"Consciousness Creates"
Learn To Create Your Reality with Conscious Intent

Home   About Pat   About learntovisualize.com   FAQ   Online Book   Contact Pat   Articles    Recommended Reading   Links   Newsletter  

Ten Things You Can Do To Make Your Creative Visualizations More Powerful

by Patricia F. Hare, MAT, MA

There are a number of ways to make moving though the creative visualization process more powerful and effective. An added bonus is that many of these suggestions can be applied to a variety of life situations to make them more rewarding whether or not you are using creative visualization.
 

Whereas Newtonian physics is the physics of physical reality, the new physics (which includes Quantum Mechanics & Holographic Theory) is in many ways the physics of the mind. This science deals with the “unseen world” of subatomic particles that lies behind/beneath the “seen” world. The new physics has already provided much evidence and insight into how our thoughts interact with these particles to shape and form them into the physical matter and experiences we then encounter in our individual and shared worlds.

By better understanding how what you think becomes what you experience you have a greater ability to take responsibility for what you create.

For a good introduction to the new physics, an excellent resource is Michael Talbot’s, The Holographic Universe. Other highly recommended books are The Dancing Wu Li Masters and Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, and Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics. A new and exciting resource for learning more about the new physics and its role in creating our day-to-day human experience is the new film, What the #$*! Do We Know?

Visualization is predominantly a function of the right hemisphere of the brain, drawing upon so-called "right brain" skills which recognize relationships, feel, intuit, create, express, and inspire.

...your imagery is giving direction
 to the “unseen world” as to what you want to experience in the "seen world."

However, no matter what your background you can become better at visualizing. And you want to become better at visualizing because the more vivid your imagery, the more effective your visualizations will be. This is because your imagery is giving direction to the “unseen world” (see #1 above) as to what you want to experience in the “seen world.”

In their book, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, authors Schwartz and Begley tell us, "...we are seeing evidence of the brain's ability to remake itself throughout adult life, not only in response to outside stimuli but even in response to directed mental effort." (italics added) So retrain your brain to recognize the relationships, feelings, intuitions, and creative impulses that are aligned with the new experience you want to create!

Also recognize that the stronger your imagery skills become, the farther you can reach with your imagination to come up with exciting new events and experiences to create in your life.

One of the biggest roadblocks to success with creative visualization is the lack of clarity. Vague goals yield vague results. Clear goals yield clear results.

Time and again I have seen or experienced the power of getting clear: You’re not sure what you want. You think you really want this; no, you think you really want that. Then one day something happens—usually something stressful—that throws new light on the situation. Suddenly you become very clear about what you really want and POW! Within a few days it’s yours!

You don’t have to wait for something to force the issue, of course. You can simply give some time each day to serious thought about what you want and why you want it. Journaling is an excellent way of getting clear. Write about your thoughts and feelings related to a particular situation—why you think you want it, the pros and cons of getting it, how much do you really want it, etc. Over time you will discover yourself becoming increasingly clear.

Lip service doesn’t get the job done. It’s easier to say that we want something than it is to set up and follow a discipline of visualizing what we want. But folks, our goal is to change our reality! You should not be surprised to hear that some effort is required.

...folks, our goal is to change
our reality! You should not be surprised to hear that some effort is required.

Focusing on your goal regularly means giving it your full attention. Often. So go into a room and close the door. Get relaxed. Visualize your goal. Do this again the next day and every day until the process is complete and your goal has been achieved.

Having a vision is good. Thinking about what you want while driving or washing dishes or going to sleep is good. But nothing replaces the disciplined exercise of creative visualization, so make it a priority and do it regularly.

Sometimes we set a goal and earnestly go about doing all the right things to accomplish it using creative visualization. We may even see the beginnings of the manifestation of that goal. But then something seems to stop or block our success. This may be because what we want is trying to get into our experience but can’t find a good opening.

When you are planning for the achievement of a goal, make changes in your life to accommodate it. For example, if you want to read more, turn off the TV at 8:00 so you will have time to read. If you want to be in a relationship, you may need to cut back on your work schedule or make other changes so that you will have the energy and attention needed to be intimately involved with someone else.

Will you have to give up something? Perhaps. What you will need to do is decide which you want more—time to watch your reality TV shows or time to read, a life at the office or a life with someone you love.

When you make choices that create space for your goal to happen in, you are telling the creative forces that dance and play at those unseen, subatomic levels that you are serious about achieving your goal. This is a powerful affirmation! 

When you’ve gotten clear about what you want, it’s important to begin to act as if you already have it. You may want to do a little journaling, exploring questions such as, When I get it, how will I feel? How will I act or respond in various situations? How might I talk differently? What else might be different? How will my relationships change? Make a list of ways in which you and your life will change.

Act As If can be tricky, sometimes. There’s a temptation to frequently compare what you are actually experiencing with what you are “acting as if.” If the two don’t match, you can become discouraged—which will slow your progress. The spiritual teacher, Abraham, suggests that we make a list of things for the Universe to take care of—things that are not in our immediate power to make happen. This frees us up to focus on what we can do—acting as if—and lets the Universe work on the rest.  

Life comes with no guarantees. If you are waiting for a guarantee before you act (and many of us are) you may wait forever for what you want. Needing a guarantee of success indicates a great fear of failure and a willingness to do all we can to protect ourselves from it. Like not taking any chances that might result in failure, which also happen to be the chances that might result in success.

So how can you get around this dilemma when working toward a goal? By using detachment. Want your goal. Dream it. Feel it. Plan for it. But don't let your happiness depend upon its happening. Let it be okay if you don’t get it. Let it be okay if you fail to create it.

Detachment helps to keep the goal in perspective. It’s something that you want out of life, not something that defines you, or gives you value, or keeps you safe from harm. Let your goal be something nice, wonderful, and even joyful to have, but not something that will cause you to suffer and die if you don’t have it. And if you fail…well, hey, you failed! There are many books on the market about how success is built on failure. That might be the time to go buy and read one of them. 

The paradox is that when you remove the fear of failure by becoming willing to fail, you are much less likely to fail!

I once heard the phrase, Worry is suffering in advance. Since suffering is the opposite of what most of us want to create, that alone should tell us that it does no good to worry. 

Remember that you are acting as if. If you had the wealth (or success, or relationship, or whatever) you wanted, you wouldn’t be worrying about not having it. When you catch yourself in a worry place, stop yourself and say, This is not what I want to attract more of. Then give yourself something else to focus on (call a friend, go to the movies) to distract your mind. Later, you can do a visualization exercise to allow yourself to feel what it would feel like to have what you want—instead of what you were worrying about.

A significant part of the creative visualization process is the energy you feed your image using your emotions. If you are out of touch with your emotions, afraid of the emotions of others, or think that emotions are for sissies, you will have a more difficult time charging your image with emotion. It would be great if we could feel the good emotions and cancel out the bad, but it doesn’t work that way. We need to be open and comfortable with all of our emotions to allow ourselves to feel any of them fully or powerfully.

Emotions act like magnets, drawing to us the events and experiences which match what we are feeling. To change your experience, you have to be able to change your feelings. To change your feelings, you have to know what they are!

Emotions are also handy little helpers because they give us information about the direction we are creating in—i.e. whether we are going toward or away from our goal. When we find ourselves feeling good and joyful, that’s a pretty good indication that we’re going in the right direction. When we catch ourselves feeling negative and unhappy, that’s an equally good indication that we’re moving away from what we want and we need to do a U-turn!

Turning your emotions around isn’t that difficult once you learn to work with them. The first step is to become more aware of what you are feeling. As you become more conscious of your different emotions, you can begin to make friends with them. Once on more friendly terms, you are then able to make choices about what you want to feel and why.

The events and experiences of everyday life offer us a tremendous amount of information as to the thoughts, images and beliefs we hold. They are played out for us and reflected back to us much like a mirror.

If we believe that people are basically dishonest, or if we are dishonest ourselves, we will encounter dishonesty in our experience. If we believe that people are basically trustworthy, or we are trustworthy ourselves, we will encounter trustworthiness in our experience. Some popular expressions which summarize this mirroring phenomenon are: What goes around comes around; What you put out you get back; and Garbage in, garbage out.

When you learn to see your experience as a feedback system which works like a mirror, you can get a lot of information as to how you can change your experience by changing your daily, routine thoughts and images. If you do not receive the respect and recognition you deserve at work, for example, it’s not because you’ve been singled-out by the Universe to be overlooked. An investigation of your beliefs around work and recognition might reveal that you don’t believe (for whatever reason) that you deserve such respect, or that you resent the recognition that is given to others and feel competitive, or perhaps that you are unconsciously playing out a family dynamic that you are repeating at the office (e.g. mom and/or dad were always slow to praise).  

Over time—to your joy—you will begin to see the new content of your consciousness reflected in your daily experience. A little feedback like this can strengthen your confidence in the process and build a stronger network of new beliefs in your consciousness. As the teacher Abraham says, “The better it gets, the better it gets.” 

You can also use the mirror of your reality to give you feedback that you are going in the right direction. In all areas of your life that are working for you—areas where you feel confident, successful, and excited going forward—make a list of the thoughts and images you hold relative to those areas. Again, you will find consistency between those thoughts and beliefs and your experience.

By using daily reality as a mirror, you can get clear and insightful information that will help you move forward toward your goals and grow in understanding yourself and others.

In Closing: All of these suggestions are intended to help you enrich and enliven your life’s experiences. Use any that feel helpful or useful to you. Leave those that don’t seem to have much to offer. The important thing is to remember that life is a process of learning and growing, and that if you feel drawn to it, the creative visualization process can be a powerful tool for you to use to create what you want in your life!

--by Patricia F. Hare, Copyright © 2003

Return to Articles Page                                                                      Return to Home Page