Confessions of a TRV Dropout

High Times in the Land of the Lost.
by Author X

   Yes, OK, I admit it. I'm a TRV dropout. I came, I saw, I bought the t-shirt, and I went home. Surprisingly, this is not an altogether uncommon occurrence in the realm of Remote Viewing. I was given the keys to the kingdom, and after turning them slowly over in my hands, feeling their weight and heft, the smoothness of the metal, and the responsibility therein, I smiled, closed my hands around them, and gently put them back on the table. Some people may scream, "you fool! You gave it up!" Others will nod their heads slowly and smirk, knowing full well that feeling that came to me as I walked away from that power. And yes, it is power. It was Sir Francis Bacon who said, in Meditationes Sacræ, De Hæresibus, "Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est," (or, "Knowledge is Power"). Make no bones about it: the ability to know anything is the power to control anything.

   For a time I had believed that people came to Remote Viewing because they were, in a sense, a little mentally skewed. I know I was, after all, who believes in ghosts and aliens and paranormal abilities? According to a CBS News poll taken in 2002, only 16% of those asked said they had ever experienced telepathy or ESP. If we were to reduce those numbers by those attributing chance to some kind of paranormal ability, the number of those with believed, true experiences would be very low indeed. To those others, what would we say? That you can, in fact, experience psychic ability anytime you choose? Even that you have the power right now, and always have had it? It's hard to see this as anything other than self-delusion, if you follow the pack. But then before the Wright Brother's flight in 1903, the very notion of human beings flying through the air would have seemed incredibly preposterous. Is it truly only those who are detached from the well-established road of mental thought, those unattached or unconcerned with common paradigms, that are able to see beyond the ordinary, everyday expectations and soar forward onto paths nobody had ever conceived of before? That was the easiest explanation I had for quite some time.

Walking Towards the Light

   Eventually, as the ranks of the Technical Remote Viewers grew, and I came to know more and more individuals who had taken that first fateful push into the air of the unknown, I saw what truly motivated these individuals. I hadn't even known myself why I came to Remote Viewing, I only knew that this was something I had to know, something I had to learn, no matter what. Although certainly this same motivation must be at play with the other early adopters (and believe me, we are still early into the life of this technology), nothing had yet given me any clue as to what the source of this strong motivation was. All I could do was to sit back, listen, and learn from their stories as we all got to know each other better, connected by our desire to learn and our appetites for the knowledge gathered by each other's sessions.

   As I listened, what I noticed in each of the Remote Viewers was a desire, a deep-set and powerful urge. This urge pushed them all on, including myself, to go past the borders of what we knew was normal and ordinary and (according to our existing paradigms) safe. What was this urge? For each person the cause was different. The results were always the same, but the cause could be well-hidden. Nonetheless, you always knew it was there. The cause, quite simply, was a gnawing, unanswered question--a gross uncertainty in life. For some, it may have been a UFO experience. For others, it may have been the loss of a loved one, or a traumatic event in their life. And for yet more, it could be as simple as the need to find meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. But each of them, and all of them, had a need to discover something about themselves. A need to know what the answer was, the solution to the problem that itched and clawed at them inside. It was this, and only this, which could allow so many to make the mental leap into new patterns of thought, and the belief that something different could make them better.

   It became almost a joke in the early circles of Technical Remote Viewers, after the initial training materials had come out and finally enabled more than a handful of people each year to be trained in the skill, that anyone who seriously put in their time and took the effort to learn to Remote View, would eventually disappear from the group and stop (to our knowledge, anyway) practicing and learning. None of us knew yet really why we had come to learn this technology or what was happening to some of those who had been practicing it for a while. Was it something sinister, like a change in the brain caused by repeated exposure to the Matrix, like depicted in some ways in recent films? Could it be something different, like a government plot? Probably not, we all thought. But it was odd regardless. And none of us had thought to use the skill against itself at the time.

Around the Table in 80 Days

   What happened, I finally realized not that long ago was that these people, initially brought into the fold of knowledge by those same incredible urges to know and to solve a problem, at last found their own personal answers. The skill had shown them what they needed to know, or forced them to confront the reality that they never really wanted to know the answer. Once that burning urge was ultimately satisfied, their zeal and thrust into the pool of knowledge began to fade, and they went on with their lives.

   And for some, the slowdown and stoppage comes from outside forces. They start becoming afraid of their newfound power. Suddenly those protection mechanisms placed in their lives, the trust and security of not knowing what is truly around you, start falling away. When you're scared of the dark, do you really want to know what is in the dark? Some don't trust that they are supposed to know, that the information is too good, too accurate, and that it must all be a trick. Perhaps this is demon's work, or we're breaking the laws of nature. Oddly though, I am sure the first organized use of language probably seemed unnatural and demonic at the time, and I am sure what we see today as modern medical science must seem that way also. Putting a parachute on your back and training yourself to run faster probably isn't exactly the most natural thing either, but we still strive to do it. To become better than we thought we could be. Some people are just not capable of being unsure of themselves and their world, and learning Remote Viewing only exacerbates that.

   In a way it may seem somewhat trite and uninteresting to see that these people's questions had been answered or their internal limits reached, and that was all that was required for them to continue on in their lives, sans psychic functioning. But Joni Dourif brought up an interesting point recently on the Technical Remote Viewer's list about a woman who had spent an enormous amount of energy and time looking for the answer to a burning question. There was no other skill, no other seer, any other way for her to know what she needed to know. Remote Viewing solved that problem that nothing else in this talented person's repertoire could solve. Using TRV for just 45 minutes produced more results than a small army of seers, fortune tellers, investigators, research books, and immeasurable hours of self-introspection could offer. That alone speaks a truth so profound that it is hard to put into words. Knowledge is power, and there is no more pure power than that of direct knowledge.

   But let's talk about me for a bit. Why did I come, take the tour, buy the t-shirt, and leave?

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

   I too had a great and powerful urge to know. I didn't know what at the time, but I knew that this skill was something I absolutely had to have. Not to answer silly trivia questions or to find cave shelters or for any other reason other than my own personal fulfillment. I had a void that needed to be filled, bad. Eventually I learned the skill. I became a Remote Viewer, even if I puttered and stuttered along the way. The learning became the focus point, and the initial motivating question for a time took the back seat while I gathered the skills and knowledge I would need to make my way back to it.

   I went through the stages of Remote Viewing training. Not just the actual practical stages (1 through 6), but the stages of disbelief, fear, excitement, realization it works, and then trust. That trust in yourself, in your skill with pen and paper, is a powerful thing. All doors are opened to you then. Things that you wanted to know, things you didn't want to know, and many, many things you never knew you could know. (The latter usually brought about by blind targets given to you by people with very weird ideas.)

   For a while it was a total blast. Things were new, interesting, powerful. Like a child with a new flamethrower, there was nothing I could find that I didn't think wouldn't catch fire. Everything was different, a potential adventure. And I came to accept that.

   Ultimately though, having no limits becomes very limiting. If you can go anywhere, where do you go? Where is the challenge, the uncertainty, the great mysteries of life and the daring intuition that history has worshipped as genius for so long? How boring can it be if you simply can pick up that pen and just directly retrieve the answer without pain, risk, and daring? For me, it stopped being fun and exhilarating. It was always the same. Question and answer. Exposition and unraveling. Sometimes, it's a lot more fun to not know and to speculate on possibilities. I guess that would be the philosopher in me.

You Can't Handle the Truth

   My session work slowed down and I started engaging in things that I didn't know, that I could poke around in and try out things and fail and see why they worked that way, instead of being led right to the answer. Eventually, I started saying to people that if you gave me the choice between a video game and a TRV session on God, I would have picked up the game controller. Is that cynicism, or maybe just odd comfort in knowing that some mysteries don't have to be solved. My original burning need sated, I found I didn't need to continue pulling down the window shades of reality. Is that boring or even silly? Perhaps it is.

   Of those I find who come to learn Remote Viewing and stick with it, doing session after session, day after day, plugging away at one mystery after another, they do it I think for the sheer joy of it. They don't have the burning desire to know. For them, it was never a necessary grasp at something that had eluded them for so long. It was truly a tool, they took the technology at face value and applied it in the way it was originally designed to work, at investigations. For those that continue on in their learning and studies, the very act of gathering information and breaking those codes and secrets in life is what rewards them so much. I envy them in many ways, because that requires an incredible amount of diligence, patience, and above all, self-security and confidence, to know that wherever the adventure takes you, there will still be more left to fulfill you.

   So the question remains. Where are you? Are you a dropout or a mind warrior? There is really no shame in either, any more than asking someone if they are a chef or a painter. Certainly you could argue the chef has more practical skills than the painter, but they each follow what makes them happy, what fulfills their life, and most importantly, they share that skill with others. If we were all TRV'ers, all chefs, or all painters, the world would be a very boring place. Some of us are simply not geared for the challenges that lay ahead of all knowledge and the responsibilities that accompany it. Those of us who aren't, share the other talents that make us who we are instead. Without each piece, there is no whole.

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

   Personally, I intend to jump back onto the boat. Yes, it is hard, challenging work, and I still don't have any new burning questions to ask. But I see now that the true adventure is in the doing, not the answers that come up but in the finding out. I don't think knowing where Noah's Ark is buried, if it exists, would rock my personal universe too much, but the very act of seeking it out, of investigating it, of coming to know what the ark is and what the emotions and situations surrounding it are, is thrilling. Any historian would tell you, it isn't what event happened in the past that is interesting, it is why that event happened. Everything has a story, and oftentimes those stories are lost forever. We know that Orville and Wilbur Wright flew a small plane, but what were they feeling then? Did they think their plane would work? It can be fascinating to not just look at the event, but at everything around it, to really be there in as much as sense as we can be. It's those adventures that I look forward to now, not the base and raw requirement of dry knowledge.

   For those who are still milling about their lives, taking out that t-shirt from their mental closet once in a while, looking at it wistfully and remembering what fun it was to stand on that mental lookout point and gaze in wonderment at the gigantic sea of knowledge laid before them, I would suggest looking at what exists under that sea instead, and to take on more adventure with me. Let's not look at if aliens exist, but what they do each day, what makes them happy, and what kind of gasoline goes into a flying saucer. In a way, that's the real knowledge. Not just anyone can answer those kinds of questions.

   For those who haven't gotten the t-shirt yet, you have a lot of thinking to do. Is this something you really want? Do you know what having the skill entails, and do you truly need to have the adventure? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Either way, you have your own story and skills to share.

   And for those of you who continue to plug away at the mysteries each and every day, I can only salute you, and say look out, because that t-shirt still fits.

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