It's always struck me as a great shame that magicians can spend a great amount of time and effort building up an independent entity (aka 'servitor' or 'thoughtform') only to suddenly realise that they designed it wrong or have been using it wrong (giving it 'bad habits' if you like) and have to destroy it. It's obvious that the entity has some level of power otherwise it wouldn't be able to cause any trouble. And to throw all that away, what a waste!
One problem comes down to the use of an 'energy' paradigm, where the entity begins to draw increasing amounts of vitality from the magician. Although there is no need to deliberately create an entity that needs 're-charging', the concept can be useful in building entities that can ultimately become quite powerful and still remain safe.
The key is 'focus'. The concepts of 'positive reinforcement' and 'contract labour' are definitely the way to go, not as a way of 'control' but more as a way of setting a direction. Whenever an entity does a good job you 're-charge' it (not because it needs it but as a token of thanks) and congratulate it on the things that it did well. In this way you give it a focus on doing a job well, a direction to travel in where the destination is total success.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. When will I power / charge the entity?
2. What would need to happen in order for me to charge the entity more often?
Then consider the case of the well-meaning magician who creates a 'healing spirit' as follows.
1. When will I power / charge the entity?
I charge the entity when I'm ill and task it to restore health.
Well that sounds okay. But:
2. What would need to happen in order for me to charge the entity more often?
I'd need to be ill more often.
That gives us a healing entity that, if it gets 'out of control', may make you ill more often! Oops. This, I think, is a problem endemic to the 'remedial' approach that focuses almost exclusively on ways to fix a broken world, rather than ways to make a world that doesn't need fixing.
How about:
1. When will I power / charge the entity?
When I decide that during the last day / week / month I've been the epitome
of total health!
2. What would need to happen in order for me to charge the entity more often?
I'd need to feel amazing more often!
Where will this take us? What would happen if these types of entity went out of control? I don't know. Just how healthy do you think you can really feel? How much happiness can your body take? How easily do you think you can make the very most of your life here?
This idea of 'training' an entity could be really useful: if you get the original wording a bit wrong or there are unfortunate connotations that you didn't realise at first then these can be removed: a bit like 'in-flight course correction'. The continued evolution of the entity can also be supervised.
My own experience has been that 'fire and forget' entities operate only as well as their tasks were defined clearly in the initial creation. Sometimes they disappear off into the ether. This may well indicate that often I'm not entirely clear in my own head what I want or how I intend to get it. I'd like to think that my goal planning is impeccable but sometimes these entities need a bit of 'course correction' when in-flight. Always the focus of the re-affirming ritual is upon what they've done right and what else right they can be doing.
Remember though that this is a two-way street. You give the entity feedback as to how it's going, but more importantly the amount and type of feedback you need to give the entity is a comment to you about your own skills in goal planning and communication. It gives you an insight into how well (or not) you're taking the outside world, putting it into your head and then bringing the information back out again with minimal distortions.
I suppose the issue of control and 'limits' is a personal one:
I'm interested in the idea of an entity that is ultimately intended to go 'safely out of control'. When (if?) I am sure that it has learnt what it needs and how it should go about its business then the idea is that I instruct the entity how to charge itself from a 'closed loop'. Ie It is able to draw its power from the changes it causes. These changes are initially in my self and life and then later perhaps in the world in general. The idea is that this could 'super-charge' the entity, and because I am an integral part of the closed loop then the servitor should take me along with it.
This could be like lighting the fuse on a rocket and trying to step back but suddenly realising that you're in the rocket.
I have also been thinking about the problem that some people have of servitors not wanting to be 're-absorbed'. For starters if the servitor had been 'trained' correctly I'd say there was no need to re-absorb it. But anyway I was wondering: many people are brought up to identify with their personality, right? Generally only people who have had experience of changing themselves realise that they own a personality - they don't consist of a personality. I was thinking that if someone who identifies with their personality creates a servitor, then the servitor would likely inherit a tendency to identify with it's own name and function and would think that re-absorption (the loss of it's independent name and function) would basically mean death, so of course it would resist this.
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Source: Phobos Lab 3 Document |
Intercepted: Saturday, 15th of April |
When I first started this project I had been reading a lot about Self-Image and the NLP Swish Pattern. I built a picture of myself with 'a feeling of confidence' (this basically was a 'desired result' image). This picture was dissociated and had no context. I then enhanced this image by boosting the submodalities of the picture. I also explored times in the past where I displayed these qualities and 'played' with the feelings, making them into colours and visual effects that I could integrate into the picture.
So this image was basically working like a visual anchor.
I also felt 'drawn' to the picture which is important in order to
motivate the subconscious to move towards it.
Whenever I concentrated on it I would get feelings of confidence.
My behaviour also began to change in line with the image,
becoming more social and outgoing.
The problem was that I needed to concentrate on it to get the benefit, and the feelings often 'drained away' shortly after I stopped concentration. I also sometimes found myself trying to second-guess what my new behaviours should be, which interfered with the effect.
What I needed was a way to get the subconscious to trigger the picture and for the feelings and behaviours to flow from the subconscious genius whenever required - without the conscious mind having to worry or even know about it. (And to stop it getting in the way also.)
I picked 5 locations on the way to the Lab canteen and did the Swish Pattern from what I would see at those locations to the target self-image. That was a pretty intense walk. I was walking along and then suddenly *BAMM* I felt bloody amazing. Then whoosh the feeling fell away then *BAMM* I'm back in charge again, and so on.
I also spend time a few times a week concentrating on the image, playing with the feelings, making them into an aura around me and so on.
I write down the 'objective' of this image and rewrite it frequently.
I've also added in some supporting 'movies' that have a context to them. The idea is that the context acts as a trigger and the effect (the feelings and behaviour) stays for as long as the context stays. I've had some good results from doing this in the past, where you can trigger an 'in the zone' experience, so I should get the same calibre of results this time. Basically I wrote down what I did 'on a good day' and used these situations as the contexts. At the moment only the least useful contexts have been showing results, but that's better than nothing I guess.
I've certainly had results from this kind of approach: the challenge is being able to turn the results into clear and useful successes.
