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Visualization Exercises
Another realization I had related to my experiences with my sister and Reiki healing: visualization exercises simply do not work for me. My sister was trying to teach me various visualization techniques she’d learned from Michael Tamura, but I could not make them work in any meaningful sense.
She was talking about imagining like these floating roses or something that absorbed energy, and these golden cords that run down into the center of the earth. The exercises had to do with grounding your energy and not needlessly absorbing other people’s negative energy.
It’s not that I’m not able to visualize things, because I am. But it’s that visualizing seems to simply not do anything for me. Maybe I’m simply not disciplined enough for it, but when it comes to spiritual stuff, I am realizing that I like to have things be pretty concrete. It’s part of what draws my interest to Afro-Caribbean systems of spirituality which make heavy use of actual objects: candles, statues, plants, etc. I’ve also had some decent luck with very simple breathing techniques. Something about that appeals to me much more strongly than closing and imagining various things swirling around in the darkness.
Maybe part of the break for me is that my mind is already very abstract and conceptual. So much so that maybe I just need concrete elements to balance me into a more physical direction. Sounds like as good an explanation as any. In any event, I am curious to hear about whether other people have problems with visualization exercises as well, why you think that might be and anything you have found instead of visualization which has worked for you.
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July 3rd, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Something I struggle with daily is the need for physical proof of the spiritual. And I tend to make use of objects more often than not.
However, I have found that I enjoy visualization when I can do it successfully. I require complete silence and calm to do it though, and this happens rarely. I use a visualization exercise involving tarot cards. I simply choose which card best depicts what I am searching for, and visualize myself in the card. It sounds absurd but it works for me. It gives me something nearly physical to base my visualization on.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Actually Michael Tamura did not start those techniques. He learned them and also taught them at the Berkeley Psychic Institute and they in turn learned psychic techniques from a variety of sources. There are a number of places that teach the same techniques including Boulder’s Psychic Horizons. As for visualization, I’ve never been too good at actually imagining in pictures. My “visualizations” tend to be with either sound and/or feelings with the sporadic picture thrown in for good measure.
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Hey that’s a cool idea about projecting yourself into tarot cards. I like that cause it sort of inverts the process of figuring out how the guy in a boat with a bunch of swords relates to you. It’s an obtuse symbol, so it makes sense to immerse yourself in HIS world instead of vice versa. I like it!
PS. I didn’t mean that Tamura created those techniques, just that you’d learned them from him. Thanks for the links though, maybe they will be of use to somebody near those institutes!
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Really, really, really interesting.
I typed “boucher reiki” in google and got http://www.marielb.net/
I was wondering is that your sister?
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:44 pm
No it’s not, but that’s odd. Boucher is a pretty common last name though…
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Opps, I was saying “really, really, really interesting” to your experience.
If you do have Christ like energy ever think of going to the holy sites in the middle east? Maybe you can bring peace to the Jews and Pals’.
And I wonder if that church dream you had http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/05/18/communion/ relates to your reiki experience?
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Maybe try NLP theory here. We tend to be visual, or audial, or tactile, although obviously in different circumstances this all changes. The Bruce exercises for “astral projection” largely depend on tactile, then visual, techniques and are very effective–I never completed the course but after about three weeks I was regularly getting nighttime disturbances, etc., and frequent false-waking.
I’m not sure what you mean by “don’t work,” though: it sounds like you anticipate a specific outcome. You can visualize a bowl of ice cream all you want. It’s not going to appear out of the ether. You know that. You might, however, end up running into the ice cream truck when you leave your house. I’ve sort of gotten away from “concrete” elements, though, simply because a lot of them are too silly to be caught with. That said, every thing from Chi Gung to Golden Dawn magic relies on motions and mental focus.
July 4th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Good point, I wasn’t especially clear on that. The visualization exercises were about grounding your energy, becoming calm, and being able to interact with another person’s negative energy and dissipate it without it being taken up by you. That is what I was unable to make “work”
July 5th, 2006 at 3:13 am
Check out Astral Dynamics, by Robert Bruce. It details his “NEW” (yes, it’s an acronym) way of teaching the essence of “visualisation” to a blind person. It’s considerably more effective than the traditional exercises.
July 5th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Oh yeah I think you recommended that a while back. Will check it out when I have the chance
July 6th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
well, there’s imagination-visualization, hypnogogic-visualization, dreaming-visualization, and oh-my-god-i’m-hallucinating-visualization.