I wonder if you have ever stopped to think about why it is that you know what DVD’s you have in your collection when someone asks? Even though you have never stopped to actually memorise them, or the reasons behind why you know what you need to get for your next meal from the shops, even though you have never actually made a shopping list?
’ You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.’
That is the answer to the above questions really. The lists of information have been stored in your head in the proper manner, with more areas of your brain involved in the actual process. Far more areas than the usual mundanity we have forced upon us at school. The understanding that we can now have any information in our heads to be processed in the same speedy manner without much concerted effort is based solely on the difference between seeing and observing. The difference between someone who walks through a car lot or someone like Jason Bourne who can observe the details.
Do the techniques of memorising the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards and knowing the license plates of all the cars on the car park outside differ? No. It’s the application of the methods that change. To memorise cards, it is traditionally done in a quiet zone and sometimes with sound cancelling head phones on. This is so as not to affect your concentration, which is great for the competitions. When it comes to using this out in the world of detection there isn’t a chance for this. So we must change our state around the methods that we use. We will therefore observe more of what we see in everyday life.
To create an example then, let us say that you are called to a scene. You have to walk through this only once before you are to talk to the ‘witness’. You see the pregnancy test in the trash, next to an old Starbucks coffee cup with foam in, a blue cigarette lighter on the floor, all 8 Star Wars films in order on the shelf, a phone with a small dog on the screensaver, 1 large Thinsulate glove and some old Cosmopolitan magazines all flipped open to the horoscopes section. Now I ask you, when I write this down, what is the difference between this and the playing cards, other than ease? Nothing really, just the situation. So in order to take this information in we must become observant. We do this through becoming more at ease with the basic techniques of memory work. They will then become comfortable in our changing states. This would be our state of awareness and observation. As your comfort levels with these techniques grow and in the myriad of different ways, the way you view the world around you will have you soaking the information in like a sponge. We could take in the aforementioned details by using the Link System. One quick walk through and we could better formulate our questions around potentially inconsequential moments to better understand the witness’ propensity for lies or the understanding of the other people in the house. We ask better questions we get better answers after all.
In order to start with the basics, what I have found works very well for me is to train with these memory systems when I am a holding my breath or running on the spot. Take a video on my phone when in a coffee shop or walking down the street and make sure that as I am recording I am taking in the details, I would then have the video to check my work. You build a solid grounding in the basics of the methods under duress. Get these to a point where you can do them with ease and your awareness will grow and grow because the details will line up for you to take in as you view them.
With this what we are crafting is iron clad vision with which we need to view the world as a reader of people and scenes. However, as a by product we also get to maintain our presence within the conversations and situations that we are in. This way we can still be observant of all of the details needed to complete our puzzles and solve our crimes but we also get to maintain the relationships we would need to develop in order to elicit more information to aid us in our mission.
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So here we understand that the eyes can be so much more than the windows to the soul.
Do stay in touch.
Ben
