I haven't written about remote viewing here in a while.
The simple reason is this: I totally suck at it right now.

I've been having such a tough time lately. I do sessions that either have minor contact or none at all. One after the other they're just weak-sauce sessions. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm devolving haha.

This has happened before. A bit over a year ago I was cruising along, viewing daily with half-decent results when all of the sudden it was like I hit a pit of quick sand. The harder I tried to break out of it, the deeper I sunk. For nearly a month and a half strait – every. session. sucked. every. day. Not to say I didn't have observable target contact here and there but accurate data was minimal and low-level at best. As where before I was getting used to the feeling of progress, learning new things all the time and having some good results on paper.

The angst became so great that the episode earned it's own moniker:
"The Dark Night of Psi" (cue scary organ music).

I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a bowling ball. But, I powered through it and eventually the streak broke with one of the cooler session experiences I've ever had, and a string of decency thereafter. Not a second too soon either. I didn't fancy going prematurely bald for tearing all my hair out. It's just so frustrating because you know you can do better. You've the past sessions to prove it. So why the hell isn't it working any more? Racking your brain over anything and everything that might be the culprit does little good.

Some viewers say that when you start to have trouble it's a good time to take a break. That's awesome if it works for them but personally I always seem to come back from a break feeling twice as incompetent as I did before it. Am I alone on this one? Maybe.

It appears the Dark Night of Psi (scary music) has returned. Shrouding my soul in blackness. Smiting me from the shadows! Destroying Hope and all that is sacred! Chewing a path of destruction through eternity and…….

Ahem… Sorry about that. You can tell it's a sore subject. Anyway, my viewing has been consistently pitiful for a nearly two months. I hate to whine but it's hard as hell to keep the right frame of mind when every session starts to feel like an exercise in futility before you even start. I know, poor me. I pick one of the most mentally challenging pursuits a person can, and then I bitch because it's hard. Heh.

Not sure what causes these long 'dry spells.' I think it's probably just an exaggerated bell of the learning curve. A valley canyon that precedes the next higher peak. Maybe it's worse for some than others. I'm not sure it's any easier the second time around and it probably won't be on the third either. C'est la vi. All there is is to keep at it. At least I'm lucky enough to have a girlfriend who pretends to never tire of listening to me belly-ache about it.

The last time I hit this wall, a friend of mine (and a more experienced viewer than I) gave me this advice:

"… hang in there. This too will pass, as they say. No matter what the cause is, you were doing great before so you know that you can do great again, right? The cause or source of your recent missing WILL pass. But YOU WON'T PASS. …Even if you take no steps to try to correct the problem, the problem will STILL eventually either go away or will solve itself (possibly from your subconscious figuring out a way around it while, from your conscious perspective, you have just kept plugging away)."

Leave it to good friends to make the night seem a little less dark.

I was fooling around with some graphite the other night and voila! Vulcan love. I'm no great artist but I like to draw and I'm trying to do it more often lately. It's like a kind of meditation. Always seems to put me in that collected state of mind.

I had a most amazing dream last night:

I was with a friend in a pawn shop that doubled as a governmental office that handled minor tasks related to immigration. My friend was taking forever doing whatever it was he had to do there and I couldn't wait to leave. While I was waiting, I noticed a beautiful Italian woman at the counter who was there applying for a visa or some such. She was deaf and her friend was translating her sign language for the government employee/pawn broker. They finished up and left and so did my friend and I.

I've always wanted to learn sign language so I thought I'd stop by a nearby college and try to sign up for a class. When I got there, it just so happened that sign language class was starting that day and in just a few minutes. I went in and took a seat in the front row of the large lecture hall. The professor came in a second later; an older man with a receding grey hairline, a short grey beard and thin round glasses. He started speaking about something (can't remember what) that had absolutely nothing to do with sign language. Making a lot of hand gestures as he spoke, I wondered if he was imprinting sign language on the class through some kind of advanced NLP.

He hardly looked at the rest of the class. Almost the entire time he spoke it was directly to me. Nearly like I was the only one in the room.

The class was then out on a field trip. We had been brought to the edge of what appeared to be a strip-mining operation. We stood in a half-built structure, mostly just concrete floors and ceilings and an occasional metal beam where walls might someday go. The building was positioned on the edge of a sizable drop-off – a steep slope that went down maybe two hundred feet into a giant hole in the ground. In the bottom of this huge crater was a collection of heavy machinery, tractors, bulldozers etc, all at rest.

A black curtain hung in the building, partially blocking the classes view of the inside of the crater. The professor looks around and then pulls back the curtain as if it was time to start the show. When he does, all the machines in the crater come to life. Cables turning, hydraulics pushing huge metal arms around and men in little plexiglas boxes making all of them work. I had the impression that the professor had made arrangements with the men who ran the machines to start them on his cue of opening the curtain. I didn't know what for though. It seemed a regular construction-type site.

Then I saw them.

Several 'beings' emerging from somewhere deep inside the crater. Nearly humanoid, one at a time they came walking out and they were BIG. Each of them around a hundred feet tall. They all looked mostly the same. Each one was wearing what looked like a close-cut, silvery-grey evening dress. Over the dress they had a burnished, shining breastplate that was sculpted like muscles, each one's a different color that represented…something.

Armor on the top, dress on the bottom and no arms. None of them had arms. I'm a little foggy on what their faces looked like but they had strong jaws, no hair, and no visible eyeballs. The epitome of androgyny, they had the waist and curves of a woman, but no breasts under their upper armor. They were both male and female and neither. (I made a feeble attempt to sketch one here).

One by one they walked towards us, silently climbing the slope out of the crater and walking past us. They didn't even seem to notice the class standing there watching. No one spoke. We were witnessing something very rare and very special. It was obvious that these things were spiritually some very heavy hitters – almost on the level of being 'gods.' It was an awe-inspiring experience to say the least.

I had the idea that this was sacred ground and whatever was going on with the construction below had triggered this.

As one of them with a violet colored breastplate slowly towered past, I had the thought that even though they looked perfectly solid, they might not be. I stuck my head to the side and the dress of this giant passed through my head and shoulders. As it did, it 'activated' something inside me and suddenly everything in my vision was a shade of deep violet, revealing a certain energy in the surroundings that I couldn't see just a moment before. The effect lasted a few seconds and faded.

-*-

Then I was in a room alone with the professor. On a high table in front of us there was a body wrapped head to toe in white linen that I had a sense of being me too. I was telling the professor that I can't seem to get out of my body consciously. As if on cue, a short stocky guy with an odd face comes into the room. He was dressed all in orange robes and I took him for a monk. He opened his mouth wide and pressed his face against the side of the body wrapped on the table. It was like some sort of trigger and I was suddenly absorbed into the back of the monk. It felt like I had been magnetized and instantly, physically assimilated into the guy. Startled the hell outta me. Immediately I felt like I was in a different realm completely. Like the monk was a doorway that I literally traveled through to this new place. I had left my body. Full OBE.

In this new place I was formless. There was no up and no down. It was a bit frightening to tell the truth but my excitement and awe nearly balanced it out. I encountered a person whom I quickly avoided. I wasn't sure about anything and slightly feared for my safety in this possibly vulnerable astral state that was very new to me. I moved on and came upon an amazing white pattern thing. It was like a cross between a spiderweb and a lace doily, but all made out of some bright white energy. Changing and folding inward on itself, it was beautiful. I had strong thought that all of this was totally real. "This is not a dream. This is really happening."

After a couple minutes I was 'sucked back' into my body with a final sort of 'click.' It was the same kind of magnetic sensation of being pulled into the monk. My skin tingled like pins and needles as I awoke in my bed feeling very privileged, and very grateful.

This morning I had about half an hour before it was time to start getting ready for work. Decided to use it to water the lawn and the plants for a bit. While I was squatting down watering a potted plant on the ground, I felt something tickling my leg just below my knee. I Thought maybe something had crawled up there so I put my hand up my pant leg and felt around. Didn't feel anything and the tickling went away so I just figured it was some stray leg hairs or something. I finished my watering and came inside to take a shower.

As I was taking off my belt, I felt something rough inside my pants near the top of my butt. I put my hand back there and all of the sudden something bit me hard on my right cheek. I tore off my pants as fast as I could. Standing there in my birthday suit, I looked back at the big red mark on my ass that was starting to burn and throb. I thought maybe it was a bee or something.

"Damn, that's really starting to hurt!"

I moved my pants around a little hoping to shake whatever it was out and find out what got me. Nothing was coming out.Then, all of the sudden from the folds of the denim emerges a giant dragon. OK, it was actually a centipede but it looked like a dragon at the moment. About five inches long. Those things are mean.

While most bugs and spiders don't want anything to do with you, the centipedes here are fearless and known for charging directly at people and carrying off small children (ok, so that last bit isn't true, but I wouldn't put it past them if they could).

I grabbed one of my trusty boots and smashed that sucker 'til he was dead.

I've heard more horror stories about centipede bites than I could recall at that moment. "It'll make you sick for weeks…" "…It swelled up the size of a baseball…" "…she had to have a skin graph…"

I had flashes of what of venom-ridden horrors may lay ahead. I called my boss. He's a local, he'll know what to do. Mostly he just laughed at me. Heh. Then he told me if I wasn't allergic to them he didn't think there wasn't really anything to worry about. Hell, I don't know if I'm allergic to centipede venom.

Just to be sure my internal organs weren't about to liquify, I called poison control. The lady was really nice. She said there wasn't much I could do about the pain. She also told me that it's very rare, but if it started swelling really big, or I got nauseous, a bad headache, dizzy etc that meant it was extremely serious and to call her back right away. She also said that these often get infected, and if it does I'll need to go to the doctor and get some antibiotics. She was more comforting than my boss at least lol.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late), I took a shower, got dressed and went to work. The pain and swelling mostly subsided after a while. I still have two red holes in my cheek about a centimeter apart, one where each fang sunk into me. I count my lucky stars. If I had to have one of these guys crawling around in my pants, I guess my ass is the best place I could have taken the hit. Criminy.

-*-

Driving home tonight after work I was thinking about the incident. I thought about the way the centipede looked when he crawled out of my pants (now removed from my horror of the moment). It looked like he didn't know where to go or what to do. I had the thought that he was probably just scared and trying to find his way out of my jeans when I stuck my hand back there and freaked him out. I felt bad for killing him.

I don't like to kill things if I don't have to. Spiders have free reign in my house for the most part. When I see one build a new web in a corner of the bathroom, I might name him Henry or Sir Charles or Betty and talk to them when I'm in there. If one looks particularly threatening, I'll scoop her up in a glass and relocate her outside.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a meat eater and I'm not loosing any sleep over the death of my assailant. He was a predator in my house (let alone my pants). I thought it interesting though to have such a different perspective from the total satisfaction I got out of smashing it into oblivion earlier in the day, asking it how it liked me now and flexing at it.

Of course if the centipede was 140 lbs and I was 0.5 ounces (shiver), he would have smashed me.

Reminds me of the movie "The Fly" with Jeff Goldbloom

Seth Brundle: Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects… don't have politics. They're very… brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first… insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but… I'm afraid, uh…
Ronnie: I don't know what you're trying to say.
Seth Brundle: I'm saying… I'm saying I – I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake.
Ronnie: No. no, Seth…
Seth Brundle: I'm saying… I'll hurt you if you stay.

Having compassion for a compassionless creature is truly a good way to be. A rare and venerable human trait that brings about a very old and very human grey area – When the insect is awake and he's in your pants, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Here's an example of a simple symbol. It's not going to knock any socks off but I think it's a good example of how basic information about a target might be conveyed. A clip from a session I did about 15 minutes ago:

Right. Not much to look at, is it?

Notice though, eight marks situated in a circle.
Eight soldiers kneeling in a circle.

This is typical of the language of the mind. I think it's things like this that if I can learn to analyze properly and consistently, can eventually contribute to some very effective remote viewing.

I've been thinking about some other things that seem to stifle viewing efforts.

Fear appears to be a given aspect aspect of psi-blocks. Another, not unconnected from it is belief systems. This was something else that was suggested to me by a viewer friend of mine which I dismissed out of hand as having anything to do with standing between myself and high-level psi functioning.

"There is nothing in my beliefs that could be preventing better psi in me. I've had psychic experiences throughout my life! I've always believed this is how it's supposed to work!" I said. Heh. Closer examination of myself revealed some surprising insights…

I'm not just speaking of large-scale religious and philosophical beliefs, but of course those are paramount also. I'm talking about beliefs on a micro scale as well as macro. It's a big subject. One I'm not qualified to tackle here. I will say that Jane Roberts' Seth book, "The Nature of Personal Reality" has opened up some awesome perspective for me in regards to beliefs and how they directly affect experience. I highly recommend it.

-*-

One thing that didn't dawn on me for quite some time (yeah, I'm a little slow haha), is the factor of a natural barrier. Built in as just part of how we work.

Ingo Swann writes in "Everybody's Guide to Natural ESP":

"It seems that, somehow, the human is constructed so that there are natural barriers between consciousness and an overwhelming influx of second-reality information. Otherwise, our consciousness would be inundated, as if listening to a thousand radio and TV channels simultaneously. We cannot imagine how we would be able to function without these natural barriers."

Makes sense. It's for our own good, so our fragile psyche doesn't get fried like sending 21.1 gigawatts through a 60 watt light bulb. It's inherent and aside from obvious exceptions, generally only lets though information that affects personally important things like survival or the well being of a loved one. At this point we can probably imagine how this natural barrier construct, fear and belief systems are all interconnected and interactive.

Maybe the fear is deeply rooted in self preservation like a natural reflex. Granted there is a good deal of learned fear at work there too but it stands to reason that the idea of being mentally destroyed by over exposure to a level of psychic data beyond comprehension would contribute to an automatic subconscious fear as well. Kind of like pain-response, natural and built-in to prevent damage.

Who knows. Maybe I'm off the mark here. Just some stuff I've been thinking about. To me though, it begs attention to the "un-learning" that Yoda and McMoneagle refer to.

Yes, I just referenced the teachings of a muppet. I'll quote the truth wherever I find it, thank you.

-*-

All these 'blocks' and 'barriers' pretty much boil down to one thing.

Psychology.

In the same interview with Mr. McMoneagle referenced in part 1, he was asked:

Q: "How much of 'psi talent' do you think is really a matter of psychology allowing/accepting psi?"

A: "All of it."

Ponder that as you will. It's past my bedtime. And may the force be with you.

-serious

I'm pretty good about regular practice. For me, it has to be every day, several times a day. It's awesome. I can sit and view for literally hours without a break except to take care of nature. One session to the next, I can't seem to get enough of the experience. It's a rush when a sketch matches the target. The feeling of accomplishment when I learn something new or get an idea about how this or that might work. It's addictive. It's satisfying. I can maintain this momentum for months on end. No sweat.

Then it happens.

Resistance. Pointed avoidance. It's time to sit down and practice and I conveniently come up with a billion and one things that I "need to do real quick first." My level of interest hasn't changed. I still think about it all day. I'm still passionate about it while I sit there clipping my toenails when I should be viewing. The worst part (or it could be the best part, I'm still not sure) is I'm fully aware of what's happening. I know perfectly well that I'm giving in to some little part of me that's pouting in the corner with his arms crossed saying "I don't wanna!"

But I do wanna. That's why it doesn't seem to make any sense.

This occasional inner conflict struck me as quite odd until I heard other viewers mention it too, and began to get more of an idea more about what might be going on internally with consistent RV practice.

"I think it has a lot to do with fear of psi…" one of my viewer friends told me.

I wasn't buying it. My response went something like: "Pwah! Fear?! That's ridiculous! Why would I spend most of my free time doing something that I'm afraid of? My entire life is peppered with paranormal experiences. The idea that I'm afraid of being really good at RV is the silliest thing I've heard!"

Not long after that I had a dream.

A voice asked me if I was ready to be a world class remote viewer. I said, "I'm ready!" I felt it coming. Like my awareness was about to be blown wiiiide open. Hard to put into words, but I can tell you it felt BIG. Like minding your own business surfing 6 foot waves and then seeing a 70 foot wall of water coming towards you at 50 mph. Confident me from two seconds ago was now saying "Wait-"

Okay. Point taken. Jeez.

Acknowledging it in myself and being more aware of it may not make it go away, but helps with understanding myself more. Pinpointing areas that may need more attention. Recognizing it when symptoms show goes a good ways towards handling it better. Any twelve step program will tell you the first step is admitting you have a problem. Haha.

From a 2002 interview with Joseph McMoneagle:

Q: "There's been talk about subconscious 'fear of psi' relating to the common decline-effect and contributing to why so few end up 'world-class' remote viewers like yourself. What do you think? Is there really such a culture-wide fear of psi? Do you think people realize they've got it? (Many viewers discussing it online say it's not a problem for them.) If you think this is an issue, how would you suggest viewers address dealing with this?"

A: "If someone says this is not a problem for them – I would say they have never communicated with their unconscious mind. It's a major issue, and one that never goes away. It's a fear that is not just culture wide, it's pervasive in all cultures. It speaks to the dark side for most. It's an uncomfortable window to 'things we shouldn't have access to.' There are no suggestions for dealing with it – since there is no way of truly conquering it. It's one more battle that is constantly waged in doing RV – a battle you sometimes win and sometimes don't."

If you look at modern psychology, one of the first suggested methods of dealing with a fear is desensitization. Gradually exposing a person more and more to what they're afraid of. In remote viewing, that equates to -you guessed it- constant practice. Even with that, as Mr. McMoneagle stated it's a never-ending battle.

Usually my avoidance/resistance to viewing hits hard in two predictable places. I can almost set my clock by it.

1) When I go a couple days without viewing.

Due to the nature of my job, once in a while I'll have a couple days of 16-18 hour shifts. I come home lucky to make it to my bed before I'm asleep. If I do manage to sit down and try to view, it quickly becomes an exercise in ZzzRV. Almost always when I take a break from viewing (usually involuntarily) it's so hard to get back to the level of practice I want and need. The moment I give it an inch, I'm a mile behind. The door is slammed shut and has to be pried back open with a crowbar. Half the time it feels like starting all over again from square one to get back where I was. Some viewers say taking a break helps them. Heh. Lucky them. I don't seem to be wired like that.

2) When I have a knock-my-own-socks-off session.

If I do a session that is fairly amazing to me, I can almost be sure the next one I do will suck rocks. I'm not the only one who's noticed this about their viewing. I've heard the same thing from several others. Appears to be a fear response. I think this is another reason why Ingo and McM stress "quitting on a high." In addition to the benefits as known in learning-theory, it gives the unconscious a chance to deal with the initial shock response of a high-level psi experience and appears to lessen the related defense mechanisms.

When this avoidance starts to kick in, there's nothing that will help short of grabbing myself by the scruff, sitting down and making myself view. Then doing it some more, and some more, and… Until finally I'm back to my normal addictive self who can't imagine avoiding anything so fun, challenging and intriguing.

Charles Tart has an interesting article on the subject.
You can check it out here.

Fear seems to be only one aspect of the larger entity of psi-barrier though.

Part 2 – ahem…crowbar please

This is taken from something I just posted over at TKR. Been thinking about it quite a bit lately though so figured I'd paste it here too.

-*-

One of the things that seems to really catch my attention about how I view is symbology.

For the longest time it was the most maddening thing I could imagine. I'd get feedback and it would suddenly become perfectly obvious what I was trying to tell myself with a given symbol, but it was so cryptic I was sure there was no way I could ever manage to interpret these in session so that they might do anything except frustrate and confuse me.

Palyne about summed it up when she said, "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."

Haha.
Over time though, it seems to have begun coming together for me. Slowly, to be sure, but a few breakthroughs here and there. I started getting symbols in session and (gasp!) interpreting them correctly. When this happens, it amazes me the level of data that a single symbol can convey. More often than not, it seems to be higher-level, conceptually heavy data.

For example, I did a session in the dojo a while back. The target turned out to be a Selective Services draft card from the Vietnam era. Basically a post card from Uncle Sam saying you're going to Nam whether you like it or not.

In session, I got a visual image of a bird's foot. Recognized it as a symbol and took a moment to think about what that little birdies foot meant to me, what it made me feel, what representations it seemed to evoke in my conscious mind at that moment.

First I noted that I inherently felt that it belonged to an eagle. The obvious association (for me at the moment anyway) being American government. It wasn't a dainty little foot either, it was a sharp talon and seemed to be gripping something tightly. My translation was American government "digging their claws" into someone.

I then got an image of something like a tornado that was comprised completely of paper. A big swirling mass of official feeling documents that were surrounding something. I translated that fairly simply as being surrounded/trapped by paperwork/red tape/bureaucracy.

I thought all of this fit quite well with the target (not to mention the visual of having a gun pointed at my face) and was really pleased with the data.

Yes, at no point did I describe a piece of paper (flat, yellow, writing on surface etc), but I feel like if I'd spent longer in session and gotten some more good data, I could have come pretty close to nailing down what the target was.

***

Another example is a session I did on a line of police, decked out in riot gear, standing guard on point against a crowd of people.

I got an image of the inside of a lock, like a doorknob lock mechanism. Since I'm a trained lock pick, this doesn't have any major meaning of being locked out to me lol. I then got the same symbol again, but the inner mechanism was surrounded by a black barrier. Like it was saying "You can't even get to the lock to pick it." I interpreted this as "access denied/unobtainable access" which is exactly what the row of police were doing – denying access to an area. This alone didn't crack the target, but combined with other data in the session, it went along way towards figuring out exactly what was going on at the target.

***

Interpreting symbols is an art form all it's own. It involves one's personal reaction to the symbol, thinking about what certain elements of it mean you personally – removed from other data you've gotten in session already.

It's hard as hell. But it also seems like it begins to work more naturally after a while with a bit of effort, attention and thought.

I think this kind of data is invaluable when it's done accurately.

Joe McMoneagle has a great blog post that touches on the subject. Check it out here.

***

It doesn't always have to be a massive translation effort either. Sometimes I'll get a visual that just has a heavy 'feel' to it and it's just a matter of identifying it as a symbol (which can be a whole can of worms in it's own, but I'm getting much better at it and believe it to merely be a matter of practice, attention, experience, more practice, more practice, more…).

For instance, I once had a session not long after I first started viewing where the target turned out to be Evita Peron standing on a balcony in Buenos Aires, giving a speach. I got a momentary image of a jungle but had a strong feeling that it was a South American jungle – (which is strange because I've never been to South America. I live in Hawaii, and never got the feeling that any of the jungles here are South American, but I digress…) Anyway, it was apparent the data was "South American / Latin," (which is what I wrote down) not 'green, leafy, vegetation…' and for that I nailed the region where the target was located.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not close to actually having a handle on this, but I'm confident that I can. At least partially…eventually.
And that's a start.

-serious

Had kind of a neat little session last night. Misinterpreted some of the symbology but was not unpleased with the soldier sketch. You can see the whole session here (requires login).