Creative Visualization – II
Since there are some excellent books on creative visualization readily available (e.g. Shakti Gawain’s), we will only summarize two creative visualization methods here:
1) Affirmations can be spoken aloud, voiced mentally, written down, or chanted. These are positive, uplifting statements: for example, “Every day in every way I am getting better and better”; or “I got that raise I wanted because I truly deserved it!”; which are repeated over and over.
2) Treasure maps are collages of photographs or drawings which illustrate us getting what we want from life. The visual images can also be accompanied by written affirmations. The visual images are examined and the accompanying affirmations read with the aim of conjuring up the feeling of that image coming true in our lives.
In using both affirmations and treasure maps, the important point is to get to the feeling of the desire, and not just do it by rote. To make it heartfelt, you should be in a happy, delighted mood – lose yourself in reverie. Try to connect with a feeling of intense longing – a pang of sweet anguish – in your heart. Actually, once you have the intent firmly set up, you can dispense with the visualization (mental imaging) part altogether and just feel the feeling of your desire as a pang in your heart. This is a more economical way of doing it in terms of energy expended. The pang feeling is not unlike the feeling of fear, except you feel it in your heart instead of your solar plexus.
Creative visualization should be done for at least ten minutes or so upon awakening, and again at night before going to sleep. Try to do your visualization as you drop off to sleep. This is difficult at first because the attention needed to maintain an image in the forefront of the mind (importance) is the opposite of the attention needed to enter the dream state (relaxation). The trick is to drop off to sleep with the feeling of your desire uppermost in your mind rather than the thought forms, which is a lot harder to do, and indeed is the equivalent of astral projection – entering lucid dreaming from a position in wakefulness. However, if you keep plugging away at it you’ll soon get the hang of it – the necessary balance.
You should also visualize your desires during the day – just like daydreaming, but in the present rather than the future tense, e.g., “I’m so happy now that such-and-such is happening in my life!” The secret of creative visualization is to convince yourself that what you are wishing for is already true, and you’re just hanging around for a few minutes in the waiting room while the universe finds it and hands it to you. To visualize a desire as if it were already achieved means to imagine it happening in the here and now, as if it were taking place in front of you. You mustn’t set up any contradictory agendas such as, “In the event that this creative visualization doesn’t work for me then I’ll do this other thing.” You have to put all your eggs in one basket, in the probable reality in which your desires come true, rather than cover your posterior in the event of failure. The more energy you can bring to bear upon your desire, the faster you’ll start seeing results. But be patient: Rome wasn’t built in a day.
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