A concise summary for quick reference
by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
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Image Streaming is the most fundamental version of the modernized Einsteinian Discovery Method, as developed by Project Renaissance.
The process of Image Streaming draws on the deeper, subconscious powers of the mind to solve problems, increase creativity, and enhance understanding.
The greater part of our information and experiences is stored in our brain, not in words but as sensory images. In fact, 80% of the brain is involved with handling these richer, more immediate visual responses.
It is your ability to receive and interpret these visual insights that provides your best available, ingenious, most creative answers. Those flashes of insight and inspiration, those sudden intuitive hunches have earmarked most of the greatest discoveries throughout history.
The method is so simple, you’ll most likely be able to start using it as soon as you finish reading this description. Here’s why it works:
Image Streaming relies on an inner reflex that sorts through all the visual, sensory data in our unconscious and relates it, seemingly instantly, to whatever is going on with us at any given moment (our “context”).
Using Image Streaming techniques we capture and focus these data. Then, by interpreting and integrating such image- response data with our conscious thoughts, we build balance, improve our intellectual and observational strengths, and tap into creative problem-solving. These images are always there, every time. And Image Streaming provides immediate, reliable inspiration.
Here are the step-by-step instructions.
- Ask yourself a question.
- Start the Image Stream. Have a live listener or tape recorder with you. Sit back, relax, close your eyes, and describe aloud whatever images suggest themselves. Go with your first, immediate impressions and describe them aloud, rapid-flow, in sensory detail. More free images will then emerge. Notice when the scene changes or other imagesemerge, and describe these, as well.
It’s important to describe aloud, to bring the mind’s images into conscious awareness, no matter how unrelated the images may at first appear. This process helps bridge the separate regions of the brain.
Let yourself be surprised by what your images reveal to you. The more surprising, the more likely that you’re getting fresh input from your subtler, more comprehensive and more accurate faculties.
- Feature-Questioning. Pick out some one feature—a wall, a tree or bush, whatever’s there. Imagine laying a hand on that feature and studying its feel (and describe that feel), to strengthen your contact with the experience. Ask that rock or bush or wall, “Why are you here as part of my answer?” See if the imagery changes when you ask that question. Describe the changes.
- Inductive Inference. Once you’ve run a set of images, thank your Image Streaming faculties for showing you this answer. Ask their help in understanding the messages in your images. They are often symbolic.
Repeat the process by starting a new Image Stream, with entirely different images which nonetheless somehow are still giving you the same answer to the same question. After 2 to 3 minutes of this new imagery, repeat this step to get a third set of images, each different, yet each showing you the same answer a different way.
- What’s the Same? Examine whatever’s the same among the several sets of images when all else is different. These themes or elements-in-common are your core answer or message.
- Relate. Go back to your original question and determine in what way or ways these core elements are the answer to your question.
- Debrief. Summarize this whole experience either to another person (directly or by telephone) or to notebook or computer. This change of medium, and change of feedbacks, should add further to your understanding.
Follow-up questions
You might want to verify your responses with questions such as these:
- “How can I make sure that I’m on the right track with this understanding of the question?” (You should get back either a way to test and verify, or a reminder of real-time data or experiences which demonstrate that this is the right answer to be working with.)
- “What more do I need to know in this context?”
- “What’s a good, practical, concrete first step to acting upon this understanding?”
Prompting Techniques
You say you don’t get visual images? Many of us, told by parents or teachers to “stop daydreaming,” pushed our visualization abilities out of sight but they’re there and can be called up by easy and fun techniques. We provide 24 such back-up procedures here.
These techniques have been proven to work for virtually everyone who gave them an honest effort. They work best if you have a helper, or listener, who can watch your “attention cues” (e.g., changes in your breathing patterns or eye movement beneath closed lids) and prompt you to describe what you see. Some of these techniques include:
- After-Imaging: Stare at a bright (but not blinding) light for half a minute, then close your eyes. Describe that after-image. Continue describing it as it begins to change.
- Worth Describing: Even if you don’t get clear images, you may get blobs of color, lines or patterns. Describe those, rapidly and in detail. If this does not lead to images, look beyond the colors, patterns, etc., as if they were a screen, and describe whatever impressions you receive.
- Phosphenes: Gently rub your closed eyes like a sleepy child. Leave them closed, and describe the light-and-color blips which result. Keep on describing as they change.
- Door: Imagine you are before a closed door. Tell how this door looks, then how it feels to your hand when you touch it. Then suddenly fling open the door to catch by surprise whatever is behind it. Describe immediately your first impression of what is or might have been behind the door. (This technique is excellent for finding the answer to a question. While standing before the closed door, pose your question. The more unexpected the content of the imagery, the better your chances of getting sensitive, fresh new perspectives and insights.)
There are dozens of other wonderful procedures for those who wish to advance their abilities and those who are just starting. Whatever the specifics of techniques: key to everything is to observe closely your subtlest, most sensitive perceptions and, while examining them, to develop those perceptions fully into focus by describing them aloud to someone.