someone else's because it was a little different. Our minds are Samsonite.

I met a man in person once who was a christian mystic. Unlike the image that brings to mind, of some gentle monk-like fellow, he was pretty different. He was as hard core metaphysical as anyone comes. I don't know how he made those puzzle pieces fit with christianity without running into contradiction in a few pretty major places, but apparently he did. He told me stories, later, of "interactions" let's just call them, with people he considered variant forms of witches and evil. Normally I would have tried not to laugh, but somehow coming from this guy, it seemed completely probable while he was telling it. He certainly had some kind of light in his eyes and intense energy. As a woman, this did little but lead me to a long list of pointedly unchristian ideas about what to do with him. Alas, he moved out of my reality too soon, leaving only the anomaly of my inability to remember his name, which was weird then and weird now.

There's a TV show I've watched on unbox called "Supernatural" which reminds me very slightly of his stories, except the show has a lot of over-violence and horror-gore by my standards; I always regret money spent on it, despite I love the actors and think the premise is good. The show is surreally missing the most important, central point of a true hunter: a relationship with God. Nobody seems to notice the guys on the TV show have the spiritual depth of Doritos. They never pray. They just go around killing people. But it's "all for the good of man" of course.

I can see why the producers would fear the spiritual angle but really, why hunt spiritual entities if you aren't spiritual? If only good and evil were always as black and white as the show makes it seem, rather than infinite shades of blended grey, like some tabby cat of the soul. Stomping out evil always seems easier when you can project it on some specific 'thing' and before you know it, 13 million people are dead allegedly "for the good of man," I suppose. And the heroes do an awful lot of selling their soul to a demon in order to save the life of someone else; as if a true belief in God would see death as so horrible, and as if any true hunter would go consorting with demons for anything at all. It promotes the mythology that they would keep their word, to start with, probably the most dangerous concept on the show.

I once met someone online who told me their father was a vampire hunter. I don't know if that's really so. He seemed a nice enough guy, a bit out there for me, but then again, I've always had the problem that my inner life is more out there than half the extremes, but my outer life is in here with logic and practicality. It looks good on the surface ("All that, yet she's still sane!"), but probably only tears me up in the middle where those opposite parts of me can't seem to mesh. But I digress. I was going to say, this leads me back to the idea I started this post with:

How much around us, do we not see?

UFOs and 'their inhabitants' have been reported since pretty much forever. From every corner of the earth. From multiple witnesses. From impeccable witnesses. Hell, one UFO sighting resulted in like a million people, over a dozen video tapes and of course much camera evidence for which we're supposed to conclude 'mass hallucination'. Because you know, camcorders hallucinate too. Despite you'd have to go into John Lilly lalaland of Vitamin K and the Stainless Steel Entities to try and make any case for that, this is apparently the conclusion of Reasonable Men(tm).

Allegedly 10% of the population is homosexual. (So to steal the joke about insanity, think of 9 friends; if it isn't them, it's you.) And yet, unless you're in California or Germany/Sweden it is highly unlikely that more than the tiniest fractional percentage of those are known to all around them in that respect. If we can't even deal with what's around us in perfectly ordinary ways like that, how do we expect to see "supernatural creatures", from the fae to the were to the undead to aliens to whatever else fiction writers hypothesize about, even if it does exist? They'd surely have strenuous measures in place to prevent and deal with exposure, and possibly talents that helped maintain the mystery.

I mean think about it. Allegedly, the reason 'werewolves' came into our cultural mythos is because they would freak out and kill people and they looked like, well, a werewolf. But if in reality they looked more like an ordinary wolf, and if management of the subculture was better so people were not being turned and freaking out daily, if they were capable of not killing, or even not turning, and of killing animals instead, and so forth -- these are the nouveau-fictions that modern writers insert to make the creatures into reasonable and sexy characters rather than monsters -- then there might not be any reason for people to notice them. Add a little mafia-style damage control, and basic human resistance to and denial of anything that frightens them anyway, and it's done.

There might be zero evidence for such things being real. I have not seen any. Ever. I've experienced things that give me opinions about a lot of other stuff, but zero about "alternative creatures", outside of the distinctly paranormal fae-type accounts (and not the kinder-gentler ones either) of a few friends. But my original "argument" with myself, that "it couldn't be real or we would know about it by now," is fundamentally flawed. That's the were variant of the "why aren't UFOs on the White House lawn" argument.

Reality itself seems a lot less... consistent and objective, the more I view and the older I get. Why do viewers I've observed task everything from known-fiction to aliens, but nobody tasks something like vampires and werewolves? I'm simply curious is all, as to why both legend and fiction are so often tasked (out of protocol obviously, for fun) but these, I've never seen done. I know it's far out--so are aliens, entities, Adam and Eve, and even "StarGate's Biggest Secret", all of which are not that unusual as targets in the field already. There's no less feedback on the worlds of fae or were than on anything else esoteric. Just fewer cultural constructs to support how people think about it.

Intuitive Writing and Speaking

Back in my Bewilderness days, I used to write a lot, emails and typed letters to friends. I would talk about my ideas and theories, a lot of metaphysical stuff. And once in awhile, it would shift into something more 'intuitive' than 'intellectual'.

There are several side effects or concomitant feelings during the time this happens. They don't all happen at once. But at least one is usually present when the writing is what I call intuitive--what others have called "inspired".

1. It feels like it is coming "through" you rather than "from" you. You could call this channeling and some do, but 'information' or 'energy' rather than an 'identity'. (I could argue that identity, information and energy are all the same thing from different perspectives, but not right now.)

2. There is an ineffable feeling of truth with it.

3. Sometimes only one word can have this! Or half a sentence. Or 3.5 sentences out of a paragraph. It is like energy wending through the language--it doesn't necessarily match the phrasing.

4. It is not much different with writing than speaking it.

5. Sometimes an internal gut-level "need" for a feeling of "sound that creates shape" is present. As if sound--even in written words!, but this is much more present with spoken words--actually IS some kind of geometric form, from another perspective.

6. There are side-effects of #5. For example, I would find myself using 3, or 30, or 300, words to say something that I actually have said with about 6 perfectly clearly, but the problem is, it didn't FEEL right. It felt like the "meaning-shape" that English words created was mismatched; the surface intellectual meaning, did not match the literal "shape of truth" that was the words. This could result in whole paragraphs sort of 'getting around to' saying something. I felt on some occasions that I understood why often, metaphysical books seemed like they had too many words, and didn't just say things succinctly. I felt they were facing the same problem--the energy of the 'truth-in-sound' not match the surface-meaning of english words, and so they were trying to pull in enough combination of shape to eventually have at least a fairly decent match.

7. Another side effect was a sometimes overwhelming need to express a certain feeling of shape in sound. I had the sense that one of these shapes was rather like a corner, or an "L" shape. Except that my language has no sound which actually matches this. The closest thing I could find was "K" -- the hard consonant aspect of it -- but that wasn't really right either. Sometimes I had such an overwhelming NEED to EXPRESS that energy that I would find myself quietly saying, "K! Kuh! KKKKKKKKKK!" -- this could happen even when typing something, bizarrely enough. I later talked with a man who'd worked in a mental hospital who told me that he'd encountered severe schizophrenics who had symptoms like that, who would make up stupid phrases that had "Hard consonants" in them (one example he gave was 'f--k a pig!') and say it over and over until they were screaming it. That is really pretty weird. I don't know if it's related but as I think a lot of "mental illness" may be the combination of genuine physical and mental problems mixed with psychic awareness highly distorted, I found that sort of interesting.

8. If in the same state of mind, I sometimes got an intuitive "thread" as I call it about OTHER people's words or writing. For example if I am looking at a paragraph of text, I have sometimes been able to 'feel'--in the same way--that a given word or piece of text, sentence or paragraph, has 'truth' in it. I could feel when it was cold and out of place as if a word had been inserted by someone else or after the fact. I could feel when the 'thread of truth' weakened and vanished. I could feel that sometimes things seemed 'mixed up' as if the sentence had been written with intuitive-truth but then the words had been rearranged.

9. There is this toy, it is a ball-like shape made of a zillion little rubber things. It is like a 'pompon' shape made of something akin to straight rubber band things. They all gather in the middle. I often had the sense that I was in the middle of a shape sort of like that, like I was in the center, and going out from me in every possible direction, was a tiny stream of energy. And I could shift my attention just slightly and I would have a different stream. This reminds me of channeler Jane Roberts, who referred to this feeling as being on a road with many "paths" and being able to choose different ones.

10. Once I had a 'stream of energy' running 'through' me that had 'information', I had to be very careful about the focus. If I had a question, an intent, and got information, it was important that I kind of "got out of the way of it." If I even paid attention to what was coming through as I communicated it, I would become interested in it, or wonder about some part of it. The instant I had that interest, it was as if I slightly changed the direction of the stream, and so the information would move with me. This could result in a rather odd constant shifting of the information's goal of explanation, rather than an essay on a single given topic. I have never shifted OUT of body to allow another identity (to my knowledge), but I assume that would solve the problem. I'm not real fond of that idea personally. I have enough issues with identity and accidental "merge" with others (people, planets, metal recycling bins...) without deliberately inviting that.

11. I have sometimes had this in remote viewing sessions. But it can be only pieces, like for example I can write down a sentence about something and feel that "the last half of that was intuitive."

I was telling a friend about this the other night and I wondered if I had ever written this down. So I just thought I would, before I forget it.

PJ

Wonder Land

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 26 December 2007

After literally going longer without even *thinking* about Remote Viewing than I have in many eons, I woke up one morning recently with a radical attitude adjustment.

I realized, suddenly, that I don't know anything about it.

I don't mean the subject, the protocol, or 47 other aspects we could wax on about. I mean actually DOING IT. Sure, I can do it technically. I could teach a few formal methods, I've developed a couple fairly unique approaches myself, and there's the 2.7 million variants on "just do it" as well.

What I mean is, I think that every thing I think about RV is a belief system.

A filter I've been too close to see.

An assumption I've been too close to question.

I think the mind automatically tries to backtrack from every observation and experience and come up with a 'why'.

I suddenly felt that everything I THINK I know about performing remote viewing is, in fact, an albatross to the process of actually doing it.

I had the feeling, all the sudden, that viewing sometimes went well despite me, not because of me.

***

My goal for 2008 with viewing is to start over. To pretend I know zero about the doing-it-part, and just let every session be anything it wants to be, without models and structures.

To be as spontaneous as humanly possible.

To put no judgement on the process for now.

To let it be like an artistic movie: something I don't have to understand or agree with. Something that is an art form and a mystery and all that matters is how I feel inside and what it means to me. Which can be different every session, every instant.

No labels. No conclusions. No theories!! Just experience. Just letting it happen however it will.

We'll see what happens.

Novelty

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 16 October 2007

Just a random thought for the morning. Some background trivia to explain where the thought came from.

Trivia: One of the things that brought up the research into 'intrinsic target properties', was based on human senses, and the way they are much more sensitive to change/novelty than to repetition. (Shannon Entropy: A Possible Intrinsic Target Property [pdf] by Edwin C. May, S. James P. Spottiswoode, and Christine L. James. Journal of Parapsychology Vol. 58, pp. 384-401, 1994.)

Trivia: I think we all have realized that 'changing up' one's RV process, whether method or any other element of the process, often seems to have an initial improved-result-impact. Initially this often leads people to be sure that whatever they just changed is THE ANSWER, FINALLY, but after awhile most viewers realize this is a fairly predictable effect is all--and alas, it does wear off.

Trivia: Cue-ing for data within a session is an issue of novelty. Change a word, a phrasing, a perspective in space or time, or even other more unusual ways of focusing, and you create a 'new cue' that can often prompt new data. A given cue (whether to self or from other) seems to have a lifespan ranging from once to who-knows how many but not infinite "provoked responses" in data form. Dowsing really can bring home how changing a single word can change response, but even in viewing I think most viewers with a little experience figure out how important novelty in cue-ing is. Some degree of the value of a monitor could be in the sheer 'novelty' factor of their cueing based on the live experience, for example.

OK, so humans are more sensitive to change with their body-senses... viewer intuitive response often seems re-set/re-freshed from a change in the prompt/cue... viewer results often seem re-set/re-refreshed from a change in any part of the viewing process. It's all the same dynamic.

Although this is one reason I always recommend people use as many tasking and feedback forms and sources as possible, I hadn't really focused on this aspect of it clearly in my head before.

CHANGE. Maybe deliberately planning a constant change after so many sessions, would be useful. Maybe changing out a few basics even of the personal process such as standard self-cue's and things like that, should be part of that. I've come to this idea before several times over the years so I'm wondering why I quit thinking about it whenever that was, or why it seems novel again. (Heh. The advantage of being an airhead. New ideas every day!)

The funny thing is, this dynamic really seems to hold for everything. For weight lifting building muscle, for eating plans and fat loss, as two examples of stuff I also work on regularly, it always seems like there is an initial effect and then it ramps down to a holding pattern of sorts, where the body fights for homeostasis.

Well the psychology fights for homeostasis like crazy. That's half the psychological challenge with viewing in protocol, is how hard the body/mind fights to regain a 'known' footing/belief system. "Change=death to the psychology," as we've all heard. Yet growth only happens when homeostasis is absent, or as the old baseball saying goes, "You can't steal second with one foot on first."

Maybe when we plan our own viewer development, when we work out managing our own tasking and method and so on, a deliberately randomized set of changes in our process should be part of that. Maybe at the first sign of a few sessions in a row that don't go well, change should be implemented.

This makes me think (ok, now I'm just rambling!) of live sports performance. We are least challenged to develop when we only spar with an opponent on things we know, or do planned drills we expect. It's the sheer novelty of the fight or the game that forces us to adapt and grow. I wonder if literally creating a little utility that lets a viewer put in a variety of options for every component of their viewing (tasking or target source, a dozen diff points in their method-process, various cue-ing they do in-session, etc.) and having it randomized would actually be useful. So like, if you sat down to do an 'exercise', on the spot you'd have a custom, fairly unpredictable combination of elements. Each one would be familiar, so it wouldn't be like losing the consistency of doing-what-you-know, but the combination of them would be random, so it might be more like the novelty-of-the-live-event. Ya think? OK, rambling off, need to get back to work here.

Planets and Remote Viewing

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 28 May 2007

I sometimes think it's the world's greatest irony that some of the most 'impactive' experiences in viewing are the targets with no feedback.

(Which reminds me I've sometimes wondered if the lack of a decent time window on some taskings actually makes the viewing experience potentially more intense because there is inherently 'more information' in the 'target'.)

Last week TKR's Mission was tasked by Marv, and it was "the lakes on Titan", or something like that. I don't know why, but the stuff on other planets is just so damned interesting. Although I've had some sessions that sucked on planets, I've also had some interesting things, from one years ago on Titan (see that link above), to one on Ganymede I blogged about here (that was more after-session interest), and in the past a couple interesting sessions on Saturn.

Of all the missions TKR has done, some of my faves are their planet-related missions. Like there was "Something on Mars" that I tasked in the early days (years ago), the "Mars Home Plate" that Benton tasked over a year ago, and there are some earth-bound tasks that are directly about anomalies that are pretty fascinating, from The Dropa Enigma to The Metal Ball Mystery, both of which sort of defy 'technology we have/had available, far as we know' and make one wonder about the larger universe around us.

I also sometimes wonder, since I tend to grant "some degree of awareness" to everything, and "identity" to many things most people wouldn't, if planets themselves may have a pretty rocking-sized sentience that might make ours look pretty puny by comparison. Ever since my session with Ganymede I've been wondering that.

Not just about planets, but about targets on a larger scale. How much of what we perceive is about what the target chooses to share with us?

A Primer on AOL

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 26 May 2007

As most viewers online already know, Remote Viewing semantics are especially at issue on the internet, where words are all people have to work with. Even without issues like social politics or differing approaches to the discipline, even in groups with much in common, viewers still often get lost in the semantics of discussion.

That isn't just the modern world or the internet, of course; this has been an historical problem with parapsychology around the world, perhaps in part due to a severe lack of 'shared experience'-based terminology.

Remote Viewing's terminology is rather colorful. The patchwork history of the nature of anything psychic, and RV's former exploration in science and military, both renowned for their ability to coin complicated terms and no end of acronyms, and RV's modern commercial sales market of the last decade+, which is usually presented in a virtual snowglobe of uber-hip Matrix-Technojargon, all have combined to make RV terminology inconsistent at best, often confusing at the least -- and sometimes funny as hell.

Many viewers know some basic terminology from psychic methods training. But how well they understand it may be another story. Most folks learn this when they are so brand-spankin'-new to the subject that they really wouldn't know what questions to ask, and they are mostly introduced to the level of understanding they are ready for at that moment, which is fairly shallow. Follow-up is the weakest point in the commercial field, so deeper understanding of things doesn't always arrive. As if that isn't enough, what is taught is often in question as well, or at the least, differs greatly between sources.

I've seen some casual usage of terminology that is "gleaned from others," over in the dojo, but is probably not well covered online.

So for the sake of those new to the subject, I'm going to talk a little about one of the common jargon-terms in RV: "AOL."

This is broken into several parts to make it a little easier to get through.

Analytical Overlay, also known as AOL
AOL: The Labels of Conclusion
AOL and Learning Theory
AOL and 'Allowing', AKA "Let it Be"
AOL: Slightly More Complex Considerations
AOL: Slightly More Subtle Considerations
AOL the Temptress
Issues That Worsen or Invoke AOL
AOL from Target Pools
Using AOL Notation During Session
What Matters About Annotating AOL
New Viewers and AOL
When it's Data, it's not AOL
Exercises to Improve AOL Avoidance & Handling
AOL: The Point of it All

---

Analytical Overlay, also known as AOL

This term was originally used in psychic work to refer to the analysis the conscious mind is always trying to apply to our data.

At the entry level, the first and simplest way to think about this is "labels". Our mind immediately attempts to evaluate and conclude "what something is," and presents us with the highest-level "conclusion" about it. For example, instead of presenting data components such as 'red', 'motion' and 'spinning', our mind might present: "a red car".

Outside of psychic work, this is probably the way we've always needed our info anyway. If a friend is driving up in his car, we don't want to receive the data in 5000 separate components we have to consciously put together before we can even figure out what's going on.

If human mental processing were that slow, we wouldn't have survived the saber-toothed tigers.

AOL: The Labels of Conclusion

We probably do get information about events in 5000 components, but our minds are used to evaluating all that, putting it together for us, slapping a summary on it (Jimmy's car is headed for my driveway at normal speed) and handing us "the label of conclusion".

We rely on this as a norm. But when we begin viewing, we suddenly don't our mind actively and rapidly working to obtain "the labels of conclusion" anymore. In viewing, we seldom have enough information flow at least right-off, for those labels to be accurate. But since this way of mental processing is a lifetime habit, it's a bit of work (to understate it) to change your ways.

AOL and Learning Theory

Let us say, in this over-simplistic (and commonly used) example, that we had the sense of round (the wheels), the sense of motion, the sense of red, maybe even a sense of fun, or of speed, all of which were probably accurate, or likely enough.

Alas, "a red car" is simply wrong as data. If we write down this data, we later compare our session to the feedback photo of two children playing with a red ball and we roll our eyes over how clueless we were. "Well, I got the red," we might tell ourselves glumly.

The worst part of that equation has to do with our learning. It's important that we consciously recognize the data components that we did get accurately, and those we did not, and what processing we applied--which either helped or harmed. That's how we learn, is getting feedback on our process results.

When our session only leaves us with information that doesn't match the target, new viewers especially are prone to just sigh, feel like dismal failures at this psychic stuff, and wander off forlornly, thinking they are a lost cause. That's because most their 'results' are packaged in "labels of conclusion" which do not match the target.

The viewer being able to obtain data at a more 'component' level and record it that way is about the only way a new viewer will get real feedback on what actually "came through," and how they "interpreted" each bit, and how they communicated it. That's when feedback can be applied and the "learning theory" part of practice can kick in and do the viewer some good.

Genuine AOL is a matter of the viewer repackaging or over-translating the information, which can range from a very mild flavoring to radical revision. It's like a bad internet language translator but in concept-shape form. It can be pretty funny at its more extreme levels.

In the example we started with, you might ask why the mind didn't know it was a ball instead of a car. Well, maybe eventually the mind would have. But the initial data in a session is often in small fragments: a sense of reflection, a horizontal motion, a color, a spinning. That is what the mind had to work with, and it did its best at the analytical process.

That's part of the problem, really: there isn't enough information for the mind to use its fabulous tools in the normal way. As Spock (and later Data) used to say on Star Trek, "I have insufficient data for a hypothesis." Our mind is stuck trying to do its job as wonderfully as it has always done it, but under impossible circumstances.

It's up to the viewer to help keep the mind 'open' long enough, and well enough, that sufficient data can pour through prior to expectations filtering or distorting the experience.

Some viewers survive this for about 5 or 10 minutes. They shouldn't even be allowed to view past that: their sessions rock that long and then totally suck thanks to AOL. That's just a visible example of the tenure of their ability to keep the right mental state in place. Up till the point where that expires, they might be amazing. If they could start breaking their sessions up into shorter sessions done more often, they'd probably be better off.

Control Issues and 'Allowing', AKA "Let it Be"

This analytical processing may be somewhat below the fully intentional level, but the impetus for it happening is at the conscious level. It is a matter of training yourself into the "allowing". You must allow the target to be whatever it is, without pressuring yourself in the "need to know", which translates directly into your making the target into what you assume it is instead.

The tendency is pretty much human nature it appears, at least prior to bringing conscious intervention into that process (and possibly is a fight forever). But how often, how quickly, and how severely that is invoked, in my opinion ends up being something like a psychological control issue.

Everybody has some degree of this because our mind has been working with us in that way our entire lives. But some people can't let go of this "need to know". High J's on the ENTJ personality scale probably are a good example; those with major control issues are another. I am exampling the more extreme versions of a trait we all carry, but some a lot more than others. Some people are simply not cut out for this kind of art.

A viewer must be able to relax and let go of at least enough of the need to know, at least long enough to get decent data. That doesn't mean that a viewer is always going to be free of it -- or even ever fully, depending -- it's a matter of degree. It's also a matter of the viewer being able to recognize, in session, when they are falling into this mindset to a high degree, and either let it go, or end the session and come back to it another time.

Like most things in remote viewing, the issues viewers have are echoed in other roles. The same problems with "AOL" in people functioning as taskers and monitors have done a great deal of damage to their viewers and RV's reputation in public media, so it's worth pointing out that AOL--particularly "untreated" AOL let alone fostered AOL--is very damaging to psi work across the board, no matter what role it is played out within.

AOL: Slightly More Complex Considerations

Analytical over-processing of data is really just one of many likely issues in a remote viewing session. There's a long list of internal processing behaviors and filters that affect data as badly or worse than purely "analytical" issues.

To some degree, the term AOL is used as an "umbrella" term to represent what I initially called "Affected Data" about ten years ago. Data can be "affected" in many ways. The reasons this can happen are incredibly numerous, and likely to vary a little depending on the viewer.

The reasons are not just analytical. They can be a result of the sheer novelty of something and not knowing how to translate it, for example. Or, they can be the result of an empathetic emotion from the viewer, or of aesthetic-impact upon the viewer, or other in-session experience that has its own "progression" into other assumptions that are often less logical than emotional.

Some viewers or methods trainers have come up with their own vocabulary of acronyms to describe different possibilities.

AOL: Slightly More Subtle Considerations

AOL as exampled at the beginning of this article, "labeling", is really the easiest, most obvious aspect of the issue. Most AOL when a viewer first begins does come in this form. Or at least, so much of it comes in this form that you don't get much chance to even see the other issues that might be lurking! But with some experience, the example given becomes over-simplistic to say the least.

The most dangerous AOL is not the labeling, because that type, a viewer can learn to recognize pretty easily. The more subtle and nasty forms of AOL usually stem from other sources.

For example, there may be a low-grade AOL regarding the likely 'nature' of the target, possibly based on the tasking source. This might never become strong enough for the viewer to recognize, but it may bias and filter their whole session. This is a bad thing when it makes the data more-wrong, but it can be a worse thing when it makes the data more-right. At least you learn something from being wrong, often. And the AOL drive may give the session a more 'intense' experiential aspect for the viewer, which can result in a greater sense of certainty for sure, and if they do this often enough, the viewer may end up subconsciously biasing in favor of situations where they have some way of knowing or suspecting the target because, plain and simple, it is a lot more fun that way.

There may be a more obvious AOL regarding thinking something in the session is AOL--because the data is just like another target you just had, or just like a movie you just watched, for example, or even, is just like you would have analytically-via-AOL expected it to be (because, ironically, your AOLs from the early session may have been correct). In this case, the analytical assumption is that it IS analytical assumption--an invalidation of the data you're receiving, which is usually just as damaging to a session as anything else. This tends to result in viewers getting wonderful data they "don't write down because they're sure it's AOL," and then they want to kick themselves afterward when they see the feedback.

One of the common causes of AOL once the viewer is getting into the groove of viewing, is the way that information presents itself. The viewer may have a flash visual of something, and they may think that is the target. It might be, but usually, it is not. (Only the viewer can make this call, as best they can.) Usually, it is something in the viewer's mental database of experience that has something in common with the target... but which other than some major aspect (which can be shape, concept, or a combination of factors), has nothing to do with it. (See 'exceptions', later in the article.)

There are pretty much no limits to the possible 'sources' of AOL or 'data-affecting issues'. Every human is unique and every viewer could probably find a dozen new ways.

AOL the Temptress

AOL if recognized and released is usually not all that damaging to the viewer or session. (Obviously, circumstance and details vary.) It may be just a minor point of observation, released and the viewer moves on.

But that mental 'base of assumption' tends to grow, especially if not recognized and dealt with. It can bias the mind toward recognizing only data which fits the filter of expectation, as an early problem. It can literally help create data which fits the expectation, which is a larger problem. Usually though, the mind's ability to creatively configure even what does come in, is more than enough flexibility to "help" the viewer make the session into exactly what they "suspect" -- which translates to what they want, because the lack of closer and not-knowing in a session is psychologically very difficult.

AOL's biggest tragedy in a session isn't usually what it does to the data with which it arrives, but what it does to every "experience" for the viewer which follows. And for sure, attempting to 'surgically remove' AOL from data in retrospect is easier said than done.

Suspicion can function as AOL, including AOL-Drive which is the term some use for when the session is totally driven by some form of assumption, expectation, etc. One of the more insidious things about AOL is that the more of it the viewer gets, the more tempted to follow that road they might be. It feels GOOD to have a 'suspicion' about what something in the target might be, and viewers often unconsciously "retask" themselves on "that-thing-I-suspect" in the middle of a session, shifting the focus away from "the target" and onto "this thing I just perceived or that I think is the target."

Issues That Worsen or Invoke AOL

Knowing your tasker can help invoke AOL in a viewer based on the assumed nature of the tasking. I've suffered that more than once. It's especially insidious if the nature of the target (for example, The World Cup sporting event, people with painted faces, etc.) has something in common with the nature of your AOL (that the tasker tends to task big disasters, terrorism, etc.) because then it "skews your AOLs" or helps create them.

To deal with it: you can use an RV tool like Taskerbot to mix up your tasks, so even if you only have a few, you won't be sure of the source when they are given to you. tbot Tasker allows a super simple entry of nothing more than task numbers for example, for tasks that already exist. It isn't tasking you, it's simply handing the tasks to you in a random order to help increase the blinding factor.

The best way to work against having any expectation at all about the target is (a) the widest variety of task sources or task genres, and (b) experience. Once you've had the chronic experience of having no idea what the hell you were talking about in a session, and you see how assumptions whether gross or subtle messed you up, you get a little better at not coming to a conclusion because you know too well that you have NO IDEA what it might be.

AOL from Target Pools

Familiarity with a target pool can be one of the worst sources of chronic AOL. Target pool AOL is pretty obvious when observing sessions of people suffering it and it's painful even from a distance.

I give this a separate section of its own because any practice utility that people can use at their own discretion, and especially those where they can see what other viewers get as tasks, is going to engender some target pool aol. Most viewers don't do enough viewing to run into this if the pool is at least 500+ tasks, but occasionally you get folks who do 20-50 mini-sessions a day, plus look at what others do, and the result is that before long, even in a pool of well over a thousand tasks, they're going to end up with target pool AOL.

I see this pretty often over at TKR at the Dojo Psi, with viewers who are either brand new and still big on the assuming, or who are so over-familiar with the pool that a good portion of the time, shortly into the session they have either identified the target entirely by the feel of it, or they have identified enough elements to come to a conclusion that it is another target (which probably has something in common with this one which led to that).

Usually the initial data is good, but at some point the mind decides what it 'might' be, at which point suddenly the viewer veers off into describing the assumed target. The difficult part of this is that a viewer gets what they focus on. When a viewer is in session and suddenly gets enough data to suggest it's target X, they often unconsciously shift their attention to target X, or some of it. At that point, they might legitimately be getting 'psychic information', but they've unintentionally retasked themselves in the middle of the session on a different target.

Like other kinds of AOL drive this can be more dangerous when accurate than inaccurate, since at least you'd learn from being wrong, but being right may unintentionally 'teach' the viewer to allow that to happen. It also causes great confusion in the mental-processing part of RV, because a lot of what might come through for the viewer are bits of memory, not psi-derived data, another thing that one doesn't want to entrain oneself to perceive as-if-its-psi.

It's true that some people have learned to work with target pools they know decently, and that training oneself against frontloading/tp-aol can be a good exercise. But it's rather like wearing bad shoes to jog in. Just because you can do so, doesn't mean it's a very helpful thing to do... might even be harmful... there are no karmic brownie points for unnecessary suffering.

There are many sources of free targets on the internet, or that your friends can help you with, not to mention many ways to use precognitive tasking to task yourself on all kinds of things regularly that are still blind to you -- you know the target (e.g., Tuesday's headline in newspaper XYZ) but not the detail. There are many ways to dig yourself out of an over-used target pool, and it's well worth seeking them out.

In a perfect world, viewers would focus as much on live-feedback and current-time targets as possible, just because the feedback tends to be greater and the interest factor tends to be higher, both of which can have a great effect both on the session and on the learning component.

Using AOL Notation During Session

In standard 'methods' training (swann-based training methods), AOL is used as a notation when the data is recorded.

These methods were developed to be training methods, and the point of them is to be an external roadmap to helping the viewer become more aware internally of what is going on in their head, what they are experiencing and how they are processing the information. In my view this was a good idea, since we haven't yet evolved to the technology of being able to open up people's heads and look inside them. So, you have people record what they perceive, and you teach them to recognize certain things in what they are recording that should be an 'indicator' of something going on inside them.

(At least, in a better understanding of the methods than many people have, this is the purpose. Whether this is fulfilled by the way they are taught may be another story, depending on the trainer and situation.)

It appears that truly getting anything out of your system that is in your head/heart requires physically acting out the expression of it. Or in plain english, in a remote viewing context, saying it or writing it down. Even recognizing something as AOL in your head does not tend to be as effective for many viewers in "letting it go" as writing it down "as" AOL.

Oddly, saying or writing down things which are true or accurate seems mostly to better confirm them within yourself. If I were better versed on this research I believe I could reference some here; both of these points have been studied. I'm too lazy right now so, if you want to know more, google it.

In the methods, when a viewer recognizes something as aol, they write it to the far right side of the paper, and annotate it "AOL".

In practice, the point of this is to help the viewer recognize when this kind of processing has happened in their head, and to allow them to 'vent' that assumption. In content viewing (where the session content is used for some purpose, such as science or applications), it can serve to tell the onlooking interviewer (monitor) or a later analyst what was going on with the viewer.

When viewers begin, they usually only have the "labels are AOL" level of understanding about this. Eventually, if they get data like "car" they write it down as AOL because they recognize the label as "processed data".

But realistically, even "brown" is processed data. Maybe not as processed as "A Roman Chariot" for example, but the mere act of translating something to the level of words is processing. So initially, this act of writing it down for novices mostly serves to cause them to pay attention to the more obvious "labeling" tendency.

In other words, new viewers don't write down AOL because it is AOL. They write it down because it is a label and they have been taught that labels are AOL.

In the later stages of most RV methodologies, AOL can sometimes be written as AOL-signal if the viewer chooses. That means that although the viewer recognizes it is AOL, they also believe that it is directly related to the target anyway.

What Matters About Annotating AOL

For the viewer themselves, the important thing about annotating something as AOL is recognizing and releasing it; is realizing it is a mentally-manufactured or over-processed data point. Also, realizing this means that the viewer can often stop, replay the "data experience or observation" they just had, in their head, and better evaluate what they really DID experience, in its components, and better articulate it for recording.

In other words, it's not just recognizing what data may be affected; it is also being able to recognize that issue on the fly, while you are viewing, so that you can figure out what the data should be--or what the data actually was, prior to your head getting carried away with it.

For anybody evaluating the session, annotating something as AOL is the viewer's way of saying: "This was not a psi-based impression or experience. I recognize that this was just something my head has 'affected'. Even if it is accurate, it should not be considered data."

The "AOL-signal" notation would instead say: "This data is affected in some way by my mental processing, but I believe the core of this was based on psi." This functions almost as a way of saying, "This relates to something in the target, but whatever it is, is probably not this."

Ordinary "AOL" annotated data is generally disregarded when evaluating a session. The viewer themselves is telling you, "This isn't psi based information and I am just venting it to get rid of it." There is no reason for an evaluator to want to equate that to data that the viewer genuinely perceived as a psi-based experience. AOL is a viewer's "discard" pile. That does not mean the data point is wrong, by the way.

Sometimes in session a viewer will sense themselves going into a sort of "free association" or "logical correlation" mode. Things flashing into their head related to that would be AOL. Sometimes, a viewer gets a few pieces of info via psi, and feels their mind come to some logical conclusion based on that. They write it down as AOL to vent that and move on.

New Viewers and AOL

A common mistake new viewers make is to write down so much of the 'noise' in their head that instead of remote viewing, they simply spend an entire session writing down AOLs. They end up with sessions that are 50%++ AOL notation. Sometimes this is because they are so new, that they are not easily able to tell what "pings" inside their head are such light mental associative fluff that it is not an 'impression' -- or anything even potentially one. Unless one has got the state of Zen No-Mind down pat, every viewer is going to have to gradually learn enough about what comes-from their head vs. what comes-into their head (and there is a middle, joined ground, too) that they do not feel obliged to spend 20 minutes recording their free association. Half the time, the recording of it simply creates more of it and they never even get around to viewing.

As a solution to that I recommend new viewers write down "what they feel is important or relevant about the target, even stuff they imagine." Usually the "important or relevant" filter will gradually help them get a feel about what is a bunch of unrelated mental fluff they can just ignore. Sometimes, taking the trouble to recognize something, stop, and write it down, gives it far more credit than it deserves, plus it shifts your attention from focused on the target with receptive mind, to focused on the paper with projective communication. It just takes some practice to figure out what is 'subtle' enough to be dismissed as light surface mental wandering, vs. what has enough 'feeling' or 'impression' with it that it counts as data. Either way, AOL is not viewing. The RV session needs to actually contain some psychic work.

Another common mistake viewers (even with more experience) might make is using AOL as a "safety net." It's like their Monopoly Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. They figure if they mark something AOL it's ok for it to be wrong; it's like a "free" data point because one has already declared it "more processing than psi". So you can say anything you want as long as you mark it AOL.

Ah, but then you find that when they review their session, if they have something valid annotated AOL, then everybody wants to take credit for it! This is not appropriate. Part of learning RV is learning to "own your data", is learning to take responsibility for it, be willing to go with what you experience and do your best and face the results, no matter how they match or don't, learn something from the experience and move on.

Also, part of using any annotation is using it correctly, of course. Psychic impressions do not belong in the AOL column.

When it's Data, it's not AOL

There are plenty of examples where data that is a noun, a label, and even a highly processed data point, for that matter even an entire location or situation of highly processed information, is genuinely based on psi-perception. It is not about secondary processing by the viewer making it something complex or labeled. It is literally what the viewer experienced.

If the viewer has a sense of flying over an island and zooming down near a woven bridge in lush greenery and seeing a small village on fire, then that is their data. Their data is not "flying. island-aol. zooming. bridge-aol. greenery. village. fire." but to hear some people define AOL you'd think so. That is working against psi, and against the viewer, and using the red-tape bureaucracy of something designed to help, to instead hinder the process.

Psychics often run into this when they begin working in an RV protocol. They are often used to opening up and BAM they've got more information in 30 seconds than some viewers could get in 30 hours. And some people naturally get much larger data constructs. They may write down labels because they quite literally experience things in that more 'data-combined' form.

This may require more work on the viewer's part to prevent that kind of mental combining from happening even when it shouldn't. To the degree it works for them... great, they should go for it. What matters is what works. Usually it's a good exercise, if you get data this way, to make a point after anything you write down like that, to then flesh out how it feels inside you; the components that make it that-thing. Be sure though, that you are not describing what you intellectually know that-thing contains, but rather, that you are describing what you psychically feel that-thing contains. When this happens, the viewer ends up with a combination of labels (as data, not as aol) and detailed descriptions.

It usually won't take long before they realize that focusing on the more component information, will provide a ton more data that might be useful. RV is not about matching pictures after all; it's about providing "descriptive information" to someone who wants to use it. So the more accurate, detailed description that can be provided, the better.

The viewer's data should be based on their experience. Whatever that may be. Describe it as best you can, whether that means sketching (always a good idea if you can), taking shorthand, writing an essay, or talking into a recording device. It's up to the viewer to communicate the data as well as they can.

Sometimes, based on the wholly subjective experience in their session, they may feel that "parsing down" the information to basic fact-phrases is what is best. Sometimes, they may feel that waxing eloquently about a whole experience and feeling is what is best. This is up to the viewer, unless they use a methodology that restricts them. If your methodology insists you write all your data in words or tiny phrases in logical columns, then either you need to adapt to that, or you need to ditch at least some of that method and explore what comes naturally for you and develop your strengths as best you can.

Let's say (a funny real example of a viewer friend of mine) you're in session and you see a cartoon Snoopy Flying Ace and you 'know' the target is a fighter plane. It doesn't matter that your data isn't even what you experienced. It doesn't matter that your data is definitely a highly processed thing. If you are pretty sure you know the data is a fighter jet, not because your head is making the association or assumption, but because you feel in your gut that this is what it means, then that is what goes on paper. If you're wrong, you will gradually learn what sense perceptions you are willing to gamble accuracy on and what you aren't.

If you are practicing for yourself, do record this processing for your records. For example, you might write down: "sym> Snoopy Flying Ace = fighter plane" so later, you will know that you got data you believe is symbology, and then here is what you believe the information actually translates to. This is important, because later when you review past sessions (which you should definitely do. I've learned more from past-session review than actual viewing I think.) you may see certain commonalities in symbols, or in how you translate symbols.

(This is assuming the viewer gets symbology as data. Most do, but not all.)

There is another kind of data that is not psychic, it is analytical, but I do not consider AOL, because it is not overlay 'affecting' data, it is understanding 'explaining' data, instead.

This is when, during a time when the data seems relative flowing or more contextual, when the viewer may write down something like "red star > ana = Russian". The difference between this and the symbology is that (a) this may be data that is not symbolic (only this example was), and (b) this is not about the viewer "feeling" a gut-sense of what-it-means, this is about a sheer mental recognition on the viewer's part that when they get data X and Y, it usually means Z and they believe it does this time.

Technically the session is not the place for analysis obviously, but a viewer with experience is likely to sometimes recognize one or more data components, or their sequence, as having a likely meaning that may not be obvious on paper if they don't write it down.

Exercises to Improve AOL Avoidance & Handling

There are several ways a viewer can work toward improving how they avoid and/or 'deal with' AOL in session, whether directly or as a side-effect (positive benefit) of other issues. Here are a few pretty powerful things that I recommend.

1. If you record anything as AOL, ask yourself what it is based upon. If you got 'little red car', the instant you realize it's AOL, ask yourself: 'What made me think of that'? Hopefully, you will then realize that a sense of small, round, red, motion, fun, was rapidly flipping through your mind. At that point, write down the real data. Eventually, the goal is that a viewer instantly recognizes when it's happened, flips back memory a few seconds to their original perception for replay, and writes down the proper information.

Of course, this eventually leads to a viewer simply sitting down and viewing. Other people say, "Look, he doesn't even have a method! He's just a natural." Yeah, riiiiiiight. There is a good deal of RV that can be, and in my opinion eventually should be, done in the viewer's head (in part for immediacy reasons). The viewer records what results. The external methods many people use are good training for brand-newbies and for the gradual, uniquely individual development of internal methods by a viewer. If for no other reason than rigidity and time, eventually for most (not all) viewers I know, external stuff gives way to a more flexible and more internal approach. Yes, the data eventually gets to the paper, but the 'session experience' tends to get processed fast enough in the head that writing down data becomes primary, not writing down process.

2. When you get feedback on a session, that moment is of key importance. Don't rush on to some other target or activity. Sit down, be quiet, and look at every data point that you wrote down. Read one to yourself. Stop. Look at the feedback. Consider. Does this match? What all might it match? If it doesn't, what was I feeling that caused me to write that down, can I repeat that experience in myself? If I can, and I do, and now I see feedback, how do I think that experience relates to what's in or implied by the feedback? What caused my "experience" in session to get written down as I wrote it? Do this for every single thing you wrote down that is not marked AOL.

Popular methodologies have somewhat attuned people to looking at data as simply right vs. wrong, or nearly always "literal" (as opposed to symbolic, etc.). Worse, it often inspires viewers to end a session and instantly go into a math-test mentality where they start evaluating what category every data point falls into and counting how many they've got and so on. I can't think of anything worse for a viewer than doing this after a session. If you must database your results, do it later. After-session is the most powerful time for psychological review and consideration. The session feedback time is a time of intimacy in a way, where you and your mind can go over the experience you just had together. Don't underestimate how important this is.

3. Never give yourself credit for AOL. If you mark it AOL, it doesn't 'count' as credit for you if it's right. If you want your AOLs to count, own your viewing. If it's real, write it down as real. AOL means it's a mental construct, not psychic data. AOL becomes a CYA cop-out for many viewers, rather than a way of communicating something.

The viewer's "assignment of meaning" is vastly important to their experience and progress and learning. You have to set your internal rewards, recognition, etc. based on what you want to 'teach' yourself. Viewers should set themselves as the driver and owner of their talent and their skill, no matter what their background or who their teachers or what their methods. A great deal of psychic work is affected by a viewer's strong sense of autonomy (or lack thereof) and making yourself take yourself seriously, and not letting yourself get away with excuses, is an important part of developing that strength.

4. It is a good exercise, once a viewer has some experience (not for brand-new viewers), to make an exercise, temporarily anyway, of writing down everything that relates to your session, not just your data. In other words, if you write down "AOL - car" then write down, quickly as you can, WHY 'car' was an AOL. I don't mean why intellectually, I mean what you 'sense' that leads to the 'car' conclusion. A primary point of using an external notation of something is to teach yourself 'awareness' of it. Eventually, while you are viewing, this kind of understanding about yourself should be part of the process. It should not take up big blocks of seconds while stuff gets written down. It should be a micro-second realization, backtrack, data re-vew, and then recording what should be recorded. The external is there to teach the internal. Everything you can do toward that learning process is a good thing.

5. Another exercise worth doing is recording 'how' data comes across to you. For example if you get names, words, or visuals, there are many different ways that these can come through. You may hear a voice say a word; you mean get a 'sense' of a word; you may visually 'see' the word written. Over time, you're likely to find, if you pay attention to this, that "how" data comes through may relate to how literal it may be, and even how accurate it may be. It may also relate to processing issues you have including AOL. It's worth tracking, when you can.

6. Speed during the session can help, mostly because it can reduce the amount of time that the mind has to wander, associate, etc. This is a very good approach for new viewers. In general though, it is a bit of a tradeoff. Being able to truly pay attention and often 'explore' data is lost if one is rushing through it with all haste.

A viewer friend gave a good analogy of this. He said in the gym, many people use music or videos to distract them from their workout exercises and make them seem to go faster, and for the general public level, this works well. But serious athletes and bodybuilders want to pay attention to what they are doing, and so you don't find them 'spacing out' the process, you find them really focusing on it instead. There is something to be said for all-haste: it gets things done, gets you through it, and reduces mental distraction. But there is something to be said for a slower, more focus-intensive effort as well. What approach works best may depend on the target, and the reason for the session, as well as the viewer.

The Point of it All

What 'matters' to a session is that you obtain valid information about the target, much of which is usually correlated with what we call (as slang; nobody can truly define this) "target contact," or "rapport." A few seconds of close target contact can often do more for loads of accurate data, than a much longer period of distant methodical work (and often with less inaccurate data, and less overall data to wade through when trying to make sense of it all). Your practices as far as methods and process go, should serve this goal first.

So how you think about the viewer's interference with data -- including "AOL", often used as a term to encompass nearly every kind of potential interference or affect -- should be considered in the context of what is best for learning about yourself, and what is best for providing accurate information about your target. Experiment if you can. Get a feel for what works for you.

Using AOL in session notation is not necessarily something a viewer "should" do, but anybody "can", and I find it helpful personally. You can make up your own notation if you wish. Some methods use "d:" for "deduction" for example. Every methodology has a whole vocabulary of its own, and most viewers gradually develop a written shorthand for a ton of different stuff, much of which they've come up with for their own unique process.

Words don't make RV. Nothing matters to viewing but the viewing, and nothing matters to the practicing viewer but the experience and the learning. So terminology is worth understanding, and you can use some of it if you wish -- or not. If you don't like it, don't use it. In the end every viewer is responsible for themselves . . . just do what works for you.

But if you want to talk with other people about it, it's a good idea to have a shared vocabulary.

-- PJ

(P.S. I wrote this off the top while sleep deprived--as always. It may be imperfect and I may improve it in places later.)

Wide Awake in Dreamland

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 06 May 2007

Oh. When I wrote the previous post (Ganymede) I meant to write this one but got carried away!

So the archetype model I've been using for sessions lately has been forcing some warping of my brain.

As I left the movie theatre last night, and I walked across the parking lot, it suddenly occurred to me:

If the target is in me; if the archetype is the collected energy of the target; then everything in my reality is in me too.

Just like Seth would say, and the wise ones throughout time, who describe our reality as a non-lucid dream, and just one of many for that matter.

I walked past the cars. I felt a truck go past behind me.

What does it feel like inside me? I wondered. Is there a "feel" to parking lots, for example, that I could become more aware of by thinking about it right now, while having this experience? Would that help me to recognize the feel during session?

Alan Watts talked of this. And Suzuki, and the other writers of Zen (for the West) whom I waded through all those eons ago. Everything outside you is inside you. Inside is the blueprint. Outside is a mirror of it.

Archetype meditations function on this same logic: the universe is inside you. You go inside to make changes. You have a relationship with everything because everything is of you. The secret to control is allowing, the secret to letting go is merging, the secret to mastering is loving and serving.

Joe McMoneagle says: Remote Viewing comes to those who put it first, others second, and themselves third. Maybe that's so.

I was so distracted by my thoughts I drove over a curb. Sigh. I'm becoming a genuine 'airy psychic' sort!

I keep looking at things and asking myself, "How does that table feel inside me? How does the phone ringing feel inside me?"

Ganymede

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 05 May 2007

I went to see the movie "NEXT" tonight. The story is about a man (Nick Cage) who can see the future. But only 2 minutes into the future. He's had the ability his whole life and is extremely deft with its use... while he works as a stage magician at a small casino in Vegas. Worth seeing. Action film, of course!

The last couple days I've really been focusing on viewing and "thinking" in the model of viewing. Working on integrating what I am doing. The archetype approach to RV puts a bit of a different slant on the mental model of it all. It's much more of a "relationship" -- with the target; and because the target is part of me, because everything is, with myself.

I had three pretty decent sessions in the latest model (see the myPsiche blog for notes on the protocol). And then I did a fourth that had a rather unusual outcome.

***

The first thing to note is that the session, compared to feedback, has nothing to do with it. At least, unless there is some kind of odd fish-like creature being mined (on a very small scale) on Ganymede and we don't know about it, which is assuming quite a lot, suffice to say my session was simply off-target. The focus of feedback was it in space of course, so I believe that should have been my viewing perspective. Instead I had some tiny group of people 'visiting' solely for the purpose of catching some kind of bizarre heavy flattish fish through ice. Oh well.

I keep the target woven with me during feedback and my notes, and when I saw the feedback, which looks like a dead grey moon, I sighed. I explained to the target, in my head, that obviously we were both wrong, because look here, this should have been the target and perspective.

The target archetype, however, disagreed.

Now, I've sometimes had targets during session interact with me. I've had archetypes and aspects interact with me. But this is the first time I've ever had a target archetype actually communicate with me somewhat directly -- let alone AFTER the session. And argue!

It's not too hard to figure out why it never happened before: first, although I began doing archmeds prior to session eons ago, I never before had a mental model that had this "interwoven me + target- archetype" model before, so that the target could communicate with me (as opposed to me just getting impressions from it during session).

Secondly, I didn't until now have a model where I kept that weave together during feedback and notes, before asking inner-guide to de-weave us.

The archetype, just like any other archetype in a meditation except this was more real-time real-world, conveyed something that I translated as, "a big hunk of dead rock does not accurately summarize me." He actually seemed slightly put out! Not an emotion, just... well it's too subtly ineffable to put into words I guess.

My curiosity was piqued. I felt the archetype wanted to go back into our session model where I let it show me what IT thinks is important to communicate. Yet the session was over. I already had feedback. Anything after that point would just seem like imagination frankly.

But this kind of communication isn't one-way. It's not a superior, controller kind of thing. It's a mutual friendship. It's a teamwork relationship. So, I was game. I figured, I missed the target obviously, it's already a write-off, this is just experience for fun. Bring it on babe! I just sat back and closed my eyes and literally grinned with the humor of it all.

A big ocean wave crashed down nearly upon me, and then went past, as if I were virtually right beside it. Water everywhere. Swells of the water everywhere, and another wave building. Whoaaaaaa.... I said out loud, opening my eyes and leaning forward a little. That was terrific! Certainly way more "you are here" than any of the session, for sure.

I leaned back and closed my eyes again, and as my head bumped the wall a bit, I felt as if it bumped something hard -- and I was lying on my back on something hard, looking up at the sky, surrounded by water, water literally everywhere as far as the eye could see. The sky was grey. The water didn't have any particular color that I noticed either, at least not from the angle I was seeing it. No, I didn't see any fish, no birds, no people, no typical ocean scene data -- but definitely more than enough ocean, and tidal pull on it, clearly.

So.... obviously, you are telling me that you have ocean, I said to the target archetype. That's terrific. Then I found myself 'flying over' something. It was land, but... well not like anything I've seen before. Imagine, ok, that you are over a really huge system of canyons. Now imagine that the canyons are unusually... well, somewhat more parallel than they normally here, and of dark rock. "I want to go down there," I said to the arch, and my perspective went down, down, really deep, to the bottom of this unbelievably deep canyon. I just stood there at the bottom, looking up, utterly marveling at the sheer enormity of it.

I opened my eyes and changed position. If my RV were that experiential you couldn't keep me from it nearly every waking hour. Well, sometimes it is -- but not often, for sure that it is in the minority. What is this, I asked myself? This is imagination? Look at the picture. It's a moon. It's dead. And yet...

At that moment, I was having a 'mutual experience of equals' with the target, summarized energetically as the archetype. At this point, I didn't just feel humor and good natured willingness. I felt love. I imagined blending warm golden energy into the archetype. You are so beautiful, I told it. Not the tale of someone moved by a visual. The heartfelt gushing of someone whose love for someone makes them beautiful. I felt nearly overwhelmed. Ganymede had ceased to be a target or an archetype to me and had become a legitimate entity in its own right. And I was in love with it.

I sat staring into space for a little bit.

I wanted more feedback. Not because I wanted to see if my experiences were possible. At that moment, it would not have mattered if there was a planetary survey as detailed as Google Earth of the thing contradicting me; I felt I'd just had a personal conversation with the planet-as-identity itself and I wasn't in doubt about it. I just wanted to know more about it, the way you would want to know more about a person you met and were crazy about.

Of course, I told myself, this is blowing protocol.

"You already wrote it off as a totally missed target," part of me thought drily. "How much worse can it get?"

I decided my previous three sessions were solid and factual enough that on this one, I would sacrifice it and do something I so rarely do: go get additional feedback. I wanted to know more than a picture of a moon from space. Anything. So I google'd it: Ganymede. I went to the first link that seemed a science site.

There were several pictures, a couple animations, a supershort video, an audio recording of some frequencies, etc. I looked at a couple of pictures. Yep, the same 'dead moon' as we see pictures of from our own. I feel the target, woven in with me still. Observing my feelings, and what I observe. I look at another photo, this of a rather bizarre sort of dark striped terrain. I realize: That must be the canyons. and I feel the target's interest. And suddenly, it hits me, and I'm so astonished --

-- I had thought of the target showing me itself. I had thought of sharing with the target the process. I had thought of all kinds of things. But I had never once thought of me showing the target how my people perceive it. I had thought of translating from the target into my perspective. Never of translating from my perspective FOR the target! For some reason I was kind of blown away by the concept. Like the whole viewing process but in reverse!

I very slowly viewed the next picture. Got the big resolution one. Slowly scrolled, to show the whole thing. Feeling as if I had become exactly the "universal translator" or "psychic library card" that I had previously referred to: where the target, acting like a remote viewer, perceived its target, which was how-we-perceived-it in our reality. I felt like I was taking it on a sort of tour. I was a tour guide of how earth people perceive it. I got kind of anthropomorphic then to be honest. I quietly said out loud the various text notes, as if to bring them more fully into me so it could grok them, and I really focused on all the information so the transfer would be as clear as possible.

The stats on Ganymede were surprising. It's nearly 2.5x the size of earth. It has a small magnetosphere and it appears to have even a very small possibly oxygen atmosphere, though this is still theory. In fact it has everything that would qualify it as a planet, except that it orbits jupiter instead of the sun.

It is said to be greatly covered by water-ice. I don't know if this means it could have oceans, or only ice. I'm here to tell you that experientially, I think it has at least one genuine, definitely liquid-form ocean. But the only feedback I have says the planet is covered with ice. Which means the feedback contradicts my experience.

Being the logical, careful about protocol, practical kind of viewer I am...

...I choose to believe my experience over any amount of feedback. HA HA HA.

And wouldn't you know, out of that four session block, three of which were good, one of which was excellent, the experience that would move me most would be the one that was NOT remote viewing and had no feedback. Sigh! Is that predictable or what? Oh brother.

Back to practical things now.