[Help] Building psychic skills?

[pixel_fortune]

Please read before giving advice: my situation isn't the typical one. At least read the sentence in bold.

So my visual imagination is fine. I can picture a grandfather clock, to use the classic example. I can imagine the smell and taste of an apple and the sound and texture when I bite in into it

But I'm not very good at sensing presence of entities/energies etc.

What I have is decent controlled imagination, but bad spontaneous imagination. So if you say "imagination an angel", I can. But if you say "this angel has a gift for you, a symbolically important object. What is it?" then it won't be anything, because I need to choose what to imagine - my brain rarely just generates images without prior instructions. (This lack of spontaneous imagination is a common feature of alexithymia btw, some brain architecture thing I think)

I'm decent at divination with tarot and a pendulum, but not with scrying - which I think involves a certain amount of collaboration with your spontaneous imagination

I've looked up advice for improving these skills (eg Mat Auryn's Psychic Witch) but they're always exercises in controlled imagination - imagine the smell and taste of chocolate, of a black rose, etc. But I already have that skill. It's not what's missing.

So I'm not sure what else to try, other than brute force practice.

(I suspect a lot of occultists became interested in the occult because they had spontaneous psychic type experiences, so they by definition have a natural high level of "perceiving the subtle" talent, and may not have ever thought about how to build it. Whereas I got here via just thinking about it and figuring stuff out, not because of experiences)

I'm using "psychic" narrowly, I don't mean telepathy or telling the future, just sensing the invisible

Post automatically merged: Feb 8, 2024

I think the above would also help with astral journeying, which I'm not good at it unless it's planned. (I can work in my astral temple, because I decided everything that would be there. But not going into unknown places)

 

[bataillex]

Please read before giving advice: my situation isn't the typical one. At least read the sentence in bold.

So my visual imagination is fine. I can picture a grandfather clock, to use the classic example. I can imagine the smell and taste of an apple and the sound and texture when I bite in into it

But I'm not very good at sensing presence of entities/energies etc.

What I have is decent controlled imagination, but bad spontaneous imagination. So if you say "imagination an angel", I can. But if you say "this angel has a gift for you, a symbolically important object. What is it?" then it won't be anything, because I need to choose what to imagine - my brain rarely just generates images without prior instructions. (This lack of spontaneous imagination is a common feature of alexithymia btw, some brain architecture thing I think)

I'm decent at divination with tarot and a pendulum, but not with scrying - which I think involves a certain amount of collaboration with your spontaneous imagination

I've looked up advice for improving these skills (eg Mat Auryn's Psychic Witch) but they're always exercises in controlled imagination - imagine the smell and taste of chocolate, of a black rose, etc. But I already have that skill. It's not what's missing.

So I'm not sure what else to try, other than brute force practice.

(I suspect a lot of occultists became interested in the occult because they had spontaneous psychic type experiences, so they by definition have a natural high level of "perceiving the subtle" talent, and may not have ever thought about how to build it. Whereas I got here via just thinking about it and figuring stuff out, not because of experiences)

I'm using "psychic" narrowly, I don't mean telepathy or telling the future, just sensing the invisible

Post automatically merged: Feb 8, 2024

I think the above would also help with astral journeying, which I'm not good at it unless it's planned. (I can work in my astral temple, because I decided everything that would be there. But not going into unknown places)

There is a technique called image streaming which sounds like it might help build a bridge between these two points. I found it in a book called 'The Einstein Factor by Wim Wenger'. The aim of the book is to help build peoples multi-sensory imagination while also connecting to their own subconscious.

If you are good with selecting conscious imagery but not so much when there is more detail to bring into the picture, the spontaneous nature of image streaming could be a good middle point. It might take a couple of tries, but once the image stream opens, it is open!)

You get a voice recorder, get relaxed and set a timer for ten or so minutes. Then close your eyes and start describing what comes to you, make it multi-sensory. As the practice continues it can be a really interesting and amazing journey into the subconscious, in the book it is likened to lucid dreaming while being awake.

Link going over the actual technique

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Hope that helps!

 

[pixel_fortune]

There is a technique called image streaming which sounds like it might help build a bridge between these two points. I found it in a book called 'The Einstein Factor by Wim Wenger'. The aim of the book is to help build peoples multi-sensory imagination while also connecting to their own subconscious.

If you are good with selecting conscious imagery but not so much when there is more detail to bring into the picture, the spontaneous nature of image streaming could be a good middle point. It might take a couple of tries, but once the image stream opens, it is open!)

You get a voice recorder, get relaxed and set a timer for ten or so minutes. Then close your eyes and start describing what comes to you, make it multi-sensory. As the practice continues it can be a really interesting and amazing journey into the subconscious, in the book it is likened to lucid dreaming while being awake.

Link going over the actual technique

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Hope that helps!

Ohhhh this looks really promising, thank you so much!

 

[bataillex]

Ohhhh this looks really promising, thank you so much!

If you start it let me know how you get on, I have a digital file of the book somewhere, I will upload it to the book share part of the forum tomorrow.

I didn't do it for a while but since bringing it up some of my more memorable moments in stream have started to come back to me and I will return to this practice soon, thanks for the reminder.

Something I did forget to mention is, listen to the recording in the same day as when you record it and relive it in that moment, it helps the practice a lot.

Good luck and happy streaming!

 

[Xingtian]

Have you tried automatic writing? Often an image is heard before it is seen. Your imagination might be most receptive to verbal stimulae- that is certainly the case for me. Here is a summary of the practice from the Surrealist Manifesto (i hope I’m not stating something irrelevant or obvious here)- whether you share the objectives of the surrealists I find it to be an excellent way to improve one’s ability to call up images:


Having settled down in some spot most conducive to the mind's concentration upon itself, order writing material to be brought to you. Let your state of mind be as passive and receptive as possible. Forget your genius, talents, as well as the genius and talents of others. Repeat to yourself that literature is pretty well the sorriest road that leads to everywhere. Write quickly without any previously chosen subject, quickly enough not to dwell on, and not to be tempted to read over, what you have written. The first sentence will come of itself; and this is self-evidently true, because there is never a moment but some sentence alien to our conscious thought clamours for outward expression. It is rather difficult to speak of the sentence to follow, since it doubtless comes in for a share of our conscious activity and so the other sentences, if it is conceded that the writing of the first sentence must have involved even a minimum of consciousness. But that should in the long run matter little, because therein precisely lies the greatest interest in the surrealist exercise. Punctuation of course necessarily hinders the stream of absolute continuity which preoccupies us. But you should particularly distrust the prompting whisper. If through a fault ever so trifling there is a forewarning of silence to come, a fault let us say, of inattention, break off unhesitatingly the line that has become too lucid. After the word whose origin seems suspect you should place a letter, any letter, l for example, always the letter l, and restore the arbitrary flux by making that letter the initial of the word to follow.

 

[pixel_fortune]

Have you tried automatic writing? Often an image is heard before it is seen. Your imagination might be most receptive to verbal stimulae- that is certainly the case for me.

I haven't! So I'm a professional writer/editor, which is a drawback for stuff like this (hard to turn craft-brain off) and I try to avoid writing-based magic for the sake of balance (I'm already writing all day, I need to do more somatic and body related stuff outside of that)

But, but BUT: that's all precisely BECAUSE I'm a hyper verbal/word-oriented person - so it seems like if I'm struggling here, playing to my strengths might be the better approach. It honestly hadn't occurred to me though

Tangent: I don't actually think in words most of the time though, I think in "unsymbolised thought" - this is quicker than words, since you can get an idea all in one go instead of in the time it would take to articulate it, so I appreciate it, but it's also much harder to track your thoughts because they're less "visible". Eg "negative self-talk" doesn't come as words saying "you're a failure" but as the concept of having failed at something.

It hadn't occurred to me that entities might try and talk to me in my own brain-language of unsymbolised thought, but it seems like an obvious possibility now I say it. that will be tough to parse out! Woof. It means people's suggestions re: discernment betwee my own "voice" and others might be more necessary than I realised

- even if that's true, automatic writing could be a way to channel comms into a medium that's easier for me to interpret

Post automatically merged: Mar 2, 2024

This thread has been such a... proof of value for WF. Like, a bunch of promising avenues to explore when I was previously looking at a brick wall, for a problem that I'd already googled extensively and come up blank. (Not that you can't find articles on automatic writing, image streaming etc on google, but you need to know what you're looking for information on - it can't offer novel approaches, it just gives you more info on the approaches you already know about)

Next task should really be "schedule some practice sessions in my calendar"

 

[Pyrokar]

oh yeah.
wasn't there like a french author dude who started a school out of it?

except they got smashed as hell on that sweet x - century old timey Paris zaza
and then went to write

 

[Taudefindi]

Next task should really be "schedule some practice sessions in my calendar"

Make sure to give yourself a day off between those practices in order to better absorb the previous practice as well as being able to "shake it off" in preparation for the next ones.

Recovery/Rest is an important concept no matter what is the subject, be it working out, studying, practicing, etc.

 

[pixel_fortune]

Link going over the actual technique

This link is wrong I think (it's a link to this forum post) - do you have the right one around?

EDIT: don't worry I just searched the site

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also

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[mash3d]

Lyn Buchanan thought me a thing called the Ambiance exercise. Ambiance is how a place feels. Think about the ambiance of a bank , chruch or library. When ever you cross a doorway you take a moment and just feel what the room feels like. Do this everytime you cross a door, go outside etc. You don't have to stop just make take a quick mental reading. Don't use imagination just feel. After a few weeks you can walk into a room a tell if someone just had an argument. Or sit with your back to the door in a restaurant, you will be able to tell who just walked in by others reactions. Then you will start to notice if there are other enegeries present. Note you will need to practice this for weeks, if not months, before you start to feel a difference.

 

[Viktor]

@pixel_fortune
There is a long list of psychic abilities:

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I think to exercise them it all boils down to not having suspicion of what you're doing or in other words to have a strong focus without interference of suspicion.
I had psychic ability to to make other person think what I think, but in the process of doing it I don't suspect it will fail.
If you ask me how do I know, the answer is that other person told me about "voices" in their head that were exactly what I was thinking about them.

Honestly I don't practice it any more because was overrun by suspicion and it no longer works for me.

 

[pixel_fortune]

Lyn Buchanan thought me a thing called the Ambiance exercise.

Interesting!

There is a long list of psychic abilities:

This looks like a reply based on the thread title not the post. The post explains exactly which very specific ability I was looking for help with. Some people have already suggested some helpful exercises though so no stress if you don't have anything!

 

[Viktor]

This looks like a reply based on the thread title not the post. The post explains exactly which very specific ability I was looking for help with. Some people have already suggested some helpful exercises though so no stress if you don't have anything!

I did read your post but it seems you missed my point which is focus.

 

[pixel_fortune]

did read your post but it seems you missed my point which is focus.

I'm sorry, you're right, I didn't understand your point in relation to my issue

I am already decent at controlled visualisation and imagination, which requires focus. My problem is that it doesn't develop into spontaneous, uncontrolled visualisation. It's not that I lose focus, it just doesn't go anywhere. I continue to focus on the original thing I decided to visualise

I'm not sure how focusing more would help - it seems like, if anything, I need to relax my focus - so I think I haven't understood your point

If you start it let me know how you get on

Well, not great at the first attempt! I set myself up and asked a question, and a very obvious visual came into my head (like, "what should I do about x?" Image of x appears) but then it didn't transform or develop. After I'd finished describing X in sensory detail, I was still just looking at that same image of x. I picked out a couple of features to describe in more detail, but again noting happened after that. It was like if I was describing a photograph IRL: you might notice new details the longer you try to describe it, but the photograph doesn't change into a new picture

(I'm not writing the process off - I wouldn't expect it to succeed first try. That's just my initial report.)

Have you tried automatic writing?

Alas first attempt at this also not go so great! If I try to write without thinking what to write, it's just literal scribble, no letters although it has a vague handwriting shape (horizontal scribble with occasional vertical lines). (I can see how you could get a sigil out of your style process, because a sigil doesn't have to conform to any particular structure)

I think I need to be more conscious than that.. but somehow not deciding what to write. Will try again at a slightly more involved level of consciousness

Post automatically merged: Mar 14, 2024

1. Did you lift your head in bed? Did you sit up? Was your view 1st or 3rd person?

I wasn't there, I saw the bed without me in it

2. What colors did you see in the flowers and weeds? Did you recognize any of these plants?

I did see some colours, the purple of a thistle. When it said "brush your hands against taller plants" my brain had to reshape the image because none of the plants had been tall enough

3. Which direction did the breeze blow? How strong was it? Could you feel it in your clothes, your hair, on your skin? Did it make the grass move?

From the right, and could feel on my skin. Didn't see grass move but I wasn't focusing on the grass

4. When the gravel crunches, are you wearing shoes, socks, sandals, bare feet?

Unknown. I heard the gravel crunch and felt the sensation but no awareness of what feet were up to. In retrospect, I must have been wearing shoes (barefoot gravel hurts, and I'm drawing the sound from the memory of walking with shoes) but I didn't have a visual or a sense of shoes or not shoes

5. Which hand did you let touch the plants? Left, right, or both?

Right (I'm right handed)

6. Is there a difference in ambient light as your eyes feel the change?

It darkened when you said it should darken, towards the forest

7. Was there a physical feeling of trepidation? Racing heart, a nervous fidget, did your posture change?

No. I can summon up this feeling and regularly do in ritual to heighten the experience of approaching deity, but I didn't know to do it here

8. Which hand did you put on a tree? Did you lean, or just touch it? What kind of tree is it? What color is the bark?

Right hand. I did get a clear visual and sensation of roughness of bark.

9. When you turned around and saw the bed, what did you notice about it? Is it yours, or one unfamiliar to you? What kind of frame is it on? Can you see underneath it? What do you see behind the bed in the distance?

Simple IKEA frame haha. Not my current bed. Single bed interestingly, it was more like one out of clipart than memory

10. Did you climb under blankets? Did you cover up with them again?

Neither! Pretty much just turned and looked at it again

---

What I'm noticing rereading that is the places where my brain filled in something unprompted and with vividness (so not the clipart bed) were tactile. You said to hear the sound of gravel but I filled in the sensation of standing on it. Similarly putting hand on tree bark. The bark was clearly just the tree at the park near my house - drawing from the most obvious memory - but it drew the tactile sensation along with it, without being prompted

Given the pedestal basin elemental interactions also involve tactility, it seems like that's something I should actively lean into more

 

[Viktor]

I am already decent at controlled visualisation and imagination, which requires focus. My problem is that it doesn't develop into spontaneous, uncontrolled visualisation. It's not that I lose focus, it just doesn't go anywhere. I continue to focus on the original thing I decided to visualise

Here is one practice for you to try out but be careful not to harm yourself.

Close your fists and press them into your closed eyes lightly, just enough so that it doesn't hurt and you should start seeing spontaneous flashes that look like shapes of various sorts that change.
While you hold your fists on your eyes, try to look with your eyes as if you look at some far distance!
It doesn't last for too long (ex. 5 minutes or so) and after a time the shapes disappear and only dark is left.
While it lasts try to figure out what these shapes represent, try to mix them with your regular thought about spirits or what ever you normally do.

With the help of these flashes you should be able to help visualise things which you would normally not be able to imagine on your own.
After few minutes you should feel like waking up from sleep.

I can't say if this will work for you, at least not at first, but with enough practice like several times or so you should get it.
Just don't repeat too often and try to take a comfort seat or lay down while doing it so that nothing disturbs you.

 

[pixel_fortune]

With the help of these flashes you should be able to help visualise things which you would normally not be able to imagine on your own.

That makes sense, it's a way of introducing randomness, some raw material for my brain to work with

I can't say if this will work for you

Oh for sure! But it's worth a shot

 

[Xingtian]

Alas first attempt at this also not go so great! If I try to write without thinking what to write, it's just literal scribble, no letters although it has a vague handwriting shape (horizontal scribble with occasional vertical lines). (I can see how you could get a sigil out of your style process, because a sigil doesn't have to conform to any particular structure)

Here's how I think about automatic writing: the rational faculty is not suppressed, but submerged and integrated into something larger. It no longer rules but collaborates. Words and sentences emerge first in the mind's ear, sometimes in a whole, sometimes built from initial sounds. As they accumulate they may suggest a certain line of logic, as dreams often do, and this can be followed. Sometimes I start with a phrase or sentence that came to me spontaneously as I was walking.

Just now I got "twin bears erupting", so I start from there:

Twin bears erupting from my casual furnace bade me dip their tongues in the sliding august. Right through my flimsy oracle the toad wept a profusion of nasty splinters that could charm the richter scale of mumbles. Supposing my genial lichens cling tightly to that warty head I'm not innocent of snacking on swordfish souls. The room wherein my foot is imprisoned is painted grey with a single orchid tickling from below and Rembrandt cut-outs laughing above. That's not to say my cat is not also a foot, these feet are unreliable like the somersault of a champagne cork through space.

A lot of the sentences begin with a sound, and then I grab the first word that comes to mind that begins with that. So from "r," I get "right," which suggests to me at the moment "right through the..." and then other words follow. An apparent continuity of thought may or may not persist between the sentences. Benjamin Peret was very good at writing entire stories with this method with recurring characters and a certain continuity of events though the overall "plot" was like the literary equivalent of a Terry Gilliam collage-animation.

Any way I hope this helps.

 

[Tiana Silvermoon]

I want to recommend reading Sandra Ingerman's "Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner's Guide". Sadly it isn't in the library here, but I'll try to find it.
Anyway, the point I'm referring to is this: you don't necessarily need to see. You can hear, smell or otherwise feel, and it's okay. We all expect to have visual experience for some reason (I have an idea or two why), but we're all different and these things are very individual.

 

[pixel_fortune]

Anyway, the point I'm referring to is this: you don't necessarily need to see. You can hear, smell or otherwise feel, and it's okay.

So I did heavily focus on visuals in my post, but that's not actually the concern, it's just the way of describing the concern - the issue is the "spontaneous imagination" part. To change it to a different sense: I can play the sound of my choice in my head (what is called "controlled imagination") but I don't hear anything I didn't choose to imagine.

Ditto with other senses. From the analysis above I do get SOME spontaneous tactile stuff. I choose to feel something, but it develops beyond my original intention, a little bit

Spirit communication seems to mostly work via people's spontaneous imagination - you ask a question, and the response comes into your mind - it might be an image or a thought or a smell but it's not something you planned to imagine

I can communicate via tarot, but thats a different skillset

(So you might still say "it doesn't matter if you don't see/hear/taste/smell/become aware of anything, because you still have a way to communicate" which is valid, but it's still a skill I'd like to try and build)

Post automatically merged: Mar 20, 2024

I'll have a look at that book, but journeying is exactly why I'm trying to improve that skill. At the moment I can only have exactly the journey that's described to me. As soon as the narration leaves you there to converse or have an experience the journey stops for me. Shamanic journeying always does that from my experience - leads you into a trance and a location, maybe with a person, then expects your spontaneous imagination to take over (which is a reasonable expectation: it does for most people!)

 

[Tiana Silvermoon]

So I did heavily focus on visuals in my post, but that's not actually the concern, it's just the way of describing the concern - the issue is the "spontaneous imagination" part.

Ah, I see. Sorry for misunderstanding.

But if you say "this angel has a gift for you, a symbolically important object. What is it?" then it won't be anything, because I need to choose what to imagine - my brain rarely just generates images without prior instructions.

I'm wondering though... If you continue to "look" at the angel for a long time, what happens?

 

[pixel_fortune]

Ah, I see. Sorry for misunderstanding.

Not at all, it's quite a specific problem that's hard to explain clearly

I'm wondering though... If you continue to "look" at the angel for a long time, what happens?

That was a hypothetical example, but for journeying I have done: nothing, and then eventually my mind wanders to some mundane thing because it's hard to stay focused on a static scene indefinitely

In general, in daily life, I'm terrible at improv or generating ideas on the spot. A lot of my friends are performers and are great at that stuff, but I'm a writer: I need to go away with a pen and paper and think for a while before I can come up with something. (I realise this all makes me sound kind of thick but it honestly doesn't come up that much. People who know me IRL are surprised when I tell them this.)