I'm back! 

Thanks a lot Ryan!  Your little skydiving mishap kept playing in my mind all day!  Just kidding.  But I know what you are talking about.  I visualize everything too.

Doesn't everybody though?  For instance, if I need to think in terms of numbers, I see all the numbers listed in my head with 1 starting at the bottom and going upward in a line.  Same with the days of the week, the calendar, etc.  If I want to re-arrange a room in my house, decorate or something, I can picture everything perfectly from memory. 

My husband on the other hand can't seem to do anything of the sort.  He is better at other things than me, like math and history, and he has a good memory for facts.  And he has every TV show and movie he's ever seen memorized, whereas I can go to Blockbuster and rent the same movie every three months and think I'm seeing it for the first time!    

Vicky

All the comments have given me a few things to think about.

Last night when I tried to look into the darkness with my eyes closed, I easily saw the arrays I have mentioned. I also easily fell asleep. I think I need to work sitting up, but I can fall asleep easily there too.

The other day I did fallinto a day dream and it made me realize that although I always thought my daydreams were as good as Walter Mitty's, they exist as a king of dialogue type thing...I'm talking with someone (and I get to put words in their mouth!) ...any images are incomplete, like photos taken inside without a flash but the center turned out clearer. That doesn't mean I don't have a strong emotional response.

OK so I suppose that I could just try to fall into a daydram conversation with some one who has passed over, but I am aware of writing the scripts and oit would take some astounding confirmatory info to make me think it was other than make-believe.

Don yes I have thougth you dismissed all "new age" sorry if I have been too harsh. The comments from James were pretty interesting. Given the varieties of experiences of conciousness, maybe the really astounding thing is that we agree on anything.

I haven't heard about Temple Grandin's book, who who she is so maybe thats one for a list i should start up! lol

Its just like anything, partly when i'm thinking about it as wlel the images just go into my head.

Just wondering as well something i never understood, what brought up this visulization thread Lucy? I mean for me it would be about phasing or OBE's, just wondering what your motives are...just thinking never really knew, would love to know and hear about them!

Ryan

Temple Grandin doesn't have anything to do with afterlife stuff, new age, TMI, anything like that. She just has an incredible level of self-awareness and an ability to describe some of that process for herself. So in trying to understand what conciousness is and how to use it, I find her work relevant.

I think my initial post described why I asked this question.  I don't do what are called visualization exercises well. Sometimes I feel like I am being double binded...I think that is how that term is used. I feel like I am being asked to do something impossible (as in when a small child is ordered to love a parent). So I don't do this work well. Which isn't to say things don't happen. (How typical of the subconcious...wait til I'm looking the other way to do something!).

In addition, I'm always interested in answers to the question "What is real?" or what is reality. or stuff like that. The comments people have posted here indicate that there is a bit of variability in how conciousness works, which is interesting. All the subtleties James wrote about are real, and some of them show up here. But I'd also like to figure out how to do this well enough to get those verifications Bruce talks about. Its fun to go off and have these adventures, but not all the stuff posted here (I'm including this whole forum) is verifiable. If I do this, I want some of it to be verifiable to "outsiders". Some of it will always be personal.

So when people teach stuff like this, they seem to assume that we all visualize the same way, or at least somewhat similarly. Is that true?

So I found an exercise in practicing visualization, and finding that made me realize that maybe others need practice too. Maybe even for those who do visualize well, there are things an exercise like this would help them with.

I see my question as a parallel to the posts on Sylvia Browne, by the way. I'm coming at the same thing from another angle. The bigger question is, what do we agree on as real and what is the role of conciousness in determining that. Maybe the Swedenbord thread is the same too, I haven't been reading it. (would that I could make a zip file of some of this information and store more things in time)

hi Lucy
you said: Which isn't to say things don't happen. (How typical of the subconcious...wait til I'm looking the other way to do something!).
___

it pretty much works this way for me, what u said above. I just accept it, that I have to remove my expectations in order to receive a new viewpoint. it's never going to be the same journey, the same experience for everyone. it's never what I expected. in a way, I like it that way. I like to surprise myself. I'm an orderly person, but surprises and spontaneity are acceptable within exploration.
don't be frustrated. this is a new field, we are barely breaking ground in this century.
one of the biggees for me, personally speaking of course, in all of these explorations is to trust yourself; after you've read all the books and you're still confused, you have to trust yourself.
love, alysia
ps. we will never agree unaminously what reality is.

I think Lucy we're all just working at it, to understand how imagination can aid us to manifest personal reality. I don't see anybody bragging here about what they have manifested or exactly telling us how to do it.

I promised myself I'll not quote anybody else anymore. so this post just to say we seem to all be in the same boat sailing down the pike and sometimes it's smooth, sometimes we ride the rapids, sometimes someone gets a little crazy and rocks the darn thing and some bail out committing suicide. I'm not creating any better or faster than you are. I been selling a house here in Roswell since February! I thought I'd be out of here long before now.
hmm. must be I'm not the only one involved in this situation..might have to go out of body to find my buyer! I do have a lot of lookers, so maybe I at least have created the lookers? 

but about those times I actually set meself down for to use the imagination...had to keep brushing off the doubts; they were like flies on feces....so had to pretend, or trust, maybe it would take me somewhere, maybe just to Siberia. even when I was shown my verification, I had to go and verify it with another living person before it became verification that imagination can lead you to the truth, or a piece of the truth.
then when that happens enough times, you know that you yourself, are never "less than" another who is reporting miracles and leaping tall mountains...so all this to say, I know you a little, not much, but you have a fine analytical mind, all I see is you need a little more to trust yourself what you see and feel and then go with it as an experiment idea.

what if every thought we have gets manifested?  horrors! it seems every thought is important and does this birthing thing..let me ramble, I may come up with something  I think about what Bruce said about doubts manifesting; like creative doubt then its a duality world, so the opposite of doubt is trust. I think trust is really hard to do when you're using the imagination, but if I could just quiet the doubts long enough, I ended up with verification to run by somebody else and authenticate I was on the right road. love, alysia

Lucy, your question was:
" So does imagination bring one information or does it create? "

Using your imagination is a way of opening up perception.  It doesn't necessarily have to be visual perception.  As long as you notice the subtle shift of additional information coming into your awareness, and you play along with it, then you are allowing your perception of this new information to open up.  It could open up in the way of strong 3D visual perception, or it could be auditory, or a knowing.  There are many different levels of visual acuity, and one is not more accurate than another in my opinion.

My belief is that if you continue with the imagination part, or the pretending part, and you stay in control of that, in other words you keep forcing it with your own thoughts, then you are merely fantasizing.  But if you allow your perception to open up and show you new information coming in, you will find that you are no longer in control of what is taking place in your "imagination".  If you continue to play along with it and just allow it to happen, you will eventually have greater perception and eventually come upon some information that you know you did not make up, and hopefully this information can be verified in some way.  I believe this technique can be used for more than just retrieval exercises.  If you practice enough you will see your own progress and results. 
Love, Vicky

Quote: