White Flags and the Remote Viewing Blues

Archived from the former firedocs blog. 24 May 2006

We might all be psychic, but like most viewers I experience this in spots. If yesterday and today I am omniscient, tomorrow I might not be able to accurately describe a garbage can. This is the only reason my ego isn't larger than Jupiter and I can still stand myself. On most days.

But the last month of viewing has been such a trial of character, my ego is now the microscopic size of a Saint's. When I finally broke through and did something right, I was so happy to get any accurate data I felt like falling to my knees in a religious level of gratitude. "I was blind, but now I see!" Literally.

I'm pulling out of that swamp of the psyche now. Most viewers only talk about success, but today I'd like to talk about a phase of being totally, utterly, consistently lousy at RV.

Just how bad is it?

When I say viewing was horrid the last month I don't mean ordinary inconsistency.

I don't mean the cycle of "change" inside that seems to revise the whole symbolic and ideogram vocabularly and make you feel like now that you've finally got a handle on the conversation, the subconscious is starting it all over again. And you know how much fun it is when you start: as I said after CRV methods training eons ago, From all appearances, the subconscious speaks Etruscan in 4-D, translates it through geometry, encrypts it in some long-dead fish language, and then feeds you that information in code. Of course, it's always perfectly obvious in retrospect.

I don't even mean a cycle of feeling "blocked," where one sits about staring moodily at the paper, until either the mind makes something up out of sheer desperation, or falls asleep in despair-based denial.

I mean just a consistent dose of plain ol' "can't hit the broad side of a barn." This is the flag, that dratted C-word: "consistent." Remote Viewing has only one thing sure: it's inconsistent. Nobody is good or bad forever. That's what gives novices hope, despite the long haul of learning, and keeps others from being unbearable.

I am not always on target by any means, but more often than not, I am---which is not to brag in any way because you can be on target and still have a miserable session. It's just that if my sessions are lousy, it's usually a process fault: my translation, articulation, interference, etc. had problems. Most the time, it's not because I didn't have target contact.

Chance (probability) alone suggests that even by sheer accident, we'll have at least basic data correct once in awhile. So when session failure is "consistent," there is something going on. That's not just being lousy at RV, it's actual psi-missing. This suggests a big problem in viewer psychology.

It's ok to suffer. But being an undisciplined whiny half-wit isn't ok, so the next thing to do when your RV sucks is to think about how to dig your way out.

Signs You've Got Remote Viewer's Angst

Dentist appointments are a welcome break from your suffering.

Newbies make you want to shout "Run, Hans! Escape while you can!"

Lunatics on the radio make you sympathetic: "End of the world, eh? We've all had those days, buddy."

Even the drooling TKR galleries commenters couldn't make your session seem like a hit.

You start to wonder if you skipped a step that'd make this work. Like maybe selling your soul.

You start secretly wishing for an AOL-drive disaster; at least it'd feel like a good session.

(Paranoid guilt arrives. Yes. You will be punished for even thinking about AOL drive like that.)

You investigate your 'gut feeling' about RV and it only says "Go away. But first give me more chocolate."

You suspect your cat is thinking, "I knew you were a psychic brick. This is news?"

Re-gearing and Re-tooling

I have a few pick-me-up approaches I have used over time to recoup from blinding incompetence. I recently, finally employed a couple, and already things are better. So as my contribution to viewer-therapy, I offer:

HOW TO KICK THOSE I-SUCK-AT-RV BLUES.

1. No more than one session a day.
   
   Desperation breeds repetition. When what we're doing isn't working, we tend to do the same thing harder, rather than do something differently. I am all for lots of practice but once ya slide into a miss-mode it's different. "More sessions" in this mode end up resulting in less focus, with less emphasis on the individual session. It distributes the agony of failure. It gives the subconscious a soft landing---"I can always try again." Demand your subconscious perform during the only chance it's got. Pull in your focus, regroup, parse your viewing down to a few specific occasions, and give it all you've got. Viewing while in a funk usually just means more lousy feedback experiences to break your heart. Do just one session a day. Plan for it. Psyche yourself up for it. Feel for it. And then do it well. If it doesn't go well, don't go on doing session after session. Just do that one. If you fail, then suffer! On purpose. It builds character---and determination.


2. Modify session work to "exercises" with specific expectations.
   
   It's important to get feedback validating your ability and accuracy. The longer-larger the session, the more room for wandering. When sessions go badly for awhile we often tend to drag out the process, our self-confidence having been weakened, our sense of target contact being nebulous. Set yourself an exercise(s) that is brief---not more than 15 minutes at the most---and that is very specific. Decide, for example, that you want to have at least one decent visual in the session which, upon feedback, you will be able to clearly correlate to the target. That is your only goal for that exercise. It doesn't matter if all the data is wrong. If during the session you had one decent visual that, on feedback, you can see was on-target, then you know you ARE being psychic and getting the data you wanted and it's just a matter of focus. If that doesn't work, change your goal: make it to get just the gestalt, or just one good color---whatever. Find a goal you can meet. (If you're doing "little exercises" rather than whole sessions, several a day is fine.)


3. Knock off the "field politics," if you've got any or read any.
   
   Nothing has done my viewing more damage than the contentious debate on the internet and the ridiculous hype-schtick of the media. I get to where I sit down to view and my overall emotional, psychological association with the whole topic of 'remote viewing' is affected by the fact that I am disgusted and bored and annoyed about a variety of RV topics or people. Even just reading email lists or message boards or chat rooms where people spend more time grousing about the details or opining from the armchair than actual viewing, can drag one's attitude down. For some reason it's harder to clear my mind during RV of RV-related topics than even of far more serious personal topics. Anything "distracting" you may be engaged in that relates to remote viewing, take a break from it for awhile. "Congregating" in general is good, sharing with others is a basic need and supportive of the community, but let it happen in cycles that work for you, not all the time. When you're having a dry run of session results, make sure your viewing is just about viewing, and not even potentially about anything or anybody else.


4. Re-acquaint yourself with basic RV details.
   
   Re-read a book like McMoneagle's Remote Viewing Secrets. We breeze through it, "yada yada, we know all that," and move on, but a re-read by any serious viewer will usually find several things they'd forgotten about, some things they hadn't noticed in the last read, some things they now have more experience with than they did when they read it the first time, etc. On the chance your current RV issues are protocol-related, this may remind you. But even if not, it's good to stay involved with RV in positive ways and "viewing downtime" is the perfect opportunity to refresh your memory on details and maybe come up with a few new ideas for exercises.


5. Refuse to lose --- never surrender!
   
   I suspect sometimes that much of RV success over the long term is a matter of simply being such an unreasonable, stubborn bonehead that you refuse to lose. At least, for the really good viewers I know, this seems to be a trait they have in common! Plod on. Re-affirm to yourself that your success and development is going to happen, it is totally inevitable, you are going to be good at this no matter what, that if it isn't working right now the subconscious is really just wasting both your time because it's going to work, so the subconscious might as well get with the program. Refuse to accept anything else.


6. Make space and time to talk with your psychology.
   
   Sometimes there is inner-stuff going on that we need to deal with... and we aren't doing so. These things may interfere with sessions. Or in some cases, they may actually influence the data or experience in weird ways. Do some pro-active meditation on any issues in your life---including your dry-run of recent RV success, that's an issue---and see if you can work through it a little to "free up" your insides. Be creative. If you don't meditate, take a shower and do the dishes or wash the car and use those as visualizations of cleaning up and rinsing off "resistance" and things like that. Remote Viewing is as much about you as the target. (In some philosophies these aren't really separable.) Sometimes the issue isn't RV itself; sometimes that is only a side-effect of other things. See if you can resolve the "you" part of the equation through normal psychological means.

Go View. You can't give up or you really might be doomed. Most "breaks" from RV end up being rather like taking a break from a diet -- likely to become much longer than planned! -- and it doesn't get easier. I'm here to tell ya from experience---from way, way too much experience---that stopping and re-starting again brings a development curve Every. Single. Time. The loss of "momentum" in belief systems and practice are both very pronounced. I'm just your average uptight left-brain sort and if I can do it, you can do it!