- Being able to do FIML means that you have developed a skill or trait that did not exist in you before. The ability to do FIML is a functional “state of mind” that emerges from other states of mind–from consciousness, awareness, self-reflection, self-criticism, communication, language use, emotion, etc.
- Doing FIML will change the way you communicate, especially with your FIML partner. It will change the way you view language and its uses.
- Since FIML depends on real data agreed upon by both partners and since FIML can convincingly change how we perceive ourselves and our partners, it can give us new perspectives on psychology and/or any activity that depends on language/communication.
- The use of a linguistic/semiotic vocabulary in FIML allows us to classify a great deal of human cognition, psychology, and behavior as lying on a spectrum of public—private semiotics.
- This perspective allows us to broadly define many human behaviors, thoughts, and feelings as mistakes. For example, a private semiotic may be a “neurosis” and can be defined simply as a “mistaken interpretation” or an “ongoing mistaken interpretation.” Similarly, any public semiotic that can be shown to be wrong can be clearly identified as a mistake or an “ongoing public neurosis.”
- What is “normal” in FIML is, thus, that which is not mistaken. Partners have great leeway to decide much of this for themselves.
- Very often, the least mistaken view is one of doubt or traditional skepticism, the view that we may not be able to be certain about whatever is in question.
- FIML practice accepts the basic scientific view that a scientific theory must be testable or falsifiable, based on experiments that can be repeated, based on verifiable evidence, internally consistent, consistent with what is external to itself, useful or practical, open to change, and parsimonious in its explanations.
- New scientific theories should also say something new and interesting, something that explains data in a new way or that provides a new way of understanding old data.
- FIML differs from a good deal of science in that it relies heavily on the experiences of two (or more) partners. For the most part, partners alone decide what is true for them, though they cannot honestly do this without reference to other fields of science and thought.
- FIML, thus, allows for great personal autonomy. But autonomy mixed with the dialectic of another person. Partners doing FIML cannot claim to be “scientific” in most senses of the word, but they can claim to be “being true to themselves” to the best of their abilities while including a scientific view of the world.
- In this sense, FIML resembles Buddhist practice, art, or the work of early scientists in that the existential/experiential data acquired by individuals is of great importance to those individuals and is central to what they are doing.
- FIML can be scientifically falsified if many people do it and fail to gain any benefit from it.
- Done properly, at a minimum, FIML practice should clear up most communication mistakes/problems between partners. FIML also provides the means for partners to continue clearing up new mistakes as they appear.
- By clearing up mistakes in communication between partners FIML practice alleviates a great deal of emotional suffering.
- It is my guess, my hypothesis, that by clearing up mistakes in communication between partners, FIML practice will also relieve partners of other mistaken ideas and feelings, thus relieving a good deal of more generalized emotional suffering.
Being able to do FIML
American Buddhist Net 