The Journey from the Basement

SOCRATES said:

I am back. I have been tampering with electricity again. I know a fair bit but I am not an expert in it.
I cut a wire, that according to the subsidiary fuse box in the star chamber meant the wire was safe.
I made an enormous bang, and frightened myself silly. Then I shut down the intermediate main and the main proper. All systems have been down for two hours. Phew ! I will never do this again. What a fright !
All the computers are whirring again. All is well thank goodness.

Click to expand...

Socrates, given the importance these electrical items have to you, it might be a good idea to invest in having circuit-breakers installed. Far safer - for you and your equipment.

SOCRATES said:

This flash also does not just confirm intuitively the correctness of the trade.
It can go much further than that , the "flash" has the ability to warp the
use of time, so that the trader has more than a gut feeling. It is an
intangible intuitive idea of what will happen next, and it does !

Click to expand...

Is this perhaps what Livermore was referring to when he just 'knew' he had to be out of his position? He talked about a feeling of 'comfort' in his decision without any obvious clue as to why it would be.

And invariably would find his exits were exactly at the right time "to the minute".

Has there been a practical demonstration of this knowledge I can't seem to find one on this thread

Not on this thread. But check out 'Days of Stopping Out' under General Trading Chat. The futurology demo kicks in on page 2, post #23 at 2:20pm (24/05).

It's worth reading from the beginning of the thread (as always) to get the background...

great stuff you late night birds (or early evening for some )

To me, intuition is the extreme end of the subconscious application of acquired knowledge and can only flower if it is free of all the emotional and conscious, mechanical thought constraints that might divert it. As china said an intuitive feel for a good trade is easily inhibited by fear and/or a conscious examination of irrelevant mechanics (rsi is overbought or some such).

However, there does need to be acquired knowledge for the subconscious to operate. Like driving a car one starts off by gaining mechanical knowledge applied consciously (right, here I go - push in the clutch, change gear, bit of gas and release clutch) until those mechanical actions are applied subconsciously without any conscious thought whatsoever.

Staying with the driving analogy, ones subconscious builds up knowledge of how the other drivers around you are operating and that awareness leads to the intuition that the twit in front is going to cut across you without signalling. And sure enough......

I suppose what I'm saying in the context of this thread is that you can't have one (intuitive trading) without the other (relevant mechanical knowledge).

Totally agree. I think that point has been made in a number of ways. There is no shortcut. You need to read 'the books' check out 'the indicators' look at 'the systems' etc. to get the raw material for your Unconscious to work on. It's only when you've assimilated all of that stuff that you can just let it all go.

Your analogy with driving is spot on. And it's a process of skill development.

Conscious Incompetence. {Even 'trying' to work hard you make mistakes. Wrong gear. Forget to use clutch when slowing down to a stop etc.}

Conscious Competence. {As long as you keep a reign on things and focus intently - they'll mostly work out all right}

Unconscious Incompetence. {Most of the stuff you can do without thinking. I.E. driving along WHILE switching radio channels, WHILE eating a Big Mac AND talking to your passenger - but occasionally having to switch into conscious override to deal with the unexpected}

Unconscious Competence. {Let someone else drive while you sleep...} Or more seriously - having driven for say 23 minutes and arriving safely at your destination without any conscious awareness of the passing of the time or the journey itself, but with the absolute certainty you have done so with confidence, skill and mastery.

Lets take the driving analogy a bit further.

Barjon u r right about the mechanical stuff but I have experienced the time shifts Socrates has talked of in driving. Take an accident situation I experienced.

I was driving too fast on an icy road and came to a bend and swerved fast off the road past a well constructed roadsign through a fence and towards some very solid trees in a wood. The whole incident from skidding to hitting the trees probably took about half a second max. To me in the drivers seat I would say it occupied about 5 seconds. I saw clearly what was going to happen at each stage well before it did.I was able to avoid the worst of the potential damage and to brace myself well in advance of the final impact. Everything slowed down to give me time to do what little could be done. I saw and experienced the whole thing as if it were in slow motion. I could actually see may arms and feet moving to different positions at what seemed to be normal speed while what was going on "in the utside world" had apparently slowed down to accomodate this. The only explanation I can give is that my subconcious processes cut in and acted in a time frame quite out of the normal one.

I have had some similar experiences at times of intense mental effort too

Ok these were not in trading but I can see a connection - call me nutso if u like

a320 said:

One has to confront the Lonza* in order to penetrate the next higher level to look directly upon the hidden.
CJ

Click to expand...

May be this will not seem so cryptic ? After the revelations on the overnight !!! ??


Blake again had a useful name called the Spectre.

I recommend you cast your eyes over the Blake picture again...


*Lonza is often referred to as " Dweller on the threshold" in more modern times

May as well add a picture...

Yes I'm going deep for most , but I know some of you understand where I'm coming from!!
Mr Bramble & Ford spring to mind )

A quote from Paracelsus:

"but we will speak only of the things which are difficult, and not to be grasped by the senses, but, indeed, which are almost contrary to the evidence of the senses."

CJ

barjon said:

To me, intuition is the extreme end of the subconscious application of acquired knowledge

Click to expand...

Barjon, This is a useful definition of intuition. Rogenvald's experience is, I think, quite common when people are subjected to unexpected stress. Time seems to slow down. Neither intuition, as you define it, nor the apparent slowing of time as described by Rogenvald involve precognition. I have found Socrates' analyses of time and volume most enlightening. I was confused by "Days of Stopping Out". Did it provide evidence of precognition (knowledge of an event before it occurs)?

Rognvald said:

Lets take the driving analogy a bit further.

Barjon u r right about the mechanical stuff but I have experienced the time shifts Socrates has talked of in driving. Take an accident situation I experienced.

I was driving too fast on an icy road and came to a bend and swerved fast off the road past a well constructed roadsign through a fence and towards some very solid trees in a wood. The whole incident from skidding to hitting the trees probably took about half a second max. To me in the drivers seat I would say it occupied about 5 seconds. I saw clearly what was going to happen at each stage well before it did.I was able to avoid the worst of the potential damage and to brace myself well in advance of the final impact. Everything slowed down to give me time to do what little could be done. I saw and experienced the whole thing as if it were in slow motion. I could actually see may arms and feet moving to different positions at what seemed to be normal speed while what was going on "in the utside world" had apparently slowed down to accomodate this. The only explanation I can give is that my subconcious processes cut in and acted in a time frame quite out of the normal one.

I have had some similar experiences at times of intense mental effort too

Ok these were not in trading but I can see a connection - call me nutso if u like

Click to expand...

You are not nutso, you have put your finger on it. The problem is to replicate it.
You can see now how time can be made to move more slowly. I am sure this is
not the only example of the subconscious kicking in to take control.

Notice that the subconscious was able to enable you to "nearly experience" what you had not yet experienced. This shows you that the subconscious mind is able to transcend
time.

When the subconscious becomes very skilled at this it is able to do it at will
using the conscious as a filter. At a very high level of proficiency this can be taken
further, that is stimulating the immediate future to come forward to net present time.

But you have to be ready for it. And you have to dare to dare. If you do not dare
you can never succeed, I mean as a top anything you want to be, be it an athlete,
inventor, or whatever and not as a mediocre one. Any one can
be mediocre, there is no merit in that. But there is merit in what is not mediocre.
That is what interests me, as I am not interested in the ordinary, only the
extraordinary interests me.

I am prepared to go to any lengths to satisfy my curiosisty. I am curious about
what is extraordinary. In discovering what is extraordinary there is always a
price to be paid for the benefit of enjoying the discovery. Sometimes it can be
a bit hairy.

You know how I explain the concept of survival being the driving force that energises
the being to strive always to be right because this is part of our humanity. Therefore
this survival syndrome is a trap into which we fall when we are in "humanistic mode"
and this syndrome is what in large measure induces in humans what we call feelings.
These feelings contain emotions and it is these emotions that get in the way of what
has to be done, but the root cause is the urge to survive.

I wanted to do an experiment with this.
An oppottunity arose in Appledore, in Cornwall. I was sailing with some friends and
some wanted to go ashore. I brought them ashore in the dinghy that had a Seagull
(those of you who are yachtsmen will know about the notoriety of early models of this
outboard engine) Outboard engine. I dropped them off at the pier and made the mistake
of casting off without starting it. I pulled and pulled and pulled and it would not start.
There was a strong ebb tide running. I began to drift fast towards the yacht. My wife,
who at that time was my girlfriend, was standing on the bow, watching my drift. As I
passed I coiled a rope and threw it at her but she missed and it slipped through her hands,
and she began to scream. I was very calm. I knew this was a very dangerous estuary
where at the mouth there is a whirlpool that claims several lives a year. But I was not
afraid, on the contrary I found the experience for want of a better word "interesting".
A lady on shore who had been watching and who knew the risks immediately called out the
lifeboat.
From where I was I could see the lifeboat being launched down the ramp. It hit the sea
with a huge splash, and the engines revved up with a roar as it began to make progress
on its route to rescue me from certain death.This was a race against time and both the
coxwain of the lifeboat and I knew it. This was going to be a very close call indeed.
And then I became super calm, I am going to call it "supercalm", I actually began to almost
resent being rescued, this is a very strange feeling. I felt that the lifeboad was interfering
with something I needed to find out. I wanted to actually experience the feeling of my opportunity to choose betweeen life and death. I wanted to experience what it is like to
look death in the face and in fact if possible to touch it before it touches you.
I can tell you it is a very strange experience to be so close to death and being at the last
few seconds, brutally snatced away just when the experience was getting really really interesting. I remember actually selfishly resenting being saved, to the astonishment of
all, including my wife, because what i was able to learn about myself in those few
seconds was priceless.
As a consequence of not having succumbed to the stimulus of survival, I was given
an opportunity to glimpse what life could be like without the survival syndrome attached to
it. I discovered how the need for survival stimulates the emotions, triggers reflexes,
creates habits, implants misconceptions, induces misapplications, and conditions us
in the opposite direction to that in which we should be heading if we want to succeed
in an arena in which all that is normal in normal life is abnormal here because it does
not and can not work.
As a final observation I want to tell you the Lifeboat was roaring along at perhaps 18 knots
but to me it was crawling. The wave motion of the sea was "oily" and "sluggish" .
The souund of the Lifeboat engine was not a revved sound but like a machine gun.
Everything was happening in real time like Rognavald explains but this kind of experience
has the ability to warp time. This is what I succeed in replicating. now do you understand
more clearly that this can be done at will, on command, but you have to be able to do it.

robq said:

Barjon, This is a useful definition of intuition. Rogenvald's experience is, I think, quite common when people are subjected to unexpected stress. Time seems to slow down. Neither intuition, as you define it, nor the apparent slowing of time as described by Rogenvald involve precognition. I have found Socrates' analyses of time and volume most enlightening. I was confused by "Days of Stopping Out". Did it provide evidence of precognition (knowledge of an event before it occurs)?

Click to expand...

Reply Affirmative,

barjon said:

great stuff you late night birds (or early evening for some )

To me, intuition is the extreme end of the subconscious application of acquired knowledge and can only flower if it is free of all the emotional and conscious, mechanical thought constraints that might divert it. As china said an intuitive feel for a good trade is easily inhibited by fear and/or a conscious examination of irrelevant mechanics (rsi is overbought or some such).

However, there does need to be acquired knowledge for the subconscious to operate. Like driving a car one starts off by gaining mechanical knowledge applied consciously (right, here I go - push in the clutch, change gear, bit of gas and release clutch) until those mechanical actions are applied subconsciously without any conscious thought whatsoever.

Staying with the driving analogy, ones subconscious builds up knowledge of how the other drivers around you are operating and that awareness leads to the intuition that the twit in front is going to cut across you without signalling. And sure enough......

I suppose what I'm saying in the context of this thread is that you can't have one (intuitive trading) without the other (relevant mechanical knowledge).

Click to expand...

Barjon, this is correct the danger is that INCLUDED in the knowledge that you acquire as a consequence of experience , contained in this experiential excercise there are invisble and undetectable booby traps you set yourself even without being aware of them as a consequence of you own humanity.
Therefore you cannot deal with what you cannot identify, in order to identify you have to
realise, you cannot realise if you do not know what you are looking for and what you are not looking for.You have to raise your awareness first. In order to raise and heighten your
own awareness (which is different to everybody else's) you have to work on yourself.
As your Net Present Self cannot do it because your humanity gets in the way you have to work to deal with this, in order to get yourself to change.
The majority of people may talk about it , the DUNCES will try to mess up discusssions on this board, but there are very few who dare to dare. Of these very few a few become stars,
and the others planets.

a320 said:

May as well add a picture...

Yes I'm going deep for most , but I know some of you understand where I'm coming from!!
Mr Bramble & Ford spring to mind )

A quote from Paracelsus:

"but we will speak only of the things which are difficult, and not to be grasped by the senses, but, indeed, which are almost contrary to the evidence of the senses."

CJ

Click to expand...

You are going to be given some serious work to do as a contrast to what you are currently doing.

SOCRATES said:

I wanted to experience what it is like to
look death in the face and in fact if possible to touch it before it touches you.
I can tell you it is a very strange experience to be so close to death and being at the last
few seconds, brutally snatced away just when the experience was getting really really interesting. I remember actually selfishly resenting being saved, to the astonishment of
all, including my wife, because what i was able to learn about myself in those few
seconds was priceless.

Click to expand...

A very interesting parallel situation with sky-diving. Many who do not participate believe the real thrill is in the jumping or in the falling. It isn't. It's in the DECISION. Not when to deploy, but IF to deploy.

Albeit in the individual's control, unlike in Socrates' accidental exposure to it, but in that instant of total awareness there is an a experience of genuinely unbounded clarity.

To achieve that sitting in front of your trading screens I suspect will require significant effort.

Max22 said:

Socrates,
If there was someone who had never looked at a chart, and did not even know what indicators were, but wanted to be a trader, where you would advise him to start.? A person which could be molded for success.

Click to expand...

You just follow all of this which is here for your benefit so that you learn which route
not to choose, which is the most important consideration as you are a beginner.
When you learn what you must not do,
Hopefully you will learn what you ought to and should do.
So hang around with us and avoid bad company at all costs.

Interesting thread!

For those interested in similar, experiences & are prepared to put the effort in to 'see', using an altered state of awareness, then you may like to read the Carlos Cantaneda books. These recount his teachings from Don Juan (a Yaqui indian & shaman). These books describe various techniques - the first & most important is losing the self/ego, called 'stopping the world' & changing your assemblage point (focus of awareness) - much as what Socrates advocates. Other aspects/techniques are described, for e.g. lucid dreaming & 'intuititive knowledge', literally just knowing - from the interconnectedness of all things - animate & inanimate.

There have also been US Govt trials over many years using a technique called 'remote viewing' whereby information was similarly made available to 'viewers' . Lots of info on the web no doubt for those interested to follow up.

What 'techniques' did you devise/evolve/learn & use Socrates?

Cheers.
MikeW

Socrates,

Thank you for the reflection of my SBUX trade which I am reading and re-reading as your reply has a lot for me to take in.

On the subject of slowing of time, the ability to move oneself into a state where time slows has also been achieved by top athletes. In the 1984 Wimbledon tennis final many commentators have siad that John McEnroe played "perfect tennis" that day. When asked about what made the game so easy for him he said that on that particular day he said that time had slowed down for him . For every stroke he made said he was literally able to go through every option of how to play it.

I have had similar experiences to this but not in any of the above described ways and only on a few occasions. On the occasions that it has happened the only way I would describe it was being in a state complete perfection and by this I do not mean that I felt that I was better than others. It was more a completeness where for the duration of the experience I had no concept of time.

Being able to do this at will I havent tried so it will be interesting to see if I can.


Paul

I have had similar experiences to this but not in any of the above described ways and only on a few occasions. On the occasions that it has happened the only way I would describe it was being in a state complete perfection and by this I do not mean that I felt that I was better than others. It was more a completeness where for the duration of the experience I had no concept of time.

It could be that you experienced what Abraham Maslow describes as a Peak Experience,I also have experienced this were the ego or the monkey mind is somewhat disabled for a period, the concept of time is irrelevant due to the fact that the mind is totally present and not being dragged to the past or the future by the constant thought process.It's a wonderful experience and in my case changed my world upside down for the better i can add.The key is to maintain this higher consciousness and from my understanding and practise ,mindfulness meditation
can aid this process for certain individuals, other people might find other paths to progress or practise which uses one pointed concentration exercise for periods of time.

Must add that it's very educational and interesting thread.

MikeW said:

Interesting thread!

For those interested in similar, experiences & are prepared to put the effort in to 'see', using an altered state of awareness, then you may like to read the Carlos Cantaneda books. These recount his teachings from Don Juan (a Yaqui indian & shaman). These books describe various techniques - the first & most important is losing the self/ego, called 'stopping the world' & changing your assemblage point (focus of awareness) - much as what Socrates advocates. Other aspects/techniques are described, for e.g. lucid dreaming & 'intuititive knowledge', literally just knowing - from the interconnectedness of all things - animate & inanimate.

There have also been US Govt trials over many years using a technique called 'remote viewing' whereby information was similarly made available to 'viewers' . Lots of info on the web no doubt for those interested to follow up.

What 'techniques' did you devise/evolve/learn & use Socrates?

Cheers.
MikeW

Click to expand...

The US Govt programme you mention was originally called Grill Flame and was devised by American Inelligence when they discovered taht the Soviets were very advanced in research on this topic at the height of the Cold War.

It came to their attentiion that the Communist Machine was scooping up anyone behind the Iron Curtain who was known to have any unusual psychic abilities. It was discovered that (quite by chance Imight add) the communists had a special division of the KGB (formerly NKVD) devoted to scouring all Iron Curtain Territtories for Shamans and other naturally
gifted individuals.


The US Govt was panicked into action and formed a training facility as a countermeasure
as they viewed the Russian effort as a threat. This was funded secretly and at the time there were only 4 members of congress and the President in the know, as it was considered
a really really hot topic, and not one that for reasons outside intelligence requirements could
even be discussed openly not because of defence considerations or because of the element of surprise or other military or tactical questions, but simply because of the potential nuisnace that could be caused by disruptive skeptics, that could be organised
as "spoilers".

This programme ran for several years. One of the poineers who is now a recluse was Ingo Swann, whom I have met and he lives in New York, or did, and at the time ,
could be said that he was the first to identify the Signal Line methodology.

Subsequently as a result of Govt changes and because of poilitical reasons the programmme was restructured and renamed Stargate, and operated also for some
time, which some of the orginal Remote Viewers continued to cooperate with,
Mc Moneagle, Dames, Smith etc., Then later this was broken up as a result of funding
being discontinued, and all the findings being put in edited form in the public domain.
An Ex Naval Officer, Hal Puttock played a very important part also thoughout these years.

Unfortunately RV is not of any use in the market so it is not used for this purpose.
It has been tried in the past , and experiments have been done but the results
have never been more accurate than you could get, say, by flipping a coin.

Remote Viewing is not effective for market use, it has been tried but not found to be reliably accurate like the Military version. So RV is not the answer. But what happens is that if you have the correct Biomind faculties you may be able to develop as a RV, because all these
are linked, but not dependent on one another thereore they may be useful but not crucial.

Also it does not necessarily mean that if you have RV abilities you will automatically have
the correcet biomind faculties that very advanced traders have had to develop to overcome
humansistic problems that block their path. The poblem for them is to first recognise
that the path is blocked and how it is blocked and what has to be done for them to change
themseves in order to attempt to unblock it.

The recurring problem is that the person you are normally has a goblin that does its best to
prevent you from developing the persona you need to develop, as the goblin is programmed to believe it is doing its best to protect you. One feature of this goblin is the survival syndrome. Other features vary in other people. We are all different. But we all start with similar problems and limitations, which in my circle we call Inabilities.

My technique is a different approach and the result of creating a separate persona, that I
can operate specifically to carry out tasks, but by the same token is autonomous, as this
separate persona is better at carrying out these tasks as it has been decontaminated over the years and purged of the viruses that prevent people from being rational, calm,
detached, emotionally uninvolved, impersonal, impartial and so on, when confronted by an environment that in human terms is hostile.

It is hostile because it does not repect or take into account feelings, emotions, personality, needs, status, gender, age, circimstances, and so on which to most ordinary people is a frightful shock., and very difficult if not impossible for them first of all to come to terms ,
let alone surmount a shock which is more often than not regarded as an afffront, but in
reality is not and can never be.

When several shocks are delivered in succession the accumulation of these shocks creates a mountain. Now to deal with this mountain needs work on self, because the
more it is delayed the worse it gets. That is why I am trying very hard with all of you
in repeated attempts to raise your collective and individual awareness.

Now you can clearly see, moderators, why I get annoyed when a pillock lands in the
middle, to deliberately disrupt through stupidity this discussion of life and death importance
to everybody who aspires, whether they yet realise or not. Let us keep trying.
I cannot do more. You cannot expect me to do everything.