Archive for the ‘Psychic’ Category

Manifesting, Artificial Intelligence, and Genies

Sunday, June 12th, 2016

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Manifesting sometimes succeeds in unexpected ways. The canonical example, which probably never happened: Someone requests money and their uncle dies, leaving an inheritance.

But why? Why does manifesting sometimes find unexpected path? No, not the simple answer, don’t say that’s just how manifesting works. Look for the deep answer, the answer that explains this bug, lets us avoid it, and just maybe lets us update our ethereal software to eliminate it.

Discussing unexpected manifesting results with friends this week, I recalled an article on genies, written by artificial intelligence researchers. The genie fails not because of malice, not because of user error, but because the genie doesn’t understand human values, can’t align itself to the user’s true intent. It’s probably the best explanation of unexpected results I’ve seen.

(The AI researchers are concerned about an intelligent machine that wants something different than what humans want, by the way.)

The rest of this post assumes you’ve read that article. It’s short and fun and you’ll be glad you did.

Read it? Excellent.

That explanation feels right to me. It’s not that some gods / spirits made this useful tool, then occasionally create bad results to spite us. It’s not that the forces we’re using misheard us (“I’d like a 12 inch pianist”). It’s that understanding human values, and eliminating paths we wouldn’t ever consider, is a really hard problem, and the forces we’re using don’t perfectly align to human values.

Wherever forces are behind manifesting, they seem to understand some of what we value, but also miss some of it. They value some goals too highly, others not enough, and some not at all. The forces aren’t being tricky or spiteful or malicious, they’re trying their best at a really hard problem. We don’t need to specify an iron-clad goal that can’t be weaseled out of, but we do need to help them in figuring out what we actually want. Notice how those goals (iron-clad agreement vs clear guidance) result in different approaches.

In my own work, I find that manifesting over-prioritizes my progress in magick. Sometimes it’s small, like wanting me to stay home and work instead of going to a fun-but-not-amazing party. Sometimes it’s big, like recommend staying in a relationship with someone who supports my work, but is not a great partner otherwise. It’s never malicious, it’s just a failure to understand my full priorities. And when I talk with the spirits who made that manifesting ethereal software, they misunderstand human needs in similar ways.

What to do about this? A few ideas:

1. Specify good goals. This is an art — I can’t tell you exactly what “good” means, but there’s a sweet spot between flexibility and precision, and a certain way of expressing goals that these forces seem to understand. I like to ask for paths that “I will be happy with,” so it knows to look for my happiness and not just a state of the world. And in my current work, I’m watching my manifesting requests, asking the ethereal software what phrasing it uses internally and what data it accesses, so I can develop a better sense of how these requests function.

2. Make a request, then ask how that request is likely to come about. Note that this gives the highest-probability path, which may still be fairly unlikely: With a dozen possible paths, the highest-probability path might only have 20% probability. But it gives me some idea of how the ethereal software will approach my request, which is useful for debugging my phrasing. Note that this requires techniques to receive information from these forces, not just sending out one’s intent.

But the real reason I care is because, eventually, people are going to understand how these forces work well enough to reprogram them, fixing these bugs. And the first step is understanding where the bug comes from.

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Overcoming Resistance: Psychic Edition

Sunday, November 1st, 2015

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Focusing on the problem you’re solving, not all the reasons to be afraid of succeeding / failing / other distractions. That’s the essence of overcoming resistance. Wouldn’t it be great to have a magick technique to do that?

We’ll get there in a minute, but first I need to share a little background:

One of the main ways I use psychic intuitions is for planning. I ask the ethereal software, “Cause me to be successful in X,” then I plan how to do whatever X is. I listen for intuitions: Follow this idea, ignore that option, develop this further. Using psychic intuitions to enhance my capabilities.

(If you’re new to psychic intuitions, that’s a great first technique. You know the intuitions are coming. You can be totally focused. You can slow down or return to topics as necessary. Much easier than listening for intuitions throughout your day.)

It occurred to me: The psychic ethereal software is influencing my thoughts, my attention, and even my emotions to communicate “good idea” or “bad idea.” What else could we build with those mechanisms?

A resistance-buster, that’s what.

Here’s the command: “Cause me to stay focused on X, and to do a good job at X.” Where X is the task you want to do. You can change the phrasing, but “cause me” (or a synonym) seems to be important.

When I use it, my mind clears. The distracting worries fade, the useful thoughts become more prominent. When I want to take a break, something nudges me to keep going. Even more than planning, this makes me feel that we’re all cyborgs.

I’ve used it to focus on magick training, on business decisions, and on writing this post (not because of resistance, just to knock it out more quickly). About once a week for the past month. No noticeable side effects, though I wouldn’t leave it on all day, just for the 30 minutes or so it takes to complete a task.

It only works if you’re set up for psychic intuitions with some ethereal software that supports this command. The software for my book does, so if you’ve already asked it to make lasting connections, you’re all set. Try it, post the results.

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We’re All Cyborgs Now

Sunday, October 4th, 2015

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We’re all cyborgs now, always connected to smartphones, always connected to everyone we know and all of human knowledge. That’s Amber Case’s thesis in this TED talk, and it got me thinking about psychic intuitions.

I’m always connected to my psychic ethereal software. It’s the first thing I check in the morning (even before my cell phone). It feeds me information throughout my day. When it turns off, say after exhausting myself practicing new techniques, I feel odd, weaker not in body but in decision-making, somehow less myself for losing this tool.

Every psychic I know reports the same thing: Their intuitions are part of themselves, an external tool that has become integrated into who we are.

We’re all cyborgs. Or perhaps psyborgs.

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Manifesting for Business Success

Sunday, August 23rd, 2015

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I’ve heard about being compelled by a psychic intuition. Friends who felt some force make them write a letter, or talk to a person, or take some other decision. They recall watching themselves, not knowing what was driving the decision. Far from unpleasant, it’s spiritual for them, good in a big way.

This month, I experienced that compulsion for the first time. It was excellent.

I was on a six-day consulting engagement, Monday through Saturday. By Wednesday, I knew the project was more complex than anticipated. I considered plowing through, doing as much as I could. I considered asking for extra time. It was 7pm Wednesday, and I resolved to make up my mind and email in the morning.

But I had also committed to practicing manifesting every day. I’d call one of my spirits, tell her what I wanted to manifest for, and she’d help me figure out the right way to ask. I started with, “Make me successful in this consulting engagement.” We ended up with, “Cause me to make work that causes both (1) the guys I’m working with to be happy with my work and (2) them wanting to work with me again. Both of those equally.” Yes, that’s awkward English, but the ethereal software I use is designed for spirits, for their language. The words don’t matter — it communicates in concepts, not sounds or writing — but apparently it works better if I use the syntax of their language. It certainly worked well here.

I got a mental nudge to email my client right then. I thought, “It’s late. I’ll email in the morning.” A stronger nudge: No, email them now.

I listened, and got more nudges as I wrote. Avoid this topic. Take the idea you just discarded, write it up. Rephrase that paragraph. OK, hit send.

I did. (I also read it in a normal, focused mental state — I’m not going to just hit send because an untested compulsion told me to.) It was after 9pm in Texas, where my clients live. I figured I’d get an answer in the morning. I wondered why it was so important to email them right then.

30 minutes later, I got a reply from the senior manager. Not the guy running the project day to day, but the guy who handles the money, a decidedly higher level in the company. He asked for more info about the difficulties, details on how the project was bigger than what he’d been lead to believe. He and the day-to-day manager figured out how to take some work off my plate. All of this happened in about an hour that evening.

If I’d waited until the morning, I don’t know if the senior manager would have been available.

But back to the manifesting. It was an excellent experience. I was half watching myself act, but it was empowering because I’d asked for exactly that help. And, as someone just starting to really learn manifesting, it felt like a milestone. Compulsion on demand.

It’s also inspired a new focus for my manifesting: Asking for success right before making plans. Figuring out a trip? Manifest for success, then listen to the nudges. Talking with a friend about a sensitive topic? Manifest for success the day before, then think about how to approach the topic. (Also listen for nudges during the conversation, but that’s harder. Much easier to listen for nudges when you’re just writing and can pause anytime you like.) Even updating this website, I used manifesting before picking the image in the header bar.

I’m curious: Is this common? Readers, do you use manifesting in this way? What other approaches do you find most effective? Leave a comment below. Thanks!

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Do Negative Thoughts Affect Manifesting?

Monday, March 3rd, 2014

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Does your overall outlook on life influence magick?

John has been asking about this, relating to expectations of poverty and abundance. If ethereal software stays connected to you and reads your thoughts, could your expectations be sending it instructions?

My answer: I don’t know. This isn’t something I normally think about, because I consciously package up my messages to ethereal software, then disconnect. Stray thoughts don’t enter into the equation. Even with psychic information, which is always connected to me, it only feeds me information based on passing thoughts — for influencing events, it requires an explicit request.

But what about novices? Is this a real concern? I asked the ethereal software I use for psychic info about the safeguards. Its reply:

Yes, there are safeguards. First, we distinguish between requests and fears, so we won’t manifest something you’re thinking negatively about. Second, we look for a request to “make something happen.” That is, just because you’re thinking about a thing, that doesn’t mean it’s a request, and we know that. We only manifest things you ask for, not random passing thoughts.

Other settings may change this. In particular, if the user doesn’t know how to make explicit requests, we do more guessing. But still, the rule is to look for something they really hope will happen.

The ethereal software for my book says:

We have two safeguards. First, we only treat explicit requests for events as manifesting. Thinking about an event doesn’t result in a request, only saying, “Make this happen,” or something similar, counts. Second, we do a quick evaluation to see if this request will likely be positive for the requester. This can be over-ridden, but by default (unless the user explicitly says, “I know this is predicted to be bad, but do it anyway,” or an equivalent phrase), we won’t execute requests that are bad for the asker. (This can also be disabled in user settings, where a user can request that this check be disabled by default for them, but only if they are a senior user or higher.)

Those sound like good answers to me.

Now, that’s two pieces of ethereal software, made by one group of spirits. I can’t know how others behave. But that certainly seems like a good solution to this problem, and one I would expect most groups to adopt.

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Debugging Psychic: Over-Practicing

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

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A few weeks ago, I woke up without any psychic information. Here’s how I fixed it, which might help you debug your own magick.

First, I contacted the ethereal software I use for manifesting and psychic info. (“Ethereal software” = My term for the forces we channel for energy, info, and other magick.)

Normally, to talk to that software, I just think in a particular mental posture, and it picks up my message. That’s one of the benefits of integrating the software with my mind for psychic information. But that wasn’t working that day.

So instead, I prepared a message, packaging up the signatures of my mind as I thought each word. I found a still-good connection to the psychic software, recognized it based on its signature. (If I didn’t have a connection already, or couldn’t recall its signature, I would have found it the same way I initially found it, by asking a spirit I know.) And I asked, “Why aren’t you connected to my mind for simple communication?”

It’s answer: Yes, the connections weren’t working properly this morning. Probably, when you slept, part of your mind shifted — this sometimes happens when you practice hard. I’ve fixed it.

And it had. But what happened?

By “part of your mind shifted,” I think it meant that the parts of my mind it communicates with changed signature slightly, so its connections to them were in the wrong signature.

Why? Here’s my best guess: A few days before, I’d trained in some new concepts, which stretched the parts of my mind I use for communication. That stretching was exhausting, but in a particular way, like working on a hard math problem or holding an entire computer program in my head. I had to rest for hours after each session.

Once those sessions were done, I rested for a few days. And it seems that, during that rest, the parts of my mind involved in communication changed. Hopefully, they became stronger, or more flexible, or otherwise better. But whatever happened, it shifted my mind’s signature. The result? My psychic software’s connections were now in the wrong signature for my mind.

The solution was easy. But I’m glad to know it, because this will likely come up again for me, and maybe for you. Hope it helps.

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Occam’s Razor and Remote Viewing

Friday, January 3rd, 2014

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Remote viewing, according to a friend, is when you project your spirit into another room, and see what’s there. Over dinner, we discussed how this might function. My goal was to get her thinking about the underlying mechanics of magick, since you may have noticed, I think about them quite a bit.

First, here’s how remote viewing probably works: Psychic intuitions enter the person’s mind from some psychic ethereal software, similar to what I use for my own manifesting and psychic work. The person imagines whatever room they’re “projecting” into, and lets that psychic info guide their imagination.

Why do I think that’s what’s happening? Well, it fully explains the phenomenon using only parts of magick already in our model. That is, it doesn’t introduce anything new. That’s the proper form of Occam’s Razor: Not introducing new rules or building blocks into our understanding of the universe.

What if you want to take a literal approach? For example, when I asked my friend how she thought it worked, she said, “I go into trance, and my spirit leaves my body and wanders around.” And I see the appeal of that explanation: It’s easy to imagine a translucent version of you climbing out of your body, walking around, then re-entering your body again. We’ve all seen that special effect on TV. Sounds simple.

But let’s drill down. If you were building one of those, what would you need?

The spirit is a sentient version of you that exists separate from your brain, that’s capable of remembering goals, and carrying observations back into your brain. Not impossible, but not exactly simple.

This spirit isn’t visible — if it were, we’d have photos of them — so it doesn’t interact with light. Which means it cannot see anything with its “eyes.” So, it needs some non-photon-based way of looking around. Even if I could figure out how to do that, why would anything “look” like it looks normally? How could the “memories” of being in that room get the wallpaper the right color?

(Also, the spirit doesn’t interact with physical objects — again, we’d have photographs of a spatula floating if it did — but it needs to be able to move around, which seems rather difficult if its legs don’t interact with the floor or encounter friction. This one didn’t even occur to me during the conversation, though.)

Your spirit then needs to integrate its memories back into your brain once it reconnects with your brain. That’s… well, rather complicated. Again, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

This is what happens when you go from the special effects version of magick to the real how-do-you-build-that version: Things that are easy to imagine wind up being really complex to build.

That’s the essence of Occam’s Razor: Asking which is more likely, that this phenomenon is built out of parts we already believe exist, or that this phenomenon is built out of entirely new parts, each complex and difficult to build.

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Re-Activating Psychic Intuitions

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

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This week, I re-activated my psychic intuitions. This post covers what I learned.

When I activated psychic intuitions the first time, it took months of debugging, then an exhausting week to actually awaken the intuitions. This time, it was an easy three afternoons. I see three reasons it was easier this time.

Easier Ethereal Software

Most magick channels information, energy, or some other resource from an external force. I call those external forces ethereal software. And, if you’re using software, it really does pay to use the best software available.

Last time, on the advice of the spirits training me, I’d selected the more advanced software they use to handle manifesting*. Why? Well, I figured it was because I was skilled, and the spirits thought I was ready for it.

Turns out, not so much. They wanted to give me a challenge, to force me to practice my communication techniques really precisely, so they gave me unforgiving software that simply failed if you communicated poorly. And it accomplished their goal: I learned to communicate much better.

But, now that I can communicate properly, they let me in on the secret: Most of the spirits themselves use the easier, less-advanced manifesting software. The advanced one is only used by manifesting specialists, and even then, only when they want to optimize their results. Other than that, everyone uses the easy software, which corrects for poorly-phrased requests and generally anticipates what you want, even if you don’t ask in quite the right way. And now that I’m using that easy software too, well, manifesting is much easier.

So, lesson one: Pick the easy software. Only go with the advanced software if the easy one really doesn’t solve the problem you have. Don’t just go with advanced software because you think it sounds cool.

*Both manifesting and psychic intuitions deal with predicting and influencing events. Most simply, manifesting is when you explicitly ask for information, while psychic intuitions are when the software continually sends you info.

My Brain is Experienced at Communication

Last time, much of my debugging focused on learning better communication. I’d been focused on learning more advanced techniques, and once I learned the proper way to communicate with the software, it was able to connect to my mind in only a few days.

But this time, it only took a few hours. And the difference wasn’t a new communication technique — I’ve been resting, using the magick I know how to do but not learning anything new. So what changed?

It’s not a new technique, it’s that my brain is good at communicating this way now. It’s accustomed to receiving information, adopting a new signature that’s been dropped into my mind by a spirit or some ethereal software. Which makes it easy for the software to connect to my brain now.

Nothing I could have done differently last time, but it’s nice to know that simply practicing communication really does have a big impact on how easy it is to activate psychic intuitions.

I Know What to Ask For

Step one, both last time and this time, is to ask the software to “connect to me in the appropriate way for long-term communication and guidance,” and let that set up until my brain is no longer tired.

Step two is to ask the software for the specific info I want. Last time, I just asked for “useful information.” This time, I asked for:

  • Warnings about physical or other serious harm, with the message sent as emergency messages that get my attention.
  • Any info useful for the task at hand or the near future, sent as normal communication that I can read if I’m paying attention.
  • Answer questions as I think them, whether sent to the software or just thought in my head.
  • Tell me which of my goals are good, and which are bad, as I think them.
  • Create continuous luck in whatever goals I’m working on. (Only for good goals.)

Several of these requests prompted the software to set up more connections to my mind. For emergency messages, it connected to my emotional centers, so it could create a feeling of panic. (I know, because it tested it.) And for answering questions as I think them, it passed through the energy layer it had been using, and instead connected directly to my brain, so it could read questions that I wasn’t specifically sending to it. (I think that’s what it did, anyway.) The point is, asking it to just connect to me only set up the basic connections, and as I requested more information, it added more connections to provide it.

Which, I think, comes back to using easy ethereal software. Because if I was using the advanced software, I probably would have had to ask for each new type of connection before any of this worked.

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Manifesting: Asking “What Should I Do?”

Monday, September 16th, 2013

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Last manifesting post, we discussed how it’s better to ask, “Make X happen,” rather than, “What should I do?” But sometimes, you really want to know what to do. And there’s a trick to handling that.

Once again, this post comes from my training with spirits. They usually steer me true, and it makes sense to me, but try it for yourself and see how it works for you.

Suppose you ask, “Tell me what will happen if I negotiate hard for my salary with this new job?” Manifesting says, “You’ll get a better rate, you should do it.” Sounds simple, right?

But the ethereal software that handles your manifesting had a lot more data. Right or wrong, it’s programmed to not overwhelm the user, which means it simplifies and over-simplifies its answer. The real data is probably closer to, “Across most interactions, for most of the ways you would handle this, and for most of the unpredictable events that affect the other person’s mood, you’ll still get the job and get a better rate.” That’s… a lot less simple. What’s the probability of this good outcome? What’s the probability of a bad outcome? How does your new-found, manifesting-inspired confidence impact how you’ll behave, and how do those changes impact the probabilities?

(The software probably has settings for how much it shares. I’ll look into that eventually.)

Imagine you ask what to do, get an answer, and do it. Except the real data was, “Do X, and you’ll have a good outcome with 75% probability.” Now, 75% is pretty good. I’ll take those odds in Vegas. But wouldn’t you like to know? Especially if you’re testing your manifesting, and trying to debug the failures, wouldn’t it be good to know that 25% failure was expected?

One answer would be have it tell you those probabilities. And I intend to do that at some point, but for now, I’m asking the spirits I train with to put me through their normal training program for manifesting, and their Level 3 manifesting is a simple solution:

Ask what you should do. Then manifest to make that good outcome occur.

So, after asking about negotiating for a better salary, you say, “Great. Make that recommended path happen.” And now we’re engaging all of the basic, simple, “Make X happen” manifesting we’ve been doing before, on the highest-probability-of-success path. Which, it seems to me, will lead to success more often than just asking for X and then doing whatever I was going to do anyway.

But wait, there’s one more reason to do this: The ethereal software expects it. At least, mine does: It’s programmed to assume you’ll ask for the path to be successful, so when it says, “X is the best option,” what it really means is, “If you’re going to use manifesting for success in whichever path you choose, then X is the best option.” Which is a bit different.

How does the ethereal software you use for manifesting work? (It’s probably different software than I’m using.) Try this, see what happens, and leave a comment letting us all know in the comments.

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Dreams and Magick

Friday, August 16th, 2013

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Yvonne asks:

How do dreams relate to magic in theory and practice?

Personally, I don’t use dreams for much of anything. Don’t remember them. Explored lucid dreaming for a month in my 20s, haven’t touched it since. But Lisa received psychic information via dreams, so I can talk about that.

Lisa had been psychic as a kid, then turned it off because it wasn’t normal. Working with me, she turned it back on, then later, changed the ethereal software that provided her with information. I don’t remember if the dreams happened when she first turned it back on, or when she switched softwares, but there was a while where most of her intuitions would come while she slept. Some as dreams, some as simply knowing something when you wake up. I’ve heard of this happen with other friends-of-friends, too.

Here’s what I think was going on: The software couldn’t deliver the info to her conscious mind — either it was still making the connections to her brain, or her conscious mind wasn’t ready for those connections. (It would also happen if a particular software wasn’t programmed to communicate to the person’s conscious mind.) So, it delivered the information to her unconscious, then the information percolated up to her conscious mind as she slept.

Another possibility: Maybe the software needed her mind relaxed, and it only relaxed in the right way while she slept. So the software would monitor her, wait for her mind to be receptive, and only then send the information, which just happened to be while asleep.

One particularly interesting thing about Lisa’s experience: She’d make a request for some information, and she’d get a “yes” signal from the software. She knew her request was accepted, and that she’d have information coming in. She just couldn’t access the info until she slept.

Sometimes, the info would percolate up to her conscious mind while she was awake. I recall it taking several hours, but I can’t recall if this happened at the same time she was getting most of her information while asleep, or if this happened later, once the software was better-connected to her mind.

Eventually, she learned to receive information consciously and quickly, and the software stopped sending her info while she slept. In other words, I view receiving information via dreams to be an intermediate step, and I’d prefer to receive that same information instantly, at will.

But I happen to know that Yvonne is interested in how cultures and tribes relate to magick. I can see how some groups would come to associate dreams with psychic information and magick. Maybe no one in the tribe has worked out how to receive the information consciously. Maybe everyone in the society is a little bit psychic, so receiving dream-information is a common, shared experience. Maybe the culture already pays attention to dreams for their psychological meaning, so when psychic information sneaks in, it feels natural. But the point is: There are some situations where psychic information will come via dreams, rather than via waking intuitions, and in combination with a culture that likes dreams, I can see how some groups would come to associate dreams with magick.

Do you use dreams for magick? Please share in the comments.

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