Institute for the Study of Peak States
"Methods for Fundamental Change in the Human Psyche"
Support Newsletter #5, August 8, 2006
"More on Seeing and Perceiving"
Newsletter Spotlight
From the Editor Paula Courteau…
More Comments About Seeing and Perceiving, Arising from Last Newsletter
Grant McFetridge on seeing
The WHH Workbook on seeing
The late Dr. Adam Waisel on seeing
Our students on seeing
Terry writes
Marc R. writes
From the Editor Paula Courteau...
August already.
We are taking a break from teleclasses until early September to allow our teachers to take a little bit of time off, then start catching up with the research projects that have been on the back burner for a few months. On the agenda: more experimentation on the healing of genetic diseases; checking in with the team that is formalizing our methods for healing addictions; and the training of instructors and, especially, of people who have decided to devote their time to these research projects.
I'm hoping to devote more space to questions about certification in the next issue; meanwhile, for most people there is homework to do. One priority is to raise your scores for each brain's choice for good. To do this, you can practice scanning your own brains, if you've learned how, or seek help from someone who can, and start working on whichever brain seems darkest. Keep doing this until everything is very bright. For most people this will take several sessions. The other priority is to get training on suicide assessment and intervention. I got mine through the local community outreach organization. I also was able to get into a crisis intervention course through the same folks, and, since I was already donating time as an emergency services volunteer, the courses were free. The conditions for getting into these classes will vary from country to country. This is where networking with the other students from your group will come in handy.
Several of you noted that Tal has been difficult to get in touch with for readings and sessions lately. This is in good part because her hometown has suddenly become a war zone. It's difficult to focus on inner work when one has to duck into an air-raid shelter several times a day. At latest news, Tal was safe and sound and planning to get out of Haifa for a couple of weeks; but while she's out of the city she's also going to be out of reach of email.
Until next time... Paula.
More Comments About Seeing and Perceiving, Arising from Last Newsletter
From a phone call with Grant:
It's important to point out that there is, ultimately, an objective reality. What one sees using peak abilities is really there - the problem arises when the person unconsciously distorts what they see. For example, when people start using WHH, some of them may perceive the content of past traumas as metaphors, but as their sense of trust in the process increases, they let go of metaphor more and more and let themselves perceive actual biological events. The underlying mechanism for this distortion is trauma based, as one of our advanced students recently experienced - whenever he saw metaphors we'd have him look for a trauma. There always was one. Once the trauma(s) was resolved, he'd see the real biological processes.
From the manuscript of The Whole-Hearted Healing Workbook, here's a description of the first stage of that transformation from seeing metaphors to seeing biological events, again illustrating that we can't 'will' ourselves to 'see the right thing'; it is with experience that we feel safer and allow ourselves to see in more detail; in the meantime, acceptance is the key; and healing does happen regardless of your perceptions. A state of calm, peace and lightness indicates that you've fully healed the trauma, regardless of whether or not you 'saw' anything.
"In their first sessions, most people don't allow themselves to see prenatal images. This doesn't mean that they didn't regress that far: if, using advanced techniques, I merge my consciousness with theirs, I often perceive prenatal sensations and images. I've had clients describing in living detail a sense of pressure on their heads, a sense of an endless tunnel and of leaving everything that they knew, and insisting that they were reliving a high school moment. I simply ask them to consider that the later images just might be metaphors, and to be open to the idea that they might actually be reliving a much, much earlier trauma. People still seem to get lasting changes from these sessions. With practice, they eventually sense more and more information from earlier events."
The late Dr. Adam Waisel on seeing
Looking through the archives, I found a discussion string from our research group, dated March 11, 2005. In it, our dearly-missed colleague, Dr. Adam Waisel, argues that, although there are different kinds of seeing, there does exists a definite peak state in which all types of vision become clearer. We can improve our seeing through practices like Image Streaming, but certain peak states give instant results. Answering one of my e-mails, Adam wrote:
"In our work together, Tal and myself, we distinguished several *kinds* of seeing, which, however, are all connected by the *ability* to see. That is, if one is able to see, one should be able to see the trauma images in WHH, Inner Vision (or Inner Body Vision), Spaciousness, and the Tribal Block (for want of a better term) scenes, as well as Gaia and Creator and the 'other realms'. By what you describe, you will probably benefit from using the technique [Image Streaming] of describing verbally what you see (we tried it on Hornby, remember?).”
"You say that seeing is a 'whole body' thing. This coincides with what Tal found on healing my own seeing, i.e., on healing partially, there was apparent a sort of seeing system involving the "Sea of Vision" in the back of the head, the third eye, and the chest; but after complete healing, the ability to see is supposedly a whole-body experience, just as you yourself found. "As for myself, I am supposedly able to see perfectly (according to the Higher Instances' report...), but, well... I don't.”
"As an aside, if you've read Castaneda, he had somewhat the same problem, till at a certain point in time he all of a sudden saw what he couldn't see before. Maybe it involves the conception of possibility versus impossibility. I wish I knew."
I received some feedback from students after the latest newsletter. One tells of widening his definition of what constitutes perception; the other recounts an experience consistent with Adam's theory that precise perception comes with certain peak states, and can occur suddenly. We are still not sure what those states are, although there are a few likely candidates. If you do pop into a state where your perceptions drastically change, please take as many notes as possible about your experience and relay them to us. The most useful notes follow the same principles as the Sacred Questions I wrote about in the last newsletter, keeping perception ('What did I see?') separate from interpretation ("What does it mean?').
Regarding how we perceive: The NLP model is what gets talked about the most, in my experience - Visual, Kinesthetic, Auditory (V-K-A). I recently realized that I was trying to force my main style into that mold, and it doesn't fit. I have finally realized that I am an Empath (Thanks, Star Trek NG). I feel emotions, and given my family of origin, I constructed 50+ layers of shell over my core so that I could survive. I feel emotion; then I try to understand it and get some barely-perceptual visuals; rarely actual words but many times a Knowingness (clairsentience?). More frequently now, as I trust more, I sense a feeling in a portion of my body.
Working with others, I found that I always merged with them, but could not sense congruence when using the V-K-A model. Now that I have added "Empathic" to the V-K-A hypotheses, I have a working model that helps me understand where I am as I experience.
"I have been in and out of a "remote sensing" or melding state in the last few days that doesn't hold but has been interesting. It has been accompanied by, or rather arises within CPL. It seems like I can "vision" structures or heart states within others in various ways, I haven't gone too deeply into it yet...”
"...This may have been an ability I had at some much earlier age, it almost felt familiar or "natural". But I have no specific memory of when or where I may have seen the hearts or structures of others before.”
"In this case, I had been doing some WHH on myself the previous days to the Mishras' concert, with mixed results, feeling CPL but also emotionally "labile" or openhearted for hours or days after. The night of the concert, I was sitting in the back with a male friend who I felt comfortable with, that is felt safe around. A very rare occurrence for me in the last 7 or 8 years, excluding the limited time I get to spend around "old" friends from off-island. John Heinegg also came in, and took a seat on the other side of me. The players began to tune their instruments, and I soon thereafter began going into deep meditation. I felt a sense of warmth and detachment, and being 'protected'. "
(In our phone conversation, Marc also described the experience of 'swimming playfully' around people in the concert hall and being able to perceive something about their hearts' states. It sounded sperm-ish to me... that, and the safety of male friends on each side.)
Copyright 2006 by Grant McFetrige
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