Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Visualization is necessary, but I'm told it isn't

I've never been able to visualize, not in the sense that every self-help program seems to require. How does one take advantage of these programs (I have four paraliminals) when one isn't able to visualize?

I've been told it's not necessary to actually "see" things because it is. The programs are very specific about imagining thus and so scene or whatever.

The Silva program, which I spent $500 on and flunked because I wasn't able to do even one of the exercises, was the first to tell me that. I flunked because I wasn't able to imagine myself, my consciousness, for instance, going into a wall and describing what it felt like, looked like, etc. Actually "seeing" IS necessary.

What does one do? I've tried brain entrainment using binaural beats, isochronic (sp?), as well as hypnosis (I'm always told to imagine, see, etc.), and, of course, my paraliminals, all with no success.

What's a mother to do? (My wife used to say that. That is, my EX-wife used to say that. She probably still does. I just like the phrase; that's why I included it here, even though I'm in no way equipped to be a mother.)

I seem to be unable to fully relax, not able to rid my body of its constant 24-hour-a-day tension, including in my head. So, perhaps that's part of it. I also have been diagnosed with ADD, which doesn't allow me to stay still for very long and concentrate for very long.

Any suggestions?

The thing with visualisation is you don't see as if you would with your eyes. Do you find your car when you parked it? Do you find your way home at night? You have sound visualisation skills because if you couldn't see in your minds eye what your car or where your home is.

Can you point to something yellow? If so you can visualise.

Now with exercises like the Silva Method you get a sense of. Some people are stronger at hearing or smelling when they get a sense of what "visualisation."

One way of developing the visualisation skill is to stand in front of a painting, study it in detail for two or 3 minutes and then close your eyes and talk about the detail, describe as much as you can. Do that for 10 minutes and then give it a break for a day or two. Do it again a few more times if necessary. Though I doubt it is. All that is required is that you notice that the mind does perceive a lot of details and usually too fast to catch.

I must be pretty lazy when it comes to Paraliminals. I just consider the questions in the booklet, Listen to Paul in the beginning and then just let the non-conscious mind handle the details. I learned long ago, trying to visualise and get it right limits the possibilities of greater than my imaginings. So while I do the visualisation exercises with other programs, I never bothered much for Paraliminals. If my conscious mind caught up with any of the visualisations Paul has on the Paraliminals I just did something. No details though.

Alex

First of all, Alex, thank you for responding. And secondly, thank you for the patience you're going to need in reading my response. I've been through all this before . . . numerous times.



I understand visualization is not seen through the physical eyes. I close my eyes. All I "see" is black. If there's such a thing as a third eye or mind's eye, I haven't found it yet.

I don't see anything in my mind's eye. My memory serves me to find my way home, etc. If you're saying memory is the same thing as visualization, I would have to disagree with you.

The mind may or may not see in pictures, but if it does, it doesn't translate that to my conscious mind. I still see nothing but black when I close my eyes, yet I can still remember how to find my way home—with my physical eyes and memory, not by visualizing in the way, for instance, Shakti Gawain describes in her seminal book, "Creative Visualization."



Sorry. Memory.

I don't buy that. That's just an easy way out to try and explain to people like me who are not able to "see" with one's mind's eye or third eye or whatever.

What you just said is the same thing as saying that I am visualizing with my physical eyes if I can point to something yellow and see it. And you've already said physical eyes don't visualize, at least the way I'm talking here.



I'm not sure what you meant by this last bit, because the sentence structures are all ka-fooey.

The exercises in the Silva method involved casting about your conscious awareness into things like walls, up through the roof, etc., none of which I was able to do. And they all involved visualization. They also involved other internal senses, which I am unable to connect to, not speaking of the physical senses, which I connect to just fine.

I am strong in none of the senses you mentioned, when it comes to internal sensing. To me, visualization is visualization. Smelling is smelling. Feeling is feeling. Feeling or smelling is not visualization. Look at the root word—visual.



Anytime I have tried these kinds of exercises, I am relying 100% on the memory of what I saw. And as often as not, I remember very little. And just as often as not, I am wrong in what I am remembering.

When I close my eyes after looking at such items, whatever I look at remains present for about one, maybe two seconds, but it is fading away at a rapid rate at the instant I close my eyes.

Brain damage at two different times in my young life has had a deleterious effect on my memory, and perhaps my ability to "see" with my mind's eye or third eye or whatever.



The most I can do when listening to paraliminals is try and relax the best I can and try to ignore what is being said, hoping my subconscious picks up on what Paul is saying. I have a hard time relaxing, so I concentrate on that, not always successfully.

The paraliminal that I am working on exclusively is "Dream Play." I would really like to be able to have lucid dreams.

I've written out my three experiences with lucid dreams in my blog, Odds and End Thoughts at http://oddsandendthoughts.wordpress.com/...acked-up-to-be/ — if you're interested.

Sorry, if I seem thick-headed, but I hear these kinds of explanations every time I talk with someone about my situation.

I'm not ignorant regarding these things, as I'm very widely read on the subject. I know I've got a pituitary gland up there somewhere, which is supposed to be the seat of the third eye, so-called, but I'm just not able to "turn it on." I do all the things the books say, but nothing seems to work.

So, if it seems I'm a little thick-headed, I'm just a little tired of hearing the same-old, same-old mantras for my not being able to visualize, all the while being told I am in fact visualizing.

For me, there are no white screens upon which to "see" stuff or work rooms where I am supposed to "do" stuff, all with my eyes closed.

My former brother-in-law can visualize with his eyes open. In fact, he can look at a wallpaper full of cars and make the cars move around. He can actually undress people with his mind, if he so desired. To me, stuff like this is visualization in its highest form, not that I want to undress people with my mind.

Not pointing at something yellow and seeing it with my eyes and telling myself I'm visualizing. I know what visualizing is and this ain't it.

Silva involved a lot of white screen, mirrors, etc. I'm not able to close my eyes and point to them and say I'm visualizing because they're not there and I don't know how to put them there.

I'm not even able to visualize, say the color red, or a red apple when my eyes are closed. I can think about them and remember that I really do know what they look like, but they make no appearances to my mind's eye, third eye, or whatever.

Sorry if this has taken on the appearance of a rant and it's certainly not meant to be a flame. Just frustration for a life-long problem I have yet been unable to unravel, in spite of all my efforts and money I have spent on "programs" and books and tapes, etc.

They all want you to visualize with or without white screens. With your eyes closed.

So, thank you for your patience. Hopefully, you were able to have some. Else, I'm sure it was a long read.

Hi Cris,

Sounds very frustrating! I can sympathize. Though not to the same degree, I've myself had some difficulty visualizing, despite a life-long desire and belief that I ought to be much better at it!

I can't say for sure what you'll need to do to locate your "missing" visualization skills. Instead, I'll just describe a little of my own experiences and discoveries, and hope that maybe you... (or at least someone else reading this)... will find it helpful.

One of my biggest revelations along the way was that my standards were WAY too high! I had some strange idea that "visualization" was supposed to be like hallucinating. I read stories of people like Nikola Tesla who could supposedly design machines in his mind so vividly that he could come back a few days later to see how much the gears had worn down. Of course I'd LOVE to be able to do that. And I felt envious of everyone I heard of with stories of being able to have insanely lucid hallucination-quality visualizations.

So... biased by that crazy expectation, when I did "visualization" exercises, I'd always say that I couldn't "see" anything. It was frustrating. I would try really hard to "see"... but I'd just go blank. It was really frustrating not to be able experience life like a schizophrenic.(!)

Then a few years ago during the course of a few meditations, I noticed a subtle detail that completely changed everything. It was a simple difference in how the leader *worded* the instructions. The difference was this:

When they asked me to "visualize"... I saw nothing.

When they asked me to "IMAGINE"... I found I could *feel* my way through an imaginary situation. I could *imagine* holding balls of energy in my hands... even though I could not see a thing. I could *imagine* people standing in front of me... and even answer questions about them... even though I couldn't see them.

Turns out -- I could IMAGINE things just fine! That one realization turned everything around for me. It changed how I approach just about everything. For one, I *never* ask clients to "picture" or "visualize" something... (unless it's already been established that they're a visual person who literally "sees" things in their imagination)... but instead ask them to *IMAGINE*

(Not that "imagine" is a magical word or anything. I've encountered more than one situation where someone couldn't 'imagine'... so we played with the wording until we found some common language.)

So what I've had to learn is either 1) Translate "visualize" into "imagine"... Or when it becomes too annoying... 2) Avoid scripted meditations that refuse to break out of this very limiting language. Honestly, I often find myself taking the second route, because I don't want to get stuck with a training (or trainer) that's already biased against me.

And once I learned to do that... to start living within my own strengths... as someone with a VERY good imagination (even if it's kind of mysterious what kind of 'sense' I'm using to daydream)...

I have since become very good at literally Visualizing. It's still not "hallucination-quality" -- (as if that really means anything, since all imaginary phenomena are technically hallucinations) -- but I can dependably create imaginary visions... as long as I *FEEL* them out first! (In a sense, I actually sculpt them.)

Lemme know if you (or anyone else) can relate...

Coach Rik

You're trying to see with the third eye? That's not necessary for visualisation, yes memory is. Why do you want to take memory out of visualisation? It's a huge part of it. Without memory you cannot begin to visualise.

The more you play with memory, remembering dreams replaying past reels of experience the more you tap your visualisation skills.

I don't see a white screen, I remember what one looks like. Then I remember a polar bear, wearing a pink bikini with lime green polka dots, dancing on ice followed by a huge rabbit carrying a blue umbrella sliding on it's oversized brown fluffy tail across the ice bowling over the polar bear. The polar bear lands in the overturned umbrella spinning like a top.

To write all that I had to visualise, with my eyes open.

What you're trying to do is see with the eyeballs. Seeing with the minds eye is subtle and you find it by tapping your memory.

Play with image streaming from the Genius Code Course. Unfortunately the ability to visualise with clarity you are looking for atrophies in adults to be almost non-existent by the age of 40. It can be recovered by playing with memory techniques that require you to recall images. Image streaming is also a good way. The fact is it's not a skill we are without it's one we don't recognise because we judge, jump to the first answers.

Tap your memory if you want to build your visualisation skills.

I will work on this idea. I sort of get it. Thanks. I would have answered sooner, but I forgot I wrote this posting.

The idea is practically applicable. I will surely think about it.
We all are waiting for your answer.

andrival, thank you for the reminder. I had forgotten I had ever written this post, let alone having responded to it. However, I would first like to address Alex’s latest post, as it is clear we’re not addressing each other’s needs. So, I’ll be going through his comment in detail, and in the process, giving my experience in “imagination” vs “visualization”.



No, Alex, I’m not trying to “see” with my third eye. I’m just trying to access it, to open it. That’s an entirely different thing.



I would respectfully disagree with you, Alex. I’ve read enough books; I’ve listened to enough tapes, CDs and radio shows; I’ve watched enough videos to realize that the third eye is the seat of all visualization-type experiences, as well as many other extra-physical experiences.

I’ve heard of too many visual experiences people have had that they had never before experienced; hence, memory had nothing to do with them. Yet, they were highly visual.



Memory may have something to do with directed visualization, but not, so far as I’ve been able to tell, with, say, setting up a mental workshop, complete with “guides” who are there visually to help you, to answer questions you give them, to offer advice, to show you things, and so forth.

While I can remember what four walls look like, a desk, a chair, and so forth, all the things necessary to build a mental workshop, I’m not able to make use of them, even by “imagining”.

I’ve tried “imagining” the way Coach Rik suggested, and while I can sort of “imagine” a workshop, I’ve never gotten any benefit out of it. While I can “imagine” (sort of) a “guide”, and I can ask questions of the “guide” until the moon turn into green cheese, I can get nothing out of the “guide”. No acknowledgment of any kind.

So, what good is memory in situations like this? Absolutely none.

I appreciate the time you took, Alex, to respond to me, but it’s clear, at least to me, that we are not on the same page here. While you may have had good experience with memory and visualization, why cannot you accept that I haven’t?



First of all, I am not able to play with my memory. I barely have one. That means I have to take a different direction.

Secondly, I am not able to play “past reels of experience”. I’m hardly able to remember them, let alone play them back as if I were looking at a video recording. I’ve heard of others who can do exactly that, but I’m not able to.

Third, I’m not able to recall, say, smells or songs or anything out of my past and play them back. For instance, I’m not able to think about my favorite cologne when I was in the Air Force and bring up the smell memory of that cologne.

I can remember a song, but I am not able to hear it in my mind, although I can “imagine” it—but only if I can remember the words and sing it either in my mind or aloud.

No memory at work here, so far as playback goes, only bringing back the fact that I can remember the words (very rarely) and the melody. I’m not able to play back the song in my mind, not as I heard it on the radio way back when. If I can remember a song at all, it’s in my voice, not in the original voice, and without music.



I can remember what a white screen looks like, but it doesn’t help me remember one visually when I close my eyes. Total blackness is not a white screen, no matter how well I can remember what one looks like. Black does not equate to white, at least to me.

I can try and “imagine” such a thing you described here, but all I get is black on black “images”, if I can call them that. And I’m using the word “images” really loosely here.

I can sort of “imagine” a polar bear, but only a black polar bear with a black background.

I can try to put a pink bikini on it by mentally forcing the idea onto the black polar bear, but no pink. And I can sort of do the same with the rest of your description, using Coach Rik’s suggestions, but what do I have in the end? Black on black. In other words, nothing.

I have no memory of such a creature, but I tried relying on your memory of such a creature, which I suspect you have none. But you painted a picture and I tried to duplicate it, but all I have in my palette is the color black.



First of all, that is not what I am trying to do. If you remember, one of the statements I made earlier is, “I understand visualization is not seen through the physical eyes.”

Secondly, I still have not seen or heard anything that makes sense that describes how a mental memory of something can equate to a visual representation of that memory, let alone how someone can get a visual presentation of something for which he has no memory.

Thirdly, while I believe memory can be an integral part of using the mind’s eye, I have not seen anything to suggest that it is the only way to tap into one’s mind’s eye, other than your saying so.

In my understanding, the mind’s eye, or third eye, or whatever you wish to call it, is the portal, if you will, to putting oneself in touch with the “universe”, so-called. And I suspect there is much more in the universe that can be “seen” that has nothing to do with one’s memory, let alone all the memories on earth. And I’ve heard of many such experiences from the experiencers, and unless they were all lying, memory played no part in their experiences.

And I am not even looking for that, just something simple, like a green tree that is actually green.



No more courses. No more money spent on things that have a 100 percent zero track record. They may work for you and for others, but I have been unable to make any of them work for me.

I’ve worked with several different methods, such as Matrix Energetics, obviously Paraliminals, Quantum Touch, and several others to try and fix whatever’s wrong here, but I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m glad memory has worked for you, but it hasn’t worked for me.



I don’t buy that. If it atrophies at all, it’s because it’s not used, not because it’s just something that happens when one grows older, like wrinkly skin, and that doesn’t have to happen either.

However, in order to atrophy, one must have had it in the first place, and I’ve never had it in the first place to lose.



I’ve read the memory books, tried the suggestions. Parts of the Silva Method and the various memory books rely heavily upon this technique. However, I wasn’t able to remember the memory pegs. Some of them, but not all.

Anything that requires memory to have success has been a bust for me. I had the same problem in school where the more I had to memorize, the worse my grades got.



I don’t know what this is. Given that, I must say that my memory doesn’t stream very well, I’m afraid.



I believe that it’s a skill that everyone has; I just haven’t been able to find it. And it’s an assumption on your part, if you are insinuating that I am judging, jumping “to the first answers.” I’m not even sure what you mean by this, except that you’re assuming that I do this.

As I’ve said, I’m not uneducated in these matters. I’m highly read, if you throw in audios and visuals. I assure you that I am not jumping “to the first answers” in all this material.



Summary: It just doesn’t work that way for me.

Now, to get onto the “imagination” idea of Coach Rik.

As it turns out, I think I’ve already addressed much of this imagination issue in the above remarks to Alex. I can only add this:

If all I can imagine is blackness in a background of blackness, what have I got, really? If you wish to call this visualization, fine. But it’s totally useless to me. And this has been my experience for years on end.

I can imagine an apple, say, but I cannot imagine a red apple, or any other color, for that matter. I can imagine the softball-sized hail dents in my metal front door, but I can’t feel the dents with my inner sense of touch. I am out of touch with all my inner senses. Visualization is only one of them.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And it hasn’t gotten any better over the years I have worked at this. So, Coach Rik, I have been using “imagining” for many years, I just haven’t been able to get anywhere with it.

I do not think my expectations are unrealistic, nor do I think my standards are way too high. I just want to experience something visual in my mind, other than blackness. Is that unrealistic or too high an expectation?

By the way, to me, hallucinating is something caused by something external, like drugs or hallucinogens. Visualization isn’t externally caused, it’s internal. And you really don’t want to “experience life like a schizophrenic.” Believe me, you don’t. So, I hope you weren’t serious when you said that.

Thanks for all your suggestions and for taking the time to write them. I’m not trying to be negative or a nay-sayer, but it’s just that I have been trying for decades to access something pretty much everyone else can access.

All I want to do is open my third eye, mind’s eye, or whatever you wish to call it and let happen what will happen. But techniques just do not seem to work. For me.

I constantly listen to binaural beats with music, isochronic beats with music, have watched all the open-the-third-eye videos on youtube, listened to Paraliminals, hypnosis audios, used light and sound technology, all on a very consistent basis.

Nothing seems to work or want to change. So, maybe it’s all in my mind after all.

How do you know you're visualising a red apple and not a green one? Why are you mentioning a red apple in your post? Where did the idea come from?

To visualise is different than developing the third eye.

Visualising is the mental creation of an image. Like deciding where to put a table in a room. Design a building or choosing clothes. You mentally create an image. It disappears quickly. However mental creation is usually the putting together of remembered images. It's easier for me to visualise a hippo in a tutu than a polar bear in a bikini because I have seen a hippo in a tutu.

Seeing with the 3rd eye is a different experience again. I was asking if you were working on opening seeing with the third eye.

You realise you must have visualised when you assigned me a gender.

Alex

First of all, I am not visualizing anything—no red apple, no green apple. I'm imagining such a thing, but only in blackness, in which I "see" or "visualize" nothing.

I remember in words such a thing as a red apple; you're not going to trick me there. I'm not "seeing" a red apple. I'm remembering there is such a thing.

If there is a red apple sitting in front of me, I can remember that it is a red apple from descriptions given me as a youth. I'm not visualizing the red apple in front of me; I'm "seeing" it with my eyeballs.



I'm not so sure, having experienced neither.



Right, an "image", not blackness. I decide where to put a table in a room by my eyesight and mental processes, which you, undoubtedly will describe as visualization.

Call it what you like. I just move stuff around until I like what I see with my eyeballs. If I see a space in the room, I can move something there to see if I like it. If you want to call that process visualization, fine. Play with your words.

I choose clothes because I like their colors—with my eyeballs. I don't mentally create an image. The image is right there in front of me. I "see" it; I don't visualize it. It's already there. I choose the clothes because I like them.



To me, you're just playing around with words. The point is, I do not know how to form mental "images" to the point that I would describe them as visualizations.

Blackness is not visualization. You may think it is, but I don't. I'd trade my blackness for your ability to visualize any day. Then maybe you'd "see" what I'm talking about.

I've seen neither a hippo nor a polar bear dressed as you suggest. Yet, if I were to describe what you described to my friend, he would be able to visualize such a beast, even though he'd never seen one before. THAT'S visualization!



I'm using various aural and visual means of trying to open my third eye, all to no avail. Yet, I continue to pursue that worthy goal.



No, you just talk like a male. While Alex can be assigned to a female, it is more than likely a male. The odds are with me.

Last time I looked I was and still am definitely female. And you made my point perfectly. You used your memory and to compare my "talk".

You say you've never experienced visualisation or seeing with the third eye. Rest assured visualising, seeing with the third eye and lucid dreams are all different mental constructs and they do look different.

Visualisation can best be described as trying to see through a dirty window. Yep you see blackness but still remember your way to the office. Men are particularly good at looking at a map and knowing which way to go. Like it or not it takes visualisation skills to do that.

It works from memory. What you remember what you've experienced. Nothing new has ever been imagined it's all been created before by building with memory.

You say you recognise images against blackness... why do you choose to make that form of visualisation wrong?

One oft overlooked thing when it comes to proper visualisation is to use all your senses, hear, see, smell, feel and touch with your imagination. Create with your remembered experiences.

And the original thread was is "Visualization is necessary, but I'm told it isn't" It isn't necessary for Paraliminals. It isn't necessary to succeed with the Silva Method, not in the way you think.

To succeed you take your memory against the blackness because if you can name it you have to visualise it. If you can name an apple red or green and know there is a difference you are visualising it against the blackness.

Alex

Alex: Okay, I think I've landed on the ground now. Sorry for the misgenderizing. Obviously, the odds weren't with me. And sorry for the griping and complaining. Point taken. I did use my memory.



Okay, this is even more confusing to me. I understand about lucid dreams, as I've had three, two of them lasting about one second.

You say visualizing is nothing more than memory. I haven't totally bought into that, but I'm open to the potential fact that I may actually be wrong. Heaven forbid that that could happen.

This leaves us with the third eye business. Is this where inspirations come from, like Einstein's E=MC2? I hear all the time people having things "come to them" in their minds, often with very visual effects—things they've never seen nor known before.

I read or heard the Bee Gees discuss song writing one time and the twins said they often would see lyrics appear to them visually in their minds at the same time! Both visualizing/seeing/whatever at the same time. Where does that come from?



This is the part that confuses me. Even people I know who visually visualize do not "see" anything, except what's in front of them, when they are going to their offices. My understanding is that, through repetition, it becomes "hard wired" into them.

It's like driving "in the zone" and not realizing you have just gone ten miles without being aware of it. I know, you say that's visualizing, but I say it's hard-wired rote memorization.

It may be that I'm just stuck on words, but, hey, I'm a guy and guys do that sort of thing with a fair amount of regularity.



The Bee Gees description of their song-writing would tend to disagree with you on that last point. If I remember correctly, the Silva Mind Method (SMM) differentiates visualization from imagination.

Hmmm. I'm going to stab myself in the foot by bringing this up. But, now that I do recall, SMM said that visualization is based on memory. However, that imagination was something else, more like the Bee Gees's experience.

I'll have to do some more thinking here, it's plain to see. Even if it's so, so many people can remember with visual acuity, as well as remember/visualize smells, sounds, feelings, etc., none of which I can do.

So, if visualization is seeing into blackness/dirty window, why can others "see" so clearly, with no blackness? And why can't I do the same?

I've really been working at this since the last time I ranted, and I think I'm making some progress. There have been times, say, when I've thought of someone and, without actually "seeing" anything, I sort of get a dirty-widow image of that person, but it's in a place I can't seem to access, in order for me to make the image clearer or larger, for instance.

It's really hard to explain because I've spent so much time and energy complaining about just seeing black, which is what I see when this sort of thing happens on rare occasions.

I couldn't actually describe what that vague image looks like because I'm not able to tune into it. But if this is what you say is visualization, then I guess I'm making progress, eh? Even in this posting.



I'm not sure what you are asking. Whatever image I "see" isn't against black; it's out there somewhere else, where I'm not able to tune into it. It's separate from the blackness, which is still there. Again, it's kind of hard to describe, not being over-experienced in this.



As I mentioned, I'm unable to do this. And again, according to the Silva class I took, imagination is different from visualization.



Yes, but something was necessary for the Silva Method to succeed. One of the exercises was getting relaxed, then imagining you are slowly floating upward, through the roof, and out of the house. Others were able to do this, but I was not.

I'm suspecting this had nothing to do with visualization but having some kind of ability to cast about one's consciousness outside of the body, yet being different from an out-of-body experience. Whatever it is, I didn't/don't have that ability, and it's not been for lack of effort.



Which doesn't really amount to much. So, say I visualize, per you and Silva, a red apple against, not just a wall, but total blackness, the image of the red apple is lost in the blackness. So, what good does it do?

I guess it's a start to pretend something is there, for if it is or isn't, the result is the same. Nothing discernible.

And what I have actually "imaged" or visualized, you are wont to say (you see, I'm still not totally wanting to give up on years of programming), however briefly, and however unclearly, and however unmanipulatable, it's at least a start.

But I'd still like to do the mental mirror and other exercises I learned in the Silva class, which means "imagining" a blue-framed mirror, putting something in it, changing it to a white-framed mirror and putting something else in it, moving one mirror off to the right, or something.

If I ever get to that point, I'll have to go back and review the class.

One other thing, in Matrix Energetics, and other energy modalities, you're asked to imagine a pond and drop a rock into it, the rock representing whatever, and watching the ripples go out, and letting go.

Here's the thing. I can sort of pretend I see a pond, then sort of pretend I'm dropping a rock, and I'm even able to sort of pretend I'm seeing ripples going out. Rather I can sort of pretend to see the ripples, but they never move unless I forcefully move them with my mind.

It's like pretending I'm throwing a ball in my mind. I can go through all the mental motions, but unless my mind actively makes the ball move, the ball won't move.

In other words, I can start something, but it won't go on its own. I'm not sure what is required to have things "go it alone" without my having to mentally "push" it along.

So, what I have just described, it would seem, is the process of visualization, as described by you and Silva. But this pretending I'm talking about isn't the same as those images I talked about earlier. Not even close.

So, there's something different going on between these two examples (meaning the earlier one and these last two or whatever), but I don't know what it is.

All I know is that if I am indeed visualizing, by the things I have described, then how does it come to the forefront where I can see, smell, hear clearly those memory-like things?

I've gotten back to reading "Creative Visualization" by Shakti Gawain and taking copious notes. While I have a hard time developing new habits, her suggested use of affirmations have taken root in me. I have a list of twenty-six of them, based on ones she had in her book, but I made them my own, and I've been writing them out every day for just over a month now. None of them are about visualization, nor any of the other "seeing" ways discussed here.

You're much more patient than I deserve, and this is a long one, but, well, there it is. Peace.

Welcome back Cris,

Visualisation for all intent and purpose means to mentally construct an image by putting together or imagining. This can only be done with memory. Of things we've seen, heard and experienced.

What you're looking for with the 3rd eye experience is something else again. Here you're delving into the area of metaphysics. Your Bee Gee example is more in the realm of telepathy and tapping what is known as the collective mind. Everyone taps that, that's were ideas spring up from.

Coming back to visualisation and the loss of the ability to mentally see with clarity, which is what I understand you are looking for to succeed with using the Silva Method is dropped when the logical brain starts taking over. When we develop language. It discovers that there is a faster way of processing. So Chair becomes something that one parks their rear end on to sit but, in reality there are more chairs that could be drawn with the minds eye. Even two identical chairs in a room are unique. So in order to move ahead faster the mind only fills in the necessary details.

If you saw what the eye actually sees you'd be surprised at your eyes open visualisation skills. The brain paints a picture so it's not surprising when we miss stuff right in front of our nose.

As I said the skill severely atrophies as we get older and by the age of 40 most have very little skill seeing eyes closed visualising.

There are techniques that can recover the skill, thankfully the proof of our brains neuroplasticity is helping more to "believe" that they can acquire the skill again.

One method is to play with the technique taught in the Genius Code Course yes in the beginning the images seem more vague but they do develop more minds eye clarity. Like you I find it difficult to describe. It's like describing the colour red with words. Visualisation is different to seeing with the third eye and different to lucid dreaming. It's also more fleeting than those two experiences. We need to slow down and hold the image more, that's where the Genius Code Course helps.

Another technique that enhances visualisation skills is is to stand in front of a picture and then close your eyes to see it. It too helps to describe it out loud. A Silva Instructor challenged someone difficulty visualising to do this 10 minutes. It was interesting when that person returned from the break reported it became a bit easier. This instructor also took the fruit exercise from the course further.



None because it's static. With your minds eye bring in a knife or sword, make the handle of the sword ornate and then cut the apple in half and if you do it with a good swing...

You need to repeat the exercise and change the objects. It needs exercise to develop that atrophied skill.



The Silva secret. The fundamental 3

Desire, Belief EXPECTATION

I emphasise expectation because unless we expect to succeed we won't. We get exactly what we expect.



You fake it until you make it. You trust what you're getting and run with it. Take it from there where you are. Right now you're analysing it into the bin. Yet I think you're throwing it away too soon.

With your post, I'm getting the understanding that you're looking to get the visualisation skills right to succeed manifesting using the Silva Method.

As a Certified Silva Ultrarmind Instructor. I can tell you that the visualisation aspect is largely creative memory.

If you've ever been given driving directions, turn right at the lights after the X landmark, you've created, visualised a route before you saw it.

What I've worked out, is we visualise and we visualise well, we just do it to sonic fast for our conscious mind. And we need to slow it down. That's were visualising fruit against a black background is a good place to start. Because fruit looks appetising against a black background and it's traditionally painted that way. Try looking at an orange against an orange background and then change it to pink.

Another way to develop visualising skills and this is one for those who want to develop their intuitive psychic skills is to actually put the fruit in front of you. Study it, memorise it. Feel it, smell it and memorise that. Notice also your feelings, what energy, imagine if you will, do you sense. If you could see it what do you think it would look like.

What you're doing is creating a database and reference point.

Like going into the metal and leaf exercise in the Silva course. They create reference points. For what you perceive. Then you will have more clarity when see, smell,hear touch what you create with the minds eye (visualise).

With that database you will also have greater access to the collective mind and like the Bee Gee brothers see the lyrics already written.

Without that database you preconscious processor removes what it doesn't recognise.

Alex

1. I don't ever remember being able to visualize with clarity. Possibly to do with two incidents—first, shortly after birth, and second, in fourth grade when I got hit in the forehead with a line drive while I was playing 3rd base. The first instance set things up when I actually died for a short time, causing my blood vessels in my brain to clump up somehow. When I got hit in the head, those blood vessels burst, leaving me partially paralyzed. It wasn't until they took out some spinal fluid that I felt some relief (about the 4th or 5th day in the hospital), I presume from taking pressure off of the brain.

I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but it is what it is. I don't recall ever having anything appear in my mind with clarity, or even unclarity, with or without my eyes closed.

2. I'm not sure at least some the things I was asked to do in the Silva Method had anything to do with visualization. For
instance, having my consciousness (or something) and go into the wall, feeling everything there, smelling everything there, etc., or floating up toward the ceiling, through the ceiling, and on up, etc. I have no memories of those kinds of things. I'm assuming this is more in the realm of I-don't-know-what.



I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to here. What are open visualization skills in reference to the rest of the sentence? Thanks.



Not exactly sure what you're referring to here, either.



What causes it to never have existed?



Not sure what neuroplasticity is. I don't know if I believe I can acquire the skill for the first time or not, although, I have had those incidences I mentioned in my last post. However, I do seem to be somewhat in a drought recently. Nothing's been happening in that visualization place, which is not behind the eyeballs.



I checked out the Genius Code and, unfortunately, it's out of my wallet's skill set.



Do you mean describe it when my eyes are open or when they're shut? If you mean when they're shut, then it will be a very short description because I've never been able to "see" anything after doing that, either behind my eyeballs or in the visualization place.

Besides that, I don't know how to find this visualization place. When it has appeared at all, it's been completely unbidden and so small that I can hardly make anything out. I've never been able to maintain the image or enlargen it.



If I can discipline myself to do something like this for 10 minutes, I'll give it a try. With the lack of focus and attention span that comes with ADD, it's hard for me to sit still that long, especially if I don't get immediate results. It's been tough that way for me, pretty much as far back as I can remember, which isn't far. The memory of my past pretty much escapes me, except little tidbits that come when I'm reminded of something. Maybe that's one reason why I have trouble with visualization: because I have trouble with memory recall.



I don't know how to do this. Yet, even as I spoke, I sort of did it, but not all the ornate stuff. I didn't "see" anything and my eyes were even open at the time. I was looking slightly down and to the left and whatever happened was farther out to my left. Weird. No color, no anything. I can do it with my eyes closed as well - in the middle of my head, I think. I can swing a make-believe knife onto a make-believe apple and put the blade through the apple, but it seems I have to mentally push at the apple to get it to fall over on each side, one side at a time. I guess that's progress.



It's not atrophied; it's never been there.



I don't know where I am with that. The desire's there.



I don't know how to fake smelling stuff, or fake feeling stuff, or hearing hearing stuff, which is what you were referring to. I am very analytical, that's for sure, but I'm not sure what you mean by your last two sentences.



Not exactly. What frustrated me even more than not being able to visualize was not being able to move my consciousness out of my head, as in the two examples I mentioned earlier-the wall thing and the ceiling thing. Matrix Energetics requires one to move down into the heart space. It's fake it till you make it there, too, and I fake it, but my consciousness still remains in my head.

It's like the brain damage, which did damage (I don't know how much) to the basal ganglia and perhaps other areas in the central part of my brain, has caused a disconnect between the right and left hemispheres of my brain. I've felt this for a long, long time.



Yes, I'm getting that.



Okay, I can see that.



There's the rub: slowing it down. If I can imagine anything at all, everything is all black—the apple, the background, the knife. Everything. There is no changing color because there is no color.



I can see the sense in this. I'll have to try it. The feelings part, I'm not so sure about. I've never been able to call up past feelings and this is one reason I've never really had much, if any, success with Gary Craig's EFT.

The only energy I've ever been able to sense is from rubbing my hands together till they get heated up and then do the expanded ball exercise. Sometimes I can feel the energy ball when I bring my hands together, but most of the time I don't.



The metal and leaf exercises are vaguely vague in my memory, although I don't recall actually physically handling either. The instructor cut down the five-day course into three days, so I'm sure some things were cut down, if not left out.



I'm not certain what all that means.

I'm sorry it took so long to get back with you, but I missed the email that told me you had answered, and I just happened to stumble across it while deleting a lot of unopened email.

Lastly, thank you for your welcome back.

That's creative imagination for most of us.





The eyes themselves record very little information. The brain paints everything you see. It fills in a lot of detail. You may have heard of the blind spot. Well it doesn't just fill in that little spot. This goes into the subject of biology of the working of the brain and what the eye perceive. Have you ever searched for something like a set of keys and then found them were you looked more than once? That's because your brain didn't include the information of the keys when it painted the picture in your mind. And then when you finally found them it included it in the painting.

A more profound demonstration of the brains deletion capability is mentioned in the book the Holographic Universe. Author, Michael Talbot.

What it comes down to, it's all a creation within the brain.






That's an interesting question, the answer is language, once we start speaking and labelling things like chair, table, ball. As you know each of those items can be vastly different yet they have been categorized with our speech. Because relying on the visual, to communicate is so slow, super processor part of our mind deletes and jumps to answers. If we had to rely on an eidetic memory while answering test questions in the time we have available we'd fail to get it done in time. Instead the brain has sorted the information dropping much of the unnecessary visual to leap to the answer, so when you think of something like a red car, the mind will jump to the first red car you can think of, it may be an Audi or a Ford or a car you know belongs to someone. That becomes your visual for a red car.





Neuroplasticity refers to the brains ability to change, a basic example of this is the ability to recover from stroke, it may be a long slow path but to some degree or another the brain finds a way to work around the damage.




Check out Win Wengers website, in particular Image Streaming. That's a good place to start.





Describe with the eyes shut, you can open them to have a look what you missed and close them and repeat the process. Most people don't see it when they first try it. That's normal that's why it takes the effort of standing, in front of the picture and then describing what the picture was of. Say it was a still life, you'd probably start by saying it was a vase with flowers. Take it from there.



That's where you play with image streaming. You do it. It's like building a house you take it brick by brick, you don't just pick up a whole pile of bricks and toss them in the air and a house is formed. You take what you can do and build on that.





Don't sit, stand. Do it any time. if you see a photo, take a mental snapshot and describe the photo. Don't worry you'll leave out a lot of detail. Excuses or the same amount of discipline it took you to go through the post. It's your choice but you cannot convince me that you haven't got attention span. We wouldn't be posting this to each other if you didn't have that.



Perhaps the effort of learning to visualise using some of the techniques I suggested will trigger the neuroplasticity of the brain and you'll have a better memory too.





Because in reality it isn't there, it's only with the memory and imagination that we can visualise.



That's my point exactly, it's possible and yes it's progress.





Without the expectation, your desire won't be strong enough. You can either do or not do, there is no try. To try means that you expect to fail, not to succeed. So forget trying and make the decision to either do, or not do.





Well I could put it another way, You talk, you haven't got around to doing. You theorise, you haven't test the theory.





Forget consciousness, use awareness. Try this. Hold your hands out in front of you, palms facing each other. Look at, put your awareness into the area between the hands. Look at that space, focus on that space, Move your hands closer together and further apart to test your awareness. It's just a place where your attention goes. Now move your hands up to the sides of your face, either side without touching your face, now notice narrow focus, your awareness centred between your hands and then move your hands away, notice the room that you're in. You have now learned how to use awareness.

Now use this technique to bring your awareness to your heart. (I find this better than visualising to get to my heart awareness) Take your hand and hold it palm down just above your eyebrows. Become aware of the space just below the palm. And you can have the other hand at the belly level palm facing up. Now become aware of the space between your two hands. Now move your hands and keep your awareness in that space between the two so that they come about 20cm (6 inches) apart near the heart area. Now your awareness is at the heart level. Notice your awareness there and you can then move your hands away. If you've done this without rushing, you're awareness can remain at the heart area. Think of it like switching on a light. You've turned it on.

It's like the brain damage, which did damage (I don't know how much) to the basal ganglia and perhaps other areas in the central part of my brain, has caused a disconnect between the right and left hemispheres of my brain. I've felt this for a long, long time.



How did you get an apple if it's all black? It's a matter of attention. The details are show up. You get to decide whether it's a red apple or green apple big or small shiny or dull.





EFT hasn't been a strong point with me either. I prefer to let go of the past.



Focus on when you were successful, what was going on then, how were you feeling, what were your emotions. Look at stuff like that. You'll notice that something comes into play when you succeed that's not there when you fail. It might just be a more playful attitude or even I don't care or I'm just making this up but that's okay because I think something is happening.





That's disappointing, it's the part the students feel most self-conscious about and yet you cannot do it wrong. It helps when you actually hold and compare different metals, just building conscious awareness how different a few metals are to each other, in terms of texture, weight colour and even smell makes a difference to what you bring into the visualisations. The same with leaves. I recommend getting a few leaves and a few different metals and comparing them to each other sometime.




Without the conscious input the mind has no references to compare with or to recall. A phrase the instructor would often use is Points of Reference. It's like finding a ruler to measure a piece of string.



Thank you for giving me a chance to share what I have learned so far.

Alex