Visualization

Visualization is the art of training yourself to see images vividly in your mind’s eye. It is one of the most fundamental skills required for mental and spiritual work of all sorts, from brainstorming and general creativity all the way up to ritual magick, if that interests you. As such, it is one of the most important skills you can develop if you have any intentions of ever working on meditating, accessing your subconscious, training psychic abilities, and so on.

Working on visualization requires no preparation. Make sure you’re not going to be disturbed for five minutes and make yourself comfortable physically, sitting or lying down as you prefer. Close your eyes and take several slow, deep breaths. Concentrate on your mind’s eye, and imagine the number “0″. Picture it in your mind’s eye, in white, as if it was written in chalk on a blackboard, but only concern yourself with the number.

Just concentrate on it, and keep it in mind.

When you feel that you have a fairly firm mental hold on it, add another digit next to it. You can pick one at random, or select digits from a number that has meaning to you, like your telephone number. Remembering to keep the “0″ vivid, hold the second number next to it. When it is stabilized, add another number, and then another, and keep going until you can no longer hold the whole number simultaneously in your mind’s eye. At that point, start back from the first “0″, and try building back up.

Blackboard by Pareé Erica

During your first attempts, you may find that even the initial “0″ is wavering and difficult to retain. That’s perfectly normal; visualization is not something that many of us practise. Keep at it, and you’ll find that you quickly improve. When you can hold an entire ten-digit phone number steady for minutes at a time, expand your horizons a little. Imagine the surface of your mind’s eye really is a blackboard, complete with chalk dust and a wooden frame. Hold all of that in your mind’s eye. Then rub a number out with a blackboard eraser, and write in something else, using a different colour chalk. Fill in the rest of the classroom that the blackboard is in. You can even populate it with attentive, polite, quiet little children.

If you can hold the image of an entire class – with individual children in specific places – and still retain the numbers you started with, then you’ve truly mastered visualization. Most people won’t ever need to take it that far (although it is very rewarding), but if you’re going to be using your visual imagination ever, do try to keep at it until you can at least envision the blackboard and the wall it is mounted on. This is likely to take several weeks.

You’ll find that visualization is easier some days than others. Factors such as fatigue, when you last ate and even the moon’s phase may play a role. Look back over your notes and see what correspondences you can identify.