News:

Welcome to the Astral Pulse 2.0!

If you're looking for your Journal, I've created a central sub forum for them here: https://www.astralpulse.com/forums/dream-and-projection-journals/



Visualization

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

madmagus

Wasn't sure where to post this, so here goes.

I wanted to put out a quick post on my view of visualization, because I keep seeing so many articles that make visualization into something hard or promoting a way to develop it that is either outright wrong or is far harder than it should be.

Up front, if you can see an image in your mind when you close your eyes and think about the room you are sitting in, then you can visualize.  If you couldn't visualize, you'd be forever getting lost because you wouldn't remember what your house looked like, and you'd spend your afternoons after work wandering aimlessly through the city.  And very importantly, visualization doesn't mean that you stare at the blackness behind your eyes and draw silver triangles and squares or whatever.  If you are using your eyes, you are not visualizing.  You are staring.

The simplest way that I have found to start a visualization session is one of two ways: visualize, see in your memory, the room you are sitting in, or pull any other memory from you mind.  This automatically puts your 'sight' into your mind instead of into your eyes.  You stop looking physically and start looking through your mind's eye.  Once you have the scene pulled up as it actually is, add an ingredient to it.  If you are looking at your bed, put a basketball on top of it, or whatever you choose.  You are already in the right mental space, so adding items becomes easy.  This is simply a way to jump start your focus.  Once you start adding visual elements, you can do whatever you want.  Add, subtract objects at will. 

Initially, you are probably not going to see everything precisely.  Not a big deal.  Everything takes time to develop, but by pulling up a memory to jump start your session, your stress level diminishes and your efforts are rewarded right away.  The easiest way to improve clarity is to focus your attention on a specific point rather than taking in the whole scene.  Zoom in.  Look at the lines on the basket ball, look at the little nubs.  This, with practice, will give you clarity.

A final point on clarity.  Most people believe that they see quite clearly, assuming you don't have a visual deficit.  But if you look carefully, you will find that the only clarity in your vision is directly in line with your focus.  The rest of the room is actually blurred and out of focus at all times.  You can test this easily enough by looking with your peripheral vision while maintaining your forward focus.  Your eyes are just so well adapted to their job that they refocus with such speed that you don't notice any blurriness as you look around the room, so you falsely assume that everything is coming in with clarity.  So, when you close your eyes and visualize what you remember about the room, your mind doesn't play favorites and gives you the entire room, out of focus.  Because, in reality, that is how your mind gathered most of the data: out of focus through your peripheral vision.  That is why it is necessary to focus on a specific spot if you want to gain greater clarity; you are looking at a memory as a whole and are not focusing on a specific target as you would be if you were using your eyes with your eyes open.

One of the best practices to improve visualization and visualization's clarity is to practice looking at items around your room very specifically, drawing the lines of the object with your mind, looking at the particulars, mentally feeling the patina.  Learn to be more precise with your normal viewing of your world, and your inner world will become clearer and more defined as well.

thanks for the read

serge

Quote from: madmagus on April 09, 2018, 05:52:34


Thanks for your thoughts. You articulated the issues around visualisation very well.
I for one try to stay away from visualisation altogether, which of course does not always work: like any one else I end up forming mental images as soon as I close my eyes. However  my own attitude is this: in the act of visualisation one creates a world with peoples and things. In other words what we see out there is only  what is already in our minds. I am curious about the non physical  plane and I attempt  not to fabricate it mentally . I follow this personal rule in daily waking level of consciousness (meditation) and in my approach to astral projection (in my case in the hypnopompic state). In essence I force myself to concentrate on what is out there. Sometimes I only see mud, sometime shapeless colours. In most cases when I maintain my focus , actual forms end up happening: rocks, forests, animals, humans, etc. I believe that it is essential to let NP things be with minimum interference :-).

baro-san


It depends what you want to use visualisation for.

For things like obe's and affirmations, is better to live whatever your intention is, than to imagine that you look at it, like watching on a mental screen. And it is essential to be in an appropriate state of consciousness.
---
"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider."
- Sir Francis Bacon

Xanth

Here is probably the best "article" on visualization:  http://www.astraldynamics.com.au/content.php?205-Part-2-NO-Visualization

It's Robert Bruce... he and I don't agree on much, but this is solid information.

In a nutshell...
Visualization is more like remembering a memory in as much detail as you can.  Remember a birthday party you had from when you were growing up.  Remember all the details about it... the cake, the presents, your friends, your parents, the smells... everything.  Realize that you don't actually SEE it.

Now, if you actually do start SEEING (like really seeing it), then you've moved on and away from "visualization" and moved more into the realm of remote viewing.

Nameless

Well done Madmagus. It depends on what your goal is as to whether you actually need or maybe just want an eye-level visual. Going along with what you are saying one practice I find extremely revealing is to practice "seeing". If you are using your physical eyes then that is seeing which is where I think much confusion comes in.

Unfocuse your eyes (let them relax) and you will see two of everything. It may surprise people to know that by doing this you can actually draw your focus to only one of those images leaving the double in your peripheral. Focus on the single image while seeing double and you will notice details you missed before.

You might wonder why anyone would want to do that. Simple, it helps force our brain to let go as our brains are rather lazy. And the bonus is that you should start seeing those things we normally tune out.

Xanth did a good job describing visualization above so I want repeat that. If you do visualize to the point of seeing I agree with Xanth, you are approaching remote viewing which very much works like seeing but takes place in your mind (sort of).

Good Post!
Remember, You came here to this physical earth to experience it in its physical form. NPR will always be there.

madmagus

#5
Thanks for the responses.  Appreciated.

Visualization is like any tool.  It's not good for everything.  Use as needed.  The reason I posted was simply to point out to people who are trying to OBE/Phase/WILD using visualization techniques that it doesn't have to be as hard as people point out.  The only thing hard about visualization is the effort you must apply to perfect it.

I'll check out the reference Xanth.  Thanks.

p.s.  Read the article.  It had a good example of creating imagined scenes in your mind, but he plays a bit fast and loose with his 'visual' semantics, if you will.  His personal opinion regarding 'seeing' with the mind's eye is technically correct, only in the sense that we never see anything with our mind, we only sense and interpret it.  But you could say the same thing about physical sight.  We don't see with our eyes; our eyes are just lenses through which we gather vibrational data within the visual spectrum, transmit it to the visual cortex, and the visual cortex translates the data into impressions that we have learned to call 'sight' or images.  If you want to be technical with 'seeing', we never see anything.  We only interpret.  So trying to re-interpret the word to push his point can be confusing for people not already familiar with the topic.  But it was useful for people who didn't understand the relationship between visualization and imagination.  It was a good effort on that front.

Xanth

Quote from: Nameless on April 09, 2018, 18:56:31
Xanth did a good job describing visualization above so I want repeat that. If you do visualize to the point of seeing I agree with Xanth, you are approaching remote viewing which very much works like seeing but takes place in your mind (sort of).
Oh, and I also wanted to point out that it illustrates one of my other points so well... in that, the line between all of these "abilities" we're on this forum learning is extremely blurred.

Visualization... remote viewing... dreaming... lucid dreaming... astral projection...

There's a singular thread which runs throughout all of those experiences.

Blossom

I visualize, but my best results are not by visualizing "something".  You have to feel it.  In otherwords, don't visualize the room next door.  FEEL yourself standing in the room next door.  Be the object.  Be there.
~~Blossom~~

-----------
"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
In Alice in Wonderland by 'Cheshire Cat'