Visualisation

Your mind is a magical thing, but you may not have been taught to use many of its wonders during your years at school or college. One of the greatest of its abilities, seen in its most impressive form in remarkable works of art, is imagination and the skill of visualisation. With imagination you can soar beyond the limitations of your body and surroundings; you can bring together in creative ways things you had never brought together before. You can leap beyond logical thinking into real insight and creativity. When you add visualisation to an ability to listen and watch, it becomes a doorway to enormous depths within you. Through it you can access treasure of insight and experience that were previously locked in unconsciousness.

To use this well might take some practice, but it is worth the time taken to learn. There might also be some barriers to overcome. For instance most of us seem to have a resistance to imagining ourselves as someone else – even if it is a character from our own dream! Then, to imagine ourselves as an object at first seems even more alien. Please press on till you move beyond such hesitations.

Perhaps without being really aware of it, you already know your body is a screen. When you see a film or read a book you might be moved to laugh or cry, or shout out in fear. Considering that the book and film is not reality, what is happening? Well, the outside images or words are helping you to experience things upon the sensitive screen of your body and mind.

With visualisation a similar thing can occur. But you need to learn how to direct your attention inwards instead of to a film, TV screen or book. So take time to turn your attention inwards and look beyond the surface gross impressions of your senses and swirling thoughts. When you do, what do you observe is going on – do you feel relaxed, tense; are there persistent body sensations or aches; is there an overall feeling such as sadness or loneliness? Learn to notice these and carry on watching.

We are born with a problem-solving ability present. When we face a life situation in the form of an external event in which is a life problem, usually we respond with deep emotional and mental involvement. The transformation in ourselves occurs because we are led through the experience and events we face to the point where a shift occurs. The mental changes that do not solve problems are those that simply replay the difficulty without moving on to a change in the events to bring a shift of feelings and realisation. Once we realise that this is a fundamental process our mind uses in problem solving, we can take it up consciously and make use of it, extending its efficiency far beyond the level occurring without conscious help.

To put this into plain language, supposing painful childhood events had left someone with the habit of building a powerful shield between themselves and others. Suppose this barrier was like a great metal shield they erected every time they felt slightly hurt, thus stopping them from prolonged intimacy with others. To attempt a change in this habit, one need not wait for a dream. If the situation has been seen, the first step is to create a pictorial representation of it just as a dream does. So, in this case the person could be depicted as having powerful great doors which could be shut whenever anyone came close.

The next step is to act this out alone or with one or two other people who are sympathetic to the technique. It can even be done by imagining – fantasising – the action. The person could act out closing their powerful doors and excluding people.

So far this simply represents the negative habit the person has built into their life, but this is important because it makes it real for the person. The next step should be taken slowly, and with as much openness to emotions and delicate feeling responses as possible. This is to enact a shift from the problematical position to a different one where they try opening the huge doors that block them. So, the person might try opening their doors – but not automatically – with sensitivity to what fears, emotions they experience in doing so.

Any example of doing this: Dreamt that at the same time I was myself and had spent a long time following clues in my research into the unconscious. One line of clues had led me to go through a door in the house in which I lived. This house has no clear connection with any house I know, although it reminds me vaguely of G. L’s house. The door led to an area somewhat like a cellar or basement. It was certainly down some steps, but I felt more as if it were an almost secret place within the house rather than underneath it. It was dark, with no windows though, and was similar to being down deep.

I was like a detective following clues. To follow the clues, I tried an experiment. I sat in this interior place facing a tunnel. It was maybe about five or six feet high. Where I sat was dimly lit, but the tunnel led into complete blackness and the unknown. I believe I repeated some keywords and looked into the tunnel.

I had neither warning nor expectation for what happened. I was overwhelmed by terror, as if the very darkness of the tunnel was a living force of fear that entered me and consumed me. I screamed and screamed uncontrollably in reaction and found myself running back up the stairs.

Nevertheless, a part of me was observing what had happened, and was amazed and realised I had found something of great importance. Somehow, I managed to turn my screaming self away from the tunnel. But on my right – it had appeared to be behind me – was another tunnel that brought about the same terror.

I managed to get to the door, open it and get back into the everyday part of the house. I remember feeling, as I did so, that I hoped no one would observe me coming out, as in some ways it was illegal to go into or be in such a place. I also feel as if I have had many, many dreams involved in the house, that I have never brought to consciousness before.

In meeting the terror of the tunnels using the method described above, I first felt two string connections; firstly I felt that society puts an authoritative and restricting stamp on the people by considering that only psychiatrists, doctors, priests, or professors have anything useful to say about it. This led to my sense of secrecy or illegality shown in the dream.

The second association was with feelings that I had a lifelong habit of retreat form adult functioning, this showed itself in a spontaneous movement of me burying my head trying not to be involved or to see.

But it worked out as my struggle to avoid the rectal anaesthesia as a child during a medical operation I experiences as a nine-year-old in which I kicked the bottle that held the anaesthetic that was being poured into me. I wasn’t experiencing the emotions of that, only the movements and intuitions about its connection with the dream. That is, I kept saying, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t.” This was expressive of a sense that the pain inflicted to me during the operation, must be because I had done something wrong. I could see that I associated inflicted pain with the punishment a parent gave because of some “bad” action. So, I could not understand why the pain had been inflicted on me.

Because the operation was on my nose, I couldn’t be given anaesthetic via the nose, instead the nurse tried to stick a pipe up my behind. She gave me no explanation about why or what she was doing, so I fought like mad and kicked the bottle of anaesthetic out of her hands. But again, without explanation she brought several other nurses who held me down as they applied the anaesthetic. The effect of this made me feel I was being blown up and I felt I was dying, so was fighting for my life against what felt like women attacking me and trying to kill me.

I screamed, struggle to and shouted, expressive of fighting with nurses. What I screamed was pleas to be left alone. What had I done to deserve such an attack? I screamed to my “attackers” to stop.

What arose from all this was the distinct reaction that people could not be trusted. For no good reason, and despite physical struggle and screamed pleas for them to stop, they yet persisted and caused me pain. So, I saw that out of my experience of people in those situations arose a powerful suspicion and mistrust of people. Also, I developed a belief that people are purposely deceitful. This was because my mother, and nurses, doctors, say such things as, “This won’t hurt. Everything is going to be okay. You’ll go in, they will put you to sleep, and you won’t feel a thing.” There was no mention that nurses might attack me and subject me against my will to what felt to me like death.

The sense of death equated with pain and people hurting one. At the time of the anaesthetic my conscious identity had been plunged still with some awareness deep into the unconscious. The loss of shape or senses was felt to be death. So, a conditioned reflex had been set in me lasting many years until I recovered the memory of it and so transformed the terror into understanding. The conditioned reflex was or is that when I get to the point of consciously entering the unconscious, my frantic screaming and struggling for life was triggered. It was the way I mastered the nightmare using such things as Opening to Life and Secrets of Power Dreaming – Acting on Your Dream.