Scott Free Thinking

Exclusively on ScottFreeThinking.com, I have the great pleasure of showing you this written interview between myself and Win Wenger, the man behind Project Renaissance, or more commonly known these days, as the co-author of the Genius Code learning course from Learning Strategies. Win Wenger is also the co-author of a very famous book in the personal development community, The Einstein Factor. While most people are following the huge Law of Attraction craze, Win Wenger has been stepping up the game of the accelerative learning experts for years.

I e-mailed Win a couple months back, not sure if I was going to be able to get an interview with him at all, but to my surprise he graciously agreed! In part 1 of this interview, Win has given me very detailed written responses to the subjects of what Win Wenger is behind, who he is, and best of all - we are told all about his signature method, Image Streaming.

Scott: So Win, how would you describe the man known as Win Wenger?

Win: Win is an ordinary man who stumbled into extraordinary things. An undistinguished student, he went into teaching in trying to make things better for the next generation of students than it had been for him. - Only to discover that conditions were far more crippling even for teachers than they were for students. He went into college teaching for awhile and then into research on the very thing getting him into trouble, the search for better methods of teaching and learning. That’s when things got interesting. He has found or discovered literally hundreds of highly various methods whose effects far excel beyond those obtaining from the methods which are conventionally used in classrooms. He also leads in the area of creativity methods and creative problem-solving, having created more different methods now in successful professional use around the world than has anyone but one other person now living. Ask him about the “Toolbuilder Effect” as to how this came about.

Scott: What is the “Toolbuilder Effect?”

Win: If you HAVE a good method for solving problems, one of the best problems to work it on, is……the problem of how to create BETTER methods for problem-solving. Of course: one of the best problems to work those better methods on, is on the problem of how to create yet BETTER such methods….. Back in 1967, during Win’s first round of college teaching, he was looking for ways to enrich the learning of his students and found the literature of that time on creativity and CPS. It occurred to him then to propose this proposition, this principle of re-investing your best methods into the creation of yet better methods - that principle is all that Win accepts credit for; everything else happens as a consequence. Countless new methods present themselves for study when one applies this principle, and each one brings fresh understandings. “Toolbuildering” is the process of new methods emerging from one’s application of current methods to the problem of how to create better ones.

It is through applying Toolbuildering for the past four decades that Win discovered that EVERY creativity-evoking and creative problem-solving method is also, usually with little adaptation needed, a profoundly powerful method also for learning and teaching the various contents of the curriculum. Thus the hundreds of effective creativity-related methods now in professional use around the world, constitute an enormous reservoir of superior methods for teaching and learning.

Scott: What is Image Streaming?

Win: We are pleased to report the existence of an ongoing natural phenomenon, ever-present in every living human being. The majority of the brain is engaged in associating experiences by sensory image, in contrast to the conscious-focused part of the mind, 2% of the brain, which associates by word and word-concept. This part of the brain works very comprehensively and very rapidly, and is where nearly all our understandings, insights and inspirations form before they become conscious for us. Far MORE understandings, insights and inspirations are formed there than ever become conscious. These are reflexively, constantly, being expressed in streams of sensory images “in the back of the mind.” Perhaps one third of people can tune into this simply by looking for it; virtually all the rest of us can also tune into this with a simple step or so of procedure as described freely on the web at http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm

Connecting consciously with this activity of the majority of the brain, brings more resources more immediately available for conscious use. Since these functions in the brain reflexively associate the most relevant experiences with what’s currently going on, one may use that “what’s currently going on” to direct questions or focus on problems, and be presented images in his ImageStream which answer, often ingeniously, those problems or questions.

Another utility for this reflexive relating to “what’s currently going on,” is for creative work or for writing. Never experience a “block,” or have to wait for inspiration. Simply ask your own ImageStream faculties “what comes next?” Describe in detail for a paragraph or so whatever imagery results, regardless of what it is, and you find your next or further inspiration clicks right into focus. Pretty convenient.

You, or the person reading this, might be one of the one-in-three who, easily and immediately, is able to ImageStream without further guidance. Have someone there with you as a listener, or an audio recorder on behalf of your imagined or potential listener. You might have to close eyes to see more freely, so memorize these two steps so you can give full visual attention to what’s playing in the back of your mind…

1) “Look in” now and see what’s playing. (Not what you decide to see, but the “spontaneous” imagery that’s actually playing there. The more surprising its contents are to you, the better.)

2) Whatever’s there, describe aloud, in detail, to your listener. (Describe in sensory detail, instead of naming things or explaining about what you are seeing. Keep on describing, and notice when the images change, and try to keep your describing up with what you are seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, etc.)

Five to twenty minutes a session of ImageStreaming, one or two sessions per day, should be enough to work miraculous effects in the life and experience of just about anyone. Try it for yourself for ten days and see for yourself if the world hasn’t become very positively different and a much richer place for you.

Scott: I’m assuming you’ve experimented a bit with lucid dreaming. What were some of the results you experienced, and what are some of the things you’ve tried with lucid dreaming? For me, I tend to believe that Image Streaming is a more practical way to solve problems, because you can do it almost anywhere, anytime in a waking state, where in lucid dreaming you’ve got to gain consciousness of our dream state. Do you think Image Streaming is ultimately the more powerful tool, or lucid dreaming?

Win: When I was seven or eight years old, I read a book on dreaming and, for awhile, recorded my own dreams. It quickly got to where I was recording as many as twenty-some dreams a night, so it got to be impractical to continue, but that experience did teach me much about myself and I’m sure played some significant role in my development. During that time I had one or two dreams that could now be called lucid, and every now and then since I’ll occasionally have one.

Lucid dreaming is an area of research I would like to take up, it’s at least as powerful a link to the Beyond-Conscious, from the standpoint of the Beyond-Conscious, as is ImageStreaming, and I’m certain a great deal more can be done with this topic even than has been. Alas, I’ve had my hands full and then some with the ImageStreaming and other work that I’ve been doing. There are hundreds of other very inviting investigatory leads trailing off in all sorts of directions that I also mostly can’t get around to without dropping other ones. I wish very much to encourage other people into research in this very rich area, all sorts of science-significant stuff is languishing for lack of people to investigate it.

As you said, ImageStreaming can be done almost anywhere, unlike lucid dreaming. Further, ImageStreaming is easily directed to practical goals such as solving problems, finding answers to questions, solving problems, finding understanding of all sorts, inventing, assisting in several kinds of accelerated reading, and making discoveries, just to mention a few things. You CAN do some or most of these things also with lucid dreaming, but apparently with difficulty and only by advanced practitioners - at least the literature on lucid dreaming doesn’t feature much such practical applications.

Lucid dreaming, like ImageStreaming, reflects ongoing natural phenomena present in every human being and so can probably be a skill learned by every human being alive. However, lucid dreaming takes weeks or months to train up to any proficiency, whereas generally ImageStreaming can be learned and made effective in just a few moments. Both appear to be equivalent, perhaps equal, in providing avenue to our deeper selves and to whatever is our true nature.

Read part 2 of this interview >>