Visualisation
Tuning in
Within each of us, there is a place that never changes and remains both still and silent. This short visualisation may help you to return to experience that inner space where our deepest peace and contentment can be found.
Sit comfortably, consciously relax your body and gently close your eyes...
Imagine you are sitting in front of a huge TV screen almost as big as the wall...
At the flick of your thoughts you can change the channel and therefore the image on the screen...
The first channel you watch has an image of you in a moment of high stress...
See your facial expression, see your body posture, listen to your words tumble from your mouth...
Be aware of your feelings...
Now switch channels - and there you are driving through the sunny countryside...
You are talking animatedly, but positively, to others in the car...
Occasionally you all break out into peels of laughter...
Happiness is woven through this tapestry of companionship...
Again switch channels and there you are sitting out on the balcony overlooking a lake...the sun is setting...and your favourite, relaxing piece of music is playing inside...
You are utterly and totally mellow...as relaxed as you can be, as you gaze across the lake...
Turn up the brightness of the scene, the volume of the sounds and the richness of your feelings...
You decide to stay with this channel and watch the sun slowly sink on the horizon...
As it does so the music fades gently away...
And you are left in silence...
Nothing moves...
The world is still...
Frozen in a moment in time...
The moment is eternal...
Your whole being is wrapped in stillness...
Pure peace is by your side...
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Why Practice Visualisation?
The most powerful energy in the universe is the energy of the mind. Everything we create, from the simplest of objects, to the most complex philosophies, are formed in the human mind. The images and thoughts which you create at each moment directly influence your emotional and physical well being. Imagine yourself eating a lemon and you will begin to salivate, picture yourself fall from a cliff edge and you will generate the feeling of falling along with tremendous anxiety, possibly terror.
The key to relaxation lies in what you do with your mind. Like an inner television screen or an artists blank canvas, your mind is ready to display any idea or image which you choose. While meditation tends to have one point of mental focus (an idea, insight, icon or mantra) creative visualisation is the purposeful use of the mind to create positive images and therefore has a number of beneficial uses:
- 1 Simple Relaxation
When you create peaceful and positive mental images you invoke and awaken feelings of inner peace, releasing tension and dissolving anxieties.
- 2 Generate Healing
There are now many documented cases of patients visualising their return to good health, or using symbols and images to visualise how their immune system fights and defeats physical disease.
- 3 Invoking Inner Wisdom
We all have a deep resource of wisdom and truth at the heart of our consciousness – sometimes referred to as intuition or conscience. Creative visualisation opens and quietens the mind, so we may clearly hear this inner voice and allow it to guide us.
- 4 Goal Setting
When you set a goal for yourself you will create an image of its achievement, sometimes known as a preferred future state. (goals are not desires) The vision then helps you to discern what is useful to achieve the goal, and if the vision is sustained with the right quality of energy it begins to attract towards you the necessary resources.
- 5 Restoration of Creativity and Concentration
Our modern world has encouraged us to become dependent on others creativity and most of us have lost our awareness of the importance of mental concentration. The media and entertainment industries present us with the clever and calculatingly impressive ideas of a few. As we, the many, sit and allow ourselves to be entertained, we can easily become dependent on the creativity of those few, and in so doing lessen our own creative capacity through lack of practice.
Daily visualisation restores our ability to focus and concentrate the energy of our consciousness and become masters of our own minds. If we are not able to do this for ourselves, we allow others to capture our attention and influence our creation. We then become slaves to others imagery, and wonder why we are not able to relax at will, and why we feel drained after a particularly emotional movie.
Learning how to visualise, and develop the breadth and depth of 'inner vision', is the art and the heart of all creativity.
While the weekly visualisations are designed for your practice it is important that you generate your own visualisations - otherwise it can become yet another dependency, and lazy thinking continues. So we would encourage you to use the visualisations which you find here as a template for creating your own.
Any Questions?
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