As my practise has developed one of the most fascinating phenomena I’ve noticed is that of the active observer and the effect that has on changing one’s experience, sometimes even dictating the type of experience that can be had. My thoughts on the subject aren’t hugely coherent, so I thought I’d throw it out for more ideas to see what people think on this.
To begin with, I once did some timeline work with a bloke who was pretty well versed in physics. His timeline manifested as a beam of light from his future that refracted through a prism (the prism being his visualisation for the way in which his present related to his future) and then out into his past as a cone of dark energy. I’m using his own descriptions as much as I can remember them. His natural conceptualisation of his timeline was in about two metres away in front to of him (with the past on the left, present directly ahead and future on the right (a classic NLP through-time representation. Later in the intervention I enacted taking hold of this timeline under his guidance and positioned it so that it was in-time so that the past was behind him, future ahead of him, and the present intersecting through his body at his abdomen).
During the work he noticed that the beam of light from his future bent around his body at the periphery of his vision, and on intuition I asked him what was causing the beam to bend (I seemed to remember from somewhere that gravity can act on light and cause it to bend). He answered that it was a gravitational effect caused by his position in relation to the timeline: his position as observer was effecting his conception of his life as plotted along the line. I then asked him to test this by moving his position, which totally spun him out. Even the slightest movement on his part caused the future area of his timeline to swing wildly in different directions that accorded to each shift in his body.
The nature of the work we were doing and the fixed time limit on the exercise meant that we didn’t have time to explore this further. His intention in doing the exercise was to become more present in the here and now, more active and energised and alive. His perception of the prism was like a buffer between himself and his direct experience, in that he felt it was a device that would safely shield him from a direct relationship with his senses. This is understandable, as living can be hugely painful. During the exercise he directed my hands to remove the prism, and once we changed his perceptions to in-time he found this instantly restored his relationship to his body and senses. Colours became more vibrant, sounds became clearer and more crisp, his tactile and proprioceptive sense became more alive and sensitive. However I’d call this active work, and so the simple effect of his position as observer on his perception of his timeline wasn’t explored in greater depth. Although it does raise the question about whether observation is ever a passive process…
There’s a great deal of this in NLP: exercises that involve taking different perceptual positions in relation to your experience: observing it from different perspectives. For example the Meta Mirror is a relationship change technique that has four different perceptual positions. It first situates the client in position one and their conceptualisation of the person with whom they’re in a relationship in position two. From position three the client can observe both their self-conceptualisation in position one and their conceptualisation of the other person in position two at the same time. From position four all three prior conceptualisations can be observed. The client fully associates into each position until position four is assumed, from which they consider whether the version of themselves in position one or the version of themselves in position three is more suited to dealing with the relationship. This is more often than not the client who perceives the relationship from position three, as they have a perspective on the whole of the relationship and can thus see more of the complete picture. You then swap the two conceptualisations over (so that the conceptualisation in position three is situated in position one, and vice versa) and cycle through fully associating into each position again, noticing what has changed as a result.
The intention is to make the client more resourceful by swapping their stuck self with their resourceful observer self. When I first learned the technique I instantly began thinking of different applications. What if you chose the perceptual position of an omniscient benevolent being? Or what if you ran the technique on a writer who wanted to create character-driven narratives as a means of understanding how their creations relate to them as author, or ow they relate to each other. This strikes me as a particularly useful toolkit for investigating how the action of the observer effects the outcome of a situation. By making alterations to the person in position one (the client’s stuck self), the entire system changes, and their new expectations will have a knock-on effect of drawing out a different side of the person with whom they’re in relationship with.
Finally, I was specifically interested in a more wide-ranging discussion of some of the implications of the Post Modern Magic thread. In that thread I mentioned the effect that all preconceived notions have on our experience of deity: our beliefs set the frame for what we allow ourselves to experience. What other illustrations are there of this in magical experience? For example, so much shamanic literature includes journeying accounts that largely use the natural world as their basis. Does shamanic technique necessarily mean that our experiences will manifest in-journey through natural symbolism? Has our reading and research set the frame for the kind of things we’ll encounter? |
