You Can't Bribe a Dog with a Dollar!

The Analogy:

A burgler broke into a house to steal whatever he could find of value. As he ransacked through a jewelry box, he became aware that he was being watched. He turned around and found a very large and menacing dog staring at him. The dog bared its teeth, began growling, and poised itself to attack.

The burglar normally carried a meat bone with him for just such a situation, but this time, had not brought it. He reached into his pocket for it and found only a wad of dollar bills he had gotten from the house before this one.

So, he decided to just distract the dog by tossing a dollar to one side. Maybe he could escape, if the dog would just attack the dollar. It worked, but not well enough. The dog attaced the dollar, tore it to pieces, and immediately turned its attention back to the burgler.

One by one, the burglar threw dollar after dollar to the side, and each time, was able to inch a tiny bit farther towards the open window through which he had entered. But before he could get close enough to the window to escape, he ran out of dollars. Now, the dog stayed fixated on him. There was not going to be a way out of this. The lights came on and the homeowner stood there with a gun. The burglar thought that he might buy his way out of this situation, but then realized that all his money had been torn to bits by the dog. The homeowner called the police and the burglar learned a very valuable lesson: A single juicy bone might have gotten him away, but you can't bribe a dog with a dollar.

The Meaning of the Analogy:

I don't know how many times people have tried to entice me into working the lottery for them or working the stock market for them, and in return they will give me part of the money so I can be rich. Never mind the fact that, if I worked the lottery for myself, I could keep all the money.

In the same manner, they will tell themselves that if their subconscious mind will give them the proper numbers for the lottery, for gambling, or the stock market, they will give a certain percentage to charity or the homeless, or whatever. They also reason that having more money is a great reward, so their subconscious mind should jump at the chance to get rich.

In other words, they are trying to bribe their subconscious mind with riches, conscious pleasures, being a hero to some charity, being able to buy their loved ones nice things, and so on. But we have found that sadly, it just doesn't work. You can't bribe your subconscious mind with money because that's not what it really wants.

That type of reasoning has no effect on the outcome of their viewing. If they win, generally one of two things happens: Either they suddenly see the use of this tool to get filthy rich and greed sets in, or they give themselves a reward for their conscious minds, not for their subconscious. They may give to charity and feel, at the conscious level, either a sense of joy or pride. Or they spend the money on good things, or pay off bills, or buy presents for others. But these are all things that satisfy the conscious mind, The subconscious is unimpressed with all that. It's great feedback for the conscious mind, but it doesn't actually stimulate the subconscious to want to do better. In many, many cases, a viewer will have great success and then seem to lose interest in viewing, or still want to view, but just can't bring themselves to practice or even get involved in a viewing operation. Their subconscious has lost the desire to view. The fact is that you can't bribe your subconscious with a dollar, either.

So, what does the subconscious mind want? Many things, but one of the easiest rewards for it is pleasure. It likes for the brain to be in a state of pleasure. The brain is electrical in nature, and trapped inside a dark skull with its only real inputs coming in as electrical signals from nerve endings in the ears, eyes, tongue, and skin. At its most pleasant state, the synapses of the brain fire together to form what is called "alpha waves". Believe it or not, it wants alpha waves. And, those are easy to make.

Believe it or not, a piece of chocolate, a warm bath, a period of meditation, time spent with a loved one, a game of pitch or "hide and go seek" with the children is more of a reward to your deepest self than all the money, fame, recognition and "things" in the world.

The dog in the analogy is a very complex animal with very simple needs. Your subconscious is, too. At the dog's most basic level, it responds to something as simple as a piece of raw meat. Likewise, the subconscious feeds on and hungers for those electrical pleasure signals coming from your senses. And when it gets them, it responds very favorably and learns to do those things which will get them more. This is the basis of how humans form habits, desires, and even obsessions.

This may sound oversimplified and illogical, but if you want to bribe your subconscious mind to get better at remote viewing, wait until it does a great job and then, as a reward to your subconscious mind, eat chocolate - go to a movie - go swimming - smell flowers - take a long soak in a hot tub. Forget about the money. Forget about being "The Greatest Remote Viewer In The World". Forget about scores and "hits". When you have a good session, reward your mind and yourself with something that gives you a simple pleasure.

And if you do a session and find that your subconscious mind did not help you, then DO NOT give it any kind of reward at all. Many parents yell at their children and punish them for being bad, but never praise them for being good, and then wonder why the children get worse and worse. The reason is that they are teaching the child that doing bad things is a way to get Mom and Dad's attention. To the subconscious mind, just like to children, negative reward is still a reward. So, do not beat yourself up for bad sessions. Instead, treat a bad session as a great way to learn something about yourself. Study it with cool analysis, not with emotion, and when you find out what went wrong, reward yourself for having learned something new. This is why we, at PSI constantly reinforce the understanding that, "The purpose of a practice target is not to learn something about the target. it is to learn somethng about yourself."

A simple bite of chocolate is more of an incentive for your subconscious mind to work better than all the money in the world. A physical kiss or a hug or even just a simple word of praise from another person for a job well done is infinitely more important to your subconscious mind than getting paid for your work or logging in high scores into a database, Monetary rewards are for the conscious mind. But the conscious mind isn't the one you depend on to do good viewing. Giving yourself conscious mind rewards every time your subconscious mind does good work is very much akin to your boss receiving a raise and promotion whenever you come up with a good idea.

So, if you want to have continued success in remote viewing, and want to continue to improve your skills at it, you have to start bribing the dog with a bone. That is, by giving your subconscious mind what IT wants. You have to find out what your "inner child" is after, and provide that as a reward. Struggling to hit the lottery or to make a killing in the stock market is an exercise in self-defeat. So, when you have a truly successful session, take some time off to play ball with the kids, go get a hug from a loved one, or just sit back and have a piece of that wickedly tasteful tripple chocolate cake (well, a small piece, anyway). Do that, and you'll find that your subconscious mind will give you many more successful sessions to come.