Posts Tagged ‘power of imagination’
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.
Black Magic, Evil and Dreams
Although thorough investigation of claimed injury or death attributed to black magic has shown the real cause to be malicious aggression or murder, scientific research into the deaths of people who were said to have died as the result of a curse or a voodoo ritual, has shown the victims to have died of fear.
Death through fear is fairly common, and is reported by some doctors in connection with surgical operations, especially in the past. In 1887 Dr. Crile had watched helpless as his friend, William Lyndman died of shock after amputation of both legs. My uncle also died of the shock of losing his arm. My uncle, like William had lost little blood, and no vital organs were injured. Crile went on to develop anaesthesia and blood transfusion to counteract death through shock. But some forms of shock appeared to be outside any physical cause. In 1898 Crile was on an army transporter off Cuba and examined a young officer who was delirious with fear due to facing his first battle. He was as deep in shock as if his legs had been crushed by a wagon as William Lyndman’s had. This led Crile to become interested in exopthalmic goitre, an illness which produces a similar type of anxiety condition. Despite the use of anaesthetics, no one had successfully operated on such a goitre condition. Every patient died. Crile discovered why when he attempted such an operation in 1905.
While under anaesthesia the patients heart rate rose to 218 and the body temperature rose to a dangerous level. Despite no physical injury or infection, the patient died that night with a temperature of 109.6 F. Crile realised from his previous observations that it was fear which had killed the patient. Therefore he told his next patient, a young woman who needed the goitre operation, that he was going to give her a simple inhalation treatment. When she breathed in the anaesthetic, she therefore thought she was having a ‘treatment’ not an operation. She was the first person to survive the operation for exopthalmic goitre. Crile called it “stealing the goitre”, and was so impressed by the influence of emotion on the body he constantly stressed the importance of self control, and taught that calmness is strength.
Crile’s experience illustrates what can occur through threat of a curse or black magic. In our dreams we often portray something we deeply fear as an evil influence or person, or as an awful monster or ghost. Such fears usually relate to our own urges, such as anger or sexuality, but can be about any urge or thought that we have been led to feel is not permissible, or downright evil. A demonic figure or environment might also be connected with very early babyhood experiences. The pain of birth is often depicted as hell or demonic influence in our dream symbolism. On exploring dreams that have a very evident evil force or devil in them, what is discovered is that the ‘evil’ is actually the person’s own repressed or hurt sexuality or urges. See: evil; witchcraft; The Con About Evil.
Because the unconscious will use any belief system or cultural symbols we have absorbed to express a theme, the powerful images of witches or evil characters we see on films or in fiction are often used to depict important experiences. For example a dream in which a spell or curse is placed on one can portray the influence a painful experience has left on ones emotions. If you had been deeply hurt while in your mother’s arms, your unconscious would equate pain with being held close by a woman. This ‘cross wiring’ of associations could meaningfully be portrayed as a ‘spell’ which makes one feel frightened in the apparently loving situation. See Victims; Dream Like a Computer Game; spell.
The Archetype of Fear
The images of fear can be darkness; an unknown something approaching you; losing control in some way; a dark and monstrous figure or animal; an obscure but powerful ‘thing’ that is threatening to engulf or destroy you; or death in its various forms such as disease, ageing, or meeting an opponent, etc.
As a human being you are not simply a creature that responds automatically to your environment. Even intelligent animals such as chimpanzees and foxes do not simply responded to their environment instinctively. They learn certain types of behaviour from their parents, from experience, and from their fellow animals. They, like us, are capable of learning. Our own relationship with parents, other human beings and animals during infancy, passes on to us an enormous amount of information through our ability to copy behaviour, through word of mouth, through our own experience, and through reading or viewing. So many of us have awful images or sense of fear haunting us from being passed on.
The instincts that inform us, and the cultural or personal information we acquire, are both the result of enormous amounts of past experience. Instinctive behaviour has developed over millions of years of dealing with survival. In a similar way cultural responses that we absorb are the result of experiences faced by millions of people. Both of these sources can be described by the word archetypal. By this is meant that no one particular person, experience or piece of information lies behind an instinct or a cultural response. Such responses are usually the synthesis arrived at over thousands of years, perhaps millions.
In this sense archetypal behaviour is the synthesis of thousands of people’s response to situations. These archetypes are often more easily seen, not so much in our own personal experience, but certainly in how some things are portrayed in art, in literature, and in popular or group responses to things that we might confront.
However, it is difficult to categorise such responses as clearly instinctive, cultural or personal. If we take the example of pain for instance, some individuals in tribal cultures seem to have a very high tolerance for pain, whereas many people in European based cultures have a much lower tolerance. So we cannot say that a response to pain is instinctive. Even if it is instinctive to remove your hand from something that burns, there still seems to be a cultural element to the response.
In looking at general responses to human situations, there are however particular things that often stimulate fear. Of course, physical or emotional pain is one. There are many other things that are much more subtle though. Fear of death for instance, can be seen as a sort of archetypal response to something that is essentially unreal until we actually meet the experience of death. Watching someone else diving into water is not the same as doing it oneself. In the watching you are only having a subjective response. In doing it oneself all ones body senses and feeling responses are involved. Observing the death we see around us is similar. It is not an experience of death. Only those who have a near death experience can say they have met death.
Another such fear is the loss of what we usually call identity or personality. The illustration of such fear is often portrayed in films as an alien creature, a disease, or an encroaching influence gradually taking over ones body and mind. But this fear is not always expressed in an obvious way. Sometimes it is connected with the losing of what one identifies with. For instance you may be blessed with an attractive and healthy body, and as this ages and loses its attractiveness, you may feel great stress, and struggle with enormous vigour to maintain the features that are slipping away. Such struggles arise out of the fear of losing oneself, or at least losing the sense of oneself connected with appearance, work, success, or financial standing – the loss of identity.
Something that is not as obvious but nevertheless can be seen to cause enormous depression and even illness in human beings is our connection with meaning. As human beings we struggle to give meaning to the world and to our own lives. People often despair if they are not involved in a meaningful task, work or relationship. The meanings we give to our life and the world may be expressed in religious, scientific, or aesthetic beliefs. If these beliefs are threatened or questioned we may experience anger or stress. Enormous effort and expense are often involved in creating an expression of these beliefs in our outer life, and an attempt to support them or their reality. Any threat to them may cause great fear or anger. This can be seen in religious sects and their fight against anything that threatens their beliefs.
Examples of fear in dreams are as follows.
I go upstairs to a bedroom to get a weapon. When I enter the darkened room, I sense that someone is there. I fall onto my stomach on the bed and there I am paralyzed, unable to move, extremely fearful that I will be attacked while I am in this vulnerable position, feebly kicking my feet, sure that the ‘enemy’ is somewhere in this darkened room with me. I keep expecting to kick someone, but I can’t really tell if I ever do. I am in a state of complete panic. PG.
I dreamt I was sitting on a pier when I suddenly I had a feeling of danger. I safely pulled my feet out of the water when a shark rose out of the water really angry with me for pulling my feet out. I woke up frightened and couldn’t fall asleep again for the rest of the night. ARE dream.
Dreams also show how we can deal with our fears, sometimes paradoxically.
I dreamt that I was being approached by a tiger. I was in fear believing that the tiger would attack me. I decided not to fight or run but instead do nothing. When the tiger reached me, it was friendly. I could hear it communicating to me that if I did not fear it, it would not attack. ARE dream.
The paradox is of not being frightened of what is, in the dream, frightening. Yet that is the way through fear, to face, in the dream or in ones exploration of your dreams, what is frightening. This can be done using the methods given under peer dream work.
Fear is fundamental to life, but for humans, because of our ability to think and hold images of things we are not actually meeting at the moment, fear can become a constant threat. Therefore the facing of fear, the meeting and dealing with the many images of fear we meet, is extraordinarily transformative. See: fear – dealing with. Also see the Dreams are Like Computer Games.
Death through fear is fairly common, and is reported by some doctors in connection with surgical operations, especially in the past. In 1887 Dr. Crile had watched helpless as his friend, William Lyndman died of shock after amputation of both legs. My uncle also died of the shock of losing his arm. My uncle, like William had lost little blood, and no vital organs were injured. Crile went on to develop anaesthesia and blood transfusion to counteract death through shock. But some forms of shock appeared to be outside any physical cause. In 1898 Crile was on an army transporter off Cuba and examined a young officer who was delirious with fear due to facing his first battle. He was as deep in shock as if his legs had been crushed by a wagon as William Lyndman’s had. This led Crile to become interested in exopthalmic goitre, an illness which produces a similar type of anxiety condition. Despite the use of anaesthetics, no one had successfully operated on such a goitre condition. Every patient died. Crile discovered why when he attempted such an operation in 1905.
While under anaesthesia the patient’s heart rate rose to 218 and the body temperature rose to a dangerous level. Despite no physical injury or infection, the patient died that night with a temperature of 109.6 F. Crile realised from his previous observations that it was fear that had killed the patient. Therefore he told his next patient, a young woman who needed the goitre operation, that he was going to give her a simple inhalation treatment. When she breathed in the anaesthetic, she therefore thought she was having a ‘treatment’ not an operation. She was the first person to survive the operation for exopthalmic goitre. Crile called it “stealing the goitre”, and was so impressed by the influence of emotion on the body he constantly stressed the importance of self control, and taught that calmness is strength.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Have any of my dreams been examples of facing and dealing with fear? If so what can I learn from them?
What does my dream and its drama suggest I am frightened of?
Am I paralysed by my fear, or can I confront it?