>>17127Using Your Imagination
We are all capable of easily creating and visualizing the most complex scenario in our minds, without training and with no exceptions. Over the years, I have asked many people who claim they cannot visualize if they ever reminisce, fantasize, daydream, or imagine things.
The answer is always "Yes!" Everyone is perfectly capable of using imagination to build complex and detailed fantasies in the mind's eye. So, let's get something straight here: Imagination is visualization. Visualization is imagination. They are one and the same. And neither is truly a visual ability.
Visualization is not a visual ability. You do not actually see what you visualize, just as you cannot actually see your imagination or fantasy. True visualization is pure imagination. Imagination is the generator of all daydreams and fantasies, whether memories are relived or something fictional is created based on memory. You cannot really see memories or fantasy creations, but they are so vivid and realistic that they are indistinguishable from any mind's eye creation that is more visual.
Concise imagination and concise imaging are terms that are much more apt and workable for the use of imagination to construct detailed fantasies or visualizations.
Memory plays an important part in constructive imagination. Imagination is based on memory. If you have ever lost anything, you have most probably tried to re-create your past actions in your mind's eye to help you remember where you lost it. You have replayed these, using imagination, going over your every movement step by step. This is perfect visualization, concise imaging - based entirely on memory.
As a sample exercise: get up and go to the kitchen, get a drink of water, and return. As you do this, carefully take note of everything you do and see and feel along the way. Then sit down, close your eyes, and relax. Remember what you just did, from the beginning, and re-create this sequence of actions in your mind - in your mind's eye. It is important to feel everything as if you were actually doing it. This is exactly like creating a fantasy based on real-life events.
Remember getting out of your chair and how the room looked as it moved around you as you turned; remember your steps as you walked to the kitchen, what you saw and felt when you arrived, and how your hand looked and felt as it reached out for a glass; remember filling it and drinking; remember how the water tasted and smelled and felt; and remember returning the glass, walking back to your original position, and sitting down again. Do this in real time, taking roughly the same length of time to re-create it in your mind's eye as it took to actually do it.
You cannot actually see these actions, but you can remember them and feel them easily. This is exactly like any fantasy you have created in your mind's eye. You can almost see a good fantasy, they can be so real. Fantasies are constructed with imagination. Today this is more commonly called visualization.
Again, relaxed and with your eyes closed, try constructing a completely fictional scenario in your mind's eye, with all the necessary parts taken from memory. Remember what it's like to brush your hair.
Rehearse this action in your mind, in your mind's eye, without actually doing it first. Imagine there is a table in front of you with a hairbrush on it. Carefully feel yourself reaching out (without actually moving your arm), take the imaginary brush, and lift it slowly to your head and brush your hair. Feel your arm moving all the way as you do this in your mind's eye. Feel your hand pulling the brush through your hair over and over, without actually moving. This is constructive imagination (fantasy or visualization) only.
Finally, return the imaginary brush to the imaginary table.
You must feel all these movements as you construct them in your mind's eye. Do not try to see this happening, imagine and feel it happening. If may help if you consider that you are using your projected double's arms and hands to perform these actions.
You have just successfully created a construction of pure imagination (a complex fantasy or visualization) in your mind's eye. Any visualization or imagination exercise, no matter how lengthy or detailed, is simply an extension of what you have just done in these two exercises.
One last constructive imagination exercise: with your eyes closed, remember what it feels like to walk barefoot across a beautiful lawn on a lovely sunny day, with trees and shrubs and flowers all around you. Construct this from your memories in your mind's eye, and ^/yourself as being there inside your creation. Remember a time when you actually did something like this, or remember a scene from a movie you can use for this purpose.
Feel yourself walking across the lawn toward a massive ancient tree with heavy leafy branches hanging down all around it. Some of these branches are touching the ground. Imagine the tree becoming bigger and bigger as you approach it. Walking through a small break in the branches, you now move into the restful shade under its leafy boughs. You find yourself standing inside a secret clearing behind the branches.
You can smell the living wood and leaves of the tree, intermingled with soft, earthy smells like moss, bark, decaying leaves, and damp earth.
Walking around closer to the great bole of the ancient trunk, you see the shape of a comfortable chair carved into the wood and massive roots of the tree. Soft green moss is everywhere and you can feel its friendly touch underfoot. Moving over to it, you sit in this chair and relax. Leaning back, hands clasped behind your head, you close your eyes and listen and feel and smell the secret world around you.
You hear the wind gently whispering and murmuring through the branches. You hear small birds fluttering and fluting and insects humming and buzzing all around you, calling and chirping softly to each other. Sit here a while, feeling totally relaxed and at peace with the world, letting all your cares and problems melt away into nothingness.
You have just successfully constructed a detailed fantasy scene in your mind's eye. This was full of actions, sights, sounds, smells, and tactile perceptions, based entirely on your memory and imagination. This is exactly what you need to do when you follow any led meditation, where a voice leads you through a fantasy scenario while music and special effects help stimulate your imagination and transport your mind there.
You don't actually see what you are visualizing or imagining, but you can generate a detailed mind's-eye perception of it all the same.
