4.7 - Focus Control; Homework and Lab Assignment #4

We have covered storages and influences of the storages on the Perceptual Lens Array. We also covered the perceptual lens, its elements, the internal influences of the elements, and how flows through the Perceptual Lens Array enter storages through choice and cognition. All of this activity passes through the Focus Control Buss of Figure 4.4. "You are here."

It is through this focus control, we have control of our ego vehicle (matrix). This is where life resides in the matrix. We are the operators of a truth matrix. We are not our storage. We are not our perceptual lens. We are not the matrix, or our ego vehicle. Postulates 5 and 6 and their theorems say: "We are the Creation of God." We are much more than these words can convey. However, words and the perceptions words convey, are instruments to understanding.

Through the Focus Control Buss, Truth -- which is us at the very core of everything - is allowed to manifest within us. It has the power to allow us to actually see things or let us see things how we want to perceive them. It can cause this mechanism, this Perceptual Lens Array, to refocus. The control buss, you, has Creation in it. It is the dynamic controller of this whole system.

Focus control bus?

Yes, b-u-s-s. It's an electronic term. It's a place where data passes through and is sometimes temporarily stored. In Figure 4.4, it means this is the place where there is an interchange between the lens and storage. This is where our awareness tends to be. Who we really are is none of these. Who we really are is in Truth.

The flow so far: an objective event goes through the Perceptual Lens Array. We make a choice, which goes into programming. Programming then feeds back into you through the lens. Then you make another choice, constantly refocusing until everything makes sense (a cognitive connection).

Programming, with its knowledge and memory bias, influences the Focus Control Buss. It then breaks down that influence from the three basic storages and directs the storages' influence into their related triangle pairs (areas of influence). What you have programmed (previous choices/judgements) aligns your perceptual lens and determines what type of choices are made. I do want to stress again that this is a flexible dynamic system.

This is our conscious awareness?

Yes, and this is where life resides in the matrix and this is where our conscious awareness tends to lie. This is how our conscious awareness has both Truth and untruth programmed into it and how it makes up part of what we think is us. Our conscious awareness can be outside of this process, also. Some of the later exercises aim at doing that.

It is possible to give an idea of how this whole thing works, and show development of the lens. With a little exercise of the imagination we can run a baby through adult programming.

First the baby gets light, color, form, and other sensory input and has no initial reference. It just focuses on random objects, and has no recognition of objects because there are no cognitive jumps that have been made yet. It has some vague desires and wants. Its immediate perceptions are of the surroundings affecting them. It has very poor perceptions, or understanding, or any sense whatsoever of what is happening, or what 'is'.

The repetitive cycles of these forms (light, color, composition, etc.) go through a number of choices and cognitive jumps, which then go into knowledge, which affects the programming, and programming begins to use focus control. "Red! Like color red!" "Green -- food, ugh!"

Once the baby begins to use this cognitive loop, and after it has some kind of storage to work from, it begins to use the focus control. The patterns of choices that the baby starts making, through the focus control, begin to show up as behavioral programming tendencies. Every individual truth matrix at this point is beginning to grow. The baby is beginning to program his/her storage. He is learning to exercise his control, and begins to influence how this information is coming into him/her/it.

All this is in reference to an objective event, but what about subjective events? Up to this point, we have focused on how we process things that happen outside of ourselves, the objective event.

Figure 4.4 shows a subjective event loop, which is another feedback loop within this whole system. It's one more way to become hooked up into another massive programming spiral.

One aspect of the subjective event loop can be passive, such as day and night dreams and fantasies. It also can take a dynamic form: it can be psychic and spiritual visualization, dreamtime,³³ and when you are using reason, also.

Meditation?

Some meditations, but not all. This loop does include psychic and spiritual visualization that some meditations use. It's also used when you are working something out, putting a puzzle together in your head, as in reasoning.

When you are trying to reason something out, you are using the subjective feedback loop. "Okay, I have got that conclusion (cognition), now let me run (refocus) that back through and see (perceive) how it relates to..." The subjective loop is used to figure something out. Then the subjective feedback loop is on active mode.

Let's cover the passive aspect of this subjective event loop first: night dreams, daydreams, and fantasies. These are predominately based on and/or influenced by programming and memory storages. For the most part, with dreams and fantasies, there is a free flowing of desire sets and perceptual elements that I covered earlier. A picture and a desire along with it comprise a subjective element. We see that arrangement with daydreaming. The daydream travels through the imagination triangle and we make a choice: go.

As mentioned, this is the mental masturbation loop. There is a free flowing of desire sets and perceptual elements. In this case, the figure in the Focus Control Buss is just the observer of what is happening. It's kind of like watching the movie or TV that is happening on the inside.

Most choice options are not actively exercised in this free flowing that makes up daydreams and fantasies. We are just sitting there -- the only choice we are making is allowing it to happen. However, the choice to allow it to happen tends to show up in patterns of storage (programming). Which then, will tend to show up in patterns of how the lens focuses because of how the storage affects the lens array, and so on, and so on. Here again, we are getting into a form of mental masturbation or to a spiral of untrue predominant choices.

In daydreams, you are not the objective observer. You put yourself right into it and are constantly making choices. In night dreams, you are an objective observer or participant and most choice is removed. Night dreams are another example where the patterns of previous choices have an indirect relationship, as it does with cognition. The night dreams tend to show the patterns that you have already generated when awake, through the dream. Like the patterns of recognition -- a clown, a wheelbarrow, horse -- night dreams contain these patterns of recognition and patterns of storage in the lens. It can have some psychic elements because it can be affected by the Truth.

Daydreams can't?

The daydreams that have psychic aspects are called visions. For the most part, no, they are just fantasizing -- there is no psychic involved with that. Most of the time it is just the free running of the perceptual lens into storage, and from storage, feeding back through the lens -- mental circles. Of course, this all happens according the current desire you are having.

The dynamic aspect of this feedback loop is based on knowledge storage. Let's start with psychic and spiritual events: which come from truth, go through knowledge, and then to programming. As it does so, it is colored by what we know (patterns of cognition) and what we have programmed (patterns of choices) into us. So, the psychic or spiritual information becomes interpreted into systems and ideas that we understand. They will tend to be in forms that are recognized and already established already in your storages.

Can you give me an example?

One example is an image from the book of Revelations: a figure with a sword coming out of its mouth.³⁴ A sword, at the time of the vision, was a common instrument of war and destruction. It implies something that is very solid and holds an edge.³⁵ Truth is indomitably solid and whatever 'edge' it has, never changes. Relate this to what comes out of the mouth is words. A spiritual figure with a sword emerging from its mouth is analogous to waging war and destruction with words of Truth.

Here you are setting up an image system and the psychic information is appearing through that system. Well, we have already set up a whole bunch of systems of patterns of thinking within our individual matrix. The psychic information will come through those patterns or systems of thinking that we already set up. One part of a later psychic exercise is an intentional conscious mental setup or construction. The rest is letting the Truth use the setup.

The difference between the two is: Truth is using what system of patterns are already setup in the matrix, while with the other, an individual is consciously setting up a system to allow for the flow of Truth.

For the first, an example is of prophetic visions -- seeing the sky turn black and lightning coming through and illuminating the land. It's speaking through your images of darkness, of lightness and quickness; it's speaking through your images of illumination and change.

Psychic information tends to speak to you through the patterns and ideas that are set up. It probably will not speak to you through archetypes and concepts you do not understand. An Indian living in the tropical Brazilian rainforests, and that's the only world they ever have known, will tend not to have visions where computers or a frozen winter speak to them.

The psychic and spiritual information that's coming down into your conscious is colored by what already is in knowledge, programming, and memory. It tends to be in forms that are recognized and already established within our matrix.

The one major exception is: the more we start programming Absolute Truth into this knowledge storage area, the less perceived psychic forms come through. I am going to get into it the three different kinds of psychic phenomena's manifestations later in Chapter 7. I will just mention the exception right now.

The one exception is: the more Truth we choose, the less the psychic shows up in perceived forms. The more we enter a quiet knowing -- labeled in this work as intuition -- we see things less. This quiet knowing rarely uses the perceptual lens.

I put dreamtime in Figure 4.4 because this is also another form of psychic. I am using it in the Australian aboriginal reference. It is a dynamic use of the matrix through psychic and spiritual terms. However, and again, dreamtime tends to come in patterns of forms that the individuals recognize -- something that has already been established or programmed within them.

As I said earlier, another aspect of the dynamic is visualization. This includes problem solving, a visual expression of the Creative aspect within us. The individual is taking the spiral, and instead of letting the matrix free-run, letting the choice spiral go down, we are guiding it upward to a point.

Again, it's based on something objective that has already been programmed in the matrix. With visualization and problem solving, we begin matrix manipulation. We use the focus mechanism to manipulate symbolic forms of an objective reference. This can be done without direct manipulation of the objective itself. We are putting it together in our head before we go and do it outside of our heads. Again, the visualizations are indicative, as in dreams, of our programming and storage patterns. That is: how we visualize, or how we try to visualize.

Homework and Lab Assignment #4 -- Time/Space Imagination Exercises:

In most meditations, there is a disengaging or stilling of the Perceptual Lens Array. They are concerned with maintaining an individual's focus on one thing and not letting it stray. What this assignment is going to do with visualization exercise is different. Instead of stilling the lens, we are going to be actively refocusing the lens; playing with the lens.

This exercise will work with the reason and imagination triangles of the lens array. The power of the imagination is incredible. Some of the plusses and minuses it has are evident in the earlier board on the ground example.

Remember: if you imagine you are going to fall, you will have a hard time walking the board. Whereas if you focus your imagination on walking across successfully, you will not have much of a problem. Where your head goes, your body will follow. This is true for diving, tumbling, wrestling, golf, tennis, etc. This axiom applies to the metaphysical and spiritual as well. Where your head goes, your body is going to follow. Again, it is this concept that is behind attitudinal and spiritual healing.

One of the minuses of using imagination is that the similarity between psychic phenomena and imagination is very close. It can be confusing. Until the individual can perceive the difference between how the two feels inside one's self, it can lead to confusing results when doing psychic exercises.

Another minus to using imagination is that whatever you imagine or visualize is going to be based on temporality; on time. Whether you are using symbols, words, or images, they are limited to your temporal matrix. They are limited to whatever you have in your head, in storage. Whereas, the exercises I will give later tend not to be limited by your perceptions and desires.³⁶ Those exercises are simple and non-specific. When you start playing with imagination, the exercise is specific and limited. An individual can only hold an image in the head for so long. Imagination is limited by one's perceptions.

And wouldn't it also be connected to your desires and attachments?

Yes! "Give that lady another seegar."

Your perceptions and desires, come out of programming. Imagination also tends to involve memory and part of your programming. Observe how programming influences the attitude and imagination triangles. While memory tends to have a particular effect with the emotion and habit triangles, knowledge tends to have a particular effect in the cognition and reason triangles. They all kind of blend like a soup together in the middle.

These are not hard and true tangibles, that is, the edges are not that well defined. It's just a general rule of thumb of areas of affect. It can bleed from one to the other. I am just trying to show you that programming in general affects these first two triangles. The triangles of attitude and imagination reflect what is in your programming storage.

In the end, the serious spiritual or metaphysical student is going to need to step out of their temporality and go to God Eternal. They will need to withdraw into a deeper meditation and leave temporal perception behind (whether it's truth-based or imagined).

With this imagination exercise the student just reviews from what they know already. Part of what I am trying to get the student to do is to see what is in their knowledge, programming, memory; recognize what they see and what they know. These are the tools to play with this imagination triangle.

One of the plusses of doing these imagination exercises is, instead of imagining something that is not there, the student is going to imagine something that is there or is most likely there. They are going to imagine something that they cannot physically see. One of the purposes behind this exercise is to open up the mind's eye with the imagination.

The first exercise we are going to do is a space exercise. Put yourself in a comfortable position alone, or with people. In the class format, I would have you listen to the sound of my voice and look at me while I am talking.

I would have you use your perception and imagine yourself behind the eyes. Then use your perception and imagination, slowly looking out and around the room, in a circle, without moving the eyes. Your eyes should still be looking at me while I am talking and not moving.

Example: have an image of the picture on the wall over to the left of you. Then move perception around and imagine the other pictures. See the fan on the ceiling. Move perception behind you and imagine the television and VCR. Keep it moving around to the curtain and the open window behind you.

Using imagination you can see the chair behind you and to the side, and the lamp next to it. Bring the perception around and imagine the sofa. Keep moving your perception until it starts coming back into visual range. You slowly make a full circle sweep around the room, using perception and imagination, without moving your eyes or head. Look around with the mind's eye, without moving the physical eyes. Use your imagination to roughly fill in the blanks (while avoiding too much detail) and know what is there around you.

As you establish the horizontal plane that you have looked around, the next step is to jump up with yourr mind and leave that plane. With much of our perception or our awareness of the outside world, it appears that we are looking from behind the eyes. You are to imagine that you are not there anymore. Imagine now, you are looking out from the top of your head.

Now, using this change in perceptional placement, make another circle around the room. This circle will be in a plane slightly above the first circle.

Next, you are to imagine your perception is up on the ceiling and looking down around you. If you (Jeannie) were doing it with me, you would be looking down on both you and me, talking, sitting here. Look down behind you and you see the curtain making all that noise with the wind blowing. See the reflections it generates behind you with your mind's eye.

The idea is for the student to use their imagination to do something that they have not done that often. You once mentioned that you stuck your head over a bed, when you were a kid, lying on your back and looking upside down, and saw the whole room as being upside down. With this exercise, instead of physically moving himself or herself to see that, the student is doing something very similar. The student is just placing their awareness on the ceiling.

So now, Jeannie, look around you and down around you, and as with the previous part, make a full circle. This circle has more depth because of the altitude you have given yourself.

The next step is that you imagine yourself going through the roof until you are just past the roofline, outside the house. With the x-ray vision of imagination, look down into this room and see us talking. Now you are to raise your perception and imagine the things around you. You can see in the next room. You can see up the stairs. You can see the front door. You can see the back door. You can see a neighbor's house.

I can see in my neighbor's house.

You can see in your neighbor's house. See them watching TV. You can look out and see the roofs of a multitude of other buildings. Make a horizontal circular sweep at that level, just as you did when we first started, slowly moving your imaginary perception around. Move your awareness around; you know what is out there. You know there are roofs. You know where the road is. You know there are cars out there. As you are looking around, slightly color in the details with your imagination. Make a general sweep of the area all the way around. Do not let yourself get distracted by small details.

Next thing to do is move your imagination and your awareness up into another plane. Now you are a mile up, looking down. You know that in that one little house below you Jeannie and Steve are sitting and talking. Then there are all these houses next to them. If you look up, you can see the streets, the cars, the traffic, the lights, etc. As you start bringing your awareness up, you can look at the hills around you. You can start looking around seeing down the valley towards Gilroy, towards the South and Southeast. Then move your awareness around towards the East and you can see the valley, over the hills, across the way. Bring your awareness up and as you are moving from East towards North, you can see the hills starting to disappear in the distance and you see the beginning of the bay. Then bend your awareness back down the bay and look at downtown San Jose. Bring your awareness up and across, and back around until you start seeing the hills again. See all the other structures and all the cities below the hills. See the ocean behind the hills.

Again, you are just making a slow sweep with your awareness. Filling in the blanks with what you know is there, using your own imagination.

The next position is a hundred miles up. Now you can see the whole coast. You can keep on doing this until you are standing on the moon or standing outside the solar system. You can keep on moving your perspective out further and further and further. This exercise increases your perception and helps open up your mind's eye; your mind's perception without using your physical eyes. This exercise increases or expands your perceptual awareness.

Yes, I was just going to tell you. There's a musical mass called the Missa Gaia by Paul Horn. Part of his anthem was being out in space coming back to Earth. The music kind of demonstrated that.

I was on the couch meditating to it, and when Man hits Earth, there's this loud booming kind of sound, because he's breaking the sound barrier, and just as that happened, there was an earthquake. Freaked me out! But I was going to say coming back in is an experience I used to like to do with music.

Where this exercise can take you is totally limited by your imagination.

We went big, now let's go small. A suggestion is go out first and then bring yourself back in, just do not stop. It becomes quite useful when coming back in to keep going. We went large and out, you can also go in and small.

Take this eraser on this pencil. We are taught in school that there are a bunch of atoms set up in it so there is some kind of web or weave of material. We are going to go smaller, and we are going to slip into the space between the weave of that material with our imagination. We are going to go smaller and smaller so at first we can barely slip through the molecules. Now as we pass them and keep getting smaller we see the molecules are huge behind us.

We get smaller and smaller, and things become more blurry because they are much farther away. We can keep doing this and imagine ourselves in the vast amount of space between particles. Just as we would find ourselves in a vast amount of space if we went up and out.

This is the same exercise, but going in different directions. Instead of going out, the student goes in. Either way, the student is guiding their imagination. The student is the driver. The student is using the Focus Control Buss and their faith, applying their knowledge.

With the time exercise, the class would look at a corner of the room where two walls and a ceiling meet, or two walls and a floor meet. A three dimensional space that is defined by some long-term physical structure. The student uses their imagination to make a small one-foot cube in that corner.

As you look at the cube, move back in time to that which you know has occurred already. Start from this moment, and as you move back in time, the light in that corner is going to change as the sun is moving across the sky. Use your imagination to move the sun across the sky, and it's moving the shadows in the room.

Do this until it starts getting dark again as you are going from this morning and into last night. Envision it now to being last night and dark - maybe, during that time, a bug flies through the cube or a spider walks through it -- before you went to bed. The cube is filled with lights from the man made lamps. Imagine the reflections of the lamps off of the mirrored surface of the drapes. Again, maybe another fly or bug crawls through it.

Sitting in that upper corner, you can imagine people watching TV below you. Use your perception and imagination and stay as observer from that corner.

Observe the changing light of sunset, and from that corner watch the day go back in time. From getting home from work and maybe walking below the cube, to coming from the bedroom and making coffee this morning -- all are done in reverse below the cube.

There are many things you know are happening to that cube. You know air is, and has, moved through it. Once you get the alternation of light and dark down, start speeding up the cycles of the sun, going further back in time.

In that corner, nothing much is happening right now because it is isolated and away from everything -- the one I am looking at anyway. Use your mind and start speeding up the cycles of the sun, day and night. Visualize going back in time.

Imagine that a number of bugs have gone through that cube. A lot of wind has gone through it, a lot of reflections, and a lot of light over a period of days. Keep on going back and back until you get to the point to where this building is being built.

Man defined that space you are looking at, by those three corners. You can watch the building -- kind of like watching a movie backwards -- being disassembled around that space to where there is nothing but dirt below it. Go further back, and the area under the imaginary cube is a field -- like the movie, Time Machine³⁷ based on the H. G. Wells book.

It was a field and, prior to that, a plum orchard, and before that a bog, I think.

You are getting the idea.

Now, keep on going back. Because the surface of the Earth is moving with the tectonic plates, the landmass you are on is moving away (or toward the cube we are visualizing). Eventually, if you go back far enough, you can visualize a cube above the ocean. You can watch the continent retreat.

That space is staying the same as you watch the continent retreat across the ocean. Included with all this stuff are tons of bugs flying through (especially when you are in the grass or bog) tons of air, wind and rain. One can visualize all kinds of things that probably happened. Trees died in that cube, fell, and then new plants reoccupied the space.

This is where the student guides the visualization. You are actually creating this experience of guiding it for yourself and using imagination to roughly color in details.

I went backwards. I can go forward in time, also. I will stay away from the concept of any apocalyptic change. I will take it, as we know things to be now.

I can take that cube, and watch from it all the people going through this room underneath this cube daily. I can imagine the changes eventually until the building starts getting old and starts sagging. It will be torn down and then the cube is above the rubble. Then I can start to visualize someone building something else. There may be an I-beam going through that cube for a big office building or an apartment building, or it is sitting above a car parking lot. I can visualize that cube in a big chunk of concrete, farther along in the future.

Or a landing pad.

Could be a landing pad. It's all dependent on your imagination.

The student keeps going further forward in time. Using the tectonic plate thing, imagine the hills to the east moving towards that cube. All this man-stuff has been built and has come down, built, come down, built and come down as the hills are approaching that cube. Pretty soon, that cube is going to be buried in the hills. The student can do this, and set up a panorama of time in their own mind.

I had a great experience of that one time and I loved it! I had been driving down 101 where I used to go back over Morgan Hill -- there was a part between Morgan Hill and San Jose where there were always junky stores and gas stations...

This was before 101 was bypassed?

Yeah. And when I finally went down there one time, it was all gone! I thought, God, did they just pave over that whole section?

They all went out of business.

Well it was like that -- I mean the image I had initially was that there were cities down below, whole civilizations -- cities built one on top of another...

Cities built on top of the rubble of other cities... Usually, in the past, the cities were razed and destroyed; then new cities built on top. Troy was like that. There was something like seven levels of the city of Troy. Crete is famous for that because they had so many bad earthquakes. The cities were destroyed and so they rebuilt the next city on top of the last one.

Some devastation...

Some devastation would occur -- economic, social, or ecological. Then the next city would be built on top of it.

I want to stress when doing these imagination exercises -- the student should imagine or visualize actualities. This expands your perception. It opens up windows within your mind and more. It can give one a broader perspective on things. This imagination exercise uses the lens, cognition, knowledge, focus, and subjective event feedback loop.

With this expanded perception, the truth choices can start to become simpler and not so complicated. Be aware of the myriad of details, but do not use the imagination to dwell on them. Use the imagination to sketch in general forms and shapes.

In doing these exercises, it is very important for the student to be the observer only. We are watching these things unfold, like little children. No judgments, because any judgment made will tend to cloud the exercise. I have shown before how limited our perceptions are to begin with, and when we are judging something we do not see the whole thing.

In Chapter 7, we are going to be using imagination/visualization exercises to work with some psychic phenomena.

Once the student has learned both the time and space exercises, they then can put the two exercises together and travel in time and space to jump around. The student can leave the earth, looking down at it.

They can visualize the Crusades, or they can go to China. If the student knows some part of history; if they have some knowledge to anchor the visualization, then they can use their imagination to observe it. The student is staying the same and these changes are being visualized as happening around them in time and space.

Summary: With the space exercises, inside and out, and the time exercises, forward and back; the student is to do three of each, preferably in a different location with each application. For example: do the space exercise one time watching TV. Another time do it sitting in the yard, and another time sitting in a restaurant. Vary where you physically are and do the exercises in different locales.