Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Shinichi
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

Post by Shinichi »

Nahemah wrote:Ah. My advice?

Let go. Freeform, relax. Lose the ceremonial and connect to the emotional, you are a sharp magickian, but caught up in the form and the function. Let it ride, breathe and have some fun with it.

Takes time, but it's fun. [geek2]
Oh, I go with the flow plenty, but I'm still a human with human emotions and my own personality. [razz]
landing wrote:This is what troubles me, too, i m studying occult for helping saving the people i care and love.... but most of them wont listen anything, they go their own direction even if their gut feeling tells its wrong, and i m not powerful enough to influence them in a deeper level.
so, maybe finally what we need to learn is to TRUST in the LOVE OF UNIVERSE?
universe loves everyone in a long term plan......?
Heaven is ruthless, and Cosmic Love isn't necessarily any more prevalent than Cosmic Wrath or any other cosmic thing. The Universe is The All, after all. Your life is your own responsibility, and the lives of your loved ones are their own responsibility. You cannot save someone from themselves, and you cannot force someone to see wisdom.

If you are going to walk the path of The Mysteries, the two more important things you need are a stable heart and strong mental fortitude. The immaturity and foolishness of the people you care about isn't even close to being the worst thing you will face on The Path.



~:Shin:~

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Shinichi wrote:

Heaven is ruthless, and Cosmic Love isn't necessarily any more prevalent than Cosmic Wrath or any other cosmic thing. The Universe is The All, after all. Your life is your own responsibility, and the lives of your loved ones are their own responsibility. You cannot save someone from themselves, and you cannot force someone to see wisdom.





~:Shin:~
The universe is the All, yes, but i don't feel Heaven is ruthless.
I v experienced the worst shit in my life,still not totally ending.....but i feel the universe core is LOVE.
am I crazy minded?

and yes, i have to be responsible for my own, but i can same time save or help the others too if i m powerful....
the All the society etc is a collective consciousness. we r all connected.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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I used to worry about fate and stuff like that. Now I no longer worry about it, or that I won't be able to influence loved ones, hated ones or just others around me. That is as a result of a certain initiation.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Sometimes. I've had some really spot-on single draws from my tarot deck, and other times what comes out seems like gibberish. I seem to draw the 9 of swords more often than any other card. There have been spreads I've done that were also very strong, and others that seemed like noise. Having concentration and determination beforehand is important. And if the question isn't very clear, the answer might not be either. All of this gets better with practice.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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This is what troubles me, too, i m studying occult for helping saving the people i care and love.... but most of them wont listen anything, they go their own direction even if their gut feeling tells its wrong, and i m not powerful enough to influence them in a deeper level.
so, maybe finally what we need to learn is to TRUST in the LOVE OF UNIVERSE?
The way the latter is done in my experience is to embody that LOVE. Otherwise, the universe is a mixed bag we need to navigate in terms of how events flow through our lives, us and others. So get powerful enough to lovingly (or at least empathically) influence rather than callously control as many appear to do or want to do in this world. Look, you don't have to be an occultist to have a strong will to influence psychically, and often influences are collective in nature or under forces of occultists with power and complete lack of heart. Control happens all the time, and even if your control is to negate that of those without heart, it is worth it to strive for that in my view- if you want to sustain those you love.

Rather than controlling them, you can learn to control the forces around them and help them navigate their world. To do that you need to master at least a modicum of influence at a deeper level, and an understanding of ambient influences as well as those from the core of the people you are protecting. Look, that kind of empowerment demands commitment and a certain drive. Over the years, I have learned to keep silent more and act on my convictions even more than that.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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I have at times had people come to me seeking divination of their concerns.
I'm not very good at divination.
I'm actually much better at getting into peoples' heads. So I do that instead.

But the interesting coincidence here ...is that the answers to peoples' concerns are almost always inside their own mind, just not in a place in their mind which they are prepared to listen to, or emotionally objective enough to listen to.
I'm trying to think of an example where this was not the case, and I can't think of a single example.

This has interesting implications for trying to divine for myself the answers to questions in my own life.

Hearing truth is one thing, accepting it or acting on it is quite another though. Perhaps in some ways the art of divination is to sugar coat the truth.


Oh, and on the general topic of divination, I'm a huge fan of a static screen on an old cathode ray tube television. Not a fake video of static, but real time live static from a CRT TV. I find that if you stare at it, and unfocus your eyes, you will start to see 3 dimensional forms in the static. Much like those old "3D posters" they used to sell in malls. Except on the static screen, the forms are shifting and moving, polymorphic. It's an incredible avenue for visually inspecting things which enter your mind on a pre-conscious level.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Kath wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:17 pm ...
Oh, and on the general topic of divination, I'm a huge fan of a static screen on an old cathode ray tube television. Not a fake video of static, but real time live static from a CRT TV. I find that if you stare at it, and unfocus your eyes, you will start to see 3 dimensional forms in the static. Much like those old "3D posters" they used to sell in malls. Except on the static screen, the forms are shifting and moving, polymorphic. It's an incredible avenue for visually inspecting things which enter your mind on a pre-conscious level.
On that side note. Did you know, you don't even actually need a TV set for that? If you practice meditation, a little more intense forms of it, than the general mainstream wave, there are "levels of the mind" in which you can not just receive, but visually perceive pretty much same "white noise" by your actual visual cortex (not a "minds eye"), with closed eyes in complete darkness (preferably while not necessarily). Just a random fun fact from the book of "Little known curiosities of human machinery".
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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I used to use the I Ching. Once I asked it about some stock market shares in a raider. I Ching said: he loses all his followers.

I took followers to mean dollars so sold all the shares. A couple of months later the shares were pretty much worthless.

These days I prefer to use more sentient means. For example if needing to make an important decision, I make it then project a couple of months down that time path to see if I am still happy with that decision.

That works pretty well for me.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Cerber wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 8:42 pm
Kath wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:17 pm ...
Oh, and on the general topic of divination, I'm a huge fan of a static screen on an old cathode ray tube television. Not a fake video of static, but real time live static from a CRT TV. I find that if you stare at it, and unfocus your eyes, you will start to see 3 dimensional forms in the static. Much like those old "3D posters" they used to sell in malls. Except on the static screen, the forms are shifting and moving, polymorphic. It's an incredible avenue for visually inspecting things which enter your mind on a pre-conscious level.
On that side note. Did you know, you don't even actually need a TV set for that? If you practice meditation, a little more intense forms of it, than the general mainstream wave, there are "levels of the mind" in which you can not just receive, but visually perceive pretty much same "white noise" by your actual visual cortex (not a "minds eye"), with closed eyes in complete darkness (preferably while not necessarily). Just a random fun fact from the book of "Little known curiosities of human machinery".
I've seen that "color static" since my earliest childhood memories. I was always fascinated by it. At some point I decided to call it "retinal static", although there is a term for it which currently escapes me (it's early morning and I'm not caffeinated yet hehe). I see it all of the time, I just usually mentally filter it out, but it's ever present. Although I usually only pay attention to it when my eyes or closed, in the dark, or I am looking at a field of view which is all the same color & value. This is possibly the early underpinnings of my thinking that 'the void' is a mirror into the self.

It is somewhat easier though, I think, to see 3-D shapes emerge and change in TV static. Perhaps just because it is more opaque.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Kath wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 3:36 pm
I've seen that "color static" since my earliest childhood memories. I was always fascinated by it. At some point I decided to call it "retinal static", although there is a term for it which currently escapes me (it's early morning and I'm not caffeinated yet hehe). I see it all of the time, I just usually mentally filter it out, but it's ever present. Although I usually only pay attention to it when my eyes or closed, in the dark, or I am looking at a field of view which is all the same color & value. This is possibly the early underpinnings of my thinking that 'the void' is a mirror into the self.

It is somewhat easier though, I think, to see 3-D shapes emerge and change in TV static. Perhaps just because it is more opaque.
Well I didn't research goodbumps back in the day, but this thing got me really wound up back then. I start thinking of it more and more, the reasons, meanings, origins of it. Yes, like you said, it's ever present, just our minds filter it out most of the time, at least for as long as we don't intentionally focus on it. But it bothered me. Why is it there? What is it exactly? Where does it originate? I've spent years exploring that part of my own mind, not because I thought it had any practical use, but just because I found a mystery I just had to solve no matter what, just to find peace, however long it would take me, even if there is no definitive answer at the end.
I start developing my own meditation techniques, meditative experiments, trying to reach different states of relaxation to get "better picture". Since at the start I had nothing to go with it, no "facts" except one - it looks similar to radio "white noise", so I went with the only assumption I had available: "if it looks/sounds/feels similar, then it is not unreasonable to assume that it's has similar origins and/or works in similar ways".
And if radio noise is not actually nothing, but a bunch of radio signals, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, natural and "man"-made garbled up due to loss of energy because of the distance and other factors. Perhaps our brains (technically electrical device too) picking up some signals too, infinite soup of signals garbled-up in to one big hushhh which our brains simply filter out.
I've spent a lot of time sitting in my own mind, in one of meditative states, with my body in deep relaxed state but not sleeping, with "me" sitting in the darkness of my own mind just staring at that white snow..
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Hoping to see something interesting at some point or smth. Not that I really expected something extraordinary, I simply liked exploring inner workings of my own mind, my own machinery, and I just had time on my hands and a topic that was becoming a mild obsession.
I didn't really know where else to go with it, at that time. Yes, I developed meditations around it, that lets me get in to that state relatively easily, with my visual cortex and not my "minds eye" streaming white noise to me, and now what?..
For a while I had no new ideas. But sitting there for a while white noise began to change a bit. It was becoming "abnormal", it seemed like there were shapes, and sometimes if I focused harder, "zoomed in", I'd see not that snow but instead fractal shapes moving. Swirling, kind of randomly, yet at the same time so very orderly.
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I thought it's likely my mind, my brain was trying to "make sense" of that white noise, in that way. Simply because I've spent so much time in there, so my brain eventually decided to put some effort to "beautify" it, and in a sense I'm still looking at the same thing, just through some new "instagram filter".. Which would mean there is no real progress, just slight shift in aesthetics.
But one day a thought crossed my mind, if in radio it's not all just about the signal, what you can receive a lot depends on the receiver, it's sensitivity, how well it can focus on certain bands and how well it can lock on signal, filter out other noise, or what would be considered as noise in any given instance. That got me thinking, maybe I'm going about it wrong. Up to that point I've been focusing on the "whole picture" and not trying to filter out any specific dot, any specific "snowflake" in that falling snow storm.
So I went in there again, but that time instead of just sitting and staring at it all, I picked one "blip", one specific snowflake out of that whole picture, and focused my mind on that "dot" the best I could, ignoring everything else. And guess what, after few tries, some image just flashed in front of my eyes, only one or two frames, not long enough to get any clear sense what I saw, but I clearly saw some people somewhere, and I didn't recognize neither place nor those people. I had no idea if there was something, or just my own brain fooling me, showing me some random made up things only because I wanted to see something.. But whichever the case I continued with my experiments.
[..long boring story...]
..which eventually led me to discover astral projection, to accidentally discover my first OBE experience, and other stuff. And yet looking back, I can't say I discovered answers I set out to find, all those years ago, it just every step of the way old questions got replaced by new ones, again and again. It's all just rabbit hole, things don't get clearer the deeper I go, things just get weirder.
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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>some image just flashed in front of my eyes, only one or two frames

So you are developing clairvoyance on the plane on which your exercise is focussed.

Developing clairvoyance requires collecting the substance of that plane and forming the substance into a sight sense organ. This takes much work, but fortunately the progress in refining the human energy body usually carries over into the next incarnation.

The accumulated substance can also be formed into sense organs for clairaudience and clairsentience.

It is more common to develop clairsentience first - being able to feel energies.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Amor wrote: Fri Dec 11, 2020 12:22 am >some image just flashed in front of my eyes, only one or two frames

So you are developing clairvoyance on the plane on which your exercise is focussed.

Developing clairvoyance requires collecting the substance of that plane and forming the substance into a sight sense organ. This takes much work, but fortunately the progress in refining the human energy body usually carries over into the next incarnation.

The accumulated substance can also be formed into sense organs for clairaudience and clairsentience.

It is more common to develop clairsentience first - being able to feel energies.
Yes I would say so, many years ago I would personally either be very sceptical or I would outright dismiss most if not all claims of such things. But after tumbling down that rabbit hole my self for many years, eventually I had to take a good few steps back from my old dogmas. Because of things I "saw", things I've experienced my self over the last couple decades, without any guidance from anyone, without any external influence (no teachings, no gurus, no books were followed), thus I can pin it on somebody else, like "oh I experienced this or that, or I saw this or that, because somebody else put that in to my mind, and my mind made it all up from this or that.." Well if we really insist on it, we could still stick to certain "fixed reality" out of sheer will, but there is point where such attitude becomes more like beating a dead horse than an sign of intelligence. After all there is no law that require us to make a hard choice, either one or another. We function just fine not really knowing anything for certain, and just kind of going with the flow, with the flow of the mind, spirit and the body. Or so I believe, these days.
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Cerber wrote: Thu Dec 10, 2020 10:41 pm lots of stuff
My white whale of a mystery growing up was deja vu.
Although that particular interest led me more into theoretical physics and cognitive science. Unfortunately though, without much insight into the matter.

I know far more about deja vu than you could read in any book, and yet far less about it than I'd like to know.

It is potentially relevant to the 'divination' topic here too, although normally it's random, and rather very short-term.

I can tell you that if you "break script", it definitely doesn't cause a thermonuclear explosion or anything. But I can't promise that you'll remain in the exact same universe in the probability field, depends on which theories out there in physics are correct hehe.


You've inspired me to give retinal static a closer look. You put a lot more thought into it than I ever did, and now I really want to investigate it further!

perhaps worth mentioning, when you say you saw fractal shapes in the tv static, I agree. But i found it goes beyond that. if you told me to see a rotating cube in the static field, I could do it, fairly quickly. With a bit more time & focus I could see a cat with a fishing pole for that matter. Which clearly, that's more my mind projecting a perception into the static field, than the static field actually containing a cube or a cat.

I was thinking this is useful if you look at it without anything in particular in mind, and just let images manifest purely through the preconscious mind. In that sense, it seems to me like a divination tool with a lot of potential.

But you take the idea further, going to the retinal static, and the idea that it's actual signal, or perhaps more accurately an immense jumble of signals... I just never considered that.

a couple of questions come to mind though... and don't take this as discouragement, but just... things I feel like would be good to know the explanation of.
- looking at things without moving your eyes for a moment (especially light sources), you can kinda burn imagery into your retinal static (only to a degree), so I'm curious how that fits in
- if you push on your eyes (not dangerously hard, but with a bit of firmness) you can cause explosive activity in the retinal static. I'm also curious how that fits in.

possible solution (maybe?): if the retinal static is just that, then you can do screen-burn, or kinda bomb the system with eye pressure, if that's a mundane process... but when not doing that, it could still be a perception of extra sensory nature, via a mundane mechanism.

I dunno, just brainstorming here.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Kath wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 9:15 pm
I was thinking this is useful if you look at it without anything in particular in mind, and just let images manifest purely through the preconscious mind. In that sense, it seems to me like a divination tool with a lot of potential.
Yes, eventually (decades of personal "research", experiments and exploring later) I start calling the whole thing an "astral viewing", because why not, sounds cool enough and all other cool terms already taken.
But you take the idea further, going to the retinal static, and the idea that it's actual signal, or perhaps more accurately an immense jumble of signals... I just never considered that.

a couple of questions come to mind though... and don't take this as discouragement, but just... things I feel like would be good to know the explanation of.
- looking at things without moving your eyes for a moment (especially light sources), you can kinda burn imagery into your retinal static (only to a degree), so I'm curious how that fits in
- if you push on your eyes (not dangerously hard, but with a bit of firmness) you can cause explosive activity in the retinal static. I'm also curious how that fits in.

possible solution (maybe?): if the retinal static is just that, then you can do screen-burn, or kinda bomb the system with eye pressure, if that's a mundane process... but when not doing that, it could still be a perception of extra sensory nature, via a mundane mechanism.

I dunno, just brainstorming here.
Well.. I kind of left out a lot, most of it. Because this is one of few metaphysical subject I could go on and on for hours and no one would believe me anyway, at least no one in their right mind.
The physical layer of it, when it comes to explaining or discrediting that phenomena, it is true, it very easy to discredit it, takes virtually no effort at all. I still very regularly ask my self and can't find a good answer why back then chose B and not A. Why instead of compiling all the reasonable explanations "retinal static", "millions of neurons in the brain firing produce electric noise in the brain" and so on, and writing it off as case closed and explained to just move on some other more tangible things to ponder on, why instead I chose crawl down the rabbit hole? No idea, but my best guess I was just bored, and I chose the path of thought and exploration of my own mind whichever seemed more fun at the time.
I had no goals in it, no purpose of any kind, nothing to gain nor to loose. Or so I thought. It was just a thing I do when I have spare time and nothing better or more important.
Other people before sleep fill their minds with thoughts about day they had, and the tomorrow worries they will face. Boring! I would just browse my mind instead for a bit, before falling asleep (I'd meditate). Other people read book or be on their phones when they have to sit for an hour on the bus, or a train (or any other place and time of prolonged sitting), I instead would often just close my eyes and meditate. Just a personal hobby.
Because after a while of practising that "meditation", I'd became very easy, relatively, to reach that state of the mind, when "awareness", or perception flip upside down, when the actual "real" external physical stimuli perceived by the mind as just background noise, and what was "background noise" just a moment ago becomes the new "real", (meta)physical stimuli, all the sounds and and visual and even all other sense unplug from the physical and plug in to that "other reality". I mean, in a way, I simply learned to tell my brain "all that what is real is the the garbage now, and all what was garbage is real, for the next few minutes", and the brain would comply.
I didn't think it was real, I didn't even ask my self if any of it real in any way. It was long ago, and I don't exactly remember what was I thinking back then, but I'm fairly sure I did treat it as product of my own imagination. But at some point that "product of my own imagination" became more entertaining way of passing time. On one had having facebook feed filled other people's daily personal garbage to look at, social noise of near zero value, cat videos, pictures of everyone's lunch and trashy motivational inspirational digital farts to name a few, and on the other hand there are entire worlds in my mind populated with dragons, fairies and all kinds things. It's not about which is more real, it's which is more fun.
That disclaimer aside.
Originally I thought that static noise is fully or partially retinal, or fully or partially from my own neurons firing in and around my visual cortex, and other parts of the brain, since it's not just visual, there is audio and other senses involved (a side quest: have ever noticed at all times you are hearing white noise, there is ever present continues "shhhhh.." we just usually don't notice it?), but number of experiments later it kind of evolved in a kind of meditation form, a state in which the all physical external inputs are ignored, and physical body not really asleep, but in some kind of "suspended" state. Which doesn't mean it "stopped being physical in nature", I just simply stopped thinking about it from that angle :)
Actually, In terms of the phenomena as a whole I kind of stopped thinking about it that way, stopped looking for scientific explanation, because it all just to pass time and in terms of the state, in that meditative state it takes effort to distant my "software" self for my "hardware" self, so thinking about physical self and physical body parts was counter productive, distancing from anything is very hard if we keep thinking about it, so I stopped, technique required it.
So honestly, I couldn't possibly say anything with any certainty, it's possible, even fairly likely related in some way. Maybe not as a whole, but I'm sure every body part that has any wiring, and every part of our body has lots of wiring - does produce some static noise, electric, or bioelectric, chemical and all kinds of noise. Including, but certainly not limited to our eyes. But is that all there is? I believe it's not.
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Well I overlap with my "right mind", hehe, I dunno to what extent I could be called centered in it.

As for 'hours' of discussion... My appetite for knowledge, insight, experience, etc. is limitless. I'm so attached to learning and understanding new things that I even sometimes ponder the potential downside of full blown enlightenment, of no more new things to see and learn, no longer able to enjoy the childlike awe of seeing things unfold and learning, which in some ways requires unknowing. Driven to consume understanding and becoming ever more pansophical, leery of running out of food, but not so leery that I'd slow down my consuming for a even a nanosecond. I've gone 72 hours without sleep just because I was fascinated by something, only going to sleep because I realized the sleep deprivation was having an annoying impact on the experience.

That there are "rational explanations" for phenomenon, is not the same as phenomenon being factually explained. In deja vu for example, I came upon what is now the most accepted 'rational explanation' for it (basically a sort of hiccup in the brain's processing of information). For a very short time I was excited to have it explained, not in a way i expected, but excited still. And for "most" experiences of deja vu, it fits what people feel. But then I started to think about all of my own experiments with it, and longer episodes of deja vu. And I quickly realized that while it was an elegant explanation (scientifically speaking), it was simply wrong. But I was excited about it for about 10 minutes hehe. And for anyone who hasn't taken a deep dive into the matter, it probably explains their experiences to their satisfaction. Anyway, point being, there's a gigantic, huge, monstrously big difference between being able to formulate a hypothesis which explains some experience, and actually supporting it with experimental data. So if retinal static "can be" explained in a certain way, it does not implicitly make it that way. Hypothesis is FAR from a theory, and theory is fairly far from fact. Which is kinda the glaring difference between the scientific method, and just "explaining things away" within the confines of known principals (the latter being enormously more speculative). A distinction lost on many who claim to love science.

Also, I think retinal static is very interesting in the way it seems to interact with preconscious imagery formation, Even IF it is entirely mundane in origin (which it may or may not be). I mean, when i practice visualization, i see what I craft in my mindscape. But with retinal static (and TV static) the imagery I see emerge from it seems extremely free-associative, and it takes focus to direct it into a consciously intentional direction. So it's just super incredibly good for any form of divination which relies on visual focus.

When I was very young I used to look at retinal static more. Much the same reason, it was interesting to look at when not doing anything else. I didn't stick with it like you did though. I settled more into... how to put it... swimming in a sea of 'cognition, consciousness, and energy' might kinda sorta describe it. Basically a high ranking space cadet hehe.

The "shhhhhhh" you hear in your ears I don't hear. I have some tinnitus, so to me I hear a constant sound which is kinda dog-whistle in pitch, but sounds almost more like a continuous "gong" sound. I could almost describe it as kinda lemon-like. if it's not too weird to call a sound a flavor. Not entirely a great background sound to have ever present. Mostly I filter it out, but I notice it if things get suddenly more quiet. Before I had tinnitus (from a sudden loud sound), I don't recall hearing a "shhhh" though. whatever background sound i heard always had a more metalic ringing quality to it.

How do you zero in one one point in the retinal static?
I've been playing with it, and just kinda focusing on the center-most point in my vision, but the static kinda moves around, and pops in and out, so it feels hard to track a specific bit of it. Is there a best way to do this? I feel like I'm trying to catch gnats with a pair of chop sticks. Is this a work harder thing? or a work smarter thing? like am I looking at focus when i should be looking at will?

On distancing being hard when thinking about something, I agree. Although I'm pretty good at doing it anyway. I'm very used to fragmenting and unifying parts of mind. So it's kinda like splitting off a bit of self as a small automaton of thought which maintains a dispassionate focus on something while the greater hive of mind is not focused on it, but absorbing the input from that fragment. Sort of like when you unconsciously tap your foot, or breath air, but crafted.

one of the things I like to do when i go to sleep, instead of thinking about the day's events or tomorrow's challenges (both of which would surely keep me awake with more thinking hehe), but rather just feel myself, and then envision that I am moving east at about 1000km/hr as the planet rotates (it'd be more at the equator, but i'm not at the equator), and that these rotations are moving around the sun, and the sun is moving around the galaxy, and the galaxy is moving in space... and just try to get the relative direction & speed somewhat accurate in my mind with a cumulative speed of around half a million km/hr, but not all of it in the same direction. But I'm not focusing on the numbers really, just the feel of it and sense of place in it all. It's like counting sheep, but nerdy (and very serene somehow). Either that or I just dive into the abyssal void and conjure up all that I can imagine, until it becomes non-lucid and I'm dreaming.

do you look like you when you are away in other worlds?

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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If the TV static is looked at closely, would that attract an elemental or nature spirit that could use the static to make shapes?

>I hear a constant sound which is kinda dog-whistle in pitch

I would hear that louder in a forest, but having sat for a couple of weeks about 100 feet from a cell phone tower, the noise got much louder all the time. When I reduced my exposure the whistling slowly came back to the traditional level.

Since then I have discovered that electrosensitive people sometimes say they can hear electricity.

>I am moving east at about 1000km/hr as the planet rotates ... and that these rotations are moving around the sun, and the sun is moving around the galaxy

Some visitors just want to go home.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Oh You love long assays on vague and abstract subject? I got you fam!
...
(I usually try to proof read everything before posting, to fix at least most of my gibberish, but this turnout about 10x longer than I planned, so I apologize for all the typos, my dyslexia and my fat paws if anywhere, and I promise to proof read it sometime later this year. It's 2am here, good night and Happy New Year!)
Kath wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 4:31 pm Well I overlap with my "right mind", hehe, I dunno to what extent I could be called centered in it.

As for 'hours' of discussion... My appetite for knowledge, insight, experience, etc. is limitless. I'm so attached to learning and understanding new things that I even sometimes ponder the potential downside of full blown enlightenment, of no more new things to see and learn, no longer able to enjoy the childlike awe of seeing things unfold and learning, which in some ways requires unknowing. Driven to consume understanding and becoming ever more pansophical, leery of running out of food, but not so leery that I'd slow down my consuming for a even a nanosecond. I've gone 72 hours without sleep just because I was fascinated by something, only going to sleep because I realized the sleep deprivation was having an annoying impact on the experience.
I could never go that long without sleep, my brain start shutting down after only 20-30. But I've learned I can go pretty far with regular micro-naps. I learned to do couple minute long snoozes, reboots and then I'm good for another half day or so, until the next time I need a reboot.
But later perfecting my napping to cut down reboot time to just few seconds nap, and even napping while standing, working. Half brain naps. All kinds of naps. I consider naps to be both an art and a science. Big fan of naps. Huge fan. In ideal world I would be napping champion. Mortal realm really behind the curve. Should get their sht and add napping to Olympic program already.
That there are "rational explanations" for phenomenon, is not the same as phenomenon being factually explained. In deja vu for example, I came upon what is now the most accepted 'rational explanation' for it (basically a sort of hiccup in the brain's processing of information). For a very short time I was excited to have it explained, not in a way i expected, but excited still. And for "most" experiences of deja vu, it fits what people feel. But then I started to think about all of my own experiments with it, and longer episodes of deja vu. And I quickly realized that while it was an elegant explanation (scientifically speaking), it was simply wrong. But I was excited about it for about 10 minutes hehe. And for anyone who hasn't taken a deep dive into the matter, it probably explains their experiences to their satisfaction. Anyway, point being, there's a gigantic, huge, monstrously big difference between being able to formulate a hypothesis which explains some experience, and actually supporting it with experimental data. So if retinal static "can be" explained in a certain way, it does not implicitly make it that way. Hypothesis is FAR from a theory, and theory is fairly far from fact. Which is kinda the glaring difference between the scientific method, and just "explaining things away" within the confines of known principals (the latter being enormously more speculative). A distinction lost on many who claim to love science.
Well, if I can be honest, I confess I always explain "deja vu" to other people with the same, well known scientific "rational explanation", just a brain glitch, in essence. As if I my self fully believe it. Because it's quite convenient. Even though there were couple times, couple experiences of such kinds, that we simply ignore, because there simply wasn't and still isn't any explanation for those incidents of temporal but catastrophic "System Memory Overflow" in our matrix servers or smth.
So if anyone ever comes up saying he or she had insane "deja vu" experience and does it mean anything? Most likely I will always going to say "No, it's just brain farts, don't think much of it, nothing to see here, carry on with life, have a shot of whiskey, that will fix ya right up."
Also, I think retinal static is very interesting in the way it seems to interact with preconscious imagery formation, Even IF it is entirely mundane in origin (which it may or may not be). I mean, when i practice visualization, i see what I craft in my mindscape. But with retinal static (and TV static) the imagery I see emerge from it seems extremely free-associative, and it takes focus to direct it into a consciously intentional direction. So it's just super incredibly good for any form of divination which relies on visual focus.
Oh boy, your mind is jumping so far ahead with this, I'm not even sure if I will be able to keep up for long :D I wasn't touching certain aspects intentionally, trying resist temptation of writing few page long assays.
Well in this "curriculum" of mine, visualization is part of it, but much further down the road. Like the whole new separate advanced chapter for year 3 or even year 4 students of the imaginary university of Hogwarts. And we consider "visualization" to be the opposite of "meditation", in certain sense, at least in my imaginary books. Two opposites, two sides of the coins, make one whole "curriculum".
In general, I think and feel (at least these days after all of my experiments and experiences), that ideally it's better to focus at first on meditation part, learning to be still, completely silent in body, mind and heart. Not just achieving such states of mind, but being able to maintain it for long periods and feel comfortable there, virtually being nothing.
Because they say "I feel, I think, there for I am", so if I don't think and I don't feel (that's the state we are aiming for in our meditations) - I am not? My take on it, we are almost "NOT", we are trying to get as close to that existential zero as we possibly can without becoming actual zero. Because turning that knob down of "volume" of internal noise, eventually we seem to reach level when it gets so low that it is or almost is at the level of the background noise, and there hear and see other "stations", sort of, at least that's the I explain it to my self, for now at least. And it takes some work, maybe some people are natural at it, I'm just an average dude, it took me years.
And visualization is the opposite, at least in some key aspects, it focused on projecting, aka "broadcasting", instead of "receiving". But because virtualisation require practice of focus etc so in some sense to some level by practising visualization you are practising meditation, one is connected to the other, and meditation on it's own gives nothing just a state of nothing, and to get something one needs to focus on something within the that state, get that "lock". Which would require to think of something, so in a sense one could argue by thinking of something you automatically visualizing it. And I wouldn't argue with it. My only argument is that, mastering that inner silence is the harder half and very important one. Everyone around seem to practice visualization, but very few put effort in to practising achieving inner silence, which potentially can open unforseen levels of "clarity" in this form of divination. At the very least (besides many other things), it gives you fairly solid base line of your self, how do I feel like, look like, sound like, taste like, when I don't feel anything, don't think anything, don't speak anything, don't wish for anything, when I'm consciously as close to nothing as I possibly can be. And from there I started to learn about my self, to get to know my self, my own mind. In some cases to minute details, in terms of how does my mind filters work, how does my mind interpret things, change and twist things, and to recognize those layers of "artistic liberties" taken by my own mind when it presents me with some imagery, interpretation. At least being able to have some sense, which part of experience (person or place I'm seeing, words I'm hearing, feelings I'm having, over all experience I'm having etc) is me, of me, my own projections, and which part of it not coming from me.
Kind of, more or less, something along the lines.
As a divination form, for me there was a moment when it all began fall in to places, things began to make certain sense, when I began to realize what it can do, it blew other forms of divination out of the water. To actually being able to see someone out of this world, and see them as they are, clear as day, and not as some vague blurry image from the part of my brain that's in charge of imagination, and to even have a conversation, hear all those growling and shimmering non human voices with words in them and all other things... Well I respect tarot cards, and all other forms of divination, but at some point it did start to feel like all this time I was trying to communicate with somebody in another continent burning leaves and using smoke signals, while all along there was 1gigabit fibre optic connection hidden somewhere between my ears, capable of full stereo and 4k resolution real time video, metaphorically.
When I was very young I used to look at retinal static more. Much the same reason, it was interesting to look at when not doing anything else. I didn't stick with it like you did though. I settled more into... how to put it... swimming in a sea of 'cognition, consciousness, and energy' might kinda sorta describe it. Basically a high ranking space cadet hehe.

The "shhhhhhh" you hear in your ears I don't hear. I have some tinnitus, so to me I hear a constant sound which is kinda dog-whistle in pitch, but sounds almost more like a continuous "gong" sound. I could almost describe it as kinda lemon-like. if it's not too weird to call a sound a flavor. Not entirely a great background sound to have ever present. Mostly I filter it out, but I notice it if things get suddenly more quiet. Before I had tinnitus (from a sudden loud sound), I don't recall hearing a "shhhh" though. whatever background sound i heard always had a more metalic ringing quality to it.

I just cut corners with that, by describing it as "shhh". I didn't mean that as an exact representation of that "audio static", I just threw in first combination of letters that crossed my mind, in a lazy attempt to point at a "background white noise" exist within all our senses, not only visual, not just retinal.
But yes, your description sounds pretty accurate, more accurate than mine, it is more like some metallic ringing, to some extent have even a bit of "electric" flavour, for me at least.
How do you zero in one one point in the retinal static?
I've been playing with it, and just kinda focusing on the center-most point in my vision, but the static kinda moves around, and pops in and out, so it feels hard to track a specific bit of it. Is there a best way to do this? I feel like I'm trying to catch gnats with a pair of chop sticks. Is this a work harder thing? or a work smarter thing? like am I looking at focus when i should be looking at will?
Yes, pretty much that's how it goes. At first. It's counter intuitive. It supposed to be. You are doing it wrong, but you are supposed to do it wrong. It feels like you are doing something wrong, or that not doing something right, because you are trying to force your mind, your actual brain to do something "unnatural", something not it was not designed to do, so it's not just the "software problem", it's hardware. There is no way to see the light, even if you have best pair of eyes in the world, if there is no wiring, or there is very poor wiring between your brain (where you reside) and those best in the world eyes. The only way to force your brain re-engineer some part of it, is by continuously practising it.
I can emphasize one thing, try to focus on seeing, exclusively, entirely, in that state, that time and space, in that moment just focus whole being on seeing. Not feeling, not thinking, of anything. Just seeing. Feel the NEED to see.
It as much of a "physiological skill" as something like for example riding a bicycle. You can't learn to ride bicycle from from books, can't learn it by watching youtube tutorials, the only way to learn is by continuously trying. If one person spent year reading thousand books about riding bicycle and watching other people riding, while the second did no prep, and both of them start learning on Monday they both would be riding on the same day, sometime by the end of the week, as long as they spent equal amount of effort practising.
Same here. So I mean it say it's all good, just need to continue practising. Practising to reach that inner stillness and maintaining focused mind for as long as possible, regularly, preferably every day, at least 10-20minutes would be ideal. Regural practice it self force (or motivate) brain to make certain small adjustment in the wirings.
I'm sure you will start seeing something change within only a week or two, but not gonna say what kind of changes, but you'll definitely notice something, if you continue. Usually I tell people, it takes months, or even years, but by the sound of it, you already have most of what you need, somehow. I would not be too surprised, if you came back tomorrow with experiences of the kinds it took me months or even years.
On distancing being hard when thinking about something, I agree. Although I'm pretty good at doing it anyway. I'm very used to fragmenting and unifying parts of mind. So it's kinda like splitting off a bit of self as a small automaton of thought which maintains a dispassionate focus on something while the greater hive of mind is not focused on it, but absorbing the input from that fragment. Sort of like when you unconsciously tap your foot, or breath air, but crafted.
That line of thought might work, or be of some help too. Can't say for sure, if it's beneficial or not, we all see, perceive many things little different. Can never be 100% sure if somebody else's angle on something is different, or it's the same just different terms and takes, and even if different, if it's better in some way or not as good. I see my self as mostly machine, with many subsystems, automatic routines, yet some of that machinery is integral part of my contentiousness, in certain way. While I wouldn't cease to exist without certain parts of the machine, my cognitive functions and all kinds of intellectual functions, my ability to comprehend incoming information, and many more things would be severely limited if many of those screws stop spinning. So when it comes to my meditations it always a juggle, which part to switch off, or throttle down and in what order for best possible results. I far from being able to say I got it all figured out. I still pretty wobbly, I get where I want to get, when I want to get, in a state and shape I want to be - only about half the time, probably even less. There are so many buttons around in that brain, and I have vague sense what a tiny fraction of those supposed to do.
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A side story. Once long ago during one of my meditations, I kind of fall asleep, for a moment, then "woke up", and realized I'm in a lucid dream state. I thought, that's perfectly fine, in a way even better, it takes less effort to keep my self awake in LD state, then to keep my self from falling asleep in meditation. Or so I thought. By that time I learned to exit my mind space, my dreamscape from LD. So I'm like, great, I just desyc my self from my self, and ping someone i wanted to meet, to speak to, and then "beam my self up". I went on with that and all seemed good but the beaming part was glitching, I start feeling very heavy, and got stuck half way, somewhere in-between, was just floating in the void, nothing but pitch black darkness around. I reached out to that person once more but I felt like there was nothing but infinite emptiness all around me, and the darkness felt so heavy. I almost started to panic when I felt the presence. Her hand grabbed mine and I felt strong pull, she pulled so hard it almost felt like my arm was being ripped off. But a moment later we are out of it and she was standing in front of me. But just when we started to talk, I began having emotional noise spiking, went slightly mental "Oh I missed you so much and blah blah" feelings, emotions starting to dictate my behaviour, thoughts. At first she tried talking to me, there was something important she wanted to tell me, but she stopped mid sentence and was just looking at me, trying to asses my state. She often does that, if she deems me awake enough then she will walk with me then times around the galaxy talking about all kinds of things, but the moment she noticed I'm falling asleep, or I'm not awake enough to her liking, she'd be like "ok bye, talk later" and gone. Well not even that, she wouldn't say a single word, she would just give me that stare and the next thing I'd see would be her walking off without even a single word. Every single time.
So there I was, we just met again after few months and not even two sentences in I already got her "are you awake?" stare. I'm like, I'm completely awake, there some weird glitches today, but I feel completely awake. But she's like nope, nowhere near. But strangely she didn't leave that time, but instead stopped talking and went to "dream crafting". The environment changed, in front of me table appeared, and on that table there was a bomb, with a ticking clock. And not just environment, I got hit with a load of knowledge and vague memories of things that never happened but made perfect sense in that moment. Almost like some story, a script got uploaded with some vague backstory, not very neatly crafted, but just good enough. Then some other character appeared, asking me what's going on and what I'm doing, and I'm answering from that script. "Oh there is bomb, with some chemical toxins in it, time is running out, we have to defuse it asap, or else we all going to die", that new character asked me who is that other person standing there, and i answered for that script "Oh it's my friend, she helped us to defuse another bomb before" (that never happened neither in real nor in any previous dreams ever in any form or shape) , and I look at her, and she just standing there, in silence, even without any kind of expression on her face, just observing. An my mind start glitching, something off, how can she be some calm, so emotionless about this, it doesn't fit the picture, the vibe, we are all about to die, I know it, she should know it, but she doesn't look the right way. Unless what I think I know is wrong... But then my mind fall back to the script and I'm trying to decide which wire i need to cut. But before I could make the choice, my mind completely crashed, I just saw right in front my eyes that lucid (even if just partial by that monument) mental state turning in to complete dream, like a wave washed over it or some invisible painter just redraw the entire world from one corner of the my eyes to another, in real time. Brightly coloured buildings popped in around, with trees and all the "normal" dreamscape stuff, and even characters got "redrawn". My friend just disappeared, I was only conscious enough to remember and call her name, but she was nowhere around, until I looked down and saw this little girl with fluffy dress staring at me, with her eyes glowing in sky blue. I'm like is it you? But nothing about her looked like my friend, completely different person, almost. Virtually every single things, every detail, visually changed, except one tiny minute detail - facial expression. That little girl I've never seen before had exact same facial expression of complete and utter indifference about everything around. Then I woke up to realize, I was gradually falling asleep the entire time, in stages. And I start loosing control and focus of my own mind for the very beginning, but couldn't realize that because accidentally the part of the brain which were supposed to remain awake, part with important for some cognitive functions, was one of the first ones to fall asleep.
The moment I saw the entire world being redrawn in front of me, it kind of knocked me back a bit, I realized I'm falling asleep, and been falling asleep, but it was already too late, I virtually had no more control over my own mind. I still have no idea how to regain awareness or increase it, how to re-animate different parts of my mind once those slip out of my control. Especially since brain start releasing cocktail of some sleep drugs at some point, I start to get high, sleep state feels so good and any kind of mental work becomes too heavy to lift.

Hmm I kind of forgot why i brought this story, what I was trying to take from it. I'm getting old. Maybe that in this, and many similar experiences I learned I had far less control over my different parts of machinery, the brain machinery. And levels of awareness, or being "awake" is not just "0" ans "1", but there can be and is thousands of degrees between one and another, and possibly never exactly 0 or exactly 1, and always somewhere in between.
But like everything else, it all just my personal believes, guesses, assumption, dogmas, gnosis. I never met anything openly doing anything similar enough to compare. And comparing results and conclusions with experiences of people who do things too differently seems a bit too "unscientific".
And being a single source of certain untested ideas for too long, carries a risk of getting in love too deep with those personal ideas an theories while some, maybe even most or all of them being completely wrong or wrong just enough wrong to lead me far astray over the long run.
But oh well, we work with what universe provides.
one of the things I like to do when i go to sleep, instead of thinking about the day's events or tomorrow's challenges (both of which would surely keep me awake with more thinking hehe), but rather just feel myself, and then envision that I am moving east at about 1000km/hr as the planet rotates (it'd be more at the equator, but i'm not at the equator), and that these rotations are moving around the sun, and the sun is moving around the galaxy, and the galaxy is moving in space... and just try to get the relative direction & speed somewhat accurate in my mind with a cumulative speed of around half a million km/hr, but not all of it in the same direction. But I'm not focusing on the numbers really, just the feel of it and sense of place in it all. It's like counting sheep, but nerdy (and very serene somehow). Either that or I just dive into the abyssal void and conjure up all that I can imagine, until it becomes non-lucid and I'm dreaming.
A person of culture, you got some strange hobbies too :D
I can't say for sure, it what you are doing is somehow feels relevant. Like at least in general by doing your thing, you kind of practising focus, focusing on something narrow and able to keep your mind clear and in some "narrow path" while blocking out all the noise or at least most of it. Does feel relevant, as if those mental workouts has certain curiouser applications.
do you look like you when you are away in other worlds?
How do I look like in other worlds?
No idea actually never seen my self from third person perspective. The law states "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", so would need to ask those from those other world, what they see. But judging by reactions I get, I'm guessing it's varies greatly. I'm a beautiful butterfly for some, and a most horrendous monster for others, probably, possibly, not sure. Never really thought about it much before.
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Amor wrote: Fri Jan 01, 2021 12:03 am >I hear a constant sound which is kinda dog-whistle in pitch

I would hear that louder in a forest, but having sat for a couple of weeks about 100 feet from a cell phone tower, the noise got much louder all the time. When I reduced my exposure the whistling slowly came back to the traditional level.

Since then I have discovered that electrosensitive people sometimes say they can hear electricity.
possibly, when i was more sensitive. I had some intermittent tinnitus ringing then. but it wasn't worth mentioning really.

Mostly though it's from an incident of sudden abrupt hearing damage.
I can reduce it's loudness a bit by eating less salt.

I filter it out anyway. Actually I'm not sure hearing damage is the right term, since I still hear everything fine, it's just accompanied with the ringing. Some sounds you just never entirely stop hearing, if they're loud enough. Actually thinking back to before that... it's just like after you've been to a loud concert, and you get home, and you lay down in bed where it's quiet, that ringing right there. That's what I hear. it's just that it's not gone in the morning :P
not a big deal though.
Amor wrote: Fri Jan 01, 2021 12:03 am Some visitors just want to go home.
yeah

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Cerber wrote: Fri Jan 01, 2021 2:16 am I could never go that long without sleep, my brain start shutting down after only 20-30.
right around 36 hours, your body gives up on making you go to sleep, and it becomes much easier to stay up.
it's actually a little difficult to fall asleep after that point.
So if anyone ever comes up saying he or she had insane "deja vu" experience and does it mean anything? Most likely I will always going to say "No, it's just brain farts, don't think much of it, nothing to see here, carry on with life, have a shot of whiskey, that will fix ya right up."
Well, I find it to be highly random, and very indifferent to anything we'd think of as relevant or important to life paths.
It's generally just while making a sandwich in the kitchen or something, and suddenly realizing you've already seen that precise, exact, moment in time before. It gets "more interesting" if it lasts longer, but I've never seen it relate to any personal meaningful event. Just out of the blue "oh hey, you know causality? yeah, fuck that, the neighbor's dog is about to bark btw."
And we consider "visualization" to be the opposite of "meditation", in certain sense, at least in my imaginary books. Two opposites, two sides of the coins, make one whole "curriculum".
In general, I think and feel (at least these days after all of my experiments and experiences), that ideally it's better to focus at first on meditation part, learning to be still, completely silent in body, mind and heart. Not just achieving such states of mind, but being able to maintain it for long periods and feel comfortable there, virtually being nothing.
Because they say "I feel, I think, there for I am", so if I don't think and I don't feel (that's the state we are aiming for in our meditations) - I am not? My take on it, we are almost "NOT", we are trying to get as close to that existential zero as we possibly can without becoming actual zero. Because turning that knob down of "volume" of internal noise, eventually we seem to reach level when it gets so low that it is or almost is at the level of the background noise, and there hear and see other "stations", sort of, at least that's the I explain it to my self, for now at least. And it takes some work, maybe some people are natural at it, I'm just an average dude, it took me years.
I really struggled with zeroing meditation. My mind likes to go crazy fast, in 15 directions at once. I was good at getting all 15 directions to focus on a single point, to be totally focused on something, but being focused on nothing was a struggle.

But I heard a radio broadcast where they were talking about a psychic from the mid 20th century... uhhh... god i'm bad at names. He was kinda famous for going to sleep and having people ask him questions while he slept (interesting approach). Anyway, that guy had written that his favorite approach to meditation was to imagine that he had no head. Nothing gory, just no head. That instead of a head, there was just the room around him. Like the room was a surrogate for his head. it existed, but thoughtlessly. I found that a very useful way of approaching it. Also he talked some about the "silent observer", as a sort of level within the mind. I found that a useful term as well. I wouldn't say I 'practice' that way, but it really helped me get past where I was stumbling. anyway, onwards!
And visualization is the opposite, at least in some key aspects, it focused on projecting, aka "broadcasting", instead of "receiving". But because virtualisation require practice of focus etc so in some sense to some level by practising visualization you are practising meditation, one is connected to the other, and meditation on it's own gives nothing just a state of nothing, and to get something one needs to focus on something within the that state, get that "lock". Which would require to think of something, so in a sense one could argue by thinking of something you automatically visualizing it. And I wouldn't argue with it. My only argument is that, mastering that inner silence is the harder half and very important one. Everyone around seem to practice visualization, but very few put effort in to practising achieving inner silence, which potentially can open unforseen levels of "clarity" in this form of divination. At the very least (besides many other things), it gives you fairly solid base line of your self, how do I feel like, look like, sound like, taste like, when I don't feel anything, don't think anything, don't speak anything, don't wish for anything, when I'm consciously as close to nothing as I possibly can be. And from there I started to learn about my self, to get to know my self, my own mind. In some cases to minute details, in terms of how does my mind filters work, how does my mind interpret things, change and twist things, and to recognize those layers of "artistic liberties" taken by my own mind when it presents me with some imagery, interpretation. At least being able to have some sense, which part of experience (person or place I'm seeing, words I'm hearing, feelings I'm having, over all experience I'm having etc) is me, of me, my own projections, and which part of it not coming from me.
When I got seriously into the occult (and a myriad of other somewhat intersecting topics) in 2001, it was after quitting my former religion. I already had a very strong background in psychology, and was extremely self reflective. And with the added experience of a rather abrupt major paradigm change, I was, at that point, already pretty savvy to the whole paradigmatic lens effect. I only mention it because for me this preceded meditation. My sort of "first step" was purging preconception and identifying the million ways in which my cognition of things was tainted or warped. Even to the point of taking note of the many ways in which I was being (overly) "human-centric" in thought style. I was purging dogma from without, and in many ways cognitive bias is a sort of dogma from within, and I burnt both on the altar as step-1.

That said, it would have been easier probably, if I were meditating then.

I'm not a thelemite but I just gotta quote the C-man here:
Doubt.
Doubt Thyself.
Doubt even if thou doubtest thyself.
Doubt all
Doubt even if thou doubtest all.
It seems sometimes as if beneath all conscious doubt there lay some deepest certainty. O kill it! slay the snake!
The horn of the Doubt-Goat be exalted!
Dive deeper, ever deeper, into the Abyss of Mind, until thou unearth that fox THAT.


PS: remind me sometime to talk about what I call "raw thought", and the nature of the internal dialogue.
As a divination form, for me there was a moment when it all began fall in to places, things began to make certain sense, when I began to realize what it can do, it blew other forms of divination out of the water. To actually being able to see someone out of this world, and see them as they are, clear as day, and not as some vague blurry image from the part of my brain that's in charge of imagination, and to even have a conversation, hear all those growling and shimmering non human voices with words in them and all other things... Well I respect tarot cards, and all other forms of divination, but at some point it did start to feel like all this time I was trying to communicate with somebody in another continent burning leaves and using smoke signals, while all along there was 1gigabit fibre optic connection hidden somewhere between my ears, capable of full stereo and 4k resolution real time video, metaphorically.
here are you referring to retinal static attunement?
But yes, your description sounds pretty accurate, more accurate than mine, it is more like some metallic ringing, to some extent have even a bit of "electric" flavour, for me at least.
an earful of lemon, with an electric twist?
hehe, i dunno, I'd more go with lemon juice dripped into the ears from a high pitched tuning fork with a metallic flavor
Yes, pretty much that's how it goes. At first. It's counter intuitive. It supposed to be. You are doing it wrong, but you are supposed to do it wrong. It feels like you are doing something wrong, or that not doing something right, because you are trying to force your mind, your actual brain to do something "unnatural", something not it was not designed to do, so it's not just the "software problem", it's hardware. There is no way to see the light, even if you have best pair of eyes in the world, if there is no wiring, or there is very poor wiring between your brain (where you reside) and those best in the world eyes. The only way to force your brain re-engineer some part of it, is by continuously practising it.
I can emphasize one thing, try to focus on seeing, exclusively, entirely, in that state, that time and space, in that moment just focus whole being on seeing. Not feeling, not thinking, of anything. Just seeing. Feel the NEED to see.
It as much of a "physiological skill" as something like for example riding a bicycle. You can't learn to ride bicycle from from books, can't learn it by watching youtube tutorials, the only way to learn is by continuously trying. If one person spent year reading thousand books about riding bicycle and watching other people riding, while the second did no prep, and both of them start learning on Monday they both would be riding on the same day, sometime by the end of the week, as long as they spent equal amount of effort practising.
Same here. So I mean it say it's all good, just need to continue practising. Practising to reach that inner stillness and maintaining focused mind for as long as possible, regularly, preferably every day, at least 10-20minutes would be ideal. Regural practice it self force (or motivate) brain to make certain small adjustment in the wirings.
I'm sure you will start seeing something change within only a week or two, but not gonna say what kind of changes, but you'll definitely notice something, if you continue. Usually I tell people, it takes months, or even years, but by the sound of it, you already have most of what you need, somehow. I would not be too surprised, if you came back tomorrow with experiences of the kinds it took me months or even years.
uhh, I'm not good, i just had a good teacher :P
Also, so far though, I haven't actually accomplished anything. Except maybe in finding the ideas conceptually easy to wrap around. I 'did' spend some time playing with retinal static when I was young, so it's not completely new, I just never got anywhere interesting with it when I dabbled.
That line of thought might work, or be of some help too. Can't say for sure, if it's beneficial or not, we all see, perceive many things little different. Can never be 100% sure if somebody else's angle on something is different, or it's the same just different terms and takes, and even if different, if it's better in some way or not as good. I see my self as mostly machine, with many subsystems, automatic routines, yet some of that machinery is integral part of my contentiousness, in certain way. While I wouldn't cease to exist without certain parts of the machine, my cognitive functions and all kinds of intellectual functions, my ability to comprehend incoming information, and many more things would be severely limited if many of those screws stop spinning. So when it comes to my meditations it always a juggle, which part to switch off, or throttle down and in what order for best possible results. I far from being able to say I got it all figured out. I still pretty wobbly, I get where I want to get, when I want to get, in a state and shape I want to be - only about half the time, probably even less. There are so many buttons around in that brain, and I have vague sense what a tiny fraction of those supposed to do.
Language is an agreed upon symbol-set, representing conceptual abstractions. When you get off the beaten path, and common ground gets sparse, being able to have the correct word to describe something gets pretty rare. An occult background "tends" to help terminology-wise, somewhat, sometimes, kinda ...not nearly as much as one would like though. Sometimes I think having a strong background in twighlight zone episodes is perhaps more useful as a reference material for sharing ideas.
~dream stuff~
who is she?

personally I don't find the void pannicky, i think it's serene. and a blank canvas.

It's interesting how lucidity can slip away, or return.
I can't say for sure, it what you are doing is somehow feels relevant. Like at least in general by doing your thing, you kind of practising focus, focusing on something narrow and able to keep your mind clear and in some "narrow path" while blocking out all the noise or at least most of it. Does feel relevant, as if those mental workouts has certain curiouser applications.
You could call it a single-focus form of meditation.
I tend to think of meditation as being either zero-focus, or single-focus, each different from the other.
actually this runs pretty parallel to free associative imagery vs visualization.
zero focus is trickier

I usually kinda cheat at zero focus (or maybe more accurately take a lazy approach)... uh... how to put it...
What is the difference between someone who has no split personality, and someone who has multiple personalities which are networked as a 'hive mind'?
Is there a difference? is it just framing?
all minds have facets, all people have various hats they wear, and various frames of mind. I tend to think it's just a difference of looking at it from one direction vs. the other direction. 6 or half a dozen?
I tend to look at it from the more unusual perspective of a multiplicity of minds in hive state. Probably because at one time many of the facets were repressed, before I brought everything together as a whole. So... I guess oddly enough, even though i think of my mind as a kinda hive mind, I tend to think other people are "more" fragmented, if they are in the usual state of repressing most of their facets of mind.
anyway... I only bring this up because I tend to uh.. "delegate for multitasking" might fit as a phrase. I mean, I think (cogitate) in that way normally, multiple threads at once, so it seems natural to me to do most things with just a thread rather than total focus.

I tend to apply this to zero-focus meditation. Like, one thread of mind in zero-focus, but other threads doing other things. Now... i know that sounds like "not doin' it right", and I agree it's not, but... it works fine for "some" of the purposes of zero-focus meditation. For example, you can kinda treat this zero-focus meditating mind fragment as a sense organ. Or you could attenuate a mind fragment to match someone else's mind, as a conduit of connection, without your'self' being totally sucked into a vortex of overwhelming empathy. I think all of this is stuff that lots of other people 'do', but don't necessarily think about how it's being done. I find it useful to kinda dissect it like this, cuz a clearer picture of what's being done allows for better tweaking and more purposeful, targeted doing of the things.

anyway, I find that as long as you don't let the other thought threads touch the zero-focus thread, and you really kinda splinter it off on it's own, it covers a lot of the usefulness (not all) of zero focus meditation. but you definitely want to go 'all in' on meditating sometimes.

Worth pointing out... with the way most people repress parts of mind, most people "usually" are only fractionally zero-focus in their meditation, shutting down their conscious mind, but often not their subconscious.

I've put a really large amount of time & energy into digging up my subconscious and integrating it consciously. Not 'entirely', for reasons which would be a long topic. but enough to kinda turn the iceberg metaphor on it's head. It's definitely a factor in how I view minds and working with consciousness.

how did i even get on this topic? anyway, i try to focus all the threads on floating on a rock through a giant cosmic void, cuz it's cozy and relaxing for sleepy time.
How do I look like in other worlds?
No idea actually never seen my self from third person perspective. The law states "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", so would need to ask those from those other world, what they see. But judging by reactions I get, I'm guessing it's varies greatly. I'm a beautiful butterfly for some, and a most horrendous monster for others, probably, possibly, not sure. Never really thought about it much before.
"butterfly monster", i like it

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Kath
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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oh, i'll have to do more with the retinal static a bit later. got an ear infection today, so it's just annoyingly distracting.
(ironically, extra tinnitus in one ear for the moment. blindfold me and i'd go in circles :P hehe)

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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>extra tinnitus in one ear for the moment.

Was that a real-time energy signal for you?

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Amor wrote: Sat Jan 02, 2021 12:46 am >extra tinnitus in one ear for the moment.

Was that a real-time energy signal for you?
i didn't get all the water out of my ear after showering. it's an ear ache that started very early this morning, the little bit of extra pressure makes ringing louder. also a lopsided headache

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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A few months ago I was walking out of the library - automatic doors - and had a sharp whistle in the left ear exactly when I was in the doorway.

I looked for a wifi transmitter but could not see one. It retrospect I think I was hearing the electrical surge in the door mechanism.

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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Amor wrote: Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:28 am A few months ago I was walking out of the library - automatic doors - and had a sharp whistle in the left ear exactly when I was in the doorway.

I looked for a wifi transmitter but could not see one. It retrospect I think I was hearing the electrical surge in the door mechanism.
I personally don't see how people can sense electromagnetic radiation, at least not in milliwatt power ranges, which most of our modern electronic works at these days, but maybe anything is possible in some way. That said, thanks to recent advances in technology, in places like automatic doors and lighting, passive infrared motion sensors are being replaced by low power and short range electromagnetic radars, which can be much smarter, more efficient, more precise.
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Re: Is anyone achieving "practical" results from divination?

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Kath wrote: Fri Jan 01, 2021 10:54 pm Well, I find it to be highly random, and very indifferent to anything we'd think of as relevant or important to life paths.
It's generally just while making a sandwich in the kitchen or something, and suddenly realizing you've already seen that precise, exact, moment in time before. It gets "more interesting" if it lasts longer, but I've never seen it relate to any personal meaningful event. Just out of the blue "oh hey, you know causality? yeah, fuck that, the neighbor's dog is about to bark btw."
I have not found any kind of pattern, no signs of causality whatsoever. Sometimes can just sit all alone, at night with nothing happening, no triggers whatsoever and just posting in to occultforum, suddenly you see what you already wrote, but not yet, but kinda did, in the past that is yet to happen. Other times, in some cafe you might be having conversation with couple friends, and the universe just skips forward and then reverse and forgets to include you, and you just stand there turning your head to people who are about to speak but are yet to open their mouth, but since you don't want the universe to notice anything, you just repeat the same responses. Other people don't "remember" what you are yet to say anyway. At least you get to say the same joke twice and second time it's as funny as it was the first time, exactly as much. There are benefits, a tiny ones but still, I guess.
I really struggled with zeroing meditation. My mind likes to go crazy fast, in 15 directions at once. I was good at getting all 15 directions to focus on a single point, to be totally focused on something, but being focused on nothing was a struggle.

But I heard a radio broadcast where they were talking about a psychic from the mid 20th century... uhhh... god i'm bad at names. He was kinda famous for going to sleep and having people ask him questions while he slept (interesting approach). Anyway, that guy had written that his favorite approach to meditation was to imagine that he had no head. Nothing gory, just no head. That instead of a head, there was just the room around him. Like the room was a surrogate for his head. it existed, but thoughtlessly. I found that a very useful way of approaching it. Also he talked some about the "silent observer", as a sort of level within the mind. I found that a useful term as well. I wouldn't say I 'practice' that way, but it really helped me get past where I was stumbling. anyway, onwards!
I don't go around preaching my meditation as salvation everywhere I can, so over the years there were only handful of people I talked about it in any kind of depth. And believe it or not, every single one of them had pretty much exactly same or similar initial response, about their minds racing and their struggle of shutting it all down. :P
But I always say, our brain is made of pretty much exactly the same substance, mine is no more special than any other. And when I say it's "hard work", or "it might take significant effort" that's what I mean, it actually takes some effort to get all those threads to slow down and to power down. The only difference between mine lump of meat and others, is that mine simply had the resolve, and commitment to continue even when the goals were not clear, not even expecting any rewards. There is really not much else, no hidden secrets, and or tricks, at least as far as I'm aware. But maybe you will discover some along the way.
But I mean, I understand the struggle, it's real, but it's OK, it's meant to be that way at first, you are on the right track, if you have the resolve to continue :)
As a divination form, for me there was a moment when it all began fall in to places, things began to make certain sense, when I began to realize what it can do, it blew other forms of divination out of the water. To actually being able to see someone out of this world, and see them as they are, clear as day, and not as some vague blurry image from the part of my brain that's in charge of imagination, and to even have a conversation, hear all those growling and shimmering non human voices with words in them and all other things... Well I respect tarot cards, and all other forms of divination, but at some point it did start to feel like all this time I was trying to communicate with somebody in another continent burning leaves and using smoke signals, while all along there was 1gigabit fibre optic connection hidden somewhere between my ears, capable of full stereo and 4k resolution real time video, metaphorically.
here are you referring to retinal static attunement?
As a starting point, yes.
Language is an agreed upon symbol-set, representing conceptual abstractions. When you get off the beaten path, and common ground gets sparse, being able to have the correct word to describe something gets pretty rare. An occult background "tends" to help terminology-wise, somewhat, sometimes, kinda ...not nearly as much as one would like though. Sometimes I think having a strong background in twighlight zone episodes is perhaps more useful as a reference material for sharing ideas.
I try to stick to accepted "serious" nomenclature whenever I can, and it kinda works, for casual and superficial topics. But once we start sticking our heads in to some deeper rabbit holes, I often find my self only few steps from the entrance hole and already gasping for words, standard issue vocabularies dries up pretty fast. Then anything goes, references from computer science, pop culture, movies, cartoons, anime, children's books, computer games even, etc.
How do I look like in other worlds?
No idea actually never seen my self from third person perspective. The law states "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", so would need to ask those from those other world, what they see. But judging by reactions I get, I'm guessing it's varies greatly. I'm a beautiful butterfly for some, and a most horrendous monster for others, probably, possibly, not sure. Never really thought about it much before.
"butterfly monster", i like it
Oh I remember once before I did want to look at my self for reasons I don't remember, before "heading out", there weren't any ready mirror, but I just visualized one and it appeared. And when I looked at it, I only saw pretty normal looking self just wearing a hoodie, with the hood dropping strangely dark shadow on the top half of my face. And in that shadow two brightly glowing eyes, which I thought had to be the most cliche thing ever.
But since I wasn't really in any "other worlds" and the mirror was of my own making, I think it doesn't exactly count.
On appearance though, from interaction with others, and observing changes in their appearance, I noticed it gets influenced by many factors, how does someone appear can depends on me, how do I look at them, on them how do they feel at that moment, even on the environment where we are at the moment, and so on. So I'm pretty sure our appearance gets influenced too and a lot, by the same constantly changing variables.
You could call it a single-focus form of meditation.
I tend to think of meditation as being either zero-focus, or single-focus, each different from the other.
actually this runs pretty parallel to free associative imagery vs visualization.
zero focus is trickier

I usually kinda cheat at zero focus (or maybe more accurately take a lazy approach)... uh... how to put it...
What is the difference between someone who has no split personality, and someone who has multiple personalities which are networked as a 'hive mind'?
Is there a difference? is it just framing?
all minds have facets, all people have various hats they wear, and various frames of mind. I tend to think it's just a difference of looking at it from one direction vs. the other direction. 6 or half a dozen?
I tend to look at it from the more unusual perspective of a multiplicity of minds in hive state. Probably because at one time many of the facets were repressed, before I brought everything together as a whole. So... I guess oddly enough, even though i think of my mind as a kinda hive mind, I tend to think other people are "more" fragmented, if they are in the usual state of repressing most of their facets of mind.
anyway... I only bring this up because I tend to uh.. "delegate for multitasking" might fit as a phrase. I mean, I think (cogitate) in that way normally, multiple threads at once, so it seems natural to me to do most things with just a thread rather than total focus.

I tend to apply this to zero-focus meditation. Like, one thread of mind in zero-focus, but other threads doing other things. Now... i know that sounds like "not doin' it right", and I agree it's not, but... it works fine for "some" of the purposes of zero-focus meditation. For example, you can kinda treat this zero-focus meditating mind fragment as a sense organ. Or you could attenuate a mind fragment to match someone else's mind, as a conduit of connection, without your'self' being totally sucked into a vortex of overwhelming empathy. I think all of this is stuff that lots of other people 'do', but don't necessarily think about how it's being done. I find it useful to kinda dissect it like this, cuz a clearer picture of what's being done allows for better tweaking and more purposeful, targeted doing of the things.

anyway, I find that as long as you don't let the other thought threads touch the zero-focus thread, and you really kinda splinter it off on it's own, it covers a lot of the usefulness (not all) of zero focus meditation. but you definitely want to go 'all in' on meditating sometimes.

Worth pointing out... with the way most people repress parts of mind, most people "usually" are only fractionally zero-focus in their meditation, shutting down their conscious mind, but often not their subconscious.

I've put a really large amount of time & energy into digging up my subconscious and integrating it consciously. Not 'entirely', for reasons which would be a long topic. but enough to kinda turn the iceberg metaphor on it's head. It's definitely a factor in how I view minds and working with consciousness.

how did i even get on this topic? anyway, i try to focus all the threads on floating on a rock through a giant cosmic void, cuz it's cozy and relaxing for sleepy time.
Hmm not sure if you can cheat that way in this. That's not to say, that if you cheat you will get nothing, it's just that results might be different from when not cheating, but if we don't have "non-cheating" results for reference we will never know what's the difference, if there is difference, and if results with cheating feels good, or good enough, motivation not cheat drops even lower. How can then be sure if results if "clear" from radio novice from some other threads. No idea actually.
In some sense, maybe it's just pure luck (or a misfortune, depending on angle you look at it) or due to some strange accident, that I completely on my own, with no guidance from any teacher, or book or movement/community (or almost with no direct influence, at least non that I could remember) worked out that my "practice" for personal use only. I called it "meditation" because it made sense to me, I'd see in movies sages and monks sitting still and seeing visions, seemed close enough.
And only after a while, one day I start thinking "Hmm I wonder what others meditation about, what places to etc, surely lots of people must be doing exactly same thing."
I went on looking what others are doing, and when people would talk about meditation, would automatically assume it's same thing (so naive I was), then they would talk about the right breathing, and I'd be like "what? what does breathing has to do with it?", and it would get even worse when narratives turn to "energies, and chakras", and I'd be like "wtf is that? why any of it matter, what are these people talking about?". And I'd even come across guided meditation techniques, which in essence tells you in advance what you were supposed feel, see, hear. Which I thought flies straight in to face of my practices and it's fundamentals, to significant extent at least. And there was time, when called it quits and just concluded "everyone is insane and delusional but me".
But I came around after bit of contemplating such odd, confusing conclusions of mine. How can majority be wrong? Or is it I'm the delusional? How can it be so different? What I am doing differently and what others doing, what states of mind they are reaching and how? And many more question compiled on the list, which could not be answered unless I start to walk in their shoes, because it was pretty obvious no one is going to walk in mine.
Then I start learning and practising other methods, meditation practices and experiences, and taking them seriously, taking strolls on paths I would not consider before, following recipes and instructions of people i had called insane prior. Countless experiments, personal, alone, and with other people. Some of those more serious than other. Some of those experiments would be considered ridiculous by more serious practitioners, and some conclusions from those more exotic experiments would make many people roll their eyes in annoyance at best.
When I started on that path my dogma was "This narrow path is real, everything else is a fallacy".
When I finished, and now, the same dogma is more like:
"I have no f*cking idea... Reality is a lie.. There is no spoons, there is only sporks all around.. Matrix is analogue.."
I mean many things I considered separate, got merged, some things I thought to be impossible began to seem not just possible but even probable, depending on context, situation, environment. Every answer to every question turned out to be "..it depends..", or at least it seems that way.
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