Technical Essay # 106 - Flemming Funch 6 November 1992

Expectancy

I can't help but noticing that the cases of clients vary with the expectancy of the practitioner. That is, if the practitioner has a particular focus of interest or is researching some particular theory, cases will materialize that fit it with it.

I don't mean that a practitioner always gets what he asks for. It is more that the cases would have a certain theme and a certain focus that the practitioner would somehow have something to learn from. The cases that don't apply just won't show.

"Expectancy has nothing to do with it. There are no unusual cases. Standard tech is standard tech." Many traditional auditors wouldn't agree with what I said above. They would just regard it as bad sessioning if you get variable cases with variable results.

Notice however that the traditional auditor has very specific expectations about what how the PC's case is structured, very specific expectations about how the PC will respond, and a very strong expectation that none of this will ever change, because "standard tech is standard tech."

If that is what you expect, that is what you will get. However, it will only be a certain class of people who will show up for sessions. It will be the ones who either match the model you are assuming, or the ones who are willing to change to match the model before you start. The rest of the population just won't show up, and the auditor will be left wondering why everybody else "just don't get it."

Indoctrination has the purpose of convincing the PC about the model that will be used in the processing. If he agrees with the definitions and the explanations then he goes along with the model and the model will then work. That will be proof for both the auditor and the PC that the model is right. If the PC wasn't willing to agree to the model we would day that he has MUs or is PTS or something and we can still pretend that the model is perfect. This is a fool proof system of course, there is no way you can be wrong. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that the model used is going to be the best one for everybody.

It is not that there is necessarily anything very wrong with the auditor and PC having a rather fixed expectation that they then go ahead and fulfill. Actually that keeps things nicely simple and consistent. If the underlying theory is pretty good, people will get results and gains even with very minimal training and understanding. It is not entirely honest to keep the suggestion/expectancy factor secret, but it does make it work.

Now, somebody who changes their focus more frequently and who is willing to be flexible and adjust to the circumstances, will be more likely to notice this phenomenon. I change my ideas and my focus very frequently and that is why I notice that I tend to get what I focus on.

When I got interested in GPMs I saw them everywhere. Most cases I took in session had GPMs in restimulation. And not only that, they resolved best on the exact theory I was favoring at the time. First when I thought that GPMs had to be 18 item, that is exactly what I found. But then I read Filbert's theory of how GPMs have 5 items and the last one flips around and opposes the one you started with. That made very good sense, and then for weeks all GPMs I saw magically resolved after the 5th item. Then when I decided that it would probably be best to just handle the pair in restimulation and not the full GPM, then I only got hold of pairs and no full GPMs.

You could of course explain it with that I was blind to anything that didn't fit my theory, but it is more than that.

Heisenberg's uncertainty theorem says that an observer will always influence the phenomena he is observing. One will always have to take the observer into consideration. Likewise, one can't really regard a practitioner as totally neutral and pretend that case phenomena are invariable. The practitioner and the client and their expectations are very much part of the equation of what will go on in a session.

The universal law of attraction also works perfectly well for practitioners. You attract that which you mentally and emotionally focus on.

When I found that I could produce instant miracles and cure chronic illnesses and somatics, I got a whole series of clients I could do that with. That was very exciting. At that time I naively thought that I would keep doing exactly that. However, as soon as I had learned the main principles of what was going on, I started getting different cases.

After that kind of thing had happened a few times I realized that the experiences were as much created as learning experiences for me as they were signs of the discovery of invariable truths. What I learned was always very useful and interesting. However, there is a danger in trying to generalize what one learns to apply to any situation remotely like it.

I can really appreciate Hubbard's pattern of breakthrough discoveries. "Now I've got it. This is how it works. Forget what I said last year." He found something that just worked much better than anything else, it checked out with anybody he tried it on, and seemed to just broadly resolve things. Then after a while he starts running into the exceptions, the cases it doesn't work on, and he starts focusing elsewhere, and after a while he just moves on to a different field. Yet, remarkably, despite of his changing viewpoints, any theory and technique he developed along the way is perfectly workable. It is just that one has to include the context of its application in the evaluation. There will be some cases it will work very well on at a given time, and others it won't work well on.

Hubbard apparently wasn't quite satisfied with the idea that techniques didn't always work. He wanted to develop universal techniques that uniformly worked on anybody. Failing to do so he probably eventually decided to just put together his best shot for a simple system and then just decree that this is it. That is what became Standard Tech. He omitted the definition of exactly what it is, so it rather became the idea that: "There is one and only one correct way of doing it that works for anybody. All the data you need is somewhere in these materials."

So, by decree cases became invariable. As long as both auditors and PCs agreed to that game plan, things became very simple. You just do standard tech and things come out alright. The plan worked and everybody were now playing the same game, which created a big boom for the subject of Scientology.

Unfortunately there are side-effects in operating out of fixed ideas, even if they are very reasonable fixed ideas. Particularly when the knowledge that "the map is not the territory" is not passed on, everybody takes it very seriously, and the games maker then disappears. That creates a rather stuck game, particularly when the world starts changing and the old map is no longer universal enough to deliver what people expect from it.

The world is moving much faster than it did 20 years ago. There is a lot more variation and diversity. Things change much more fluidly.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to demand that clients mold themselves to the models we are using and that they stay that way until we are done with them. You can't necessarily expect a client to have his case stacked up neatly in grade chart order, unless you indoctrinate him into the ground first. For that matter you can't really expect a client to come into session in the same state you left him in a week earlier.

Life is just moving too fast to make it safe to stay the same.

For practitioners as well, the lesson of the times is to be flexible. Have a lot of tools, be prepared for many different situations, but know that any situation you meet is different and you might never be able use a technique the exact same way twice.

Are we talking Q&A and squirreling? No, there is a big difference between being flexible and not finishing what you start. There is no point in keeping the process or the client's case fixed; what you would get is variable results. If you keep the positive intention stable, and you let the case be whatever it is, and you are willing to do whatever is appropriate at the time, then you get the most honest results.

A clearing practitioner doesn't have any particular obligation to get the same results every time. He is a person too, and there is no reason to try to force him to be the same when everybody else is changing. And there is no reason to force all the clients to be the same either. This doesn't change any of the basic axioms of clearing. It is just that flexibility is the winning approach -- not sameness.

Expect that you will get great results and that you will learn a lot. Don't try to settle in advance exactly HOW you are going to do it. That would leave you out of sync with what is really going on and it would also take most of the fun out of it.

Technical Essay # 107 - Flemming Funch 22 November 1992

Where in the World am I?

I noticed a sequence in the bridge that I did so far that seems to correspond somewhat to the lower conditions formulas or to the components of time, place, form and event. That doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me at this point, but let's explore it a little bit.

Clearing incidents and erasing one's time track to go Clear seems to address the subject of WHEN. That is, before doing it one has many hang-ups in terms of mixing events from different times up with each other. Acting in the present based on something that happened many years ago and so forth. Clearing that one basically erases the concept of the time track and gets into present time. At least ideally speaking. In stead of a lot of different times that can influence your current situation the time becomes Now, and you can be cause over things in the present.

Implants and entity stuff address WHO to a large degree. It is about mis-ownership based on mix-ups as to Who is doing what and whose charge it is. You realize what is and what isn't you. Hopefully you then take full responsibility for what is you and stuff that isn't you becomes of no significance.

Next is WHAT. Ron's Org OT8-13 levels address that. A lot of "stuff" is there in your space and you sort out what it is, get rid of what you don't need and put there what you want to have. You hopefully realize that you are source of it and you can have in your space whatever you need.

After that we get to WHERE. You get into stuff that ties you in to being located in a universe and a game. Hopefully you can get to the point of realizing that you can be anywhere you want to. That you don't have to be anywhere, but you can be everywhere.

I wouldn't say that I have accomplished that, except for as a mental cognition. Actually, the reason I am writing about this is that I am confused about it all. The condition formula for confusion is "Find out Where you are", so that is how I got to think of it.

See, I kind of did the things I mentioned above backwards, and I don't necessarily recommend that. I got rid of my time track and after that I had a hard time remembering things and couldn't sequence things in time very well. Then I scattered myself all over the universe and got rid of all the Whos I could find. After which I didn't have much of an identity left. Then I found all the Whats I could perceive and got rid of all of them. That gave a nice clean space, but left nothing around to play with. My havingness was low and I had lost a lot of circuits and stuff that I actually had kind of liked. Then I disconnected anything that locked me into the Where of the universe and the game. Since then I have been kind of confused and had a hard time holding any kind of a position.

Don't get me wrong, I had tremendous wins and advances otherwise. I am just focusing the light on some things that are possible pitfalls. Since then I have remedied some of the things I sort of overdid, but not all of them.

What I am saying is that I noticed a sequence of

When
Who
What
Where

in the bridge. Who, What, and Where are condition formula stuff. When isn't really. But also each of these subjects is part of specifying something. Correct time, place, form, and event. Part of what it takes to as-is something.

I don't see any particularly good reason for why they should be in the order I described. Might be that is just how it appeared to me. I would actually think it would make more sense the other way around. First find out where you are, then what you are doing, then who you really are, then play around with the subject of time.

I inherently disagree with the idea of auditing out a lot of stuff that you really need. That should be clear from my previous essays. I learned the fallacy of doing that by doing it very thoroughly myself. I cleared away anything that moved. Bad idea.

I see no big reason for clearing away the mechanisms you use to keep track of time, the multitude of viewpoints you have available to you, the many structures that you keep in your space, and the methods you use for locating yourself. There is nothing inherently bad about doing these things. What you want is probably to optimize them, get to be cause over them, use them for something you want, and so forth. Getting rid of without knowing exactly what they are just creates further havoc, despite the short term gains experienced from their eradication.

At this point I think the only valid approach is integration and optimization. That is, you can't just "get rid of" everything in your space. That is a very dangerous approach. However you can integrate the pieces that are out of balance with each other and you can optimize the stuff in your space so that you have what you want to have.

One way of organizing this integration and optimization is by the aforementioned When, Who, What, and Where. These are basically angles of what one can be hung up on and awarenesses one need to have to be in good shape. The clearing that needs to be done is a clearing of mix-ups as far as these are concerned.

If one mixes events from different time periods up with each other one would have trouble in life. Events at one time would influence one's responses at other times. To clear that up we would want to return all events to their proper time. Particularly the practice of carrying incidents around in present time that belong at another time would have to be dealt with. That is what we do in incident clearing. Having as a goal to eradicate all incidents is not very wise. Particularly if we don't clarify what is meant. It is all the mistaken time stamps that we would like to clear, not the events themselves. Ideally that should lead to being more in present time, interacting with exactly what is going on now. And one's past and future experiences should be resources of experience that are easily available when needed.

If one mixes up different viewpoints and identities with each other, that opens up the door to all kinds of havoc. Basically one can't as-is something if one is seeing it from the wrong viewpoint. If one blames all kinds of "other" viewpoints for one's condition it won't resolve. That can be handled by realizing that there are a multitude of possible viewpoints and by exploring them. If you can become willing to assume any viewpoint, then you can always choose the most appropriate one for the situation. And if you need something as-ised you can assume the viewpoint(s) authoring it. The object is not to get rid of these viewpoints, or entities, or whatever we call them. On the contrary they can be valid resources and one should accomplish flexibility in assuming them freely as necessary. The phenomenon to clear is the mix-up of viewpoints and identities. When you are being "Joe" there is no reason to mix it up with being "Bill" unless that is what you want. The target is to be able to fully be whoever you choose to be, and not automatically mix-in other beingnesses. You should become more of who you are in the present, and clearly be able to distinguish that other beingnesses are indeed other beingnesses.

Mistaking the nature of what you have in your space doesn't make for very good luck in life either. It is kind of hard to operate a car if you think it is a bicycle. Objectives is one way of dealing with this. But much more confusion is likely in one's mental and psychic space. The perceptions one uses to perceive non-physical stuff are much more screwed up in the human race than the physical ones. This is basically what we can address as a series of advanced levels. You might have circuits, creations, games, agreements, and so forth in your space. Finding out what they are and what you are using them for can be very beneficial. It is basically a route of sharpening one's perceptions and optimizing what one finds. One would need to find out how non-physical constructs play a part in one's game and how one can use them most optimally.

The systems one uses for maintaining one's focus in a multi-dimensional spacetime is another subject. If one doesn't know how one does this, one is likely to float around aimlessly. The object is not to disconnect all ties one has to any location, but much rather to become able to establish and de-establish one's anchoring mechanism at will. Particularly if one has trimmed one's baggage by clearing away a lot of stuff one would need an excellent navigation system to know where the hell one is. Part of this is probably to come to terms all the locations one currently is manifesting oneself. See, a being isn't necessarily just in one place. We are multi-dimensional beings that can exist in many places and at many levels of awareness at the same time. That is very different from the time mix-up mentioned before. It is not that one is mixing up past events with current events. One can legitimately exist in many places in the now and be playing a number of games in parallel. One would need to learn how to keep those apart or to have interaction between them as needed.

We could possibly explore other questions, such as How or Why in a similar fashion. If all of this is the best way of doing it, I don't know. I am just trying to make some sense out of the existing approaches. Well, come to think of it, we could say that the grades is the How. You explore a lot of different ways of doing the most common things that humans do: recalling, communicating, having problems, acting, becoming upsets, having beliefs and fixed ideas etc. We find out How it is done and How it can be done differently.

Technical Essay # 108 - Flemming Funch 22 November 1992

Meta Structures

The more we strip away the common human bank, the more different people get. Behind the scenes beings might have drastically different ways of doing things.

It is important to note that there isn't a particular "ideal" way of behaving that we get to when we clear people enough. We are more likely to run into wide differences in approach and intentions and so forth. If you are making people all the same you probably aren't setting them free.

Now, beings might at a very high level have very different considerations about things, or they might have set up drastically different structures to guide their actions at multiple levels.

I am correlating this with what is called Meta Programs in NLP. That is basically that in different areas people might have certain overall programs of behavior that guide their overall actions, but that are different from person to person. For example, some people organize their whole life around avoiding things they don't want, whereas others organize their lives around moving towards stuff they want. There is no right or wrong in this, and it isn't just casual decisions either. There are inherently different motivations and methods of doing things. Some people think in really big generalities, others take great attention to detail. Ideally one is flexible and can do all of these things, but typically a person has a certain underlying approach. So, when we dig deep enough we don't find sameness, but we find that people do things for different reasons.

If we extrapolate this up to a more spiritual realm we see similar phenomena. Beings might set up a certain approach to doing things that will pervade everything they do over many lifetimes. We could say that certain structures are postulated at a high level with a great deal of persistence to them. I would call these Meta Structures. You could say that they form part of the being's personality. Not that they can't change, but they are likely to have a high degree of permanence.

As an example, I personally have a certain method of exploring a subject. I would rather randomly start somewhere, anywhere, and get very deeply involved in what I find. I would get very confused, but would eventually sort things out. Then, once I have things figured out in that corner of the subject, I would make a big jump and go to some totally different part of it, chosen in some illogical fashion, and I would immerse myself in that. By repeatedly jumping around and getting in over my head I would eventually become really good at the subject.

Somebody else might have the approach of systematically working through a subject from one end to the other and continuously maintaining a big overview of what has been learned.

Somebody else again might start out by making a mock-up of what he is likely to find and then walk in and compare everything to his mock-up.

No approach is right or wrong. It is just that the being has chosen a certain structure to monitor the way he does things.

Most likely there are structures that a being keeps all throughout their existence in a universe. And there are other structures that continue through a series of lifetimes and then change. Or structures that only apply to one lifetime or to a certain period of one's life.

Astrological signs is probably an example of structures that are agreed to be permanent through one's lifetime. I have never seen anybody audit out their astrological characteristics. You can of course progress from the negative side to the positive side of the characteristics. But I've never seen anybody stop being an Aries, or Libra, or whatever, no matter what OT level they got to.

The meta structures isn't something to audit out. It is meaningless to even try. They are very self-determined causative decisions, they aren't case. It would be much more worthwhile to find out how to use them in the best possible way. If they no longer serve the person he will probably change them. But be aware that they are created at a high level. It takes more than just a casual thought to change them around.

Meta structures would be something to take into consideration in clearing. If people work in different ways it makes the most sense to treat them differently. That is, you can do more for a person if you are in tune with their method of operation. It doesn't make sense to stuff some "standard" method of operation down everybody's throats.

As an example, some people will be well disposed to doing a bridge in a nice orderly fashion, and they will organize their case in such a fashion that it fits the program exactly. Other people might hate the idea of a fixed program and would get much more out of skipping around and exploring things in an apparently random fashion. Traditional clearing wisdom would recognize the first person as a well-running pc and would send the other one to ethics to get him to behave.

There might of course be regular case phenomena that would prompt a person to be pro or con a certain way of doing things. Service facs or overts might make somebody sabotage the program. However, even with that taken care of, I would claim that different people work differently and would work best with different approaches.

I think the best work one can do is to meet people where they are at and help them to do better what it is they basically want to do. That takes a certain sensitivity to different basic ways of doing things, and enough flexibility to be able to help people even if they have different approaches than you yourself have.

Technical Essay # 109 - Flemming Funch 24 November 1992

Be Here Now!

Probably the most valuable gain I have gotten from processing is the state of comfortably being present, facing the world with a calm certainty that everything will work out well.

I have gotten a taste of that state in different incarnations from doing TRs, from attesting Clear, from being a staff member, from doing conditions, from various upper OT levels, from suddenly understanding something, from being in-session with a good auditor, from meditating, and probably from a few more different practices.

Unfortunately I didn't find a way of having the state permanently. Hard TRs Course sort of promised that. As did the state of Clear, or OT16/Caselessness. All of it felt very good and gave me a good key-out for a while. But no permanent state of comfortably being there with full confront. Sure I got a lot more horsepower in some ways. But the stuff I would get myself entangled in would also get bigger, and something new would always come along that would change the balance.

I would claim that what most people would want in life is exactly such a state of presence. It might be expressed or thought of in many different ways, but I've found it to be the most common denominator of what people want. Being calm inside, dealing comfortably with what is going on around you, being confident that what you want is happening, optimum randomity. It doesn't matter what one calls it, or which philosophical or religious discipline one is following. It is basically a feeling that you are there and that things are happening in the right way. An ideal scene.

Various names are used about this state. Being present, being empowered, in the flow, satori, getting it, caselessness, self-actualization, OT, having your TRs in, F/Ning, etc.

It is not very precise to say that this is all one state. However, I would say that there is a state of optimum presence and operation that all of these states are just examples of. Let's look at what some of the component parts of this state would be.

First of all one must be present in the Now. That is, one shouldn't be out of PT. Life is happening here and now, not in the past or the future. Particularly one shouldn't be confusing past times with the present and act out of situations that aren't happening now. One would have most of one's attention units available for what one is doing. "Do what you do when you are doing it" is the rule. It doesn't say that one should stay in the same place or that one can't be in several places at once. It is just that one shouldn't mix up different times inappropriately or be somewhere else. So, presence now is the first requirement.

Secondly, a state of being calm inside is required. That is, one wouldn't have a million unrelated thoughts flying around. One would be able to think nothing or to concentrate at one thing at will. One would be relaxed. One wouldn't have random inappropriate emotions pop up, but would be in control of one's emotional state. One would feel free to feel things strongly without a need to hold back. One would be able to maintain one's comfortable internal state no matter what happens in the environment.

One would confront what is happening externally. That is, one would be able to focus on the external activities or lack of activity and comfortably maintain one's external focus without wavering. One would not react automatically to what is happening, but would be able to respond appropriately. One would perceive what is actually going on, not some dubbed-in delusion. One would be able to reach out and deal with the circumstances.

One would have the ability to be in the right place at the right time. That is, one would have "good postulates", one would appear to be lucky, things will just be flowing the right way. One is the person who doesn't hit the banana peel, and one knows it. There is a certainty that things will work out well and that one can handle whatever comes up.

These different qualities aren't very absolute. It is not something we can measure very well. We are talking about a personal state, not something you need some authority to bestow you with.

We are not talking about an extreme in any direction either. It is not the top of the tone scale, full cause and knowingness, etc. It is rather the point of optimum randomity. Being comfortable that there is part of reality that you are cause over (your inner calmness) and part of reality that you just need to allow to be the way it is (the external circumstances). A calm certainty that what you need will be available to you, and if you face any obstacles they can all be overcome. You don't have to consciously know everything, or control everything, or keep track of everything. As long as you are present and can trust that the game will develop in the most appropriate way, it sure will.

The state is not a goal, a quantifiable deliverable that you are pursuing. It is not something you accomplish after much effort and then you have it. It is rather an ideal scene. An ideal scene is not the goal you hope to get eventually. It is the state of affairs that most contribute to the accomplishment of your goals. It is a dynamic situation, not a fixed thing.

This brings up the fallacy of creating a bridge as a game with the goal of getting to certain states. The goal is the carrot that keeps the game going. The moment you have it the game is over and you need to think up some other goals. Making a desirable state a goal is tricky. First of all because a state is not a very quantifiable thing. But more importantly because you will have to agree to not have the state in order to play the game. And the moment you get the state then the game is over and you can no longer pursue it.

It might be a better idea to choose goals that aren't inherently all that meaningful, and then focus on an ideal scene for working on it that you really like. That is, the playing of the game ought to be the part that you really want, not just the short-lived goal of the game. If you make the desirable state the most optimum state to be in in order to play the game, then you are likely to spend the most time in it, which is probably what you wanted in the first place.

This might seem a little abstract to understand, so let me explain a little more. If you like playing soccer it is probably the playing of the game that you like, not just the end result. We could say that the end result is the ball in the net of the opponents' goal, or it is the score at the end of the game. If that was really what you wanted then you didn't need any other players or anything. You could just walk over and place the ball in the other goal, and you could sit and look at it as long as you want. Or you can walk over and push the buttons on the scoreboard to show whatever you want. That wouldn't be much fun in itself if it isn't connected with a game. So you see, the object of the game is usually something that in itself is fairly insignificant. The goal is just a way of keeping a stat of the playing of the game.

Now, if you really liked playing soccer, what would you think of a game like this: Somebody writes a number between one and a million on a piece of paper. You sit around for 3 hours and give guesses at what the number is. If after 3 hours you got close enough you would then be allowed to go out and play soccer for 10 seconds. That is ridiculous of course. However, that is an example of a game where you make the activity you really desire the goal and you make the playing of the game (the ideal scene) something tedious and boring. That is stupid of course if you plan on having a good time.

To get back to the state of presence that I have been talking about: There is really no good reason for making it a far off future goal if you would rather have it all the time. All the reasons for not having it right now are just parts of the game itself.

Many of the principles and ideas involved in the bridge are part of the agreement that you can't have the carrot now, but if you play the game right you will have it in the future. Most specifically, any datum that tells you that it takes a considerable amount of steps, time, effort, money, suffering, etc. to get to the state you want, is primarily there to keep the carrot from you and thereby forcing you to play the game.

That doesn't mean that it is with any mean intent. It is a trick alright, but so is any game. You have to un-know and un-have the object of the game in order to play the game of getting it back. Nothing wrong with that as long as the playing of the game itself is fun.

So, if the game is "going up the bridge", then the game playing itself better be fun and exciting and full of valuable lessons. The final carrot is only something you've already had all along, so it shouldn't be only because of that that you play the game. There certainly wouldn't be a point in suffering a lot of pain and hardship to get there unless the fun and learning you have outweighs it. If the game itself is fun, then by all means play it. It is a big, complex, and ambitious game, so why not - it can be a lot of fun.

But if all you really want is a state of being comfortably present, calm, collected, confronting the situation, making things go right, etc., then you don't have to go through so much trouble. You would than rather choose a game that requires you to have exactly that state in order to play it.

A goal in a game is something you have to work at against opposition and with limited resources. The ideal scene on the other hand is something that is in your full command and that you can accomplish just by doing it. The difference is all in the agreements made about it, you can make anything into a game or not. What we have called a "games condition" is when you make something into a game that shouldn't be a game.

You need to make clear for yourself what you would like to have most of the time and what you could easily live without and therefore could make into a long term goal of the game.

If you would like to be exterior with full perceptions right now, then choose a game that requires you to be in that state in order to play it. Don't make it into a 20 year project with many obstacles. If you want to be rich right now then choose a game that requires you to be rich in order to play it, and you will be rich much faster than if you made "becoming rich" the goal.

This is also the difference between Be and Have. The Be is what you assume in order to play the game at all. The Have is what you agree at first that you don't have and that you are pursuing. The tension between the Be and the Have is what defines the game and what makes the Do possible. The game itself takes place in the Doingness. The Doingness ought to be enjoyable in itself, otherwise it is a stupid game.

You are maintaining the Beingness through the game in order to do the Doingness that eventually will acquire the Havingness. In other words, you are spending the majority of your time with the Beingness and Doingness and you only eventually get to hold the Havingness for a brief moment before the game disintegrates.

A state is most naturally a state of beingness. It is a rather risky thing to make a desirable state a havingness instead of a beingness. Because it means that you are going to go largely without that state for the duration of the game. If you make a game with the target of "becoming happy" then for sure you won't really be happy before the game is over. So if there is a state you really want now, make it a part of the beingness you need to have in order to play the game.

In this light, the accomplishment of the aforementioned state of comfortable presence becomes a much more simple matter. We just make it part of the required beingness and we include its maintenance in the ideal scene. We reject any datum that makes it into a games condition.

Notice that Hubbard did that as far as auditors and staff members were concerned. An auditor has to have his TRs in. In lieu of auditing the auditor we just set a standard for how he is supposed to be and we let him do TRs until he has got it. A staff member has no case, per policy. One has to make it part of one's beingness as a staff member that one has no case whatsoever. If one fails to behave accordingly one gets thrown in ethics and treated rudely until one flips back into the correct valence. The interesting thing is that this works quite well. People are quite able to behave in a caseless way if it is made necessary for them to do so.

What I am getting at is that there could be very simple methods for accomplishing what would otherwise be regarded as a very high state. If we regard the state as a required ideal scene and we aim for it directly without any games conditions, then it should become much easier. And if we regard the state as not an end goal but as a means to other ends, then it should be much easier to maintain.

This state, which I will call the Zero State for lack of a better term, is basically available to anyone at any time. However, there might be reasons for not being in it. These can be found a remedied and one can then become able to assume the state. It would be similar to an administrative action: If one finds that the existing scene is different from the ideal scene one would do an evaluation to find out what the major outnesses are and then you would follow a program to get back to the ideal scene again.

By regarding the Zero state as the normal, optimum mode of operation it puts the associated processing into a different light. Specific techniques would be methods of correcting outnesses in the existing scene so that one moves back to the optimum point from which one then can go about one's business. They would simply be adjustments, like the way that you would tune a car engine so that it runs more optimally. A well-tuned car is not an end in itself, it is a means to some other end.

We could also call the state Clear, and that might make a lot of things make sense in a new way. However, it will go against much existing thinking, so I won't go that far at this point.

 Technical Essay # 110 - Flemming Funch 26 November 1992

Drills

The most obvious and straightforward way of developing abilities and states is to drill them. It is so obvious that it is sometimes overlooked.

If you want "full" exterior perceptions then your time is probably best spent drilling exterior perceptions. You might wonder then why people go and do all kinds of other things and then expect to suddenly have full exterior perceptions as a result.

There is the old type of belief system that you need to do certain very exact and specific things in order to accomplish something else. Like, you can only be cause over your own mind if you have gone through the Clearing Course platens in the correct order and called them out until they didn't read any more. I am not saying that that isn't a useful thing to do. But if you connect it with the belief that you can't have the state you want before you have done exactly that action, you might be limiting yourself unnecessarily.

There are a whole bunch of beliefs like "you can only have X after you have done Y" built into the game of the bridge. You can not communicate freely unless you have done the processes on expanded grade zero. You can't get into advanced stuff before you've done the lower bridge. You can't know who you are unless you've handled all your entities. Etc.

Now, those Can't Haves are part of making the game work. They work very well in making it very desirable to go with the program and continue up the bridge. They aren't necessarily the best way of getting what you want.

If there is something you want to do, the most rational thing to do is to DO it. Most reasons for not doing it right now is either your own aberration or somebody else's trickery that you have bought.

Time is an illusion anyway. The time is Now. If there is something you want, then do it Now. Putting things in the future will tend to keep them in the future.

If you want to be a painter, then start painting. If you want to be a writer, then start writing. If you want better perceptions, then start perceiving. If you want to have fun, then start having fun.

Drills are the most direct route to doing something. A drill is basically that you do something on a gradient. You don't do some unrelated activity and hope that your wish comes true. You do components of the actual thing that you want.

In a drill you break down the desired activity into manageable component parts that you then exercise on a gradient. You don't search for reasons why the person shouldn't be able to do the activity, you assume that the person CAN do it. Any difficulty is treated by breaking down the activity into smaller parts, or by easing the gradient, or simply be continued repetition.

There is nothing wrong with locating and eradicating reasons why one can't do something. That is what clearing is mostly about. Or, we could say that negative clearing is about removing stuff that is in the way. There is also a positive direction that more directly leads to the desired ability or state.

As previously described it is important to have a balance between the negative and positive directions of clearing. One without the other would tend to run into a stuck flow. Traditionally the negative clearing is what has been overdone way out of balance resulting in a lack of havingness and a stuck flow leading towards even more obstacles. Positive stuff is needed to maintain a balance.

There probably isn't much point in calling the positive stuff "clearing". It is a type of processing alright, but it doesn't really clear stuff away you don't want, it puts stuff there that you DO want.

The positive direction includes stuff one can do in session, such as creative processing or objective processes. And it includes drills and exercises, like the ones done in connection with training. And it includes actually DOING something, the desired activity itself.

Overall we could call the positive stuff "creating" as compared to calling the negative stuff "clearing". They aren't quite comparable, but I guess it could work somehow. Then we would have Creative Processing leading to increased Creativity or Creativeness and Claritive Processing leading to increased Clarity or Clearness.

So, as mentioned, drills are a most direct way of moving towards a given ability or state. It would most naturally be the first choice. If you want to do something, then start doing it on a gradient. If particularly significant blocks come up you could possibly switch to some form of negative clearing, remove the blocks, and then go back to the drilling activity.

Any activity can be drilled. It is a matter of identifying some of its component parts and then practice them a little at a time.

Certain drills have traditionally been associated with clearing. Communication, control, changing emotions, intention, model session. The list could probably greatly be expanded to include many more desirable abilities.

Notice that part of the trick is that the activity done in a drill is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end. It is not a goal, it is steps towards an ideal scene. Therefore one can avoid having a Can't Have games condition about it and one can start doing the activity right away.

Therefore, if there is something you want to do and you would like to drill it, work out what you want it for, so it doesn't become the end in itself. For example, let's stay you want psychic perceptions. Don't make a game that might eventually result in that you get such perceptions, but that otherwise doesn't involve them. Make a game where you need those perceptions in order to play it well. You will then naturally exercise the abilities and get better at using them. And drilling gets to make much more sense.

TRs are effective because they aren't a goal in themselves. They are just a means to get to the point of auditing somebody well. We assume immediately that the person communicates, but we work at getting him better at communicating.

Any ability can be drilled. If we start with the idea that the person already has the ability somewhat, and we then practice component parts of the ability some more, that is the fastest way of getting there. We are moving the person on a gradient scale from his existing scene to a more ideal scene as far as the activity is concerned.

Technical Essay # 111 - Flemming Funch 29 November 1992

Unlimited Games

A game is traditionally defined as consisting of freedoms, barriers, and purposes. Within this basic concept there are many different types of games.

Some games have goals and rules. That is, there is an objective to the game that is specified in advance, and there are certain rules that you must follow. We can call that type of game a Limited Game. It is pretty much worked out in advance what kind of action will take place in the game and how it will end. The only creativity allowed is in which rules are applied when. That can be very interesting and entertaining of course, but it is indeed limited. Chess or monopoly are limited games.

We usually say that life is a game. However, the goal and the rules of this game are conspicuously missing. We could claim that that is an error, and that some big bad guys are hiding the rules from us. But that ain't necessarily so. Also, one can try to figure out what THE rules must be. Many people have given some good suggestions and have set themselves up as the Authority on what the game of life REALLY is about. The trouble is that any of those sets of rules doesn't seem to apply to everybody, and there isn't wide agreement on them.

The thing might also be that life is an example of an Unlimited Game. An unlimited game doesn't have a fixed goal and fixed rules for what you will be doing. It is more like a space within which you can play whatever games you feel like. In an unlimited game YOU make up the goals and the rules and you can change them along the way. So, any rules that you play by are fine. You can codify them as much as you like, but they don't really get to be more or less important than anybody else's rules.

What makes a game a game then? First there has to be some kind of space that it takes place in. Then we need to divide the contents of this playing field into two categories. There is the stuff that you control, that you know, that you are, that you can do, etc. And there is the stuff that you don't control, that you don't know, that you aren't, that you can't do, etc. The first category is the equivalent of freedom, the second category is the equivalent of barriers.

Having a playing field and a polarization between freedoms and barriers, the only thing missing to have a game is purposes. That is, you must feel like doing something. There must be some kind of a need, urge, desire, or wish, some kind of vector that you want to follow. And, voila, you have a game.

There must be both known and unknown factors to make a game. And if the game should be enjoyable these factors must be in balance. Optimum randomity is when there is a fun but challenging balance between what you control and what is outside your control. If you try to play a game where you control everything, well, then it isn't a game. If you try to play a game where there is nothing you can do about anything, that isn't a game either.

Often unlimited games are played on top of limited games. Like, if you are playing cards with somebody all the rules and the goal of the game might be set in stone in advance. But you might get a lot of enjoyment out of interacting with the other players, guessing at what they will do, teasing them, trying to mislead them, or to help them, and so forth. Those factors are not part of the limited game you are playing. You are adding them on top in order to enjoy the game playing.

Limited games usually aren't much fun in themselves. They become fun because of the unlimited games they get overlayed with. If everything about the game is known in advance it would be boring. Most people would solve that by making something unknown about it. The unknown part could be the other player's reactions, the time the game will take, etc.

Some games have opponents, some games don't. Even if there are several or many players they don't have to play against each other. Often games can be more fun by working out some win-win situation. Even if the apparency is that a limited win-lose game is being played, the players will usually add an unlimited game to it that is more win-win oriented. For example, if two teams are playing charades the limited game agreed-upon has certain rules and a goal. But, most likely, there will be an implicit agreement that the unlimited game played is to see how much fun everybody can have, or how creative one can be. The latter game is probably what motivates people to play at all.

Anybody who is here on the playing field of life has what it takes to play unlimited games. However, one can still put oneself in a no-game situation. If one claims to know everything or control everything, there is no game. If one claims to control nothing, there is no game. If one doesn't follow a purpose, there is no game. The thing is, one doesn't necessarily get assigned these things. It is up to you to decide to play. Any game will do, but you have to decide on your own to play or not to play.

The right to play or not play is one of the most basic rights within this setup. You can play or not play any game you want. Even if your game involves hiding that fact from yourself or others.

Often a limited game is used as the starting point of unlimited games. That is, you play a game with rules, but you have fun exploring new ways of doing things. However, to get people to play ONLY a limited game takes some element of trickery. If you want people to play only according to your rules and nothing else, then you have to lie to them. You have to hide the fact that there are unlimited games from them, and you have to somehow convince them that your limited game is the only way to go.

If a game ever becomes serious chances are that somebody tricked you into playing ONLY a limited game. Sometimes games start out as mostly unlimited and then degrade into a limited game over time.

Take the game of "The Bridge". It started out as a big unknown territory that it was very exciting to explore. It wasn't serious. At some point along the line people started to take it very seriously and you had to play according to certain limited rules and nothing else. To some degree that took the game out of the game. It was no longer an unlimited game, but just some rules you had to follow no matter what. Many people still were able to add their unlimited games to it and have fun, but for some people it became a deadly serious activity.

A fixed, limited game is however often better than a no-game situation. That is, people will rather play a serious, limited game than not playing any game at all. If you take away their limited game, they will get upset.

There is a kick-back from destroying games. If you destroy somebody's game you must give them a new one. The most decent thing to do would be to teach people to play unlimited games, so that they will never have a scarcity of game.

There can be a sort of a twilight zone of no-game between fixed, limited games and free, unlimited games. Let's say that some people are playing the game of "going up the bridge". If you point out to them how they have been tricked into playing that game you might destroy the game for them. They might realize that it was just a game and that it wasn't necessarily inherently more important than any other game. However, if you don't at the same time rehabilitate their ability to play unlimited games, you have done a big dis-service. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be far off the mark to call it a suppressive act. You destroy a game and you still keep it secret that one can make one's own at any time.

There is a lot of responsibility that goes with the job of making or unmaking games. Particularly if you set yourself up as an authority and you don't tell people about unlimited games.

Really no game is more important than any other. You can do whatever you feel like in this universe. However, that can be a rather depressing thought if you are used to thinking in terms of limited games. If you thought that there was something that was more important than anything else to do, and somebody suddenly shows you that that was a completely arbitrary purpose and isn't any more important than anything else, then you are left in a big confusion. If everything has no inherent importance, what the hell are you going to do. The answer is: whatever you feel like. But, it might take you some pain and suffering to get around to that. It might be an overwhelming amount of freedom at first.

You could keep playing other people's limited games of course. As long as there was a games maker around who tricked you into a new game whenever one was ended, then you could keep playing. However, if you wish to approach your more full potential as a being you need to get further than that. Sooner or later you would need to take responsibility for the fact that you are cause over your own game playing.

I haven't found any pat way of bridging people over from fixed, limited games into unlimited games. Most new clients I see are perfectly happy with the idea of playing unlimited games. The problem is the ones who have believed fully in one particular system with a goal and rules. In particular that is true for Scientologists or for anybody else who thought they had "The Solution" to life. For them it is often a disturbing thought that the universe might be wide open for them to play any game they wish.

Every being is basically a games maker. That doesn't have to be in conflict with the playing of games. But one might have to re-assume one's games making responsibility on a gradient so that one can maintain an optimum randomity

Technical Essay # 112 - Flemming Funch 2 December 1992

Burning Bridges

Hubbard said that the last thing one would do after finishing all possible auditing would be to audit out the subject of auditing itself. The reason for that is that auditing in itself installs some aberrations. We get the pc to agree that his case IS organized a certain way and it WILL respond to certain systematic techniques. He must keep certain ideas fairly fixed for the duration of his auditing.

The suggestions and fixed ideas installed for auditing purposes are presented together with a positive intention that the person will improve. That makes them probably less aberrative than if they had some evil intention behind them. However, exactly because they DO have a positive intention it makes it all the more difficult to get rid of them again. People might easily forget that they were just made-up rules invented to make auditing possible at all. People might think they are actually absolutely TRUE.

The reason we don't want to leave the fixed ideas of auditing in place forever is that they aren't ultimate truth. They were very workable truths that tricked the person into getting a lot of gains. But, if he assumes that they are absolute truth and he continues to operate in life through them, he will run into trouble. They will sooner or later limit the person's further development.

There have been a couple of attempts of devising a separate rundown that would run out auditing itself. Captain Bill made one that basically consisted of scanning one's auditing track and running it out. That is fine, but most likely all that the pc will find there is session out ruds and that kind of stuff, all within the agreements of auditing. It still doesn't run out auditing itself. That is quite visible in that many people continue doing auditing after that point.

However, it seems to me that there are a number of bridge actions that are inherently intended to audit themselves out. That is, the mechanism that the rundown is based on will eventually self-destruct. After that point it will no longer be possible to use the same mechanism in the same way. That should preferably correspond to the EP of the rundown or level.

This principle is somewhat of a secret. Hubbard made some references to it, but I am not sure even he fully realized it. Certainly he violated it on himself by running engram chains after going clear. Captain Bill made some mention of the principle, but again violated it.

Incident chains is one example of this. There is a certain theory that says that traumatic incidents are found in chains with the same flow and the same somatic. When we find the earliest incident and run it through, the whole chain will erase. That theory allows us to run Dianetics, particularly if both the auditor and the pc go along with it. It is a good theory, things work quite well using it.

Now, after running a certain volume of incident chains, certain things will begin to dawn on the pc. For one thing, he will realize that he doesn't have to be effect of this stuff. Obviously, since he can sit in a session and look at incidents and talk about them, and then the negative effects vanish, then he must be cause over them. Once he realizes this he is Clear. Several other things will usually happen around the same time. One is that the earlier similar mechanism will be broken up. It will no longer happen in the same way that an early incident will automatically cause certain reactions in a later incident. That will screw up the time track mechanism so that any existing time track mock-up is likely to erase. Also, the mechanisms that created the apparency that the case belongs to just one person, and things happen nice and orderly one flow at a time, etc. will be broken up. That is, the composite case will not be composite much longer.

There is a lot of mumbo-jumbo terminology that we usually have used to describe what is happening. The "reactive mind" has been "erased", the "composite case" has "broken up", the person is "cause over mental matter, energy, space, and time on the first dynamic", and so forth. That might make it easier to agree on what we are talking about, but also it will cover up what really is happening. They are just WORDS, and the phenomena they describe aren't necessarily THINGS, even though it might sound like it. I have never seen a "reactive mind" separated from everything else.

The mechanisms that make engram running in chains possible tend to break up after repeated use. That roughly corresponds to the turning point we call Clear.

Incident running is built on the idea that there is a time track one can move around on, all the incidents belonging to one person, earlier incidents being more basic than later incidents, points of overwhelm causing automatic reactions, etc. It would be a mistake to think that this is just the way it IS. It is a workable model that holds true for the duration of incident clearing.

All of these basics of incident clearing dissolve after sufficient application of the techniques. After that point we can no longer successfully run incident clearing the same way. As a matter of fact there can be dangerous side-effects connected with the continued use of the exact same techniques.

In other words, the agreement that the technique was based on self-destructed. That would be great, as long as somebody will notice it. If not, previously workable techniques suddenly become sources of screwed up cases.

David Mayo introduced the rule of "No Dianetics after Clear" after coming in touch with some of this. He missed most of the mechanics behind it though. A Clear could still run incidents. It is just that certain agreements have been erased. Earlier similar, one viewpoint, effect.

After the aforementioned turning point one ought to stay away from looking for "earlier similars". One could look for "similars" and take what one gets no matter what time stamp it has, that would work better.

After the turning point, one can no longer address any case from just one viewpoint. There are always more viewpoints and there is always a whole situation. One has to deal with these. It doesn't mean that it is always somebody else's case, it just means that we have to take all viewpoints into consideration.

After the turning point we can no longer address the pc as being effect. He is cause and things will resolve much better if we back him up rather than trying to convince him otherwise.

So, as long as we adjust for the changed rules of the game there is no problem. The pc ran incidents, he as-ised some mechanisms that were giving him trouble, and that weren't the truth anyway, and now he feels great. We used his existing aberrations as leverage to handle themselves with and now they have changed. But, if we start undoing the results we got by continuing to impose the same rules on the pc, then he is going to start feeling less great.

What if we start telling our sparkling new Clear that he has many years ago been overwhelmed and implanted with dead beings and the only way he can recover is by handling their case. Well, that violates most of the points above. We make him effect, we convince him that something in the past did this to him, we persuade him to handle it one viewpoint at a time, others' viewpoints, and from the position of being effect.

There is absolutely no problem in running all kinds of weird clustering implants and so forth. As long as we take the person's case state into consideration and we continue to progress from the point we have gotten to. I.e. for a clear, we would address stuff like that in PT, we would include all viewpoints, and we would address him as cause.

Now, this was just one example of how auditing rules self-destruct. Dianetics can be run as long as certain phenomena stay stable, but along the way they get erased, and then the rules change.

What we are looking at is that there can be a certain path, a bridge, that handles a certain case phenomena. We can create a theory and a sequence of steps that get a person through the case phenomena. But then, after we have done that, it is very likely that the bridge has been destroyed in the process. It might still work fine for other people, but for that person the bridge is no longer valid.

That in itself is quite desirable. If it didn't happen, the person would be stuck with a bridge he would use as a fixed solution to everything. If he doesn't notice that it happened he would still use it as a fixed solution, but it wouldn't work anymore.

Actually it ought to be the responsibility of bridge builders to make sure that there is a way of destroying the bridge after it has been used. There should be a method of burning the bridge, leaving no residue.

"Well, why not use techniques that are universally workable and never stop working?", you might say. Well, that is exactly why Hubbard suggested that auditing needs to be audited out. Once you convince people that a certain approach works they might grow so fond of it that it becomes a service fac for them. No fixed ideas are worth keeping forever, not even the ones that auditing is based on. All fixed principles are lies, not matter how good they look, or how well they work.

If you find yourself still having the mechanism that you handled on some rundown or level, then it is a bit suspicious. If the approach you used is still valid, then consider the possibility that either you aren't done, or you didn't notice that the rules changed.

Entity handling is another good example of the self-destruct mechanism. It is not just that you would need to "blow" all the entities you can find. No, the target would be the mechanism you have been agreeing to that have been giving you are problem with them. Maybe you didn't have a problem until the C/S told you that you had, but let us assume for a moment that you had some kind of issue with entities.

Entity handlings are based on the idea that beings can stick to you or get stuck in your space. Because you agree that they are there and that they are other beings, then we can apply all kinds of clever auditing techniques to them and we can handle them. The underlying agreement makes the auditing possible.

However, the underlying idea isn't really true. It might be a workable truth while you are being bothered by that case phenomenon, but it isn't absolutely true. Beings don't get stuck in each others' spaces, that is bullshit. What would be wrong with you would be that you have somehow bought such an idea. The target of an entity clearing rundown would be for that agreement to break up. After that point it should be meaningless to run entities. It is not particularly that you "handled them all", it is that you as-ised the basic idea and you realized that really the story is quite different.

Notice, this doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with running entities. It might be very appropriate. Just as there is nothing wrong with auditing engram chains, it might be perfectly fine to audit implanted entities. There will be a certain band of case where it seems appropriate. But once you have cleared the basic phenomenon it no longer makes sense and you wouldn't run it that way anymore.

Just as the Clear would have realized that, sure, there are past incidents, but he isn't really effect of them unless he thinks he is; in the same fashion the "entity clear" would have realized that, sure, there are other beings, but they aren't really in his space unless he thinks they are.

It is a great disservice to anybody doing clearing to hide this principle from them. It doesn't mean that we will stuff the clear cognition down their throat when they come in. But it should be widely known that the techniques used fit a certain model that approximates the case, and when the case changes the model will change too.

Since a lot of people have done a great deal of clearing, and have taken it much too seriously, there is good reason to put a little extra emphasis on the subject of burning bridges. See, if you still believe the theory of most of the rundowns you have done, chances are that you didn't fully handle the phenomena. On the other hand, if you see the bridges burning behind you, chances are that you are through with those phenomena.

Personally, I have spent quite some effort undoing many of the things I got to believe in and take very seriously while doing many bridges. That is actually one of the reasons I am writing these essays: to re-evaluate and discard stuck data.

The majority of the theories behind various bridge levels I no longer believe. I still apply them to my clients when appropriate, but I don't believe most of them myself. Likewise, most of the associated auditing actions can no longer work the same way on me. That doesn't mean that I am "caseless", I don't particularly believe in that either. All it means is that the considerations that kept my case in various well-defined shapes has been erased. My "case" just works differently now, and I just need some different principles to deal with it.

Now, the progress in all of this is that the principles and theories and considerations tend to become more and more true as we go along. They become closer and closer to our own true nature. That doesn't mean that any of the theories used along the way were wrong or shouldn't have been applied. No, on the contrary, using and then discarding certain agreements is a quite useful way of progressing.

OK, I personally tend to favor theories that hold true as long as possible, or that are picked from as high a level as possible. I find that high level truths work perfectly fine on anybody, as long as they are presented in clear language and without specific evaluation. The only problem is that it takes most of the urgency out of the game of "the bridge". If you address people as being cause over their own situation in present time, they get very keyed out and things resolve very quickly. However, they are not very likely to desire to struggle through a several year program to fix their case. But then again, maybe they don't really need to if they can already operate at cause.

A band of bridge is often a game we have to trick people to play. If we tell people about engrams, somatics, chains, prenatal incidents, the reactive mind, etc., and it somewhat matches their current situation and they then desire to get some auditing to change it, then we have started a game. When the game works well, we then help the person resolve a lot of stuff and he is much better off for that. If we hadn't convinced him that we knew about his problem, then maybe he wouldn't have wanted to play the game.

We trick people by providing a model of their mind that fits their reality. If a person feels he's had a rough life and he has unwanted reactions, then it is not very hard to sell the idea of Dianetics to him, and he might want to commit to an auditing program. But, if you just told him that he is full cause over it in present time, and he just needs to change his mind, then he might not have agreed and he might have walked away. However, that is actually what he is likely to cognite once he is done with his Dianetics program. At that point we would be most wise to present him with a model that then fits his reality, i.e. that he is cause. And then we would agree with him that of course one doesn't get affected by past incidents, and one doesn't have to react in any way one doesn't want to.

Any bridge that is sold to a client for expediency ought to be burned after use. Don't leave the guy believing it. Don't leave the guy confused because it no longer works. Admit that it no longer works, explain why, and provide a better bridge.

Any clearing practitioner who seriously believes all the theories of clearing will have a hard time taking people through this process. You should be able to believe the theory with the client as long as it is effective, and together change your minds when it is no longer appropriate.

The map is not the territory. You might introduce maps that make navigation easier. As long as they make navigation easier they are good maps. The moment they don't, make some better maps. Ritually burn the old map and introduce the new better map with much fanfare, if that suits the purpose.

We often tell kids very simplified versions of reality when they are learning about things. The characters in movies are always either "good guys" or "bad guys" to avoid too much explaining. We tell them that they must always do what their parents tell them. We let them believe in the "tooth fairy" if they want to. Now, when they are ready for it, they will get a more expanded story that is little closer to reality. We could argue about whether it is OK to treat kids that way, but generally speaking it works fairly well. They are supplied with a story that fits their reality and gradually improves it.

Clearing is based on an element of suggestion and trickery. If we really wanted to keep things super simple, we could just tell people to change their mind about whatever is bothering them. That is ultimately all they will do anyway. They will change their considerations about things. But that is not always a very impressive technique to use with new people. "I am depressed". "Well, just change your mind then." I have seen that work, but many people would like some more fancy sounding theories before they agree to change their mind.

It is not bad that there is suggestion and trickery in clearing. It is simply one of the tools. The worst you can do is to hide it from the practitioners. If the practitioner doesn't know that the theories are just ideas, then he will be unwilling to let his clients change their minds about them. What we really want is that the practitioner is helping the clients change their minds as quickly and thoroughly as possible. We don't want them to stay the same, that is what is wrong with them.

Now there can be a little bit of a problem in tricking people and then admitting the trickery afterwards. Like, if you convince a person that new research has shown that depression is caused by lack of circulation in the left index finger,. You get him to believe the theory, you gently massage his left index finger, and voila, his depression is gone. If he believed the theory thoroughly enough he could then in the future cure his depression whenever it appears by massaging his finger. That is hypnosis basically, but it might work for a long time. But what if we let him in on the secret. There was no such research finding, it was just something we made up. Well, most likely his depression would come back even worse than before, and no matter what he did to his left index finger nothing would help.

Luckily there is a key basic of clearing that make what we do a bit different. People are basically cause. We clear them towards being more cause. If you can get somebody to realize that THEY are cause, then the controls are in their hands, no matter how we got them there. In that context, the only really ethical way of tricking people is tricking them into being more cause.

A bridge or a step on a bridge consists of a theory and a system of trickery that should lead the person towards being cause in a certain area. Once the person is cause we can and should let him in on any of the trickery that was used. We should allow him to realize that the bridge served its use and can now be burned behind him.

Fully crossing and then burning the bridges behind you will allow you to arrive at new plateaus and see things in new and different ways. You can't go back the same way anyway. If you need a new bridge you can much better make one if you don't try to take the old one with you. The bridge that led from A to B is not likely to lead from B to C. The best idea is to clear the fixed A-to-B solution out of the calculator and start looking at what it actually takes to get from B to C.