Don  Actually it was one of your posts elsewhere that got me into posting this. It was concerned with people trying to use what you call New Age stuff to try to heal diseases and perhaps not being healed, I think. It reminded me of something I read about a couple in the '80's who were highly accomplished people when they finally met and fell in love and married. And then she developed some kind of cancer. And the article I read said they tried everything...conventional medicine and what you call New Age...Seth and The Course in Miracles...and anyway, she passed over in spite of everything. Now, up to that time, I thought I was just doing something "wrong"....but then I realized this stuff (that's a big group of stuff) requires alot more work; it isn't just "read and follow the instructions" and Ta-Da! you get a result! So I worked a little harder and even heard through the grapevine that for all those authors coming out with books in the "80's about how easy it was to visualize...well, apparently it was a secret but it didn't always work for them either. I get bothered when you lump all this stuff together as "New Age" in what I see as a dismissive way, because I think alot of this is old knowledge, but if I had one criticism of the popularization of this it would be that the pop culture application of this makes it sound like a push button approach should work, and it doesn't. But Don, I've been arguing for decades in my head with the Christians because they treat Christianity the same way and besides I don't know anyone who can walk on water. I take the stories of Christ healing the sick by touching them really seriously and I won't take the Christians seriously until they can do that too. But I don't want to get into it with you because you can out-talk me any day!

So I saw your post and then I saw this description of "How to Visualize" that was much more detailed than any other I'd seen and it has me thinking that there is much we have to learn about how to use our concious minds, and it is going to take alot of work to learn it. But I never really learned to pray in church; and I think prayer and visualization have alot in common. And now I think prayer takes alot more work than I ever knew. My current thinking is that there are blocks to manifesting. Seth would call them beliefs and say you have to work on your beliefs. Maybe those who pray just have to learn to totally surrender to the god process when they pray and that takes care of the blocks (more hard work). The ebook I mentioned has a chapter in dealing with blocks and it looks like alot of hard work. But at least there is something to use.

Oh my I used to know something about DMA...how interesting you should bring that up...and focus is another topic this ebook author discusses. I haven't mastered that chapter yet.

Irene I may be an old-bie and not a newbie but I still have a go at it with the visualization. OK I'm kind of throwing affirmations and Bruce's imagination technique into a bigger category here because they both have a bit of visualization with them even though they aren't the same. But either way, I have a hard time with visualization. And I think there are two things contributing to that.

One is that there are people for whom it is very easy and they have success at it. So they don't really know how to tell the rest of us what they do. Hey I understand that. I used to tap dance. Counting to 4 or 8 and moving to the music at the same time is second nature to me. I can't not move to music! but my son cannot dance (or carry a tune for that matter) even though he plays a brass instrument and can follow a written line of music that is not the main melody with ease. I visualize like he dances. He can't step to the beat! How can that be? How can you not feel the beat? I think I am not the one to teach him how.

The other is that all the instructions seem to be written by people who visualize easily. Maybe for some of us, this is hard work. Everyone had something interesting to say...MS, Ryan, blink, Alysia, Vicky. Sometimes maybe the most useful thing to do is be the little kid standing in the back of the ballet class trying to learn by imitating the big kids. More hard work. but as Alysia said, "thats only a piece of the story. all of us are pulling it together by our contributions." Maybe once you go off on your own a little and find what works for you, it is easier.

Marilyn you cracked me up! I always think of those curly things you can make when you run one side of a pr of scissors down a strip of paper (or ribbon if you are wrapping something).

Dave, thanks for responding.  Ok when you said "Think of an apple" I had a barrage of thoughts. I just sometimes think too fast for my own good. Which one came first? I'm not sure...thinking "what is he asking that for?" or red fruit(like a picture in a grade school math book but then I start questioning why that picture) or red fruit (Gee I need to go to the store) or 1st computer (I am sitting in front of a PC but my first "love"...) or the word "apple" or some other things. Now the stuff like 'red fruit (gee I need to go to the store)' is not sequential but like a rote if you will. A packaged thought. I'm just too damn introspective.

Thinking about this made me realize that one way to repress something is to start just thinking in words or about just the words rather than the content. Sort of like the way you can memorize and repeat the Gettysburg Address and never think about Lincoln sitting on the train jotting it down or about Lincoln already having some of those ideas in mind because he debated Douglas in 1858 or about the carnage at Gettysburg....just strings of letters turned into strings of sound. So I wonder if my inability to visualize is some sort of repression...but then you would be repressed too!



Dream mode - people dream in something besides pictures??? well yes actually I have (rarely) but not in a long time. Usually I just get the pictures and the feelings. Dreams to me have moods and I have a difficult time deciphering them. The pictures are easier to talk about. Are dreams a visualization process? If so, then don't you have to talk about waking visualizations, because surely we don't all see even physical objects exactly the same. We learn to conceptualize things and give them names, but who is to say whether the things are 100% equivalent between 2 people. But then if you include waking visualization, then I can visualize....

the "lucid image state" in which you are extremely aware, with exceptionally clear imagery, yet still not awake, nor fully asleep.
Not sure what you mean by exceptionally clear imagery...What are the other possibilities? I have entered a very interesting state but it is not between wake and sleep but I think it is between waking and one of those full-fledged vibration-buzzing-paralysis type obe experiences. In the stronger ones, I seem to be in some sort of array, fully three dimensional and vivid colors. Like falling through a really cool 3-D screen saver only more complex and that first happened before screen savers were invented. Pretty nice after those nasty vibrations. I would like to be able to listen to music and just pop out of the top of my head but that has never happened for me.

Between wake and sleep I just think, have ideas, talk to myself (or maybe it's some guide, the ideas are usually pretty interesting ). I don't know if I fit the pattern there.  That doesn't happen in recent years anyway since I live by an alarm clock.

I thought about this and realized that if I am going the opposite direction...wake to sleep...under certain conditions I can easily go into a light sleep (For instance, riding the subway home at night after work) and I do see "pictures"..more like snapshots than a movie, but not exceptionally clear. I always wondered what this meant as I thought it took more time to go into REM sleep.

I wrote this earlier, haven't had time to read the last few posts.

funny how individual we all are Lucy. case in point; our differences; you know those vibrations where you are going obe? you called them nasty.. I loved them; they were so pleasant, sort of like getting a body massage only a thousand times more pleasant. I don't get those vibrations anymore. guess I'm more into what we discuss as phasing. maybe those vibrations are only for to align the various energy portals connected with the body. that would explain the times when I did not have an obe experience that I remembered anyway. the next morning I could only remember that the vibrations had come again.

in all these explorations of the mind, the soul, the afterlife there is such a thing as trying to hard all the while comparing ourself to Monroe, or Bruce, or some other author/teacher. if we can only get over the very natural desire of the mind to compare and measure our own self, we might be able to achieve, as you say, our own particular type of visualization or obe technique, or our own niche. maybe thats why we discuss it here, we can get some tips sometimes.
although I will share with you something I did get from a guide. I get most of my own guidance just before I get out of bed. heres one of them. "emotion is the barometer of the soul."
so I muddled around with that for a few years.. apparently it meant in ex-hippy language "it if feels good do it, if it don't, then don't.

ok, here we go; Lucy, try not to think of pink elephants; what do you see right now?

love and hugs, alysia

What do you hear right now????

Hi Lucy,

I have always had it comes easy and natural to me, and I wish I could explain it better to you.  I wish there was a way to write it out like a secret formula.  But I do believe that whatever kind of visualizing you can do, that is good enough for you to work with.  Then if you relax, trust it, and not try too hard it will come easier for you and you will probably open up greater ability to visualize better.  I really believe this.  One thing for sure is, if you try way too hard at anything you most likely will block it from happening because of doubt and frustration.  I'm not saying I always have it that easy, I can't just do anything I want.  But I do have it come naturally, ever since I was really young.  As bad as my childhood was sometimes, I am thankful for the fact that it caused me to rely on myself and trust myself.  Those things that happened to me were the reason I started using visualization as a means to cope.  When the outside world wasn't there for me, I turned inward and learned to help myself.  Blocking out the outside world and going out of body became my only way to escape.  So I can't explain how I learned to do things, I can only say what it is like for me. 

Okay, sort of changing the subject but not really....there is one kind of technique I use that I wonder if anyone else knows about this.  I'm sure some of you do, but I've tried to figure out how to describe it physically.  I close my eyes and focus my eyes as if I am trying to see directly in front of my field of vision rather than letting my eyes relax peripherally.  It kind of feels like crossing your eyes, and it puts this pulling sensation right between your eyes.  If you do it too hard it hurts and makes you dizzy, but the trick is to find the balance between that and relaxing the eyes.  Even though the eyes are closed this is something you have to do with your eye muscles (this is the only way I can describe it).  So once you balance it there, that is when you make your body and mind relaxed, don't think, go with the flow sort of thing.  (I am not always successful because it is a LOT of work), but if it works then something clicks in your brain or mind, and once it clicks you don't have to work hard to hold it there, it just stays.  In doing this I can see visually the same as physical sight, clear, color, 3D, etc. 

Ok, as crazy as that just sounded, I described it exactly how I do it.  I don't see any reason why anyone who hasn't done it can't do it.  So please try it and be patient.  I would love to hear if it works for anyone else! 

Love,
Vicky


 

Vicky, everyone, I know about that clicking you talked about. mine was between the eyes. I believe thats the forehead chakra opening up. it  only happened once with the clicking, but I've read other people who describe the same sound or action. such a feat makes what happens afterwards somehow more real, because the body is involved.
I think visions are different from visualization, then theres a thing called holding a vision.
these may all be related, but a vision pops up, a visualization could be like an exercise, then holding a vision might be like following a vision as in seeing where it goes to.
i like this thread. I hope we can talk more.

Hi,

No problem, hope we have helped in some way.

Vicky i think i know what your on about! I seem to feel relaxed as soon as i do this. You can feel yourself looking inward and afterwars when you open your eyes you can feel that you have right?
I have never really tired this but give it a go, seems good! Also i feel when i do this i get an imediate sense of the feeling of blackness, the expansion type thing if youy like. Does all this sound right because would love to give it a go!

Also just thinking earlier how i could describe to people that feeling to help them with this stuff. That part when i was on about feeling the blackness, feeling that expansion i thought of a way to describe the feeling, well give give you an idea.

Its like really when you close your eyes you can see the blackness etc and thats it. Now go in a room and make it pitch black (usually easier done at night lol!) and look around you with your eyes open, you can't see anything you you can feel like where the walls are, you can feel theres more than just seeing the blackness. Not sure if this makes sense, maybe someone could explain better. But that feleing i find will come to you when your relaxing (with your eyes closed) this blackness will have depth and feeling to it, and then thisis normally where something happens for me.

Ryan

Hey again,

Just another story i would like to share about trying to hard lol, which i think i defiantly know about! lol

Well i'm sure those of you who were around when i came to this board for the first times would of notice my obession in OBE's, i still have that yes but only recently found other ways to explore. But i would not believe anything and thought i had to have an OBE to explore the afterlife.

Now i tried all the time, and i got the floaty feeling going and i couldnt get there for anything, partly the reason i gave up for a while, but i came back and nothing still happened, but i didn't give up i just stopped trying for a bit. I thought well i'll have a break, relax and try in a few days, then i got one! lol

Trying to hard all the time isn't too good and sometimes take a break and you might suprise yourself, if not when you come back to it your have more luck.

Ryan