Introduction To Visualisation

In this article I will be looking at Creative Visualisation, it can provide the means to enjoy successful meditation, take you on a journey to your inner self, bring about change in your life, or be used to project to higher planes.

As the subject matter for both topics is vast, I will touch fairly briefly on as many themes as possible, and as most aspects are my personal opinions if you don’t agree with me thats fine, this is my personal view picked up from a purely solitary Egyptian Heka path and so others views will vary. However you do need to find your own way and I always say, read extensively, question everything and go with what you feel is good and right to YOU.

What is Creative Visualisation?

In it’s simplest form it can be used as a tool to push desires and wishes to the subconscious or externally so that they can manifest in this reality – the process involved is highly debatable and I won’t be going into that metaphysical question here. I will however discuss some of its practical processes as they do lend themselves to firming up the mental muscles which will be needed later on. However you reach or begin visualisation, to me it’s primary function is to focus the mind and imagination to create imagery that can be a literal or symbolic representation of something with which to interact with.

There are few limits on it’s list of features, and many of them I consider are successive stages in the process of using visualisation to higher goals. At the lowest level it gives the grounding in relaxation, gaining and maintaining a focused state of mind, upwards gives the mind something to actually work with, and once those skills are mastered then it can be used to create and maintain a convincing reality.

Setting The Environment

First principles are really to do with setting the environment, here we must set our ground rules. Many of them will be familiar and I wouldn’t be surprised if you use them already for other things. Importantly setting these ground rules enables the right focus and consistently doing them will provide a repeatable experience and a way to measure progress. This is important as early on there will be failure and it can be very disheartening if you can’t repeat the workings so as to over come the failure.

For me the following are the things I try to maintain each and every time I use these tools:

Lighting low to dark. Bright light distracts my attention and if I close my eyes I don’t get complete darkness.
Sit or lie down. I prefer to sit. Standing could be a problem, should you lose yourself enough to fall over.
Try to isolate daily life and distractions, kick the family out, or wait for them to go to bed or work or school etc.
Noise can be distracting unless of course it forms part of the process. At least get rid of annoying noises.
If you can find somewhere outside to do this then all the better, in some woods, by the sea or water. Up a mountain, whatever feels good. And importantly safe from harm should you not have full attention. So no doing this while driving your car or riding a bike please!
Room temp does not bother me unless its extreme hot or cold.
Clothing loose depending on room temp. With or without I’ve tried and found no advantage either way.
If you are finding it hard to empty your mind as they say, then try a candle or any bright point of light as it can help with a dark room to focus on a point and keep it from wandering.
Keep food and drink to the minimum. Don’t want to be uncomfortable.

Right frame of mind.

Most will understand this for any workings whether they are physical or not, you have to be in the right frame of mind, and that is be open with no day-to-day thoughts and worries in the way.

Mood is also important. Be happy as they say!
Calmness of mind.
Not tired.
Mental stability. Any instability such as depression or anxiety will not necessarily cause a block, but it will impact the quality of the working and could throw up some surprisingly bad images. I’ve ignored this on occasion and immediately regretted it.
Look at your relaxation methods but not too relaxed though, want to try avoid falling asleep, although sometimes it can’t be helped.
Avoid using substances as they can have unpredictable effects on this process, some of course say it’s positive when you think about some elements of Shamanism, but I’ve never had the need to use them and don’t think I’ve missed out because of it.

With practice you will come to realise what aspects of the environment and mood level are required for successful workings and those that have an impact on them. Take note of them and work with them knowing your limitations, it’s not worth pushing in the wrong direction and doing yourself mental or physical harm.

Off we go!

Many books are around to help you, all that I’ve seen contain at least one guided meditation as an example. They have never worked for me straight from the book and that may be the same for you, but long term but its always worth a try if you are stuck for inspiration on how to get started, or for clues to help develop something more personal and hence more effective.

The book that got me started was Applied Visualisation: A Mind-Body Program by James Lynn Page (ISBN 0-572-01555-0).

I advise looking too at other methods to boost the effects, one of which is emotional triggers. These work particularly well for me and serves two purposes, one as before about getting in the right frame of mind, the other as a way to draw myself into the working. It’s not something I’ve come across in many books but perhaps the reason I find this highly effective for me.

Taking this method further, there are a number of ways to achieve an emotion link with something be it colour, sound, taste, visual, but my preference is sound or more specificity music. Music can be left on in the background with no direct focus required which makes it less intrusive through the working should I no longer require it’s use.

The idea with music is that I want to use music to trigger a positive state of mind with very strong pleasant emotions, it can be something that triggers memories of someone, a place, a thing I really love or a memory of an event. Therefore the choice of music is very significant, and very personal. But that’s good. I personally don’t get on with the fancy meditation ones in the shops, and as I just said, I need a strong personal connection to it, so I use music from my past. My choice various and can appear a little cheesy but it depends on what I am going to use a particular track or set of tracks for. To illustrate here are a few of my choices:

Careless Whispers by Wham (emotional tie).
Kylie track called Slow (hypnotic beat good bass).
Ecci Mundi Gaudium by Mediaeval Baebes (a high energy, high pace track that I quite like sometimes)
A dance track called ‘You’ve Got The Love’ by the Source (combination of emotional tie and good bass),
And recently found ‘Fiesta de Amor’ by Inkubus Succubus (wave like feel with a few crescendos, feels like the sea).

Unless you already have a strong emotional tie to piece of music, you will need to build that association and that takes a lot of time and effort. Most of us have something that means something to us.

Whatever the method or combination of methods you use its important to use them repeatedly so that your mind and body becomes programmed.

A Guided Working

Lets now pull all of that together and look at one of my workings. Do bear in mind that this works for me and may not work for you:

If I feel in the mood for music as I know I’m going to struggle because I’m not completely in the ‘right frame of mind’ then I will switch something on for either the whole working or just a quick listen before I begin to invoke a change of mood.
Breathing is measured and calm – not too deep enough so that it’s not laboured and requiring too much thought about what I’m doing. I am trying to visualise, not do breathing exercises!
With my eyes closed I try and loose any thoughts. This is a really difficult bit so sometimes if something keeps popping back in then I just move on and hope that some focus will push it away.
I then start to chant my usual spoken ritual words (or rubric) for Goddess Selket This is one of a very few spoken rituals I have ever used and I use it when I’m serious about doing some work with my goddess. It focuses my intent and purpose.
The rubric forms a rhythm and is quite short but I can repeat it if I feel it not had the desired effect on my mental/emotional state and what I’m looking for is a sense of calm, awareness outside my normal senses, presence of my goddess above the normal background sense of her, and a nice slight tingling on my back and neck. When I am there I continue on.
Once ready I visualise I am standing in an endless ocean (at this stage I’m not actually aware of hot/cold, sound of the water, the opposite to what I will discuss later).
This ocean is more than just visually easy for me to use, it has a significant symbolic function too as the primordial waters of creation. I am saying to myself and my goddess that in my ‘created world’ I exist alone, and I am the creator, all that is around me is chaos and I can fashion it as my will sees fit. Its a strong symbol, and I don’t like to presume that I am the creator of all in general, but in my ‘world’ I am.
While in this water my mouth is just level with the surface.
Now I begin to notice the music around me if its playing.
I start to visualise the surface of the water vibrating the the rhythm of the music with the ripples going out from me.
I try and keep this going as long as possible. I tend to have my most common tracks on loop for this!
Next when I feel ready to start the task in hand if this session is for a working I then start to call the name of my goddess and bring to mind the desire that I want to begin the journey to my temple.
This journey consists of visualising a serious of symbols approaching me, like road side signs, flashing past at speed. As this begins I tend to be distracted from the background music and it’s presence will fade as I focus on the symbols around me. The water may still be bobbing but by now it can be independent of my concious thought.
The first of the symbols is the winged goddess Maat starting off a long way ahead which flies pass me.
Then the symbol Ankh.
Sometimes I then let my subconscious pull any more in and this can be quite interesting to see what comes by, its a little like some people do when on a guided working and they wander around say a forest and see what animals pop by to talk to them.
By now the temple is starting to solidify around me like its coming out of a mist until it’s solid.
Alternatively if I am not doing any workings then I stay with these symbols and in the water.

How long this takes to do? That’s a good question and one that’s very interesting when working with visualisation. Time does not function the same, and you’ve might have noticed that with dreaming too as they are both connected. Time varies quite a bit too, when I come back it can be any where from minutes to an hour or two even though it’s felt the same inside.

What Can Go Wrong And How To Deal With It

Whatever you are trying to learn, failure happens, mostly in the early days but can occasionally occur again for a variety of reasons. In particular using visualisation you can encounter more than it’s fair share and we shall discuss some of the problems that are commonly encountered.

A frequent one I’ve experienced is ending up being too relaxed and falling asleep! I don’t worry about it as I end of having a pretty good sleep with no side effects.

But if you end up having deep sleep by accident and no memory, something could still have happened and its down to personal taste if you want to dig into it and go along exploring this route via lucid dreams – another large area that takes a lot of practice to perfect, it’s not a method I’ve explored so I’m not able to give any advice on that, but I’ve seen many books around on this so check them out.

Blocks are another hazard to overcome, it could be blocks on meditating, on trying to visualise or to travel. Knowing its something I want to do, and not need to do, its forced and just does not flow naturally. Happened recently as part of this research. Just ended up feeling frustrated by not being able to do it, something that’s been natural for many years felt a block, a resistance and try as I might could not get focus. Do some physical exercise which helped with relaxation, got a bit further through but not enough. Forcing it does not help, and if this was an early learning process I could understand when some would say give up and not try again.

Whatever the problem, just step back, think is there something I’m missing? Am I happy with what’s going on, is it causing the block? If you can’t pick any particular glaring faults, then take a break it might not come to you straight-away. Like all aspects of following a path there are always self doubts, insecurities and these are normal human traits and they can, and will be overcome. It all takes time, energy and determination, and I personally don’t care how many times I fail, I learn from it each time and gradually move forward. Sheer bloody mindedness it is. Don’t let it beat you, but don’t beat yourself up about it either, but if it truly does not work for you then try something completely different for a while.

What You See When You Are There

Assuming then you are progressing and imagines are appearing in your mind, what do you see? How should you deal with the images? Do they actually mean anything?

I’ve not said much apart from a few clues in my example, of what you will see when you visualise. Do you see forests, wilderness, cities? Are you trying to let the mind show images as a form of divination? Don’t be afraid, and this is what I previously said about not being depressed, as it can be quite a shock for the mind to see what comes in from outside or your sub-conscious.

As well as the visual sense, what about your other senses? What do you hear? Smell? Touch? And gravity, what is that doing?

Pay great attention to what you sense around you, and as soon as you can regain conciousness back then write it down: keep a dream book. Look for patterns, anything that could be meaningful. If there is any symbolic images then like dream interpretation, those symbols will have had significant focus of your attention through the process, or show up in stark contrast to any surrounding detail. They could be clues to help you or other forces trying to attract your attention. Detail is everything.

Touching slightly on other topics that use elements of visualisation, There is always the possibility that a guide of some form will try and make contact. That path is a little out of the scope of this topic.

Using Visualisation To Bring About Change.

For this final section on purely visualisation we will look at the most common use for it and that’s to bring about change in your reality, or essentially making wishes. This is where most books on the subject will lead you so we will now discuss this area of use.

I will keep things brief as this usually covers a few chapters of most books.

First a list of the the common points books give you:

The first task for ‘wishing’ is setting your goal, and set one that is reasonably attainable.
Don’t make wishes too specific as they are harder and take longer to come about.
Keep the wish in your mind, recall it once in a while and then push it back to refresh the desire.
Act as if you have it – acting as if you have the result brings it on quicker.

Wishing can play big tricks so be careful of what you wish for. In that I mean should you wish for more money, then that has to come from someone or somewhere, will someone have to die so that you can inherit? An accident for an insurance claim? Wishing is a dangerous game to play and if you’ve ever experienced working with Thought Forms who exhibit similar tricky behaviour then you will know what I mean. Keeping the wish non-specific means there is a greater chance of success as the result can come from multiple sources.

How it works is highly debatable, but my personal view is the wish is adjusting causality to bring about the wish, as well as the self being more mentally open to opportunities that may present themselves. It’s a complex subject and not one I admit I know all the answers to. From experience the time scales vary, I’ve had ones where it’s taken a year or more to come about and others, less than a day. Depends on the request and the effort put in.

House Of Kiya

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