Visualization is the way

Learn Mind’s Secrets – 5

Visualization is the way

Though we are not consciously aware of it, we live in an immense quantum sea of vibrating energy that is ever responsive to how and what we think. Our thoughts are forever trying to express themselves in our lives. Our thoughts are creative forces, and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we can begin designing our lives with clarity and purpose. As already explained what we focus on, we attract. Visualization is a very valuable technique that helps us to focus, attract and actualize our wishes.

Visualization is simply mental rehearsal. We create images in our minds of our having or doing whatever it is we want. In our mind we are constantly running a mental movie of what we wish to achieve. We repeat these images over and over again.

Visualization, where one mentally rehearses the ideal performance in his mind over and over before the actual event, should be a tool in the success arsenal of every peak performer. In 1954, Roger Bannister did what many people thought no human could ever do. He broke the four minute-a mile barrier. When asked how he did this, he replied that he simply ran the perfect race over and over on the movie screen of his mind before he ran it in reality. Tennis ace Andre Agassi is a master at the art of visualization as is golf legend Jack Nicklaus, soccer superstar Pele and Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner.

“It’s all in the mind,” says Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is five-time winner of the Mr. Universe title, a successful real estate tycoon, movie star, and governor of California. “The mind is really so incredible. Before I won my first Mr. Universe title, I walked around the tournament like I owned it. I had won it so many times in my mind, the title was already mine. Then when I moved on to the movies I used the same technique. I visualized daily being a successful actor and earning big money.”

What worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Andre Agassi and other legends will work for every one of us. It’s not magic and it doesn’t happen overnight, but if we persist in our vision, we will achieve it.

Carl Simonton, a radiological oncologist, who used relaxation techniques and mental imagery to augment the chemotherapy, radiation, the regular medical treatment that people were receiving. A typical example of some of the imagery, for instance -- one woman with lung cancer would imagine herself going into her lung with a vacuum cleaner and vacuuming away the diseased tissue, and then coming in with a medicated spray. A fourteen-year-old boy with terminal leukemia went into his bloodstream dressed like the Lone Ranger, all in white, and every time he saw a leukocyte he'd pull out his six shooters and kill the leukocyte and haul away the dead leukocytes. He applied this technique of mental imagery or visualization with terminal patients. After five years, twenty-six percent of his patients were still alive.

How did these miracles happen? Here is an important truth we must understand. The subconscious mind cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. Our subconscious will act upon the images we create within, regardless of whether those images reflect our current reality or not. If our subconscious mind sees us doing something successfully, then it retains a positive memory and will in turn give us ideas on how to make that happen.

Now let us see how to practice visualization in simple terms. The first step is just to relax our body, relax our mind, and let ourselves drop into a quieter, deeper level of consciousness, which puts us more in touch with our intuitive or creative self. Meditation techniques will help us excellently to go to our deeper consciousness. After that, the basic technique of visualization is to create an experience within ourselves of whatever it is that we want. That can be an external thing or an internal thing. In other words, we could visualize or imagine ourselves in our new house, or our new job. Or we could simply visualize or imagine ourselves feeling self confident, or feeling very creative, or learning how to express our feelings more directly, or anything that's important to us.

We should make the picture clear and beautiful. We should not be afraid. We must make it grand. We should remember that no limitation can be placed upon us. We are not limited as to anything. We should construct it in our imagination as imagination is what fuels the power of visualization. Clearness and accuracy are obtained only by repeatedly having the image in mind. Each repeated action renders the image more clear and accurate than the preceding, and in proportion to the clearness and accuracy of the image will the outward manifestation be. It will have to be clearly in our mind clearly before it will ever appear anywhere else. We must hold it firmly in the mind and we will gradually and constantly bring the thing nearer to us.

The key to remember when visualizing is to always visualize that we already have the thing we want. This is a mental trick. We don’t hope that we will achieve it, or build confidence that some day it will happen. No, with the visualization technique we “live and feel it” as if it is happening to us now.

When we start to visualize, we simply open up our own horizons, so that we start to notice opportunities that we wouldn't even have thought of before, and we seem to create an open energy field that starts to bring things in to us.

(To be continued…)

- N.GANESHAN