Definition of the Technique

Creative visualization seems to be a way to clarify, expand upon, and explore one’s mental conception of the experience of reality. This includes the experience of inner reality.

Background Mechanics

Whatever is within the experience of reality, of which we are currently aware of, can become rendered within our mental imaginative space. This includes things like feelings, memories, thoughts, ideas, etc. Physical surroundings can be rendered using visualization – indeed, it may be through visualization that we are able to take the visual data we’re aware of and transform it into a mental conception of a space through which we can navigate. But when the eyes are closed and one is in a silent environment, it’s easier to pay attention to feelings, thoughts, ideas, etc.

Utility of Creative Visualization

A technique for exploring inner phenomena becomes useful as a means of attaining a clearer understanding of that phenomena. Just as keeping our eyes open helps us to better understand the world around us, and remain aware of what’s there, so too does exploring our own feelings become important for understanding the causes of certain feelings, as well as knowing what internal actions to take in order to best serve our own inner environments, such as our mind and feelings. It also helps us to better know what actions we CAN take.

One example of how knowing what action to take could help us is in the question of how to “mend a broken heart”. Some people seem to know how to do this, able to move on and remain vibrant and happy in their lives, and others don’t, suffering under the weight of their own emotional pain for potentially a long time. Creative visualization serves as a technique for discovering, through awareness, things like the mechanisms that keep things like emotional pain in place. Knowing these mechanisms, we are better able to transform our feelings in ways that serve us, able to take action in restoring ourselves to a state of what could be called greater emotional vibrancy and health.

There are many other examples of problematic inner situations that can be better understood through creative visualization, such as: fear, anger, hatred, confusion, grief, depression, etc. And understanding these situations, when we happen to find ourselves in them, can help us to lead ourselves out of them through finding solutions that work, based on knowledge of the root causes behind these feelings.

Precautions

As with trying to grasp the laws and truths of the physical portion of reality, discernment is important. Just because something within you seems one way doesn’t mean it is. A mechanism you happen across that seems to make you happy may have unintended, problematic consequences in some other part of your psyche. Taking the time to understand, before taking action, will probably achieve more reliable outcomes for you. But as long as you go into this with an intention to ultimately help yourself completely, no matter what problems you might unintentionally cause, then you’ll probably be able to use this technique to recover from your own mistakes, which may be inevitable anyway. After all, mistakes can have tremendous benefit in helping us learn – it can help us to see what the “effects” are to certain “causes”, that if we were scared of making mistakes we might never have seen. And having a clear and accurate idea of the causes and effects of things in any area helps us to achieve more preferable effects.

How to do Creative Visualization

Note: First understand these steps before attempting creative visualization.

1. Find a place that’s (1) silent, or as silent as possible, and (2) a place you would feel comfortable remaining with your eyes closed for a period of time that may be greater than five minutes. You can sit, stand, or lie down during creative visualization.
2. Close your eyes, and become aware of your awareness as it drifts around to various aspects of your reality – maybe it’s bodily feelings, or maybe it’s ideas in your head, or maybe it’s an intense feeling.
3. Try to render what your awareness is picking up within your mind’s eye. You might have varying degrees of ease or difficulty with this step.
4. Let yourself choose where to go from here. What aspect of reality do you wish to explore?  Here are some ideas of what you might feel like exploring:
   1. Maybe there’s a problem that’s been on your mind for a while
   2. Maybe you’re having trouble visualizing at all, and want to investigate the question of why your mind is rendering what it is, instead of perhaps what you’re trying to make it render
   3. Maybe you’re bored and just want to chill for a while within your visualized space
   4. Maybe you want to explore your creativity in the way your visualize things
   5. Maybe you want to explore the space you’re in, and see if there are any hidden subtleties or secrets to inner reality you’re rendering
   6. Maybe an impulse seems to be pulling you towards an issue or different image and you want to see why it’s pulling at you, or where it might be trying to take you
5. Step 4 may last a while, and you may come up with new directions after the one you started off with.
6. When you’re done, open your eyes.

Note

You will not be “cut off” whatsoever from the outside world during this exercise. You will be able to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. But when you’re in one position, in a silent place, where all you can see is the inside of your eyelids, it’s easier to pay more attention to inner reality than you might otherwise do. Yes, we can visualize with our eyes open, but it’s probably much easier with our eyes closed.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Mark Ivar Myhre, from whom I learned about Creative Visualization as a means of achieving emotional healing. My technique, and the way I now understand and describe it, is a bit different than his, but all the same with the help of his guided creative visualizations or meditations, I was able to experience and use this technique for myself, which allowed me to explore the technique, and my understanding of it, through trial and error. If you want to check out his website on creative visualization, you can find it here:  http://www.creative-visualization.com/.

And of course, thank you to YOU, for reading this. : ) I hope the information here serves you well. This is a powerful and very handy technique, at least in my own experience, so I wanted to share it in a way that was straightforward and made as much sense as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know at oliver@theworldwithin.org