Application, Testing, and Refinement

Now it's back to the real world. You will want to apply those skills you just learned to real life. You will want to apply them to the actual situations you face on a day-to-day basis. You will want to see how well they work, to test them out, and to the extent they don't work as well as you would wish to refine them to make them better, and to improve them by cutting out any unnecessary steps.

Within each of these phases there will be several steps as follows:

Phase 1: Preparing for the DTI

A list of questions to ask yourself, or your client, that will assist you in preparing for the DTI is included as Appendix 1. These questions cover the following areas:

Step 1: Defining the Context For The DTI

During this step you will decide why you want to do the DTI, and in what area of your life you wish to have the master's skills available. You will also take stock of your own resources, emotions, beliefs and values that may support, or undermine your journey.

Step 2: Therapeutic versus Generative DTI

We think of DTI's as falling into two broad categories, generative and therapeutic. In a therapeutic DTI you are bringing certain unwanted baggage; there is some feeling, belief, or value that is making you less than who you want to be, something you wish to be transformed as a result of the DTI.

A generative DTI on the other hand, carries no such unwanted baggage. You step out locked and loaded, seeking only to step to the next level of your evolution and personal development.

Of course, no DTI is purely therapeutic; every DTI offers the opportunity for amazing personal evolution. After all, you never know how far a change may go! Equally no DTI is entirely generative.

If you are seeking personal evolution, there is always the question of what is stopping you from being that already?

Step 3: Choosing the model

Who do you wish to model? Who is the master of the skill you want to attain? We are fortunate to be part of a species that includes giants; intellectual giants, creative giants, business giants, artistic giants, scientific giants, giants who have mastered the use of their bodies, minds, emotions, and spirit.

Many of these giants themselves stand on the shoulders of earlier giants, and this has allowed

mankind to create incredible works of art, paintings, books, music, and architecture; to travel at unprecedented speeds over land, water, and through the air; to walk on the moon and the ocean floor, to peer into the depths of space, and into the heart of atoms. Choose wisely!

As if the giants of history were not enough for you to choose from, other creative minds have provided even more choice. Idealized human beings exist in literature and religious texts; perhaps you will choose the observational skills of Sherlock Holmes, or maybe Tony Stark's engineering and business brilliance that allowed him to become Iron Man, or even Jesus Christ's ability to love his fellow man. You can even, if you wish, DTI with the very gods.

Nor are you limited to human beings, or even beings imagined by human beings. You can DTI with the animal kingdom; how would it feel to become a jaguar? Or perhaps you would like to experience something more elemental, such as the life of a giant Sequoia tree? Will you DTI with a tornado and feel the raw energy of nature? The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

We will be talking about how to choose a DTI model in Chapter 9.

Step 4: Choosing a counter model

The idea of a DTI with a counter model is something that, we believe, makes our protocol absolutely unique. There are many reasons to use a counter model within your DTI process, so many reasons in fact that we can't even begin to discuss them here, so you'll have to wait for Chapter 10.

Step 5: Are You Unconsciously Aligned With the DTI Process?

DTI is a process that requires, indeed relies on, the active involvement of the unconscious mind. If your unconscious mind is not on board with the entire process, the DTI is at best going to be less effective than it could be, at worst ineffective, and possibly even worse than worst, counterproductive. So we better make absolutely sure that the unconscious mind gets on board the train at the same time we do!

Phase 2: The DTI Experience

Step 1: Building Rapport with the model

To maximize the benefits of the effect of the DTI there needs to be a high level of rapport between you and the model. This may sound odd given that you may have never met the model, but it is important to realize that this rapport exists within you, meaning it is rapport between your representation of yourself, and your representation of the model.

The research on Mirror Neurons shows a DTI is less effective when there is no rapport between you and the model. In short, if you don't like the model, your conscious mind is very unlikely to take on the attributes of the model. Hopefully, this particular point will be dealt with when you check the

unconscious alignment and ecology, because your unconscious will likely refuse to DTI with someone you don’t like or respect!

The research also shows that the DTI is most effective when you have deep rapport with the model.

And the deeper you can make that rapport, the more effective and more profound the DTI becomes.

Therefore, we will be discussing methods to deepen rapport with the model before you begin your DTI in Chapter 11.

Step 2: Dream Incubation

One of the most effective ways of experiencing the DTI is actually within your dreams. All three of the authors actively use dream incubation, lucid dreaming or shared dreaming to install generative experiences on an unconscious level. And this includes DTI within dreams.

I (John) modeled Milton Erickson both consciously and unconsciously over a number of years. Part of this modeling involved a series of dreams during which Erickson supervised my training as a psychologist working within a prison. Having Milton Erickson actually teach you in this way, even in dreams, is truly a life-changing experience.

We will discuss Dream Incubation for DTI in Chapter 12.

Step 3: Selecting the DTI Technique

The second part of this book will be spent discussing various DTI techniques, from Alexander Raikov’s original protocol, through John's Quantum Perceptual Positions DTI, through the various protocols developed by Shawn and Jess, including BEAT DTI, Reverse-DTI, Future Self DTI, Symbolic DTI and several more.

When originally discussing this book the three authors debated at length the issue of simplicity versus variety, “How many DTI techniques should we include? Should we only include one and the book should be about how to apply this most effectively? Or should we include several?” In the end (and not necessarily with unanimous agreement!), we decided to include a number of DTI techniques for you to play with.

No doubt you will like some more than others. Perhaps you will be lucky and find one to immediately fall in love with, and use exclusively. Perhaps you'll be even luckier and get to play with several of them, or even all of them. You may find that one technique is ideal for you and when working with clients a different approach yields better results.

Whatever your preference, there are enough techniques included in the book to satisfy all tastes, including the taste for infinite variety! However, all the DTI techniques described are ultimately based on John’s Quantum Perceptual Positions DTI, discussed in Chapter 13.

Step 3: Building and Absorbing the Model

Another one of the aspects of our DTI protocol, which makes it different to most or all other discussions of DTI, is our firm belief that in order to understand a person on a deep enough level to truly model them, you need to understand their personal history, and the life events that have made them the master they are. This idea was brought out by our love of biography. When we read a biography we don't simply want to read about how that person behaved at the peak of their power. We also want to understand where they came from, their childhood, their early lives and the mistakes and lessons that made them the person they are at the peak of that power.

As we build our model, we are going to do so not just by considering how the master did what he did so masterfully, we are also going to consider how he gained that mastery. This gives our own unconscious the opportunity not to simply learn from them, but to learn in the way that they learned.

We will be using an approach we call the Event Matrix to build our model. The Event Matrix is discussed in Chapters 14 and 15.

Step 4: Unconscious Activation of the model

Finally we have the portion of the DTI process that you would normally think of as DTI: trance, visualizations (positive hallucinations), inner dialoguing, perceptual position shifts, and so on.

Step 5: Conscious Activation of the model

Now comes a very important and frequently neglected part of the DTI process. There is a point in time where the subject has absorbed the mastery of the model on a deep unconscious level. The skills of the model are available to them, but on a latent basis; almost like a gene that has not yet chosen to express itself. This DTI ‘gene’ now needs to be ‘switched on’ in order to express itself on an emotional and behavioral level.

The method of switching on the DTI can be simple, a mere expression of an emotion or action that arises from the model, from the master, and not from the subject’s normal repertoire of emotional or behavioral responses. One way of doing this is by using the BEAT pattern described in Chapter 20.

Phase 3: Integration

Step 1: Integrating the model

You have already tested for the ecology of the DTI by making sure that you were consciously aligned with the process. You have had the DTI experience; the skills and other qualities of the master have been experienced and installed on a deep unconscious level. You have carefully selected on a conscious and unconscious level exactly those skills and abilities, beliefs and values, and other qualities you wish to take back with you.

But it is still possible that there may be some clashes between your beliefs, your values, and your identity, and those that you have absorbed through the DTI process, within a real-world context you may face.

You may actually have chosen to DTI with this model precisely because they had beliefs, values, meta-programs and other qualities that you do not, but that you wish to absorb. Sometimes the DTI process by itself can be sufficient to install these new beliefs and values, or meta-programs within the specific context where you want the change to take place. After all, to install a new belief, value, or meta program you need the conscious and unconscious intention to do so, a reference experience of the new belief, value, or meta program in practice, and a self-experience either in reality—or as an imagined ‘future place’ using the new belief, value or mentor program.

In any case, you will wish to fully and completely integrate the model into your own neurology, physiology, behaviors and identity. At the same time you will want to reconcile and resolve any clashes between your beliefs, values and Meta programs and those of the model. We will be using a technique called the Mind Meld to resolve any such clashes that may arise (named after the famous Vulcan Mind Meld of Star Trek!). We will devote an entire chapter to this technique, Chapter 21. Of course, if the DTI works well and does not cause any inner conflicts, the Mind Meld will be unnecessary.

Step 2: Connecting the model with the Real-World Context

In this step we are going to ‘attach’ the activated DTI gene onto the context where the skills and behaviors are desired. We will do this using some well-known NLP techniques, including a variation of the Swish pattern. See Chapter 21 for details.

Phase 4: Application, Testing, and Refinement

Step 1: Application and testing

Of course, a DTI is of no use whatsoever unless it provides skills and abilities that can actually be used in the real world. The subject has to step into the real world context and find out what happens.

If all goes to plan, the skills and capabilities of the model will arise and operate exactly as hoped.

Step 2: Refinement

As with most things, in practice some aspect of the experience may be less than perfect, and some issue arises that could be improved upon. This is to be expected and offers an opportunity to revisit the DTI, to see how the model will deal with that issue!