Creative Visualization – III
Creative visualization is essentially a frontal attack on the doubt thought form, which will fight back with every trick it knows. Your doubt thought form is what tries to hang you up in “Will this happen or not happen? Maybe it won’t happen, so I shouldn’t let myself get too excited about it so I won’t feel disappointed if it doesn’t happen, etc. etc.” Creative visualization is a way of cutting across all those endless circles of doubt, by taking primary joy in the act of visualization itself. It’s like playing with an imaginary companion: a child who has an imaginary companion doesn’t care if it’s real or not – he or she just has fun with it in the now moment. And that’s the attitude you must bring to creative visualization – take primary pleasure in imagining it happening right now, rather than worrying about whether or not it will actually come true in some future.
The difference between creative visualization and normal daydreaming is that in creative visualization there is no doubt: as in dreaming, the experience is too vivid and intense for doubt. In normal daydreaming, on the other hand, people don’t really want the fantasy to come true. They’re afraid of taking responsibility for that probable reality, for having that much power and control over their own destiny. Ergo, they detach themselves from their desire by projecting it into a future which will never come, instead of knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the probable reality will come true – by living that reality in the now moment, which is what is done in creative visualization. Successful people are already using creative visualization unconsciously: they have no doubt about their intentions.
In creative visualization you are trying to connect with a true feeling (a probable reality in which your desire is realized), whereas in normal daydreaming you are idly indulging in some glory scheme. There’s no true feeling in most daydreams, just the false joy of undeserved glory. In creative visualization you are not desiring validation from other people; you are desiring and calling forth a sense of merit and reward from within yourself. In daydreaming you say, “Everyone applauds me because I am so wonderful” whereas in creative visualization you say, “Everyone likes me because I like myself”.
Both creative visualization and normal daydreaming tend to bring about the conditions they visualize. The trouble is that daydreaming can only bring about conditions in the world of society, not true happiness, because what is being visualized is not true happiness but rather a thought form copy of it. Daydreaming is phony – it has only glory attached to it, not true desire or true hope. Both daydreaming and creative visualization are commands to the Spirit, but creative visualization is a command of fulfillment whereas daydreaming is a command of lack.
In normal daydreaming you are standing back and watching yourself, applauding yourself, patting yourself on the back. The “you” in the daydream is just a puppet; the real you is watching this puppet perform. But in creative visualization, the real you is smack dab in the middle of the action, taking primary enjoyment from being in the scene that unfolds around you, rather than standing back and gloating over it.
In normal daydreams other people only serve as mute witnesses to how wonderful you are or how right you are; they are mere puppets who are impressed by you, or turned on by you, or repentant at how shabbily they’ve treated you; whereas in creative visualization they’re warm, alive, and unpredictable, and you take great pleasure in being in their company.
In normal daydreaming you write a rigid script, and usually run the thing over and over again, perhaps making little revisions here and there to enhance your glory; whereas in creative visualization the idea is to get to a point where you are so lost in the joy of it that you are no longer controlling the course that it takes any more – the other people in the scene (if there are any) are making all the suggestions about what will happen next.
Whereas normal daydreaming is a means of escaping from the rigors of life, creative visualization entails knowing that you called your outer circumstances to you for some reason; and knowing that you can also change that reason if only you don’t lose sight of (feeling for) the ultimate goal. It means to make a conscious decision to stop obsessing over what you lack and instead focus upon how much you have. It means to drop your moaning and groaning self-pity and roll up your sleeves and get down to work. It means reaching out to probable realities in which there is joy, no matter how improbable they may seem at the moment, rather than to ones which will only reinforce your self-pity and self-hatred. The legend of Pygmalion and Galatea is not a myth – it’s a true story.
When you catch yourself indulging in normal daydreaming, switch it to creative visualization. The point is to stop thinking and to let yourself feel; to give yourself permission to feel as much joy as you would feel if your desire were to come true, without making that joy contingent upon whether the desire comes true or not. Then it really doesn’t matter whether it comes true or not; and this clears the way for it to come true. Having set up an intent by intense, singlepointed desire, you must then drop the obsessive concern and become indifferent as to the outcome. The trick to magic lies in the ability to turn the importance switch on and off at will.
(continued …)