Honing your Visualization Skills

I was inspired by a letter I got from someone who wanted to know about why it is so hard to visualize while doing guided meditation (Thanks Brack!). This is a really good question that a lot of people grapple with. In fact, this is one of the greatest stumbling blocks people experience in the beginning of doing this kind of work. Most people don’t realize that there are many forms of psychic experience and that we are better at some than others. Not many people are naturally gifted with a lot of the forms, they might have one or two. These forms are: Clairvoyance (seeing, either in the mind or with one’s eyes), Clairaudience (hearing spirit), Clairsentience (feeling spirit), Clairescent (clear smelling), Clairgustance (clear tasting), Clairtangency (clear touching), and Emapthy (sensing emotion). In order to fearlessly jump in, we might need to practice these a bit in order to feel comfortable.

Our brains are used to seeing with our eyes. Artists use the inner seeing facility easily and are used to letting their imagination take this form. Musicians hear music inside their heads and have an easier time with clairaudience. You get the picture.

Everyone can and does visualize. We see things in our minds, in our dreams. Vision like this can be a snapshot, or a created world where we see whatever we want to create. It can be daydreaming or imagining artwork, seeing color or just plain knowing as well. It doesn’t have to really be as literal as we want to make it.

I call this work with your imagination discovering the language of spirit. It is in the realm of imagination and visualization that many of us make contact. It is a huge part of shamanic journeying. A lot of times during a reading I feel like I am making it up, just BS-ing. That’s when I know I am getting it right, because I cede control and just let it rip. This is the fearless part, and the fun part. We have to let go of the left brain reigning us in and just trust that we can be held by what we are seeing, feeling, hearing.

It’s a matter of letting your imagination have free reign. The relationship between imagination, “seeing” things and desire is interchangeable. In the beginning, we think we are making it up, but in fact that is just us letting go and following what is put in our minds to follow. And if we feel that we are making it up, it’s ok. So go ahead, make it up and let it feel awkward for a bit. It will become automatic the longer you practice. We think it should be totally “put in” our minds, that if we are faking it we are doing something wrong. It takes practice to hold your mind open to receive any impulse from your imagination. Remember, imagination is divine language; it is not you trying too hard. You have to let your imagination work at this.

Here are 2 tricks from my intuition class to help you do this better:

Candle Meditation
Sit in front of a let candle. Gaze at the candle for 2 minutes…really watch it. Then close your eyes and then remember the candle flame. See it. Hold the flame steady for a bit, then let the flame flicker and dance around, the way a flame does. Practice that for a few days.

Shape Meditation
Get some fruit and stare at it. Take in the shapes and the colors. Now close your eyes and see the shapes, the colors and flip it around to see other sides of the object. Now, with your eyes still closed, imagine shapes, a square, a triangle, then a circle. Make them 3 dimensional. Change their color; make them bigger and then smaller. Play with the shapes.

The best way to practice these exercises is to work on them a little bit each day. That seems to work better than big marathon sessions. So take your time working with this and let yourself have fun with it.

I’d love to hear from you what your stumbling blocks are. And if this helps, let me know.