Thursday, March 06, 2008

Multi-lingual Mind: Interpreting Symbols

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 28 June 2006



I don't think my subconscious is speaking the same language I am.


I don't like the word 'subconscious' as it comes with lots of baggage-assumptions and mental-models I don't share, but lacking a better word for consensus reality, I'll use that one.


I had the idea last night that if a target is... a thing of its own, its own energy, and I am a thing of my own, my own energy, then our experience of the target is actually a distinctive and unique third-thing, which is "Me+Target=Session". I know that's obvious. But when you really think about that, it implies a whole lot of question about that third-thing and its nature.




OPTION 1


If I get symbology instead of basic target data, could it be in part because there is some... inability in myself to clearly perceive the target for what it is? Maybe it's something obscure like body-clarity, literally; some tiny nerve cluster is blocked by toxins or pressure, is it possible that means data can't route that way or be pulled from storage near that place, so the body has to look elsewhere?


Well that is only one idea. There are others.


Is there some obscure value or energy in me that would make my interior-energetic-perception of any given object or location or person, different than how I would perceive it with my eyes?


You know how you can be in OBE state and you might see a chair with a jacket on the back, but it's pulled out rather than under the desk like it 'literally' is at that moment. There might be your cat sleeping on the end of the bed who it so happens died 5 years prior; and the tree outside might be conscious; and there may be a large river, sky and trees around included, rushing through the area that 5 minutes ago when you were IN your body, was the hallway outside your bedroom door. It's just another day in OBEland.


I used an allegory in Bewilderness that I called "The Rainbow of Soul" and said to consider physical reality the red band, the astral reality the orange band, and mental reality the yellow band. What happens when you are somewhere "between" red and orange? Close enough to red that we can perceive physical reality... far enough into orange that it's... pretty.... weird...?




OPTION 2


Might there be something up with remote viewing that is giving us "a small dose" of this same issue OBE perception has, except so small a dose, that instead of recognizing it, we just toss the result off as "symbolism" or "inaccuracy"?


Aside from more-alert (vs. deeply altered state) forms of RV, might there be any other way to help "ground" the perceptions we get, in the "frequency" where our physical reality is currently operating?


Lately, I've had this idea that maybe I've been thinking about it all backward.


Usually, I think about it like, if I don't get a sufficient amount of specific info, my target contact wasn't good enough. In short, I figure I wasn't getting enough information.


But maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe the pathways inside me have so much MORE data from the target (than my eyes), that the "symbolic-word(s)" it uses to communicate something to me is forced to "include" more density of info.




OPTION 3


Could it be that the information I get is changed because I'm actually getting a better more "complete" view? And that it's a reverse-engineering problem, where rather than trying to get more information, I am actually in need of getting vastly less, or figuring out how to "strip it down" to less, or "separate the components" so I can get only the specific dimension of data (physical data usually) that I want?


I am NOT really referring here to something like a methodology which, like CRV, deliberately forces the viewer to 'start with component data', because this issue occurs even within methodology when at later stages. I'm more concerned with how our minds may "roll up" and present some furled-symbol that 'incorporates' a lot of information, and how to become aware of that, how to decipher it, etc.




I want to do some examples1 from sessions over the next few months, because I don't feel there is nearly enough hands-on session-experience discussion or examples online. Working on that in the background. For the foreground and now, I'm going to use my regular practice sessions and just pull out one little example of how something worked, as often as I have time. This may be data that is accurate, inaccurate, symbolic, or whatever needed for the example.


(In examples, I may slightly change minor things to provide 'sense or context' for my point, to aid in clarity or brevity.)


I hope readers understand that anybody with a website or microphone can claim omniscience. Anybody could show you only pieces of sessions or only certain sessions or even "improved" (ha...ha) sessions, that would make readers drool in awe over their magnificent psychic ability. I want to example stuff I find interesting, or worth considering, or wondering about. As luck would have it alas, this is unlikely to be data that actually matches the target perfectly, since there wouldn't be much to wonder about in that case. Nothing I example should be construed as summing up my viewing, heh!


Today's example is about symbology.


Session evaluation for learning purposes is a matter of looking at feedback and re-vivifying how it 'felt' when you got data, and attempting to find the connection between what you felt, and what is in the target. Sometimes this is guessing + feeling = assumption, but that's the tools we have and the puzzle we have to solve.

I'm hoping it doesn't make anybody think I'm trying to 'stretch' data to fit or something like that. Only the viewer knows what they feel in session, what they feel with feedback, and how things might relate. Sometimes real obvious relations (and even seemingly accurate data), the viewer knows is wrong (e.g., they were applying it to something very different than it seems). Sometimes stuff others see no relationship in, the viewer understands the internal connection that brought a certain kind of data for a certain target element. This is a good faith effort here.


Although I experiment constantly, I have a 'base' I go back to. I've just gone back to my roots and for this example (from last night) I was using my typical personal method. It employs Warcollier's ideograms, though differently than CRV, and something I invented years ago that I call Aspect RV based on Jane Roberts' "Aspect Psychology" work. I call my method "PJRV"---what else? It is part of Zen do Ryu Remote Viewing as the Dojo Psi would put it.




In last night's session, I had about 40 minutes. Tasking was system-generated (we mix TKR, RV Targets, and some other sites) by my viewing buddy who provided feedback after we both finished our sessions. Fairly early in the session, about 10 minutes in, I'd had some ideograms, text, a sketch "fragment" and then I asked an Aspect for information.


In the end, the session overall made me believe that I had decent target contact, or I would not use this as an example. I am focusing here on only one tiny piece of data. Obviously there's other and better-related data that makes me feel I had some connect.


I saw a person walking across this ~12 foot long, flat structure floating on water, like a pier but on the water. He had come from something and was going to something, both at the same level but solid, rather like the edge of a dock but down at the same level as what he was walking on. I "felt" he was walking on something that got him from one place to the other and kept him out of the water. My "sense-interpretation" was that the important part was the middle-thing; not the water, not even the walking although that would be included, but the focus was the object and its function.

There were a few primary data points in the target. I would consider them this:

1 - church structure

2 - porch structure

3 - people

4 - front lawn with signs

5 - concept of politics and voting

6 - concept of competition, advertising, signs


Target feedback, blowup of part I think is focus, and the data.


Wrong or right, this is my example: I believe that the data I got of the fellow walking across a flat structure from one place to another was symbolic or best-internal-match data for the ramp/porch in this target.


Had I articulated the minimal basic data well, which I didn't (I ignored the AOL, I said path instead of structure, I failed to note the wood-dock-like look, etc.), it would have been ok. The min basic was this: "There is a small connecting structure a person can walk across to get from one area to another." Of course, I didn't really know what or which data was appropriate at the time.

OK here's the part that drives my viewer-brain Stark. Bleeping. Crazy.!: I've seen lots of wood porches in my life. There is no obvious reason why my mind could not simply have dived into my database of memory and grabbed me any number of useful "wood porches" -- even those with people standing on them, even those that ramp up, I have seen them all! So you gotta ask:


Why didn't it just show me a freakin' wooden porch?!

Well, I'm guessing of course, but maybe to my subconscious, the visible-physical part is just very shallow. Too few dimensions of data.


Maybe it showed me what it did in part to get the concept related to the church across. Instantly my mind got the 'walk on water/religious' idea.


I didn't realize it until feedback, but the "dock-like flat structures" that were offside "each end" of the thing the fellow in the visual was walking, were wooden-beam structures just like the porch.


So we have:
* composites (wood) accurate,
* gestalt (structure) accurate,
* function and purpose (leading one safely from one side to another) is accurate
.......although only in part as the water thrown into the symbol is distractive.
* But the water/change in the symbol brought the concept (religious) in, which added more data
.......even though in doing so, it "distracted" me by seeming to give me extra/inaccurate physical data.

In a conversation we may choose several different words which have meanings that overlap, but slightly-different associations (or 'semantic baggage') with them. Perhaps the subconscious is doing this, but in its own way. Maybe whatever we see is actually like a "carrier wave" with yet-more data to "unfurl" from whatever we got.


(Hmmn. I just thought of that just now. I'm interested in 'interacting with the data', a hangup from my archetype work... I wonder if a visualization to record what I get and then 'unfurl it' to see what else comes through would bring anything of note. Will have to try it and let you know.)


In order to make sense of this and be better at viewing, I need to better understand the symbolism I get.


And in order to do this, understanding how-and/or-why my mind creates the symbolism it does to begin with, would help!




But then again.


Maybe it's not all about us. We are only one variable in a two-variable equation. Maybe sometimes it's about the target, too.


Might it be possible that a target inherently has its own history that is part of its identity and hence how it comes across to us as well?


Might the founding/creation intent, the usage, and other factors become "intrinsic or implicit" parts of the target itself, and hence show up in data? We assume yes... right? (I say this not as a caveat to excuse data, but as a consideration to better understand data.)


So if certain... qualities, creation, experience, concepts, purposes, functions, are intrinsic to the target, well, that means we don't know the target as well as we think we do. Like a lovely young woman we think we know all about based on what she looks like, maybe the target, like a person, can have surprising depths and twists that we don't know about, but which underlie the very essence of what it IS. In that case, our variable changed. The target isn't what we think, in that case. It may LOOK like a porch, or a cheerleader, but maybe there is more under the surface than we could feasibly guess at, but that psychically will come across just fine. The Target + Viewer = Data equation will have a different result.


Most of this is intuitively obvious from any armchair.


None of it's new but for new folks I'm walking through it, and because I've been thinking about it lately.




How does this translate into practical terms for remote viewing?


It's not enough to Stage 5 your session into the ground. Those are useful tools, although to me they are more like "no-brainer processes you'd use during viewing" (not as a stage). A whole effort of S5 applied to a session would only result in yet more data on top to try and figure it out (in a structure that already has on average way too much data for clarity about what is accurate or meaningful in my opinion). So I don't think that's an answer.


In a perfect world, we would have sufficient target contact to just "know" what matters. In the real world, sometimes we do... often we don't.


As part of figuring this out, I feel one needs every session to be a four-part process, to get as much learning from the experience as possible.

  1. The first part being what I call Emotional Sequencing, a formal and more complex version of what most people call the cool-down or warm-up. (I used to be very 'into' hypnosis and NLP and this is a riff taken from some techniques in there.) Or in a nutshell, psyching yourself up for the session.

  2. The second being the session itself. Whatever it might be.

  3. The third being "a session on the session." We might drop some data, and we might add other data, and we might further-flesh-out sketches or annotations of sketches. This is what is done in a CRV summary except here we're applying that not to a paragraph of words at the end of the session, but rather to what I call a "presentation session" that is a second, similar but separate product. The original session, to me, is personal; it may have personal notes and experiences and thoughts and private data. The "presentation session" has the data I wish to present to others. (If I am wrong about what to include vs. not, or what gets added, well, that's part of what I'm learning.)

  4. The fourth being a sketch and a rapport process with the target once there is feedback, accompanied by then going through the session vs. target-FB in detail for understanding.

Repeating experience, improved target contact, familiarity with symbols, and just plain asking for "literal visual" data, all of these obviously go toward better understanding this process.


But I still feel that for me, there is a whole yawning abyss (how's that for symbolism) when it comes to symbolic data and understanding it. I get data in a session and I know it applies... just not how!




If I see a flash of a structure, vertical wood beams, wall and overhanging roof, with a man standing there, what part is the data? Is it 'structure'? 'Wood'? 'Overhang'? 'Roof'? 'Vertical beams'? The man? Something about the man? Is it that he's standing around? Is it "all of the above" (man standing around on porch of a shack made of wood beams with a porch roof overhang)? The smallest flash of visual contains so much data. Figuring out which data is what my mind is trying to get through is the hard part.


Some might reasonably say that I shouldn't be focusing on "what matters" in session because that's trying to do analysis on the data as it comes in; one should just record what one gets. But I must in this respect, not because I want to match feedback even, but because I want to understand myself. There's more reason than that, though:


At times I would need to spend ten minutes writing an entire essay on all the data contained within a micro-second flash. After which, I would be totally in left-brain mode and out of the session flow. I'd have pages of data and only one or two points in there would matter at all, and even that only in symbol. The only miracle would be having sessions shorter than 6 hours, and avoiding the AOL drive that three solid pages of data all about a single given symbol is likely to provide.


Some people ask for literal data and they get it. Their mind just hops in and says "Stone," or whatever. I spend time learning how a combination of four unique, nebulous body-feelings combine in order to feel that something is stone; some people just ask for it and get it. Go figure. Sometimes that works for me. Sometimes not.


Until I find a way to make getting literal data consistent, I guess I need to figure out "how to figure out" the symbolic stuff, though.

No comments: