The End

My Keystone presentation is today.

This process was not what I thought it would be.

Last summer, I started interviewing people for my presentation, and I was so sure that I would be ahead of schedule. I planned to have a ten page essay about the history of specific clairvoyants. I planned to volunteer at the psychic fair.

As it turns out, I ended up doing a six page paper about the history of clairvoyance and it's misconceptions. I interviewed two formal subjects, and four casual subjects. My portfolio is done (!) and my product is edited and advisor approved. Instead of volunteering at the psychic fair (which it turns out I can't volunteer at without a lot of training) I volunteered with those who are "excluded" from society (homeless people and special needs teens), and I think I've gotten a lot more out of those experiences than I ever would have from volunteering a the Intuitive fair.

It's been really stressful, but all I have is my presentation.

Progress!

I have gotten so much done today.

I am two transcribed quotes away from finishing my paper - I need to pinpoint what David says about intuition and clairvoyance and what Tonya said about what people should know about clairvoyance.

I finished trimming my video! Dr. Ayres has to approve it, but I am so proud of getting it from over an hour to nine minutes.

I finished my lesson plan and had it read over.

All I need to do is volunteer this weekend and print out my research for my binder.

Productivity tastes sweet.

A Week Left!

I have one week and 4.5 hours until I present my keystone. Eek.

But I've been working hard of late, and I think I will do well.

I've brought my hour long interview down to 13.5 minutes, and I'm trying to shave off 3 extra minutes. My lesson plan that I'm going to give in Yoga tefillah to teach about clairvoyance and meditation is nearly completed. I have to put in my final quotes on my essay, and touch up my powerpoint presentation.

Of course, I still have to figure out how to rip Tonya's audio from the image and make a silhouette. An interview of a chair (because she wasn't comfortable with it on her face) may not go down so well.

That's the biggest thing I have to do - I'm not sure I can rip it. I know I can mute it then add audio, but I want to remove the audio from the picture. I'm sort of lost as how to go about it, but I will manage.

My final problem is community service. I have my service lined up, but when I talked to Roni, she said I could do the service (which happens once a month) after my keystone has happened, on June 2nd. So how will I turn in my binder? This is a problem that still has to be resolved.

I'm at that place where everything is in it's FINAL stage and needs to be touched up. Thank goodness for weekends.

Update

So far, I've overcome my snags. I've converted my video to a format that I can edit, and my interview edits are almost done.

I just got back the edits to my essay, and I still have a lot of work to do.

Luckily my community service is taken care of.

My biggest problem is that everything is READY - I just don't have my presentation.

That
Is
A
Problem.

Work Update

Unfortunately, almost all of my video content is poor. It's grainy, the sound isn't clear, or for whatever reason, I have to re-record. Luckily, that will be easy to do. -UPDATE- Now that I've started editing, the quality is far better than I had thought it would be. Everything is going fairly well.

Meanwhile, I'm still unsure of the direction that my essay should take. I want to prove that clairvoyance is not what people think it is, but there are so many ways to go about that.

Progress Report

I definitely originally took on more than I could do. Luckily, I've edited the plan.

I originally planned a 15 page paper covering the definition, history, and examples of clairvoyance. What it is, and what it isn't. It was a very research driven outline, and I thought that it would be a good idea, as I was sure that the product - my mini movie - wouldn't take long. But now that I have my interviews, I'm definitely thinking differently. I still want to do a paper on the history of clairvoyance, but really, what is there to discuss? Not much.

So I'm paring it down a bit. I think I will change to a full product based keystone, rather than a hybrid of product and research. I'm not sure.

Section one: Definition of Clairvoyance

Section two: What does a Clairvoyant do?

It was suggested that I profile my mother, but I'm not sure how appropriate that would be. I think I would want to profile a few people - clairvoyant who have a daily job, like Tanya, and one who does it for a living, like David. I could easily find some people, but I don't want to go back to Tanya and David, as they are my sources for the video and I would like something more varied.

Progress Report

Hooray! I've got my second big interview today with someone from the Berkeley Psychic Institute. I'm pretty nervous because unlike my previous interview, I don't know the woman I'm interviewing. Apparently the people who work at Berkeley Psychic Institute are also more...intense. I'm really glad I hooked this up though. I'm also VERY glad I put my interview questions up before: here they are again.

1) How would you define Clairvoyance?

2) What do fully-trained clairvoyants have the ability to do?

3)How would you compare what "clairvoyance" means to what "psychic abilities or powers" means?

4) How does clairvoyance work?

5) What concepts do you teach when holding a class on clairvoyance?

6) What is the relationship between intuition and clairvoyance?

7) What is a reading?

8) What would a reading look like, to both a casual observer and to you? In other words, what would someone on the outside see, but what do you see yourself doing?

9) There are those who define clairvoyance as "the ability to predict the future". To what level are they correct?

10) The Institute of Noetic Sciences says that they "identify three principal areas of interest: extended human capacities, integral health and haling, and emerging world views". Does this connect to clairvoyance at all?

11) Could you comment on the controversies surrounding clairvoyance, such as the claims that say all clairvoyants and psychics have tricks?

12) Would you say that clairvoyance is a "sixth sense"?

13) How could one connect clairvoyance to faith healing?

14) Would you say that one could connect "clairvoyance" to something that we would other wise define as "magic"?

15) Psychics and clairvoyants have been around for a long time. Can you think of other names that they are known by? In other words, perhaps a few centuries ago they would not have been known as psychics, but perhaps as fortune tellers, witches, or mediums?


I'm having major problems with my essay though - I don't know how I'm going to do it. I have complete writer's block though - everything I try to write makes absolutely no sense at all. I suppose I should start from the middle, but it still isn't connecting when I write it down.

Progress Report

I don't have much new: I'm working on taking notes on the definition of Clairvoyance from various books, but it is very time consuming and will take a while. Many of them seem to take a lot of space to say something simple.

I have gotten a few more interviews for the video. What I really want to do is interview strangers in the street, but how will I get them to do that? I have a lot of material, but it's all from schoolmates and people in Buffalo.

I have contacted the Berkeley Psychic Institute requesting an interview, and I also plan to visit the Psychic fair this month. I'm not sure what it is, but hopefully I'll be able to get interviews.

My (first) Outline

Update on my interview: It went very well. I have about 35 minutes of material. Some of it I have to use, some I won't be able to. I can't show it straight thought, there will have to be a lot of editing.

First outline (this is very loose: I don't have a thesis, this is my most basic layout). Additionally, it should be noted that I am writing "section" instead of "paragraph". This is because there will be multiple paragraphs per section.

1st section: What is Clairvoyance?

• Definition of clairvoyance
• What is clairvoyance and what isn't (e.g. Oracle of Delphi is not, tarot is questionable, readings are clairvoyance.)
• How it connects to other forms of ESP
• Types of clairvoyance
• Clairaudience
• clairsentience

2nd section

• Clairvoyance in history
• hindu religious texts (clear seeing)
• Marquis de Puységur
• Edgar Cayce
• spiritualistic period in the 19th century
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Charles Richet
• Government funded "psychotronic" experience against the Soviet military
• Clairvoyance as relates to the history of fortunetelling, soothsaying

3rd section

• Controversial Clairvoyance
• J.B. Rhine
• Fight against science
• Photographing of auras
• New Age science
• Chakras that turn out to connect to real pressure points

Success! First interview set up

Now that I have a formal interview set up with David Pierce of Intuitive Way (though I really should work on fixing my camera) I can list my questions for him. I'm planning on the interview being a half hour, so I think I'll have 15 Questions prepared, and end up asking about ten.

1) How would you define Clairvoyance?

2) What do fully-trained clairvoyants have the ability to do?

3)How would you compare what "clairvoyance" means to what "psychic abilities or powers" means?

4) How does clairvoyance work?

5) What concepts do you teach when holding a class on clairvoyance?

6) What is the relationship between intuition and clairvoyance?

7) What is a reading?

8) What would a reading look like, to both a casual observer and to you? In other words, what would someone on the outside see, but what do you see yourself doing?

9) There are those who define clairvoyance as "the ability to predict the future". To what level are they correct?

10) The Institute of Noetic Sciences says that they  "identify three principal areas of interest: extended human capacities, integral health and haling, and emerging world views". Does this connect to clairvoyance at all?

11) Could you comment on the controversies surrounding clairvoyance, such as the claims that say all clairvoyants and psychics have tricks?

12) Would you say that clairvoyance is a "sixth sense"?

13) How could one connect clairvoyance to faith healing?

14) Would you say that one could connect "clairvoyance" to something that we would other wise define as "magic"?

15) Psychics and clairvoyants have been around for a long time. Can you think of other names that they are known by? In other words, perhaps a few centuries ago they would not have been known as psychics, but perhaps as fortune tellers, witches, or mediums?

I put Noetic Sciences as number 10, because even though it doesn't necessarily connect to talking about what clairvoyance is, it is technically a science, and if the interviewee can agree that clairvoyance connects to the definition given of Noetic Science, then that is progress towards giving clairvoyance some validity.

While the last question may be a bit difficult to understand, and is not relevant to proving the validity of clairvoyance, it is important to ask that in order to connect clairvoyance to history.