Reality Design Series # 1 by Flemming Funch, 2 July 1992

Designer Realities

This is the first in a series of essays exploring the design and use of alternate realities.

I am writing from the position of being curious and wanting to learn, not from a position of teaching something I already know. I don't know.

To discuss alternate realities at all, there are certain pre-suppositions that must be mentioned:

1. There is an infinite Source of creative possibilities
2. Any belief is as true as any other and can only be judged by its usefulness.
3. An individual Self exists which is positively valued and static.
4. The Self is cause over its own reality and experience of it.
5. Reality and experience has a structure that can be known and changed.

These pre-suppositions are just that: pre-suppositions. They don't claim to be true, and there would be no point in trying to prove them. However, if we assume them to be true, it opens a lot of doors to interesting possibilities.

The first door that opens is the realization that you can change your experience of life. If what you are doing isn't useful to you, or if you aren't having fun, then you can change the experience. You can change how you respond, how you think, and how you act, and have a more fulfilling experience.

Secondly, there is the possibility of not just changing your internal organization, but changing the world. How about creating a reality around you that is different and more interesting than the ordinary reality. Or, how about traveling through multiple dimensions of alternate realities and feeling at home in any of them.

If we assume that we don't just have to put up with a fixed reality, but that we can find out how it works and change it, then the task becomes the discovery of the necessary principles and the development of the necessary abilities.

The interesting thing is that this proposition can be addressed from many different positions or levels. It makes as much sense as a basis for computer modeling, as a mental therapy, or as a religious quest.

Some of the subjects that relate to the design of realities are:

story telling, acting, movies, hallucinogenic drugs, meditation, quantum physics, linguistics, hypnosis, magic, computer modeling, virtual reality, Neuro-linguistic programming, and many more.

The sources I find most useful at this point as regards to the design of new realities are:

Richard Bandler, the originator of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Alfred Korzybsky, the originator of General Semantics, Ron Hubbard, the originator of Scientology, and the entity Seth, channeled by Jane Roberts.

This is an outline of some of the subjects that probably will be addressed in this series of essays:

¥ Choosing your beliefs
¥ The history of reality design
¥ Ordinary reality
¥ The holographic universe
¥ Perceptions
¥ Perceptual elements
¥ Changing things
¥ Time
¥ World building
¥ Navigation

The dream of designer realities is well symbolized by the "holodeck" in the Star Trek Next Generation TV series. You walk into an empty room and you ask the computer to provide an interactive simulation for you. It will give you whatever environment you ask for, with whatever cast of characters you choose, and with full sensory input.

Work has already started on devices aiming to be the holodeck. It is called Virtual Reality. You put on a mask with 3D computer displays, earphones for sound, and you put on a full body suit with built-in sensors that will record your movements and adjust the simulation accordingly. You can already at present walk around inside architectural simulations, opening doors, etc. With the rapid progress in the computer sciences, electronic Virtual Reality will be widely available within a brief span of years.

However, it might not be altogether beneficial for the general state of mental health in the population to provide ubiquitous virtual reality for everyone without a simultaneous advance in the general awareness level. It would not be much different from putting LSD in the water supply. Virtual reality without the full personal ability to control it can become a dangerous and very addictive drug.

The solution is to train people in doing it themselves, without artificial means. We all have all the equipment and abilities we need in the form of our bodies and minds. All that drugs or electronics can do is to activate a few of the resources we already possess. The resources are our perceptions and what we do with them.

If you could create any reality you want including all perceptions you want: 3D pictures, sound, touch, taste, smell, etc., then nobody could ever again get you hooked on any external stimulus unless you choose it yourself.

Much points in the direction that even the external world is nothing but a holographic illusion created by the perceptions that are being applied to it. That opens up the interesting question of whether you can change the outside world by fully and completely changing your perceptions of it. At least for yourself, but maybe for others too.

If you are flexible enough at configuring different sets of perceptions, you would be a lot more able to travel in other realities. You already do most of these things when you are sleeping and dreaming, but how about if you could do it more consciously and fluidly. How real are these other realities, do you share them with others, are they external dimensions or internal hallucinations, or does it really make any difference? There is a lot to explore.

The time has come to take worlds apart and build new ones.

Reality Design Series # 2 by Flemming Funch, 7 July 1992

Perceptions

Worlds are built with perceptions. The different possible perceptions are the building blocks that add up to what we perceive as a reality. In other words, the qualities and distinctions we conceive of is what defines the world.

It should be safe to say that there is a reality beyond perceptions. We could possibly call that Ultimate Reality or True Reality. However, the paradox is that you can't perceive what it REALLY is through perceptions. It is more the subject of meditation or other spiritual pursuits.

Perceptions are filters that emphasize certain qualities to the exclusion of others. That is both their strength and their limitation. You can enjoy one quality individually, but you might also mistake it for all there is.

Each perception is essentially a subtractive phenomena. It deletes or generalizes a lot of input into a more limited representation. But we can then use a number of such representations as building blocks and add them together to form a certain reality.

If there really is anything resembling the physical universe there beyond our perceptions is open to discussion. The actual reality might be nothing like it, and the illusion of a physical universe is only created by the common agreement to perceive it a certain way.

Possibly the more true reality would be that there is just a field of infinite possibilities there. By agreeing on a certain set of limiting perceptions one could then establish a world as a playing field. That world can be adjusted by adjusting the perceptions of it. And since everything is already possible, maybe all that happens is that one shifts one's perception from one possibility space to another.

The ability to manipulate one's perceptions of the external world thoroughly enough might be all one needs to travel to strange alternate dimensions fully and completely. That remains to be seen.

The easier place to start is to manipulate perceptual elements in one's internal representation. We could call the perceptions coming in through the body from the external world the Primary Perceptions. They aren't likely the most primary stuff, but from a human point of view they are pretty primary. The Secondary Perceptions then becomes what one does internally to represent and manage what is going on externally.

This doesn't mean that the individual isn't creating both kinds of perceptions himself. It just means that something actually happening is more important than the subsequent facsimile of it happening. The more times something is copied, the more information is being lost and the farther from the truth it gets.

We can classify levels of reality and perception in different ways, as to what is more or less the real thing. However, for now it will probably be more fruitful to examine the component parts of perception and the mechanics needed for the construction of useful or entertaining realities.

The most common way of categorizing perceptions is along the lines of the five major human senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting. That then gives us the five major categories of perceptual qualities: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. Each one can be divided into many finer categories, often called sub-modalities.

These are sample lists of distinctions within each perceptual system:

Visual	Auditory	Kinesthetic
Color Shape Brightness Contrast Shading Size Magnification Angle Foreground/background Focus Panorama 3D/flat Borders/frames Movie/still Refraction	Tone Tempo Volume Timbre Pitch Rhythm In or out of key Harmonies Noise level Discordance Vibrato Echo # of channels Clarity Distinctness	Temperature Pressure Weight Moisture Texture Tension Viscosity Solid/Liquid/Gas Structure Explosion/Implosion Vibration Acceleration Rotation Friction Attraction

Reality Design Series # 3 by Flemming Funch, 7 July 1992

Familiarity

In any reality, there are degrees of familiarity one can have in relation to it. That is, one can be more or less in contact with it, it can appear more or less real, one can be more or less able to interact with it.

If you WANT to interact with a certain reality, then it is probably a good idea to become familiar with it. If you DON'T want to interact with it, it would be better to become un-familiar with it.

Familiarity is increased through:

¥ Quantity and quality of perceptual distinctions
¥ Repeated contact and withdrawal
¥ Subjective reference experience

By increasing the number of qualities you notice, by making them more specific, by perceiving in finer detail, you will make the object more real. Also by having a full range of all kinds of perceptual distinctions. E.g. something is more familiar if you experience its color, clarity, pitch, rhythm, texture, smell, and taste, than if you just noticed its color. Also, the intensity of the perceptions makes it more familiar. Something might become very familiar based on intensity alone, even if there are few distinctions. Intensity of kinesthetics tend to create more familiarity than a greater number of visual distinctions.

The more one contacts something, holds on to it, and then withdraws from it, the more comfortable and familiar it will be. One can do that as a simple process to increase familiarity. Any perception will do, but again the kinesthetics will produce familiarity most effectively. Something that one can reach out and touch will more easily become familiar. For example, most people could benefit by getting more in touch with their present time environment. By contacting, touching, and withdrawing from physical objects in one's vicinity, one can become more able to handle them. This can be done repeatedly for extended periods of time.

If one has an extended secondary representation of something it would tend to become more familiar. Subjective references might obscure the actual direct experience of the reality, but at the same time it adds other types of familiarity. For example, if a certain location is labeled as "home" and one remembers many pleasurable experiences associated with the location, it is probably very familiar, even if one might not be experiencing it very thoroughly in present time.

We could possibly talk about objective and subjective familiarity. Objective familiarity would be the degree of contact and comfortableness in present time with external circumstances. Subjective familiarity would be the comfortable contact with certain contents of one's mind. If there is a choice, objective familiarity would probably be more worthwhile to pursue than subjective familiarity. Otherwise one might get stuck with familiar subjective states of beingness that aren't actually very useful to handle one's life with.

Probably the best state to be in would be to be able to be comfortable with any external circumstances, dealing fully with what is there in present time.

Most mental aberrations come out of the inability to deal with what is there in present time, the storage and manipulation of facsimiles of the outside world, and the subsequent confusion about what is what. Replacing facsimiles with the real thing and bringing more of one's resources back into present time would be a very worthwhile direction for one's personal development.

Getting in touch with alternate realities is a somewhat different approach. We wouldn't start with a memory or an opinion about the outside world. We would start with either a sense of a present alternate world or a completely invented reality. We could then work on increasing the familiarity of that alternate reality. That can be done by getting as many specific sensory distinctions as possible, from all sensory systems at the same time. One can work on perceiving them one at time, but eventually they will have to be there at the same time. One can also interact with what is the "external" environment that one perceives. One can touch and hold things and develop a familiarity. By that kind of activities one can gradually build up the willingness to allow that reality to be real. Then one can move around in it and start exploring it further.

Sometimes you might wish to become un-familiar with a reality. You might do that with subjective realities that aren't helpful or with alternate realities that you don't wish to explore any further.

Un-familiarity can be increased by decreasing any perceptual distinctions; by making things smaller, weaker, further away, quieter, etc. Also, by attaching undesirable kinesthetics to the reality. By exposing inconsistencies and paradoxes, a reality can be made meaningless. To make any reality familiar, one has to forget about some detail, because otherwise it wouldn't make sense. By exposing that kind of detail again, one can again make something unfamiliar.

The ability to establish or dis-establish familiarity freely is essential to the exploration of alternate realities.

Reality Design Series # 4 by Flemming Funch, 10 July 1992

Reality Components

The three main perceptual systems, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic represent three main components of reality. They aren't just random sub-divisions of perceptions, they have very distinct differences. Each system has characteristics that makes it most suitable for certain purposes.

Kinesthetic represents one's present time activity and experience. Auditory is related to sequencing of things. Visual is useful for dreaming up where one wants to go.

When the systems are confused with each other, one would tend to get undesirable results. Personal improvement could be summarized in terms of straightening out the use of the main systems so that one can get what one wants.

Each of the three systems we can associate with various other concepts in order to shed some light on how they work. 

Kinesthetic Present time Be Implementation Experience Movement Emotion Energy External

Auditory Time continuum Do Sequence Path Orchestration Effort Time Connecting

Visual Future Have Design Goal Visualization Thought Space Internal

This appears to apply to the way human beings relate to their physical environment. It might very well be different elsewhere. Also it is of course an over-simplification, all of the factors apply all the time. However, it can useful as a simplistic model.

Reality tends to stop being fun when you use any of the three major perceptual systems in the wrong place. For example, feelings are inherently most useful for experiencing present time life more fully. If you connect them with the past, you might go around feeling bad about something that happened years ago that you can't change now. Or you might put the desired feelings in the future and suffer through life in the hope of feeling good later.

Visualization is most useful for stuff you want in the future. If you see yourself having it now, you probably wouldn't bother to go out and work at it. If you keep a lot of pictures of the past around, or you keep pictures of stuff you wouldn't want, then it is likely that you will run into those things rather than into what you'll really want.

The way things seem to be set up around here is that you can only get things through intervening time and effort. You start by deciding on something you want. Anything goes, no goal or desire is per definition better than any other. However, you can't get it instantly. You need to set something in motion in the direction of getting it, some kind of sequence of actions taking time. Actually reaching goals is usually not as interesting as the process of working on them. It is therefore vital to experience and enjoy the action along the way.

Life will be most successful if the three components are kept distinct, but aligned. That is, what one is experiencing and feeling has better be aligned with the sequence of events one is going through and with what one visualizes to happen. It is kind of silly to want one thing (V), but then not feel like doing it (K). Or to set a goal (V) and then not do anything to get there (A). Or, to feel something one doesn't want to feel (K), to do something one doesn't enjoy (A) and end up somewhere one doesn't want (V). If each aspect is aligned and they add up to a desirable result, then things work much better.

This in itself can be the basis for a number of different therapeutical processes. Removing Ks in the past or the future, and Vs in the past. Adding As to the Vs one wants. Creating the Ks that will trigger the As one needs, etc.

As regards to the creation of new realities this is also very useful. It is not enough to just visualize a different reality and then you are there. If it is something you want to establish gradually you would need to fill in the steps leading to it and you need to have the feelings that correspond with getting it. If you want a different reality right now, then it is the K that needs to be worked on. The present time reality is determined by what you feel in the present. Visualizing it different is not enough, you need to change the feelings in the present. Additionally one would need to add an A and V future component to the K one wants in the present.

Technical Essay # 97 - Flemming Funch 13 July 1992

Desirable Polarities

Polarities are a very useful way of creating action in a game, but at the same time one of the key mechanisms of aberration.

A basic way of generating a game is to separate one's beingness and intention from some desirable outcome. That is, one starts from a state of being whole and complete in oneself. From that wholeness one separates out some condition, quality, or object, and decides that one doesn't have control over it, but that it is desirable. As the other side of the polarity one mocks oneself up as somebody who would want that other outcome, but who has to work for it. The resulting interaction will form a game.

So, if you split Be from Have, you create a Doingness, the stuff the Beingness has to go through to get the Havingness. This is most fun if there is optimum randomity, that is, the Beingness is presented with obstacles but will eventually get his Havingness.

One side of the polarity represents the stuff one knows, is responsible for, and can control; one's position of power and self-determinism. The other side represents what one doesn't know, is not responsible for, and which is out of control; other-determined stuff running on automatic.

It is all a pretense of course. It couldn't be done unless one was previously in full control of the whole thing. For that matter, it can't be done unless one is continuously in full control of both sides. It is just a case of the right hand pretending not to know what the left hand is doing. That is a useful and fun mechanism, as long as one can take it apart when one wants to.

Trouble enters when one puts so many things on automatic that the game is out of balance, and when one forgets about the games that were running and starts new ones without ending the old ones.

A good sign of bugs in the machinery is when one finds oneself being both sides of a polarity. That violates the basic idea in a polarity: one side is what one is being and the other side is what one isn't being. One side is the internal and the other side is the external. One could change the setup by integrating the polarity. But, being both sides without integration is kind of silly and inefficient for the most part.

One might play both sides either simultaneously or sequentially. That is, one might pull in both directions at the same time, or one might play opposite roles at different times. There is nothing wrong with being a different person at different times, but if they are directly opposite to each other and they are in a games condition, that is not very effective if you want to get anywhere.

The paradox here is that basically one can never be anything BUT both sides at the same time. But that is seen from a higher, pan-determined, level. If you first decide that you are NOT X, and without changing that postulate you then decide that now you ARE X after all, then the second postulate collides with the first. If you want as-isness you would have to first sort out the second postulate, then the first, and then the true situation becomes apparent.

What brings about much of the valence confusion is the mix-up of 8D and 1D awarenesses. From the 8D perspective you are being anything and everything imaginable, and you are being fully responsible for it. That is not "being" as in "being vs. not-being", it is rather an all-encompassing willingness to be source. Further down the scale beingness becomes more of a limitation: to BE something you must agree to NOT BE everything else.

The most appropriate way for an being to start expanding across the dynamics appears to be, not to start identifying with all the stuff one ISN'T, but rather to expand what one IS. Eventually one would then get around to taking responsibility for the whole thing. But, the sequence of doing it is important.

That also explains the fallacy of trying to run out what you ARE, before you run out what you AREN'T. If you run out what you ARE, you would increase what you AREN'T, and you would end the game by going out the bottom. If you run out what you AREN'T you would increase what you ARE and expand out the top.

Actually you don't really RUN OUT things. You just shift the balance of the game in one direction or another. The real as-isness would be if you integrate the two sides with each other. If you don't want to do that yet, you can at least shift the game in the direction that would be more fun for you.

I can't think of much permanent use for polarities that split qualities of beingness into two opposite factions. Generally speaking the person would probably be better off by having all the qualities available at the same time in any combination that is desirable.

Well, more correctly, that kind of polarities are there because they are useful in holding back other types of aberration. We would have to take care of the reason for the polarity before we can integrate it. Let's take the common example of feelings being split off from intellect in some area. That can be appropriate for example if very aggressive feelings are around. Then

we wouldn't want them to materialize into detailed planning. Or, if the intellectual side has a few screws loose, we wouldn't want the person to go out and feel very passionate about doing something very stupid. The mind is full of safety mechanisms and this is one of them.

Certain polarities might be very useful survival mechanisms. For example, if you are at the dentist getting root canals and he forgot to anesthetize you, then you might want to separate you perception of pain out from the rest of your beingness and decide that it isn't you, while you still are present and aware of what is going on. You should remember to re-integrate that polarity afterwards, though.

To some degree that is what being exterior is about: the ability to be flexible about deciding "this is me" and "this isn't me" at will. If you can look at your body and feel separate from it, then you are exterior. It isn't more mystical than that.

So, the ability to create and uncreate polarities can be very practical to handle situations in present time. However, the type of polarities that split aspects of your personality into different chunks should generally not be expected to be very permanent. If they are, it indicates that something ought to be cleared up. It indicates that the polarization is a response to some facsimile of a situation that isn't present anymore. If the charge in the facsimile is taken care of, the polarity can then re-integrate.

The polarities that would generally deserve a longer life-span are of the be-do-have category. That is, you establish some external object of desire that you are separate from, but that you would like to have. To reach it you assume an internal state of being, a certain collection of qualities that you identify with. That kind of polarity makes action possible and you probably want to maintain it until you have had enough fun with the game at hand.

If there is too little action in your life, you might need more of this. More polarization would be needed, not less. You could become more aware of what you are being, add more qualities and abilities that you could use, etc. And you can define in more detail what you want to have, or maybe set new and bigger goals. And you could add more distance between you and the goals.

The Be part is something to be into. It doesn't improve the game playing to be exterior from it. Your game identity is what you agreed to BE, there is no point in then not confronting it. In contrast, the Have part is what you are not in. You can cheat and mock up in advance completely how it would be to have the havingness. However, that would spoil the game. You should always mock it up distant from you if you want to have the desire to work on getting there. So again, your present time position is what you would be best off being in, and confronting. The future desired situation is what you would want to observe from a distance, and not to identify with.

Processing that increase the polarization of desired Be-(Do)-Have polarities ought to be useful. It should of course also be combined with an increase in the ability to take them apart when they are no longer desirable. Many admin tools, such as ethics conditions, product clearing, admin scales and org boards work on strengthening polarization.

Polarities create energy. The basic principle of a battery is to keep plus and minus from each other, forcing them to discharge against each other. So, if you want an energy exchange, then you need some sort of polarity. If you have some unwanted energy (charge), then you need to get rid of a polarity. And you don't get rid of polarities by throwing away any of the poles, you have to bring them back together again, so there is no longer any difference in potential between them.

GPMs are sequential sets of polarities. They are usually based on the more aberrated type of polarities: separation of personal attributes or intentions. Be/Have type separation is not nearly as aberrative, but can still form a type of GPMs.

We could look at several different possible scenarios for naturally occurring GPM type structures:

1. Somebody makes an intention to engage in a certain class of Doingness. He assumes a Beingness that will engage in that kind of a Doingness while pursuing a specified Havingness. The game somehow becomes too enturbulated and the Beingness and Havingness become too much to handle. He therefore assumes another, smaller, pair of Be/Have to pursue a similar Do. Eventually the Doingness becomes enturbulated enough so that no more games of that kind can be produced.

2. A being decides out of the blue to assume a certain kind of beingness. As a result of overts and/or traumatic incidents some aspects of that beingness become less desirable. The beingness is then split into two opposite halves: the desirable and the undesirable part. Based on further enturbulation, these parts divide again further and further into smaller and smaller polarities. Adding to that various collisions with other beings, the person eventually becomes very confused about who he is.

3. A being makes an intention, e.g. "to tell jokes". When granting that intention beingness, he at the same time grants the opposite intention "to not tell jokes" non-beingness, so that becomes other-determined. Each of the intentions will gather supporting material around them, such as beingnesses, incidents, viewpoints, etc. As the opposition to the intention as well as other confusion grows, the being might either flip over into the opposite intention, or might adopt a lower harmonic of the first intention. This might go on several times until the original intention is so effectively opposed and locked up that it no longer has any viable outlet.

It is questionable to assume that there is only one way of forming GPMs. Any discussion of what a GPM really IS, is likely to be somewhat futile in that there are probably many variations. Some mechanism of polarization obviously plays a role, and some mechanism of sequencing of polarities takes place.

Used deliberately and causatively, a sequencing of polarities would be an activity related to the design of games. It basically writes a story, a game plan that there is some overall purpose in playing through. Nobody says it has to be downhill. Sequences moving towards integration and expansion might be much more appealing.

As a knowledgeable player of games you would probably want to write game scripts of expansion and integration for your part of the game field, and scripts of contraction and fragmentation for anybody who would dare to oppose you. But that is only fun as long as everybody knows it is a game. And besides, your opponents don't have to be the other players. Winning doesn't have to mean that somebody else loses.

Polarities are one of the key tools available for the playing of games. They can be set up to create the driving force and energy needed to create action. But, when they get out of hand they would need to be adjusted or re-integrated again. The test is if one is getting the desired result and is having fun playing the game of life.

Technical Essay # 98 - Flemming Funch 14 July 1992

The item "Me"

There is an answer to any "Who .." question that is senior to all others, the answer "Me". That is an old and well-known rule of listing & nulling. However, it could bear some discussion who that "Me" is.

If we ask a lower level pc some valence question like "Who or What would eat bacon and eggs?", and he starts listing: "a tourist", "an Englishman", .. , and then he gets a cognition about really being himself and he says "Me" with VGIs and F/N -- well, then the auditor would end off that L&N action. It is always better that the pc realizes that he is himself than some valence.

For a lower level pc it doesn't really matter too much that we don't ask him to define what he means by being himself. That would probably just confuse him. The only reason for challenging the "Me" answer would be if it is just a glib avoidance of actually looking for the valence. Some new pcs would not catch on right away on the idea of valences. In that case a "What kind of you is that?" might be in order. The "Me" we will accept without question is the one that comes as a cognition at a release point.

It gets more involved on advanced levels where we address entities, remote viewpoints, attention units, higher levels of awareness, etc. It is no longer so obvious who "Me" is. There are some interesting opportunities for misownership here.

The main misunderstanding comes from the confusion over what entities really are. If you assume that an entity is always another whole being who is stuck in your space, then you are likely to guide them on to the cognition that they are somebody else, so that they will leave your space.

The trouble is when it isn't really other beings you are auditing directly, but rather ridges that are either shared with other beings, or are facsimiles of collisions with other beings who no longer are here. If you take your energy and your attention units that you have invested in those ridges and you assign all of that to somebody else, you are misowning your own cause.

There are several main levels of realization of ownership. First, on the surface I might notice that I have a sensation in my shoulder, and I might loosely call it "my sensation". If I work more on it, like if I do an L&N process as "Who or what would have a sensation in the shoulder?", I might find that really it was my Uncle Joe's sensation from 30 years ago that I had adopted. That is, I realize it isn't mine, it is Joe's, and I get a big relief. That is perfectly fine, unless I start generalizing this to mean that other people cause my condition or something like that. See, there is a higher yet strata of ownership, which is my own cause at a higher level. I wouldn't be walking around with Uncle Joe's pain unless I am somehow causing that to myself.

To give myself Uncle Joe's problem I have to create it myself, but instantly pretend that Joe is the author of it, and then I identify with it and forget that it was Joe's problem. So, it takes sort of a double alter-is to do the trick.

The ultimate "Me" answer is the highest cause level you have, which is what we call the 8th dynamic. That is, the authorship of anything that might concern you will ultimately come back to you, yourself, as an 8D source.

That is not the same "Me" as your 1D "Me". Or, more correctly, the 8D "Me" is much more expansive and includes your 1D "Me", and all other "Me's" for that matter.

It might provide a relief to point out somebody else as cause of some piece of case. That is what we do in PTS handlings for example. But, it is just a temporary release. If it becomes a philosophy to blame everything on somebody else, then you are not-ising the most important cause, yourself.

Ultimately you need to get around to realizing who you really are.

Technical Essay # 99 - Flemming Funch 15 July 1992

Facsimiles

Facsimiles are at the root of just about any kind of case. The understanding of how they work is very central to the subject of clearing.

Now, I realize that most people translate "facsimiles" into meaning "pictures", and they think that when they are Clear they don't have any stuff like that. But, there is a lot more to it than that.

A facsimile is basically a mental copy. That is, you keep an internal representation of something that happened externally. That is not just a picture. It can contain all perceptions: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory, and any sub-divisions thereof. Also, it can contain perceptual positions (viewpoints), identities, language, thoughts, mass, energy, space, time, intention, structure, etc. Anything that the external agreed-upon world contains can be copied into a facsimile.

The trouble with facsimiles are that they aren't the real thing. We can argue that the physical universe is rather illusory too, but it is a lot more real than most copies made of it. So, instead of dealing with what is actually there we deal with a copy of what is there.

If the physical universe is the territory, then the facsimiles are the map. Maps can be very useful for navigating by and for simplifying things. But, when you start mistaking the map for the territory, and when you look only at the map when you could be exploring the territory, then we are getting into the field of aberration.

A facsimile is usually a frozen snapshot taken at some specific point in time. It is then preserved and carried forward through time. It becomes part of the person's mind.

The facsimile becomes a filter that the person is perceiving life through. Instead of dealing with the environment exactly as it is, it is filtered through facsimiles that will identify what it means and what an appropriate response would be. The underlying thought is that the world is too overwhelming to perceive directly; it is easier to remember the closest similar facsimile and respond according to the contents of that.

But, responding to something else than what is there is never going to be as good as being in present time, perceiving and dealing with the actual events. Various degrees of aberration can be observed, but copying is never as effective as the real thing. When it gets to the point of getting a headache when one sees a red car, and things like that, we are obviously talking rather unsane behavior.

Semantic Reactions are automatic responses based on facsimiles in one's mind rather than on actual present time events. Copies of situations from other places, other times, and the meanings attached to them form the basis for the biased perception of the current situation, and former viewpoints and responses are replayed out of context.

The present time reality is what it is. All you need to know about it is right in from of you. It has no other hidden meaning than exactly what is there to perceive. Using facsimiles as filters to perceive through will add meaning to the scene, but only meaning that is out of context, and that further removes your overall perception from the truth.

There are many manifestations of facsimiles: traumatic incidents, somatics, fixed ideas, problems, ARC breaks, implants, GPMs, identities, entities, etc. All are redundant copies of perceptions, viewpoints, thoughts, etc., taken out of context.

Clearing is basically the ongoing process of replacing facsimiles with present time perception, and replacing semantic reactions with dynamic responses. It is basically pulling one's attention units and anchorpoints into present time dealing with what is actually there.

That doesn't cut away any options if it is done in the correct order. See, time and space are basically illusionary barriers, really they are just camouflaged present time. But, there are several layers of lies involved.

In order to have a problem with a facsimile one must create a reality somewhere in space-time, decide that one can't really be there, and therefore take a facsimile of it, limit one's sphere of influence to one's "present time" environment, and then mix it up with the other space-time coordinates. It is a similar mechanism as to how one manages to get out of valence.

Clearing a facsimile should not be done as a method of escaping one's responsibility for other times, spaces, viewpoints, etc. It would tend to have adverse effects if done with that intention. Facsimile clearing is done to clear up the misunderstanding that the present environment is some other place. That brings you into present time, as well as into present space, present viewpoint. From there you can expand your sphere of responsibility of cause to cover more of space-time, more viewpoints, etc.

In other words, there is an inversion phenomenon that has been going on. Creating a universe, then deciding one can't be responsible for it, shrinking one's sphere of influence, and then mis-owning alter-ised frozen versions of parts of the universe, and using those to replenish one's havingness. That is a very tricky setup, it forms quite a trap. You can see it in most types of case: causing something, forgetting about it, assigning other authorship to it, identifying with it. It is a clever way of getting things to persist.

LRH said that one would be better off without facsimiles, which I think is quite a useful truth, if we define "facsimiles" well enough. Because some people tend to extrapolate it into meaning that you would be better off without anything whatsoever, so that whatever you bump into in your mind is something to get rid of. I wouldn't find that to be very wise.

The idea in Clearing is to replace the havingness of facsimiles with the havingness of the actual present time reality. It is certainly not to get rid of all havingnesses, it is rather to improve them.

We aren't saying either that one shouldn't have anchor points, attention units, circuits, connections, postulates, emotions, etc. The trouble is with copies used instead of the real thing, not with all the many other interesting things a being can do. If you plan on operating in the physical universe you do need some sort of structure to keep track of what you are doing, which is what we call a mind. The advice here is just not to confuse it with the actual universe if you don't want to.

It appears to me that it is wiser to construct a mind out of connections rather than out of facsimiles. If you want the events in one part of space-time to have some kind of bearing on the events in some other part of space-time, or if you just want to note a certain association or similarity -- then make a connection between them. It is not necessary to take a complete copy and to drag it around. Connections are not as aberrative as facsimiles. You connect up the real stuff rather than copies of it, and there is no frozen meaning attached to it.

Facsimiles and the clearing thereof apply to any case level. What changes is how wide areas of influence we address. Clear could be said to be the turning point where one now has more than 50% power of choice as to one's personal 1D semantic reactions, one is more in present time than anywhere else. Similar Clear states can then be accomplished across wider dynamics.

Clearing of 2D involves the development of the ability to keep relations to other people in present time without mixing them up with other relations at other times. 3D Clear would be the ability to keep a group activity in present time without confusing it with copies of other group activities. And so forth with the other dynamics.

Structure is still necessary to operate the different dynamics and play games and so forth. But, it is not necessary to put any fixed content into the structures. It is more useful to have dynamic structures and to deal with whatever content one runs into in present time. The structures would be called a mind on 1D, various techniques and protocols on 2D, organization and admin on 3D, etc. All of them are better off being dynamic rather than fixed.

As mentioned before, there has been a tendency in clearing to either ignore structures, or to try to get rid of them. Structures are sometimes unnecessary, but more often they just need to be cleared of stuck content and maybe adjusted a little bit.

Facsimiles generally represent fixed content. You have the answer before you get the question. Facsimiles generally become "held-down-7s" in the calculator, and will make it more difficult to deal with what is there. Getting rid of the calculator is not a good idea, but getting rid of the stuck numbers is.

I hope this makes it more clear what it is we are addressing in clearing.

Technical Essay # 100 - Flemming Funch 30 July 1992

Presence

In its simplicity Clearing could be said to be the activity of helping people become more present. This is done mostly by taking attention that is "elsewhere" and bringing it back into contact with present time reality.

The mechanisms by which one would lose one's attention units elsewhere than the here and now are very interesting. Generally speaking it would happen when the present environment becomes hard to handle. Too much randomity around. Then the being handles it, not by confronting it more, but by confronting it less. This is done through various inventive ways of pretending that what is happening isn't really happening, or one isn't really there anyway, so it doesn't matter.

This "elsewhere" mechanism can appear quite useful of course. If somebody detonates a nuclear warhead in your presence and you don't feel quite up to confronting it, then it might be quite practical to pretend that you aren't there, not experience the effects, but just reappearing when it is over. The trouble is if you forget to bring yourself totally back and you leave "parts" of yourself in strange places. It is somewhat questionable if the technique is at all advisable.

Facsimiles are another side of the same issue. If, instead of just confronting what is right in front of you, you make a facsimile of it and then subsequently use that to think with, then you aren't quite there. Thinking with facsimiles is just another attempt of handling things while not being there. But if one is using some old pictures to control one's responses, one is likely to run into more trouble, and then one needs to make more facsimiles to handle things even more automatically. It is a dwindling spiral.

Whenever you use a subjective mechanism as a stand-in for your own presence, it is likely to lead to further degradation of your experience in life. If you wish to get out of the way, you need to do it objectively, not subjectively.

As an example, if you are standing in the projected path of a speeding bullet, and you don't wish to have the experience in your body of being shot, then you have two main choices. You could just close your eyes and pretend that everything is fine. That is the subjective handling. But, if you didn't get your body out of the way, it would still be shot, and you would get a mess anyway. The objective choice would be to move your body out of the way, so that it won't be hit. That would not be aberrative.

Just like the ostrich sticking its head in the sand, or the child closing his eyes and assuming that nobody can then see him when playing hide-and-seek -- they are all subjective approaches. You will still run into trouble, and you might have to construct more elaborate facsimiles to explain your failure to handle the situation.

It becomes a little more confusing to discuss it when we are talking beings and not just bodies. It is quite obvious to see that it is better to get out of the bullet's way, than just pretend you are doing it. But what about the being? When I go to the dentist to have my root canals done, would I be better off confronting the pain or to get anesthesia that puts me out of touch with the pain. Actually that is a trick question, there are more choices than that. There is nothing particularly honorable about staying and "confronting" the pain. That is not a whole lot more healthy than going unconscious, pretending that the pain has nothing to do with you while it is being stored sub-consciously.

To really stay out of trouble as a being one would need to have the ability to be wherever it is most appropriate to be, not just pretend that one isn't there. Exterior operation is basically that you can place your focus of attention where it is most useful to you. If you really were taking responsibility for what you are doing, you probably wouldn't have set yourself up to be forced to be in a dental chair. If you leave your body or not, the body would get some kind of traumatic incident if pain is present. It is a good idea to get out of your car if it is burning, but it doesn't mean that it will be back to normal when you get back into it afterwards. You would need to either get a new one, or fix it if the damage is slight.

Discussing "where" a being is, is somewhat awkward. It is already an aberrated state to consider oneself to be located. It might work better to talk about one's focus of attention. And if you wish life to be fun you've better focus on what you want and not on what you don't want.

If you have attention on something and you don't like what you are experiencing, then the best choice would be to change the situation or to put your attention somewhere else. It would be a poor choice to keep your attention fixed there, but to forget about it and move on despite it. If you don't like your car you would probably want to fix it up or to sell it and get another one. If you just leave it in the backyard and buy another one, you will be left with a problem. Sooner or later your backyard will be filled up or you'll run out of money.

To operate viably in a universe like this, one needs to be able to take one's attention completely off things, and to put one's attention on other things at one's own determinism.

Having too many attention units scattered around in forgotten times and places, and in facsimiles, is an aberrated state. But, getting rid of all one's attention units would not be very clever either. The fictitious commodity called "attention" is what you use to engage yourself in a game. It can be said to be the theta that you invest in things you'd like to be involved in. There is not necessarily any limit of it, but it might still be practical to pretend that you have a certain number of units of attention. Really you could always create new attention. However, if you leave ties to "old" attention that you no longer want, then you might stop yourself from making more. But also, if you remove the attention you put on your current game, you will be less interested in it and less able to play it.

So, we can say that what we do in clearing is to recover mislaid attention, and to make it available for one's present game. Another way of saying that is to state that we are working on making people more present. Getting them into present time, present location, with full ability to experience and affect what is going on.

It is not that these exact coordinates in space-time are the best to consider present time. It doesn't really matter where the being places a focus of attention. It could be in another time, in another part of the universe, in another dimension, or in a totally new imaginary reality -- it doesn't really matter. What matters is to put one's attention where one wants to put it, and not be held back by unfinished cycles. Any reality is perfectly fine, as long as you have the ability to be present in it. Trying to be somewhere when you are really being elsewhere or vice versa is not very efficient.

How do you know the difference then between being more present and being more absent, between taking your attention cleanly off something (as-is) or just fooling yourself that you did (not-is), between experiencing reality or just figure-figuring with your facsimiles? Obviously it is kind of tricky, many people have by mistake gone in the wrong direction.

Many clever traps within this segment of creation that we call the physical universe are in the form of paradoxes. "You are damned if you do and damned if you don't" kind of thing. To play games you need to put attention on things, and also relinquish responsibility of it to some degree. When you grow tired of the pieces of the game and you want to get rid of them you are faced with a problem. If you actually try to get rid of them, they will get more solid and will continue running on automatic. And if you just try to do something else, you will still be tied to the old game pieces.

Many technically well-versed people will say "Well, that's easy, you just AS-IS things." Sure, but notice that "AS-IS" is just a word. Saying it doesn't make it so. The question is: How would you know if you've REALLY as-ised something?

I bet that a great many people who considers that they've as-ised a lot of stuff have simply put it in a more hidden place than they did before. You look at an incident or an entity or whatever, and you work it over until it disappears out of sight, and you call that as-isness. Well, maybe you only look 2 light-years around you, and you threw it 3 light-years away where you can't see it. How do you know the difference between doing something and making a facsimile of having done it?

I have met too many people who think they have as-ised the universe. You've got to come up with some pretty involved theories to explain why you are still here and still have to pay rent and eat three times a day, even though you as-ised the universe. But then we are getting deeper into facsimiles rather than experiencing what is actually there.

As-isness has often been thought of as a method of getting rid of things, making them disappear. Maybe, but what is it that is disappearing, from where, and how? If you run an incident and it erases, does that event then disappear from the history books? Of course not, the event is what it is, your running of it isn't likely to change the event a whole lot. But, you take your present time attention away from it, and thereby the incident returns to its proper place and time in the spacetime continuum. It could be said to disappear from your current focus, but that doesn't mean it doesn't go somewhere else. That is the old idea that the incident doesn't really disappear, it just transfers from the "reactive" to the "analytical" storage banks.

Anything that ever was is there somewhere. So is anything that possibly could be, and many alternate versions of any event that could possible happen. An ocean of possibilities is out there. Some of these possibilities we have wired together to delineate some games that we play. None of the possibilities are necessarily more important or true than any of the other ones, except for relatively speaking because of the way we have them wired together.

Time, and space too for that matter, is just an illusion to create some interesting separation so that the pieces can interact with each other. It would be more correct to say that there is only here and now. Anything else is more of an illusion than here and now is. Anything else is just there to back up the experience you are having in the here and now.

If you first relegate parts of existence into being "elsewhere" or "elsewhen" and you then misown it as being going on now, that creates a double lie that kind of sticks. Further misowning it is not the solution. But, if you realize that you are currently creating something that doesn't belong here, and you then assign it to its correct coordinates, then that could constitute as-isness. Nothing really disappears, you just change your idea about it to something that is close to the truth. And you convert attention units that are outside your control (past, other-determinism, effect, etc.) into attention that IS under your control (present, self/pan-determinism, cause).

I don't necessarily have the answer to knowing when you are freeing up your attention or when you are fooling yourself. Except for if are doing the right thing, then your power of choice should increase, and your fun and excitement about life should increase. Whatever increases the emotional tone is valid processing.

Any processing that increases the number of choices you have in the present is useful. If you get fewer choices, then it wasn't very useful, even if it appeared to be as-isness. For example, if you can render an unwanted feeling inoperative you might be able to have more desirable feeling, and it would be the right thing to do. But maybe the feeling that you labeled as "unwanted" was really the mechanism you used to motivate yourself to do great things, and it wouldn't be useful to get rid of it, unless it is replaced with something better. So, fixed ideas about what to process can be dangerous. You need to be able to think with the subject and pick the path that increases power of choice.

The more you are present with what you are currently doing, the more you can enjoy it, and the more you can do it well. You can get more present by re-integrating presences that you've forgotten about, or that are no longer applicable or useful. You can also get more present by getting more into contact with your current environment, by increasing your perceptions and your enjoyment of the now.

Striving for caselessness converges with the purpose of TR0: Being there and doing nothing but being there. Many philosophies and practices point in that direction, towards more full, complete, and enjoyable experience and creation of what is right there in front of you. But no matter what the practice is, you will still have the choice to make of using it to move towards more presence, more choice, more fun, or towards escape, limitation of choice, and more seriousness.

Only you can make the choice for yourself in your present situation. The paradox is that you might also fool yourself into thinking you are getting more choice when you are actually choosing less. So, how do you know? Well, you DO know, just don't let yourself forget that you do.

There isn't particularly anything to worry about, nothing really to lose if you do it wrong. You can't NOT be here. You are already much more here than you even imagine. All you need to do is to clear up a few mis-understandings and remember who you really are.

Reality Design Series # 5 by Flemming Funch, 5 August 1992

Perceptual Separation

The three main perceptual systems, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, can be said to be differentiated from each other by the degree of internal separation.

Visual has the most separation. You can see many elements at the same time and they can be perceived as rather separate and distinct from each other. It is relatively easy to move pictures around, move in and out of them, change their qualities and so forth.

Kinesthetic has the least separation. It is difficult to feel more than one thing at the same time. Particularly emotions easily get generalized and it is hard to see them in contrast to anything else. If you are sad the feeling can appear to be everywhere. This makes it less convenient to change feelings directly and to move in and out of them at will. When the feelings are good, that is a plus, they are much more permanent than pictures.

Auditory is in between. You can perceive several distinct elements at the same time, but they are interrelating and interacting with each other.

We can in other words place the representational systems on a scale of increasing or decreasing separation.

There is nothing particularly positive or negative about separation or lack of it. It all depends on what you want to use it for. If you want something to be permanent and ubiquitous you would want as little separation between its elements as possible. If you want something to just be there for a moment and then change into something else, then high separation would be in order

For example, if you wish to have a reality where you occasionally can sit on a specific chair, then you better thoroughly create kinesthetics for that chair. If you just construct it out of visual components it would tend to be too volatile and might disappear when you think about something else.

Since the three main perceptions use distinctly different bodily organs for their communication we would tend to think of them as more different than they are. But really we could regard them as just different frequencies of communication.

Like we can also learn from electromagnetics, there are different qualities that go with different frequencies. High frequencies are very directional but doesn't penetrate much. Low frequencies spread out more and penetrate much more. To translate this back to perceptions: you can be very precise in the visual system, but it is kind of fragile; you can reach farther with

kinesthetics but it is less precise.

It is also interesting to speculate on what happens when we continue the scale in either direction. In a picture we can keep the elements of the picture separate, but they are still in the same picture. We can have several pictures, but still in the same field of vision. What if we increase separation towards infinity, so that there is no longer any relation between the elements whatsoever?

The most likely result of moving something towards infinity on the separation scale is that it will disappear. More correctly, it will disappear from the realm of actual realities back into the realm of possibilities. If you look at a ballpen as a picture, it appears to be one contiguous object. However, if we increase the magnification and see what it is really made of the picture

changes. It is made out of trillions of little atoms and with that magnification it doesn't even have definite borders, and the atoms are changing all the time. And in the atomic and subatomic world things don't even have a finite location, it is all a matter of probabilities. So, the more we separate things out, the less we would worry about the artificial groupings that we call "objects" and "thoughts" and so forth.

How about if we go the other way on the scale, towards less separation, more togetherness. Also there would we lose track of the associations that we are used to in life. Everything would become the same and no distinction of location or time would be possible.

Both directions move us out of the ordinary reality by sabotaging the lies that keep a reality together. Most realities would be based on the agreement that things are different but similar. This association, somewhere between total differentiation and total identification, is what makes it possible to play a game of life.

The truth is probably that things are both totally separate and totally the same at the same time. That is a paradox one would have to figure out to solve the mystery of universes.

Reality Design Series # 6 by Flemming Funch, 6 August 1992

The Time is Now

To construct a convincing present time reality one must take the past and the future into consideration. To do that we need to have a suitable model for what the past and the future is.

Experiences take place in the present. This is where things are happening, this is where the game is being played. People sometimes attempt to handle things from the past or the future, but that enters into the field of mental aberration. Simply put, people are better off being in the present and not being stuck in the past or the future.

The present is the most real reality you can ask for within ordinary reality. This is where you cause things to happen, and this is where you experience the results of what is happening.

The past gives a background story for why the current situation is what it is, and it provides backup knowledge in the form of past experience you can use now. The future is the dreams you have about what to do next. It provides direction and motivation for what you are currently doing.

Time is an illusion, whether viewed physically, psychologically, or religiously. It is not the fixed property that it was believed to be in the science of a hundred years ago. Since the advent of relativity theory and quantum physics the picture has been very different.

Past and future are meaningless except for in relation to present time. You can not travel to the past and say "Now I'm in the past". Wherever you are is the NOW. You might possibly travel to 5000 BC., but then you would perceive it as Now.

Past and future can simply be regarded as a scoreboard providing background scenery for what you are doing now. The past is for keeping track of what you supposedly have learned and experienced that provides some explanation for your current position in the game. The future keeps track of your plans and projections of where things are going.

If you keep a projected future firmly in place for long enough, then you would gradually change the Now to look like it. That doesn't mean that you successfully guessed what the future was gonna be and now you are in the future. It just means that you transformed the Now according to your representation of future.

You can also use your representation of the past to change the Now. The past is a framework that logically takes you to where you are now. If you change the contents of that framework well enough, then your present would tend to change accordingly. For example, if you had thought that you had a bad childhood and therefore you are now depressed, then you can change your past to rather show that you had an eventful childhood and therefore you are now a lot wiser. The present would then tend to start realigning itself with that new past. Like with the future, it isn't necessarily instant. A different past or future sets a direction, it will attract experiences in the present that will match as well as possible.

It is not so much to question whether a given past or future is the real one. There is really no such thing. What exists is the Now. There are PROBABLE pasts and PROBABLE futures. Any past or future is possible and therefore could be said to exist as a possibility. But none of them are set in stone as THE past or THE future. In a fashion all of them happened. Which ones you choose to experience depends on you here and now.

We can take a look at your current present time reality. From that we can project back what your probable past would be, and we can project forward what your probable future is going to be.

The closer to present time we project, the more accurate it is likely to be. I am sitting here in a chair writing on my computer. I remember being here a minute ago also, and chances are that I were. I think I'll be here also in another minute into the future, so chances are that I will be. None of it is certain. I could have materialized here 30 seconds ago with a set of false memories, and the planet might explode 3 seconds from now. It's possible, but not very likely.

We could say that there is an infinite number of possible realities out of which you at any given moment choose one or more to manifest in. A good metaphor is that you are surfing on the sea of possibilities. The past is the direction you are currently coming from and the future is the direction you are heading towards.

If there is a lot of agreement about a certain past or a certain future, then it would tend to appear more real and solid. It doesn't mean in any way that you can't choose a different past/future reality for yourself. But, if you want a lot of people to agree to it, you need to get them to change their past/future representations also. This continuously happens anyway in society. The generally agreed-upon past and future is changing.

As far as reality design goes, what you need to know is that a present reality needs to be backed up by a representation of past and future. Those representations serve to make the present make more sense. They provide a framework, a backdrop against which current events can be evaluated. They are data of comparable magnitude.

Reality Design Series # 7 by Flemming Funch, 6 August 1992

Acting

A lot of concepts and techniques from the field of acting are applicable to the general design of realities. That is no great wonder in that acting basically is a way of communicating alternate realities through speech, body language and so forth.

There are two main schools or styles of acting. They go under different names. Presentational, Internal, or Method acting is the most generally accepted today. Representational or External acting was the most common style in theater and movies up until the 50s or so.

The representational actor will concentrate on how he or she looks and sounds and appears to others. He will work on approximating the external behavior of the character he is portraying. The idea is that it is what people hear and see that will count, so that is where the emphasis should be.

The presentational, method actor will rather work on the internal experience of the character he is playing. He will try to become that person as much as possible, have the emotional life of that person, have that person's history and perspective of the future. The pre-supposition is that if you think and feel like the person, then your external behavior will probably be very convincing without having to worry about it.

Just about anybody who is regarded as a superb actor today will be working by the internal approach. When somebody like Dustin Hoffman studies for a role, he doesn't just memorize the lines and plan where to stand. He spends months studying the type of person he will portray. He will find out how people like that think and feel and he will start thinking and feeling that way too, to become the character, not just play it.

Old-fashioned actors used more dramatic postures, artificial ways of speaking and so forth. They chose their behavior to best entertain and please the audience. And yes, audiences will sometimes find an external approach more entertaining at first. Entertaining, but not particularly convincing. Today actors with exaggerated external behavior would mostly be laughed at. Only in specialized areas such as commercials is external acting commonly used.

To relate this back to reality design, the most convincing realities are the ones that are experienced internally as well as externally. Particularly what is critical is the kinesthetics. It is fairly easy to produce impressive pictures of other realities, but it is whether you feel it or not that determines how real you will think it is.

Aspiring actors go through many different kinds of exercises and games in acting classes to learn how to present artificial realities in a convincing way. They learn how to feel objects that aren't physically there, how to develop emotions about things they didn't care about, how to agree with the other players without explicit communication, and so forth.

Particularly in the subject of improvisation there are a number of principles and tricks that translate well into general reality design. Here are a few examples:

Never deny anything. That is, if somebody comes in and presents themselves as "Mrs.Robinson" even though you had planned on calling her "Mrs.Smith", it doesn't matter, she is "Mrs.Robinson" now. You need to maintain a dynamic agreement about what goes on. You are free to add whatever you feel like, as long as you don't deny the realities that other players introduce. That implies that you are ready to go along with whatever reality you might be presented with.

Heighten and Explore. You can take any detail in a situation or in an object or a personality characteristic, and emphasize it and expand it. That is what a lot of comedy is made of. You take a little detail like opening a door and you spend 10 minutes doing it with all kinds of problems, and it can be very funny. Or you take some mannerism, such as scratching one's nose and you expand it until it becomes absurd. In that way you can make just about anything entertaining, and increase the ability to create something out of nothing.

Body focus. Most people will have certain parts of their body they have most sub-conscious attention on, that they use to do a lot of things. For example, one person might involve her nose in everything, use it for pointing, etc., another might focus excessively on her hips, etc. These could also be called anchor points, the connections people have with their bodies. By deliberately practicing the use of different types of anchor points one can learn to operate a body in distinctly different ways.

Often the best way of defining a character is by the limitations that it has, particularly the limitations that it appears not to know about itself. For example, a person might be very concerned about outward appearance but doesn't realize that anybody else notices. That ability to take limitations on and off can be very useful in shifting between different environments.

An actor entering a scene needs to have created a past and a future, both for his character and for his interaction with the other characters. There needs to be some history, and there needs to be some intentions. An actor doing a written scene can take a long time to work out for himself what that history would be. An improvisational actor would have to be able to manufacture it in a couple of seconds.

To enter a convincing artificial reality one needs to be equipped with a different past and a different future. One can do that partially in order to temporarily visit some reality. Like, if you visit the wild west it would be more authentic if you temporarily get a past of being an infamous gunslinger and a future of looking for a saloon, and so forth. Or, probably if you could totally create a new past and a new future for yourself, and you could perceive things differently in the present, then you would probably be in that new reality "permanently".

Basically, if you can act or pretend well enough, then the pretense transcends into being a reality. There isn't any fundamental difference between reality and pretense. Reality is just the stuff you are best at pretending.

It is bad acting when you don't lay off one role before you take on another. If you can't lay off your own mannerisms and limitations before you take on somebody else's, then it won't be very convincing, unless you are enough like the character already.

To switch between realities requires tremendous flexibility in adjusting perceptions, taking limitations on and off, using different anchor points, creating and uncreating history and intentions, and so forth.

Reality Design Series # 8 by Flemming Funch, 6 August 1992

Peripheral Perceptions

Different ranges of perception are available depending on how one focuses one's senses. It is easiest to explain in the visual sense, but probably applies to all senses.

In the human eye there are two kinds of receptors of light: cones and rods. The cones are good for receiving bright, colorful, high-resolution, focused pictures. The rods on the other hand are very sensitive to dim light and cover a bigger field of vision, but not with as high resolution, not focused, and not with as many colors.

Modern industrialized society would tend to promote continuous focusing, both mentally and visually. People sit and look at computer screens right in front of their faces, with little symbols on. They have to think and concentrate to do their work right. All of it tends to promote more focusing and less peripheral perception. One way of noticing that is by the number of people who have to wear glasses, just a symptom of too fixed focusation.

However, a lot of information is lost by omitting peripheral perception. That is what one uses to get the whole picture, it is much more holistic than focused perception. It is what one uses to get the broad, general overview of what is going on. If you don't use it you might miss the big picture. It is very common today that people are focusing on many little details without really knowing what they relate to.

A lot of what we usually call extra-sensory perceptions seems to be tied to peripheral perceptions. Those perceptions are used so little that when they are it becomes something very mysterious.

Maintaining an ability to see, hear, and feel peripherally is important for one's personal sanity. If one doesn't have it one would tend to get lost in interesting specifics without any idea of where one is. With peripheral orientation one would always know the big picture, how things relate to each other and so forth.

If you can both focus on something interesting, and still maintain perspective, then you will have much less adverse effects from life. You can must easier stay out of trouble, and you can much easier put yourself in the situations you want to be in.

Peripheral perceptions can be increased simply by using them. For example, by forcing oneself to see not with one's central, focused vision, but out of the sides. By using that vision more one can develop it again.

Also, mentally, by working one's ability to move swiftly between generalities and specifics, between global and local, between big chunks and small pieces.