A great natural resource
by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
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What does it mean, to us and to you, that so remarkable a variety of authors and programs have written about or incorporated Image Streaming into their own work? All of these had and have a full head of steam on their own excellent and very special programs and methods. Each was so struck by the effects and benefits and nature of Image Streaming that they incorporated it into their own great work.
In addition to the full description of Image Streaming on this website, accounts of and instructions for Image Streaming are also found at a number of other sites and locations on the Web.
Image Streaming consists of describing aloud, in as much detail as possible, to a live listener or an audience, or to a tape recorder as potential audience — while observing the ongoing stream of sensory imagery of all kinds, which stream constitutes by far the greater part of our thinking. That ongoing stream is the source of virtually all our understanding and of all our creativity.
Significance of Image Streaming
Less than two percent of our brains is involved in conscious thinking and experiencing.
This two percent associates — we consciously think — in words. I say “sky” and you think or say “blue”; I say “table” and your response is likely to be “cloth” or “leg.” Most of the time when you try considering to puzzle out some concern or question, you usually subvocalize in words.
In contrast, some eighty to ninety percent of your brain associates in sensory images instead — forty to forty-five times more of your brain by volume than the parts of your brain which do your conscious, verbal thinking.
Where, then, is the greater part of your intelligence to be found? — in that two percent or in that eighty-plus percent?
Not only by the amount of brain involved. Our conscious verbal brain is trained down by the speed of the language we speak, to go much slower and more ploddingly compared with the rest of our brain. Most of the rest of our cerebral cortex, topmost region of our brain, communicates point-to-point some ten thousand times faster than do the conscious verbal parts. The main, limbic, brain, associates and communicates some ten thousand times faster than does most of the cortex — ten thousand times ten thousand — ten MILLION — times faster than does your conscious verbal mind.
Even more important, only a tiny part of our memory and experience are directly accessible to conscious remembering and use — and THAT access only by heavily edited executive summaries. Most of us expend huge effort and attention to trying to store in more highly retrievable form certain portions of experience (both in and out of school), and usually “lose” or “forget” most of that anyway.
In contrast, all or very nearly all of the experiences we’ve ever had, conscious or unconscious, are still in our living memory, highly accessible to our unconscious sorting and associating (and still coloring our thoughts, perceptions and choices even though we are consciously unaware of them).
Everything cited to this point is well-known, verifiable fact, long familiar to science after centuries of disciplined research into mind and brain. Also widely acknowledged these past several decades is the finding and observation that apparently every conscious thought and perception and action is preceded by relevant unconscious — “pre-conscious” — brain functions.
Your Reflexive Beyond-Conscious Sorter
What follows from all of this, of even greater importance, which even a little bit of formal research could readily verify if ever performed or allowed to be performed, is a reflexive sorting process, associating throughout our huge “unconscious” data-base.
We call this “unconscious,” but the “un-” part of that refers only to the “conscious” part of us! The part of mind and brain involved in this instantaneous reflexive sorting and associating is anything but “unconscious.” More sensibly, we in Project Renaissance have taken to calling this the “Beyond-Conscious Mind.”
On the face of it, this ongoing stream of sensory-image associations is thousands of times richer, perhaps tens of millions of times richer a process than is our conscious thinking and experiencing.
— And it is there all the time, running freely without conscious effort on our part: like breathing and heartbeat — the rich, image-sorting streambeats of your mind.
Then and Now
We all enjoyed full free use of this ongoing process while we were infants or small children. It was drilled out of us, it was forced to “move underground” under a barrage of instructions to pay visibly conscious attention to whatever adult was talking to us or teaching (“eyes front! Look at me when….”) and fixated on specific things going on (“Keep your eye on the ball!”) — concentrating on these things and treating all our hundreds of sidebands of thought and perception as merely irrelevant and distracting.
Image Streaming is, as of this writing, the readiest and most sensitive way we have to access some small part of this infinitely rich ongoing orchestra of sensory thoughts, associations and perceptions.
Who Can Image Stream?
Virtually everyone can Image Stream. Over the years, of the over ten thousand people with whom we’ve had some relevant contact, only three persons were unable. Two of these I’m pretty sure could have been gotten to “see their own images,” given a little special work. Yet, to thirty to forty percent of the American public, the very idea of actually seeing your own images the way you are seeing these words or any other objective object, seems completely strange if not impossible. (This writer was once numbered among that thirty to forty percent.)
Most of the rest of us are so used to picturing things in our mind’s eye consciously that the idea that some don’t have this experience comes as a surprise, even in these later days when seemingly so little can surprise us.
Nearly everyone who could not, can once they have seen it demonstrated (see Easy, Direct Way to Teach ImageStreaming to Entire Groups).
We have also freely published twenty-four “back-up” procedures to ensure that even deeply inveterate non-seers can start “getting” mind-pictures and begin to Image Stream.
Image Streaming is so easy, so natural a process, that most people teach themselves from the instructions posted here under Image Streaming. It is so easy and natural a process that in professionally taught groups, the simple method outlined in Easy, Direct Way to Teach ImageStreaming to Entire Groups suffices to ensure that everyone in the group of twenty, thirty, forty, even one hundred, learns (re-learns!) the skill readily.
In perhaps one group in five, one person — sometimes with his partner, for whom the inability was modelled — may need help from the back-up procedures. You may wish to carry with you a print-out copy of those back-up procedures the first time or so you take a group into Image Streaming, just to heighten your confidence.
Here, now, are the two versions of the detailed steps for group instruction:
- Easy, Direct Way to Teach Image Streaming to Entire Groups
- The Original Group Method for Teaching Image Streaming
Conclusion
Bottom line — our conscious mind works with only the tiniest fraction of our brain and mental resources. Most of our mind and brain associates in sensory images, not consciously and not in words, but nonetheless is the source of our understanding and our creativity in that, very occasionally, an insight gets through into our conscious mind.
The insight — the understanding — the answer — the apparent solution — is reflexively sorted out and on exhibit in our Beyond-Conscious mind just about instantaneously, as communications in these sensory regions of brain and mind are so much more rapid than they are within our word-based, conscious regions trained down as they are to the speed of the language we speak.
Though far from infallible, the insights and answers arrived at through the sensory mind appear to be much more accurate and comprehensive than those arrived at through conscious deliberative process, because both their speed and the great breadth of the data-base from which they derive take far more into account than do our consciously derived answers.
Image Streaming is presently the most sensitive and rich process by means of which to tap into this beyond-conscious associative process, whether for general insight or in order to gain answers. More and more programs and authors are finding our Image Streaming process valuable to their own efforts.
More and more people around the world want to learn and teach Image Streaming — some are doing so from a variety of levels of expertise and information.
We actually wish to encourage this process, rather than to exploit it or to try to put up proprietary and security barriers around it, because this simple Image Streaming and the phenomena it represents are one of the great natural resources of the human race, everyone’s birthright.
I am freely and openly publishing these details on how to teach it to a group, because when you do so I want you to get it right!
When you do so, please make printouts of this article — in its entirety, including the copyright notice below — freely available to your participants. (We will also very much welcome translations of the whole of this piece into local languages, and being advised of them so we can support your good work in our website.)
We encourage you to train, as best you can, or to co-explore with others in groups, not only Image Streaming but various other procedures we’ve published freely on the Web or in books.
Only professionally certified trainers from Project Renaissance, however, have our guaranteed quality control. No one without this qualified certification may represent themselves as a Project Renaissance trainer nor their efforts as the Project Renaissance program (only as resources from the Project Renaissance program), but you are welcome and encouraged to train as best you can our freely published resources.
Easy, Direct Way to Teach Image Streaming to Entire Groups
Once you’ve learned and practiced a little Image Streaming for yourself, it will be this simple to teach it to any sized group of people, even to hundreds at a time, should you enjoy such an occasion….
Make sure no one is going to have to potty-break for the next half hour, and get group agreement that no one will strand his partner once the process is under way. Introduce the sound of a chime or waterglass as an agreed signal to pause in talking even while staying in the process, so additional instructions can be heard when the time comes….. (see “Waterglass Rules” in Dynamic Format).
Modelling #1: After a brief explanation, demonstrate a half-minute or so of Image Streaming, aloud to your group. Then say,
“Now each of you please close eyes and as soon as YOU get your own image or images, different from mine, please hold up your hand and keep it held up. Thank you.” As the first few hands go up, say in low but audible voice things like “Good. Thank you. If more than half of us…. Good. Very good….” In less than 90 seconds you should find a majority of hands up. Then say,
“Thank you, excellent, please keep your hands up. Please everyone who didn’t get an image of some sort, who didn’t get their hand up, please make sure you partner with someone who did. Please keep those hands up — will everyone now pull into pairs, everyone partnered with someone else? At least one member of each pair having imaged and gotten their hand up? Thank you — “
Modelling #2: (As that sorts out and everyone is settled into pairs awaiting your instructions, simply say to them:) “Thank you. Those of you who got images before, the ones who held up your hands — will you go in for more and different images now, and this time tell them in rich detail to your partner while you are observing them? Please look at your own ongoing images once again, and describe them in some detail to your partner, beginning now….”
— As easily as that. Every pair should have a member Image Streaming. You might want to stroll around among your pairs to make sure everyone is in the Image Streaming process and not having difficulties (don’t be too swift to intervene!), and make sure that it’s describing the Image Stream and not someone sitting back and talking about something else entirely. Once it’s clear that everyone is in process, you can help the energies of the room by doing a little quiet semi-streaming of your own, or, if your audience was odd-numbered, picking up the spare member to do Image Streaming with.
After five to ten minutes, gently sound chime or waterglass and quietly say, “As easily as that, now let’s reverse roles, the Image Streamer now becomes the Listener and the previous Listener becomes the new Image Streamer. New Image Streamer, please look at your own images and describe these in rich detail to your partner, beginning now…..”
Having had your modelling of the process to go by, and then the partner’s modelling of that process, and with other examples going on all around them, it’s the most natural thing in the world for previously non-imaging participants to slip in to see their own images and start to describing them. (Again you might stroll among your partnered participants to make sure no one needs further help or encouragement.) After the new Image Streamer has had six to ten minutes’ experience into the process, then you can gently sound chime or waterglass and gently say:
“Carry on, the current Image Streamer continuing to Image Stream to your partner, but the Listener now also become Image Streamer and Image Streaming to you, both of you running your own images at the same time but in your describing as one of you has to pause for breath, the other comes in describing and when he or she has to pause for breath, you come in again with some more describing, of your own ongoing respective Image Streams. Both of you resume Image Streaming now….”
(Another stroll among your participants, as before, mainly as an encouraging silent presence this time, since everyone by now will have had some Image Streaming experience.) You can let this phase go anywhere from five to fifteen minutes — the longer they are in process, the greater the benefits; but you don’t want things to get drowsy, humdrum or restless, so at some opportune lull in the buzz-murmur of everyone’s Image Streaming, softly sound the chime or waterglass, gently saying something like, “Gently return your full and refreshed awareness to here and now…. Notice how clear everything seems as you come fully alert, fully refreshed, feeling very good.”
It’s a good idea to have people then change partners and de-brief to their new partners everything they experienced, in a condensed 2-3 minutes each.
For Personally Accurate Codes and Methods:
Keep Image Streams Independent
In our own workshops we start out encouraging people to go with their own imagery, and to just be present so their partner has someone to describe their imagery to. Often the imagery tracks remain different. Often partners enter each other’s experiences, reacting to features in the other’s experience even before the other gets around to mentioning it. Sometimes experiences are the same with someone else well across the room and seemingly out of hearing, for whatever the reason.
Mostly, though, because each Image Streamer is “receiving” their own message or answers in their own symbolic code, we encourage people to stay with their own Image Streams and to be merely present for their partner to describe to, rather than interacting with their partner’s stream. This makes for much more accurate “messages” and answers to questions. Each person’s own inner imagery and symbolic code has been differentiated by a lifetime of experience from that of his partner. A bridge or a flagpole in my Image Stream…
There’s the cautionary tale about the patient who had a problem, went in to his shrink with it and got it interpreted, and came out with two problems. It’s much better for Image Streaming if someone interprets only his own imagery. Even if the interpretation happens to be right, the interpreter stands between the person and access to that person’s own inner resources — which access is usually much more valuable than is any particular answer as such. One of our few rules in Image Streaming is, “thou shalt not interpret for thy partner, only for thyself.”
So for Image Streaming, keep to your own Image Stream and pursue only your own interpretation. In quicker processes like High Thinktank, answers do often seem to be given in the asker’s code as frequently as in the answerer’s, so there the images are fair game for anyone’s interpreting. But in Image Streaming we strongly recommend that only the person who had the experience may interpret it.
Likewise, the sometimes remarkable tendency for these imagery streams to pick up from one another and become shared experiences between individual Image Streamers does have some use, especially in investigating complex possible inventions as in the Beachhead procedure.
Even with that procedure we normally want everyone to have their own undistorted experience, but we’ve found some ways to take teams of varied specialists in to share a common experience in which each can recover detail in terms of their own specialty and expertise, where an invention is more complex than can be readily understood by one single observer. Instructions how to perform this specialized group Beachhead invention-making procedure are included free on this website and also found in later chapters of my book, Discovering The Obvious.
Since 1988 I have taught hundreds of groups with this simple method. I’ve yet to run into any group, a majority of whose members didn’t get their hands up in that first step after the first modelling, with pretty smooth sailing from that point.
If you have a continuing group, any other exploration or skill or training you undertake will go much more easily and effectively for having had this experience. That is why so many authors and programs have been including Image Streaming in with what they are doing.
I am publishing this information freely here because if Image Streaming should be part of your program (and it probably is), it might as well be done right. Further, I do not regard Image Streaming as somehow our own property by right of discovery; it’s a hugely significant natural resource that belongs to all of us. You are welcome to use it.
Moreoever, there are people in every part of the world, and in nearly every country, who want to work with Image Streaming and related resources but who don’t have the means to come to America for training. If our publishing this freely online can satisfy their need, they can begin helping a great many of their fellow-countrymen. And we have many other highly significant procedures for our own certified trainers to teach, in our professionally conducted workshops in as yet a few locations around the world…
The Original Group Method for Teaching Image Streaming
The much preferred, “easy, direct” group method (above) was first published in my book, Beyond Teaching And Learning.
The method which follows below was the original group training method which I used during 1973 to 1988, and which was published in fullest detail in my book, A Method For Personal Growth And Development.
I’m republishing a version of it here because it makes a good “fallback” Plan B if you ever encounter a group, a majority of whose members didn’t get their hands up as imagers in that first 90 seconds or so. In hundreds of groups since 1988, I’ve never encountered such a group, but we did have this method still available as a fallback, so it’s only fair that you also have that as a resource, just in case.
The earliest group-teaching form for Image Streaming was a version of the Helper Technique, spelled out in the present version of Image Streaming as a group experience, step by step much the same way that most of the procedures listed in CPS Techniques, such as Over-the-Wall are step-by-step instructions read aloud to groups — to people paired/partnered within these groups, that is, because within each pair, they report back to each other their ongoing step-by-step experiences.
In the instance of the “Helper” version of Image Streaming, though, one member of each pair is set up as the Imager and one is the Spotter. The Imager is instructed not to look for images, just pick up on them when they come and report them in detail. Meanwhile he simply works on making his breathing feel good, smooth and continuous (with no pauses between breathing in and breathing out).
The Spotter, meanwhile, looks for such pauses in Imager’s breathing (we tend to hold our breath when giving attention to a stimulus), and also for movement of Imager’s eyes under the closed eyelids (the mounded pupil makes this visible). If Spotter sees either, he’s to gently but quickly ask, “What was in your awareness just then?” This helps alert the Imager to the fact that, yes, he was seeing a tree branch with a bent but green twig, and on that twig….
Instruct Spotter not to interrupt once the flow of description is going; that he is to question Imager only if the flow is stopping. He is there as a listener and, with minimum intervention, to encourage the flow to continue.
The more recent and current group form for Image Streaming, as described above, is much simpler and faster. Whoever is leading the group models Image Streaming for a few moments. “Now everyone close eyes, and when you get your own image or images, whatever these are, please hold up your hand and keep it up.” I’ve not yet had a group where fewer than half held up their hand. Which means that anyone who did not get an image that readily can partner with someone who did. The one who was getting the images proceeds first with Image Streaming. After 5-10 minutes, the roles are reversed. By that time the initial non-imagers have had Image Streaming modeled for them several times and at several levels, and they slip right on into it. This makes for a much lower incidence of individuals needing further help to get to their images than with the older, Spotter/Imager, method.
Another, Concrete, Way In
I sometimes have people go first into a little adventure describing their afterimages, usually from a flashbulb which I bring along for the purpose. That’s concrete, specific, it’s easy and definite for people to get into; they discover things from doing that, and it has them (1) looking in almost the same place they soon will be looking for their Image Stream, and (2) well into the experience of describing interior imagery to a partner so that part won’t seem so strange to them by the time we get into Image Streaming.
When I’ve used this flashbulb, this has usually been in the context of teaching people to set aside their stock second-hand knowledge of things and make their own observations, and come to their own conclusions.
Afterimage is very useful for this because everyone assumes it’s just a few moments before it disappears, whereas it continues for long minutes and even hours if paid this kind of descriptive attention to. Also, Afterimage demonstrates very nicely how even some process as utterly autonomic as photochemistry in the retina is subject to the Law of Effect, that “you get more of what you reinforce.”
So now you know some ways to teach Image Streaming to a group (a group of paired partners). Anyone who has read this far, I suggest copying this, printing it out even, for several reasons, not least of which is that your own greatest effect and satisfaction from Image Streaming by far is with a live partner or partners, and to have a whole group of people doing this around you creates a kind of “psychic resonance effect” which makes matters better still. I hope some of you try that.