Presentation Sessions

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 05 July 2006

I'd like to blog a bit more about the idea, function and purpose of what I call remote viewing "presentation sessions."

First, let's point out that the concept on its own isn't novel. In CRV and its various method derivatives, the session summary at the end of the session is, depending on your trainer and/or method, a "light" form of this. Some trainers request it simply summarize the data in the session. Others, allowing that at the end of the session when the summary is done the viewer is assumed to be in "better target contact," will let the viewer emphasize or de-emphasize information from the session, when doing the summary. This ranges, depending on the trainer, in degree: some let you actually "add and remove" data as well. However, it is still just a summary---it is paragraph form. It's a small thing tacked onto the end of the session.

A presentation session is a whole second psi-based product. I believe that in theory; perhaps if done well, if this itself became a skill; this product could be an improvement on the raw session (additional information, and better understanding of what info we already have).

Sharing Data with non-viewers: Session Issues

The people most likely to use RV data aren't viewers, but people asking them for sessions. Unless it's an RV project manager, these are the people least likely to know how to deal with the data as presented. On the internet, most session-sharing is done with the public.

There are a number of "issues" with raw remote viewing sessions when it comes to them being comprehensible for the public. The TKR Galleries have actually demonstrated some of these quite well, although anybody who works with a lot of other viewers would see them.

Novice Issues

For beginners, there are the primary problems of AOLs and focus. Let's take Jane, a new viewer, as example. It does not matter whether she is trained in a formal method or not; the basics, you can hear/learn even online. Jane has been taught that she is supposed to write down everything that goes through her mind during the session process. She dutifully writes down everything. This results in a session that is quite a bit not about the target, in part because Jane's mind is wandering like crazy, but also because Jane is still new to RV, so she really doesn't have a grasp yet on what is so fleeting that it's just unavoidable association (if we recorded every instance of that, it would be an endless word-association essay, not an RV session), vs. nebulous but still clear enough to count as data or at least AOL.

Also, Jane may be recording her process like a diary (and that's ok), and if she is formally trained so she's even got admonitions and acronyms to track every possible annoyance or event in her internal or external environments. When they get to the point of adding in all their active-AOL process ("...blue, blue-grey, or is it green? maybe tan. I don't know. My sister just turned on the radio. It's really hot in here. I think it's brown actually. But then I guessed brown on the last session and was wrong... ok, I'll say blue. Hard. Shiny...") I want to bellow, JUST THE FACTS MA'AM! People reviewing sessions don't want to know the viewer had an itch. They want to know about the target. Getting all that junk out of the way of what is presented can be good.

Then there is the issue that sometimes (especially method-trained new viewers) they AOL every damn thing---down to outright word-association strings---and even AOL half their actual data in their insecurity and fear of being wrong. This tends to result in viewers who, if the AOL is accurate, want to take credit for having hit on something, but if it's inaccurate, they figure it doesn't count because it's AOL. Analytical overlay is in my view poorly misunderstood by many viewers in the field at large, and ends up with some simplistic cookie-cutter definition that might be helpful for a brief time just in the door, but after that is silly if not detrimental in its shallow interpretation.

So, between the three things above, a new viewer's session can end up with a ton of stuff that is confusing, distracting or diffusing in their "raw" session. Learning to go through that and make a "clean version" has several educational benefits.

Other Issues

For more developed viewers, there are the primary issues of personal process and structured method.

For the method part of it, unless today I want to know more about CRV, I just don't really care what they got in their long strings of stage 2's or their matrix of stage 4 or whatever. What I really want to know is, "Tell me about the target." Because THEY are the expert at their method, they are far better equipped to package that information for "public perusal" than the public at large is. I find it a pain to wade through handwritten columns on a ton of pages. Also, some session methods are so complicated that nobody who isn't extensively trained in them could really make sense of them, and some even have some pages never shown in public sessions (as 'method secrets' or 'working pages'). Seeing the original "raw data" can be confusing, or can even be incomplete to begin with in the latter case. A readable summary of the data, and the various sketches, is far more ideal as an end-product.

I realize that this process may leave out some data, if the viewer doesn't feel, during the presentation session process, that 17 variations on the word "bright" really matter. If there are four pages of descriptives, my god, please don't tell me---for reference, great to have, but for the main presentation, I want to know what is "important and relevent" about the target, not every possible microscopically accurate piece of information that could conceivably be applied to it. (As McMoneagle once said, Some viewers will provide pages of descriptive information that covers the details of a leather jacket and its zipper that the person in the target were wearing, and it's "100% accurate!"; but really, what might be important is, "There is a man with a gun in his hand.")

It isn't that I am not interested in the raw data; depending on the viewer and session, sometimes I really am. It's just that as far as public presentations go, I would like the viewer to be the one who, after the session-proper, provides the information in a readable format that at least partly makes sense to the average reader. Only the viewer is in the position to judge what is "most important and relevent" about a target---that's the psi! But when you begin a session, you're likely to get a little bit of everything. The viewer, at the end of the session when their target contact is better developed, can go back through the session and have a better feel for what really matters, what deserves emphasis, vs. what doesn't. Same as with some method variants on the summary, except I'm talking about literally a whole reiteration-with-possible-revision of the session itself. Might they be wrong? Heck yeah! But learning to be right about this is what RV comes down to.

This is not analysis in session because it isn't being done in session; it is a second psychic product that is based on the viewer's own psi evaluation (the session-part-2) of the raw data (session-part-1). Done before feedback obviously; ideally, is done following the session, as an "extension" of it.

Personal Process

The other issue is personal process. First there is the psi process itself. I sometimes write down not just the data I get, but HOW I got the data. I have a ton of personal acronyms I use for things in some sessions that would not be understood by anybody else, and I don't see why I should have to educate the whole world on my method in order to be able to have my viewing data understood. Allegedly, we the viewers are the experts on viewing (heh), and if anybody ought to be arranging a "presentation understandable to the public" of data, it oughtta be the viewer.

There are many different "kinds" of visuals, or ways to get them. There is even more than one way to "hear" stuff. Then there's mini-movies as I call them, and seeming bi-lo moments, and in-body feelings, and ghost-body feelings, and thoughtballs, and so on. "How" I interpret something is going to depend, often, on how it comes across. I can tell you that if I see something with a "stark clarity that is realer than real" for a moment, it's usually the target. Not just like the target. THE target. (For me this is more likely to happen with a single color than anything. For some people though, they get a whole visual.) If I simply see something like a picture, it is likely a memory-clip, that will be "best match" but alas, my mind uses concept, function, and other factors in its matching process, so it may or may not be a purely physical-match. If I see a visual that moves, or I see a clip of a person "acting out" something (an arm hands me something, a person strikes a pose, whatever), the first is "symbolic" and the second is "charadic" as I call it. If however I find myself "flying over" the target, and my vision is actually kind of fuzzy but is combined with a "gut feel and knowing," then I usually trust that data as being totally literal. This is critical to the understanding of how your mind works and what data you are actually getting.

The mind uses all these different kinds of presentations just like verbally we use "inflection" to modify and even reverse meaning. So in session, I may often write down how something comes across, or some piece of that as a reference. The onlooking public has no idea if this is itself data, or what this might mean. Like some points of method, it can be more confusing than helpful to readers.

Private Data

Then there's the issue of "private data." I wouldn't reveal highly personal data about an individual to the public, even if the individual was some dead public figure. I would want to record it, because the session record is first and foremost FOR ME. But that doesn't mean I want to share it with the world. Once I see feedback, I can decide whether or not that information is appropriate to be shared. If this were science, we would provide raw data, and we would not be worried about issues like ethics or privacy because science would be targeting us mostly on basic physical, nicely judgeable, statistics-deriving sort of targets that would make us all die of boredom. If it were applications, well, we assume there'd be a project manager (PM) in place to make sure target were cool, and so, I feel the client is paying for raw data as well as presentation data (which because it is a psi product, is itself additional information, even if it's only a slight revision in emphasis of the original data). But there is potentially private data of other sorts, such as spontaneous personal insights one may have during session, about their own life, or a friend.

All of those things are reasons why a "presentation session" is a useful thing. But there's much more.

When I get data, much of the time I get far too much, too fast, to properly record. I can have half-second "experiences" that would take 15 minutes to really flesh out, and many of them per a 20 minute session. Even the time it takes to note whatever strikes me as most obvious, and doesn't take longer than 5 seconds to write, may be a distraction of sorts---I have to shift into more of a left-brain state to do verbal data. Worse, if I'm still in good target contact, I'm probably an idiot about what I write down... I'm not left-brain enough, basically. If I don't make this shift and take all the time I need to record something, then I have not accurately or well provided the data. If I do, I have probably trashed some degree of the rest of my session, because instead of staying in close target contact and letting it flow-in while I can, I had to turn my attention to the outflow of communication.

It literally becomes a process where the session-recording and the data-incoming are competition for each other. No matter which one you focus on, you lose some of the other, and despite the on-paper perfect-world assumption that we record "as" we get data, that's an ad-hoc "try"---anybody experienced with this knows that there is a balance and a compromise here. Many people shy from method structures when they start feeling the structure is literally competing with the experience, and they are forced to give precedence to the experience instead, as the structure is designed to support that, not compete with that. In the early days or if not much data or not too fast, the structure can help lead you through it, but when you get plenty of data on your own and fast, it can be like a friction brake on the whole psychic process. But it isn't just structure, it's literally the act of having to write it all down.

When the future makes room for the present

Say I am sitting in session. I have a sudden flash of something, and then other data. I might not have time to write down all the details of my first flash. Further, because I'm in session, I may be really stupid about words, I often can't think of the words I want to use for things when in session. I really only have time to write down some kind of basic reference to the data.

If I stop to write down a lot more, I've pulled away from target contact, and trying to get to the correct words often sends me far toward a more linear state of mind better for writing and worse for viewing. If I stay and obsess on that data point to flesh it out, I will find myself trying to decide 'which part of it matters' in order to make the decision about what to write down, and in the end, I will probably end up in AOL-land, or really hacked because I wrote down 4 aspects of something, but it was 2 others I didn't mention that turned out to matter.

The most important thing is my target contact, continuing it and increasing it, so that it becomes as solid as possible by the end of the session.

When I tell myself that I am doing a presentation session afterward, I quit worrying about "which part of this ton of nested info I should be pulling out and writing down fast and moving on" because the decision is actually partly irrelevent: I will be going back through the session and then I can flesh out all of it if I want. Also, with the benefit of additional data and better target contact, what aspect of that 'flash' of nested info matters more than others, might be more clear. So I will have more data, more experience, more target contact, and yet probably a little better linear-state of mind than during the raw session, all of which can contribute to my "much fuller disclosure" of all the data available to me.

Because that's really what it comes down to. In the first raw session I don't have time to get down the "fullness and subtleties and context" of the data going by, and if I take the time I'm unlikely to maintain the kind of target contact that leads to an overall session being a good job. This especially goes for the "experiences" that are mini-movies, bilocations, aspect interaction, target interaction, etc. where one second can literally be an entire "experience", not just "a data point." It can literally be an entire page of narrative.

I have not done a ton of this, although I began this approach many years ago; I have seldom had time to view consistently and usually don't have time for the extra step in session. But of all the presentation sessions I have done, I have never once had it NOT be a great improvement on the original session when it comes to being understood by others. Even the process of taking it out of a structure, typing it up so it's readable (I scan sketches), getting rid of all the personal session comments that relate to process rather than data, can hugely improve the presentation of any session. But if you also have more detailed, better-stated information, that's a genuine quality improvement of the best kind.

I think of it like a book. When we get a book, it does not have the extended margin size, the printer crop marks, extensive editorial scribbling on it, etc. That may be the "raw product" but since the product is being presented to others, there is a second, "presentation product" that is geared toward people just picking it up and reading it and having some clue what it means.

Granted, we don't always have time, especially in practice, to put yet-more effort into each session. But on special occasions, I believe it's worth the effort. I have learned as much about myself, my data, how I think, etc. in the process of making the presentation sessions, as anything else. I'm inclined to think that even if they were not used, the simple process of compiling them is itself a healthy process for the viewer. Give it a try!