by InnerFire

Well here it is I guess, while not as definitive as a guide, this is designed to be a help resource to other people struggling with various issues in psionics.

What's Your Boggle?

Mellow greetings sir or miss, that's what it boils down to for this, you gotta figure out what you need help with. If you got something in mind already, good for you, if not take a look at this part and see if anything lights up. This resource is going to go over areas I've either personally experienced or have a good amount knowledge with. Suffering from the problem myself, the first section will deal with issues of the mind blocking your efforts in psionics to some degree. The second section deals with progressing with psionics, you're somewhere and for some reason you're not getting any farther. The third section deals with those oh so fun anomalies life can throw your way: born with altered energy production (or worrying about being like that), personality issues, and whatever incidents life can throw your way.

I.Trusting In Yourself

Prelude
MONK: Put your hand in the flame.
DANIEL: What?
MONK: Place your hand in the flame.
DANIEL hesitates, then holds his hand over the flame, before pulling back in pain.
DANIEL: Ah! Why did you tell me to do that?
MONK: Why did you do it?
DANIEL: Because you told me to.
MONK: Because you trusted me.
DANIEL: Yes.
MONK: Within you is the capacity for trust. Trust OMA DESALA. Do not believe you can light the candle, believe she can light the candle.

Now for those of you (probably most) that are confused, that's part of a Stargate episode, but forget that and look at the point of it. Replace OMA DESALA with yourself and omit the next line. For a good bit of people including myself, there is more than enough ability there, there just isn't self confidence. You may have had a situation not too different when someone told you to do something a certain way, you did it, and WOH!, it worked incredibly well. Then later it doesn't work as much. The likely reason for this is you trust that person more than you do yourself, and since they said it would work right a certain way way, you believe it will work and you can do it now. You have to look at this and figure out how to skip the middle man and just believe you can do it.

Your Mind and You

The first thing you have to realize is that for many people, your unconscious self is going to try and block you from doing anything "concrete" in psionics, you might be able to do stuff like psiballs, shielding, etc, but you find yourself not able to do stuff like healing or tk that you can you can see and instantly say: that was psionics, it worked, and I did it. That's not uncommon, your subconscious is going to take everything it knows about the world, and say "you can't do that." Don't find it so hard to believe, you were probably thinking it the first time you heard about the "concrete" skill you're having trouble with, you were almost certainly thinking it when you were unsuccessful, and somewhere in your head you might even be thinking it right now. Its not easy to handle, but by reading this you've already got the first part of the battle down. You know what you're fighting against, what you have to direct your focus to change, for a while that alone can improve things but it might not solve everything forever. That's what the next couple parts of this section, here are gathered several methods for trying to defeat that unconscious part of yourself once and for all and win it to your side.

Bash it to Death with Reason

This is the most common method, it will work for some people, but not for all. It's still worth a try however. The method itself is self explanatory, go through every doubt you have one by one and reason it out until you can get past it, if you can do this well enough it should at least make some kind of dent in your problem that is if it is because of a rationally based doubt, reason can beat out reason but reason vs lack of reason can be a different story.

Affirmations

And that's where affirmations come in. Affirmations are another "bash it into submission" technique, but unlike the last, this one can fight lack of reason. Just repeat a single phrase to boost your confidence over and over again. Some tips: don't use negatives, only positive statements, make all conditions immediate not "I will be able to do it", and don't sweat if it doesn't work 100% (like rolling a dice for micro-tk or something similar), if you stop your thought train to get angry or frustrated its going to get you back to doubting again, and that will be taking steps backwards when you're trying to walk forwards. Now for just some examples to illustrate:
I can do telekinesis
I can do telekinesis
I can do telekinesis
(credit: I did pull on some of this from a forum discussion on psipog: post starter Kushimaster )

Tricking Yourself

This is one technique of my own invention. Go back to the first part of this section about being able to believe when you had a middleman that you trusted. Well sometimes you can make yourself the middle man too. Think things like "if I do this in this particular way it will work", like (can you guess how I practice yet?) again with the dice rolling for micro-tk, get yourself to think it will work if you roll the dice a certain way, or hit the dice in the air, or some other clever little action. If it works when you do that you got yourself baited and you can run off that for a little. Now unfortunately if you keep doing this you're not solving anything and it will almost certainly fail given enough time. The way to use this as an actual fix is to look at it after a time and notice that you could do it.

Relax

This is important enough to deserve its own section. Really, relax, chill out. Anger and frustration can hurt your progress by breaking your focus and instilling doubt. You don't have to give up focus, there's a difference between being focused/motivated and frustrated, the first one is good, the other not so much.

The Goods and Bads of Planning

Planning or expectation can be a good or bad thing depending on the way you use it. It follows a general rule, when you think you shall will well you may find that you will do well, but more likely when you think you shall do poorly you will do badly, maybe even very badly. So try not to think you shall do badly as that will sabotage your efforts.

Coincidental Reinforcement

Ah, I've personally had a lot of issues with this one. Coincidental Reinforcement is what I call when randomly a certain event in your practice comes up a couple times, there is a chance if you're frustrated or quick to label things you'll see this not just as random activity, but some constant action. By doing so you will make it real so to speak. Your mind will try to fulfill your expectations (think the Matrix, the mind makes it real). This can be both a plague in general energy use (I'll make mention of that later) and micro tk (for me personally I've gotten a bit of a quirky number that I got into believing it would randomly come up a lot whenever it was not what I wanted. It really throws off results).

Pulling it Together

Hopefully though one of these techniques you'll be able to finally silence that annoying voice in your head, no not the one that tells you to do bad things to that guy you don't like :P , the one that tries to tell you that you can't do that one skill for whatever reason. Remember also the lessons of coincidental reinforcement and expectations, and how these two things can seriously hurt your efforts. If this doesn't work, don't give up, theres enough people with this problem that someone will eventually think up something that will work, or maybe you'll just get lucky one time, or see someone else do it--that will usually melt the problem for you if you're lucky enough to meet another psion in person.

II.Making Things Work

How Psionic Progression Can Work

Sometimes multiple times a day I'll see newbies come out in chats and forums and go into a medium sized thing asking why a particular technique isn't working out fully, commonly its stuff not completely working out for psiballs, they got some stage of it but can't get any farther. Common problems being either they can't get it to maintain its shape for more than a couple seconds, or maybe the psiball sticks around for a little but eventually fades away. These people *could* be doing everything right, which is the hardest thing for them to understand, as they really don't want the answer to be as simple as it is. You probably already know that magical word I'm going to say but lets give it a dramatic pause...
...
...
...
...

Practice!

In all seriousness I found this truth out the hard way, sometimes you just need to hammer it in and things will get better. That's how I was first able to eventually get to where I could make a stable temporary psiball on each try, then I found myself practicing hard again to raise it up to something that would stay together over long terms. Its not as hard as you think, not just for psiballs but for most things we're talking for minimum maybe 2-3 times a week. There is more than enough time to put into practice if you really want to get farther. I know it should seem like its some elusive tweaking you have to do to your technique, but a lot of times psionic progression relies on practice and repetition, which lets your body get used to what you are working on. As a side note you will also notice that enough practice can slowly get you through a mental block, but not always.

Bad Days and Bad Times\Conditions

Yes, most of us have heard it mentioned but I think it needs some more explaining. Bad days are probably unavoidable, maybe it was the weather, maybe you didn't sleep well, maybe little green men from Mars had something to do with it, who knows? Whatever the reason, we all just get some days where we're not at top strength. All across the board we can't do psionics as well. This can put some real issues into progressing, not because it takes a day away, but because if you're like me you are not going to notice it and think you're just doing something wrong. Now you shouldn't blame everything on 'bad days' but you got to be careful in instantly labeling one trial as bad for this reason. Now the other thing, you probably want to know how to cancel these bad days out, I probably can't give a straight answer on that, basically just do whatever you do to get yourself up and going, I'll talk about optimal conditions later so also take look at that since that information can help.

Now bad weeks/months are another story, there it is more likely that there something messing with your ability to generate energy. That you'll likely have to figure out on your own, there's too many causes to go into here, and each one would need a specific solution.

Now for Optimal and Reduced Conditions: This can be key for getting good results when you're starting out. When you're newer to psionics while you have the capacity for psychic activity, your body is going to be undeveloped for the job. This means you're going to have to rely on treating your body well if you want the best possible result. What you need to do should be pretty obvious: reduced conditions can be caused by any lack of a basic bodily need; food or sleep, or by emotional problems (depression). Optimal Condition is when you got everything worked out, you slept well and for a sufficient time (I like a min of 8 hours and ideally around 9 hours), you're feeling alright, you're eating properly, etc. You might also want to avoid activity directly before any session that you think is going to be taking a lot out of you, since psi/energy use if not being directly related runs off the same bodily resources as some physical activities.

Energy

Belief and focus are great things to consider, but let's take a moment to talk about energy, since some people don't fully grasp energy/psi's role in psionics. As far as we know, everything or almost everything in psionics has some amount of energy consumption, while some are negligible amounts. Now don't feel too limited by it, you are going to run into problems in your practices if you worry constantly about the energy consumption. Coincidental Reinforcement can make an activity take more energy than it needs to if you start to think that it will take a ton of energy *when it won't*. Still, be aware there is a difference between knowing how much energy it will take and really worrying about how much energy it will take. While the second thing is harmful, the first is helpful. That said, you should have some understanding about the energy consumption of whatever you do for two purposes. The first is so you can avoid overextension: once you have an idea about how a particular activity will affect you, you can properly plan how much you can do. Ask around, most people can give you some kind of estimate on what a particular activity will take. The second reason is for more advanced purposes. When you start experimenting on your own you will need to do be aware how much a new technique takes out of you. The last thing I personally worked with turned out to be an extremely high energy cost, so I had to be very careful with practicing it. The same idea basically would apply with exploring anything else new.

Pulling it Together

Meh, I don't really have much to say on this one, its three in the morning right now. Maybe you should just pretend you read this section... Nope just kidding. Anyways, you should understand that there are a lot of things that you may not consider that could affect getting what you are practicing to work. Freaking out about one unsuccessful practice is not healthy, while you shouldn't immediately blame anything in this section as always the problem, remember them in the 'no one's perfect' kinda way and try not to stress out. Remember the key lessons of the need for practice and repetition, and how energy use can factor into things, as these are the two things that most newbies do not fully consider.

III.Extenuating Circumstances to Deal With

Profiles

We all understand that all people are not born the same: some are taller, some are shorter, etc. This applies to psionics as well. As a part of understanding energy and energy consumption, you have to realize the way *you* uniquely work. Just as people can be short or tall, your ability to produce energy or psi can vary. For most people there isn't anything to actually worry about, just remember to get a feel for what you are capable of.

Now the problem is when people *do* over worry about things. Every so often in the psychic community we have a influx of people thinking that they are a 'psi-vamp', i.e. someone born with little to no ability to generate energy, and thus they have to acquire energy from external sources. While there are some actual cases of this happening (I know one but that's a story for another article), they are EXTREMELY rare. Most people just think they are one for various reasons. Now whether you are worrying about being a psi-vamp (or believe you are one), or just think you are a little below average in energy capacity, realize that when that is not the case such beliefs are harmful to your progress. If you have low self-confidence in that way, you won't be able to do nearly as much. Don't jump to conclusions, talk to people and reason it out if you suspect you have a problem.

Now if you actually *do* fall into one of those two cases, being a true psi-vamp is not so easy to help, there might be ways but they're beyond my knowledge, so look around and see what you can find. However, having just slightly below average energy production is fixable. In such as case you may be born like me. In keeping the physical analogy, just like someone that was born a little lacking in physical strength, you are going to have to work harder for a while to get your body into proper shape. Energy manipulation is recommended for this, (slowly at first so you don't overtire yourself) start doing a lot of energy working. This is shown to build up your capacity over a period of time. There are more dramatic ways to fix this problem more quickly, but trust me, coming from someone that's done some of these things, you are much better off just working out with energy manipulation.

Personalities (and mental problems)

Aside from short term emotional problems, some personalities or mental conditions can also give added annoyances to you in your practices. First obvious point, if you have any serious mental conditions, you are practicing at your on risk, we probably don't know everything about what you're suffering from, and we certainly don't know enough about psionics to understand the potential interactions between the two. That aside we go to things that are a little less serious. Depression can put a big cramp in your practices, everyone knows in general when you're feeling sad you're not going to be doing your best in whatever you try to do, also in one of the Psionic Social Club logs, Rainsong cautions that biofeedback it is not recommended is those who are seriously depressed (http://www.psc-online.org/logs/RainTurtle-2004-07-28-Norcan_Conference.html ). There may be (and probably are) other areas also effected that you should look into. Now since I am NOT a psychiatrist I am not capable of going into how to handle depression, so I have to leave solving that to you.

Now personalities are just the way you are, you can't change that most times, but you can be aware of the way they'll effect you, heres some:

Fluff-bunny (my thoughts, other's have their own definition): These are basically a wide category for annoying newbies in the psionic community, they either lie about themselves to try and impress people, expect the people in chat or forums to tell them how to do everything when most of the stuff they want to know is already in articles and we just don't feel like retyping it, those who want unreasonable amount of attention every time they're around (hey we're human we can't be killing every minute on everyone that walks in) , and/or people that come in and in the first hour want to know everything and do it.

Ambitionist (my word damnit): I once described this as wanting to know and be good at everything, and have done so yesterday. Now this is fundamentally different from a fluffbunny as ambitionists can be clever/intelligent, reasonable, and *somewhat* realistic in that unlike the fluffbunny they know they can't learn everything in an hour (they're still going to get angry about not being able to do so but thats in their nature). To some extent this is fine, ambition can be a great motivator in your practice, just don't beat yourself up too much as that can be counter productive. Unless you have some mission I don't know about you really don't need to put yourself under this kind of strain in my opinion.

Scientist: This can cause some serious self-confidence issues. A scientist is not necessarily someone in the actual career but a psion that has a strong scientific or highly logical thinking process. They've been drawing conclusions and finding things out from reason all their life and now although they might believe in psionics, part of them is still going to fervently resist "this bunk" This part of yourself you're going to have to sort out if you're one of these, your best hope is to go back to the Trusting in Yourself section.

Proofer (another one of my words): These are the people that think it is their mission to learn psionics then "prove it" to the world. Either slowly or quickly they want to learn psionics then use it to show enough people until they think the world will accept it (in the case of quickly this becomes very similar to the ambitionist). Now all I can say about this is consider very carefully what you want to do, if you really think the world *needs* to know about all this stuff then so be it, good luck.

Resilient Adaptable Stubbornness: Ah, this is was me for a while. It incorporates the scientist profile along with some other stuff. It is the result of a very strong and stubborn mind. Basically all of the methods in this article will probably have limited effect. Something will work for a while then will slowly reduce effectiveness until its worthless, so you'll find yourself after a while not being able to find a way to do what you want to practice. There are two ways to go about handling this. The first is you have to look at this intelligently, if your mind is being so resistant there is most likely a reason, go over anything you think might be bothering you, both on your own and in talking to people since they might see an issue where you don't. The only other way is through the tricking yourself method, but keep rapidly changing the trick so your subconscious doesn't catch on to any particular one. Remember this is *not* a permanent solution in itself, you have to be able to look at the data afterwards, and use it to reason with yourself.

Ah, Life

That can sum it up a lot of times, life can really put a monkey wrench in your practices. Again obviously depression is going to screw you up, but you also have to look at stress. Stress can do oh so much fun things outside of psionics, and inside psionics it gets even worse. You have to be very careful if you're still trying to practice through times that are high stress (stuff at work, exams, etc.). Some things can fail and/or become downright painful when you try to do them under high stress. Most of the time it will just cause what you're doing to be less successful. This isn't really solvable unless you can eliminate the stress, this is just one of those things you have to be aware of so you don't beat yourself up over not doing as well when its not entirely your fault.

Pulling it All Together

This section was all about things that are naturally a part of you that can affect your psychic activities. Some of it you can solve or compensate for, some of it you can't. If you have any of the problems here take the information in and use it to help you, even if it can't be truly solved, knowledge is half the battle of a lot of times. Take what you learn here and use it to your advantage, and oh yeah, take this as another reason why not to beat yourself up over a single bad practice.

IV.Closing

Well there it was, for right now this is my best attempt to try and help people out through what I've experienced or some nice tidbits I've encountered that I didn't think were emphasized enough in other people's work. At the time of this last revision there's a sequel to this in the works, so hang tight for more information if you are still having trouble