Using Visualization and Energy to Shift Consciousness
Greetings!
"Just the way sound creates visible waves as
it travels through a droplet of water, our
'belief waves' ripple through the quantum
fabric of the universe to become our bodies
and the healing, abundance, and peace- or
disease, lack, and suffering-that we
experience in life. And just the way we can
tune a sound to change its patterns, we can
tune our beliefs to preserve or destroy all
that we cherish, including life itself."
--Gregg Braden
Visualize--right now--a clean flowing river,
a brilliant galaxy, a snowy mountain peak, or
the face of a loved one. Such images sooth
your brain, relax your body, and open your heart!
Shifting Our Attention and Changing the World
"Imagery," says Jeanne Achtenberg, "is the
thought process that invokes and uses the
senses: vision, audition, smell, taste, and
the senses of movement, position, and touch."
(Imagery in Healing, 1985) I use imagery and
visualization frequently because they are an
easy, quick way to shift my attention and
help me bring feelings, senses, ideas, and
spirit closer together.
We can visualize in our cars, in the middle
of the night, in the midst of a work day to
remind ourselves of what's really important.
Visualizing is a way of training awareness,
concentration, focus, and intent. With
practice, it becomes another way to step
between the worlds.
Say I notice that I am worrying about my
friend. I know that worrying does no good, so
I purposely imagine that friend surrounded
with light-the light of my heart, the light
of the divine, the light of the moon--or
whatever image comes easily. This shifts my
energy from worry to open-heartedness. It
sends revitalizing energy to my friend, like
a prayer. It creates spacious possibilities
for connection to occur. And my intention has
a larger impact on the world:
-- Every time we shift our attention to light
or love or beauty, we get better at it. We
contribute to the positive-thought index in
the world. We feel good and it rubs off on
those around us.
-- In teaching ourselves to respond to
stressors differently, we also model
different behavior for family, coworkers,
friends, and everyone we interact with.
(There's a story of the Dalai Lama buying gum
in the airport, being so sweet and calm that
all the cranky people waiting in line calmed
down, started being friendly to each other,
and waited with patience.)
-- Setting an intention sends a vibration into
the world, just as Braden and so many others
write about. It affects the web of life and
light that surrounds us. It feeds what we are
trying to create (personally, politically,
globally) and affects the cumulative outcome
of things. The effect of intention, and the
effect of visualization, is a mystery that we
are called more and more to draw on (see
Grandmothers and Hope links).
When a baby cries, we move to sooth it, hold
it, connect its body to ours. Being conscious
of how we are soothing ourselves, and what
works to bring us into a more conscious,
harmonious state of being, is a challenge we
all face. The cultural trance is powerful;
numbing addictions are rampant. What we can
do to shift these powerful patterns is to try
one visualization at a time, just like that
baby takes one step at a time.
Changing Our Stories
In our western culture we tend to think about
"why" we feel a certain way, and often tell
ourselves stories pointing blame. As we
repeat these stories over and over, we are
giving them an energy of their own by
re-visualizing and re-creating the wrong done
to us. As we recreate the feelings we had
with story, those feelings "become" reality
for us. This happens in our personal lives,
in communities, in nations. Culturally it is
easier-whether we are a person or a
President--to get attention when we have a
crisis, or problem, or something bad happen
(like an accident or illness). It's actually
much harder to "get" attention when you go
around saying how wonderful everything is;
yet such light-filled energy also gives you
power and draws people to you. Try it!
In the worldview of the Inca/Q'ero people in
the Andes, who have been my teachers for so
long, energy is given much more attention
than story. In this cosmology, experiences
are categorized as "heavy" energies--like
sadness, grief, despair, and depression, and
"light" energies--like joy, laughter,
peacefulness, and love. In this cosmology,
the focus is on shifting personally from
heavy to light energy, and on shifting
communal energy as well. The negative story
loses power because it is simply unimportant.
Instead, light-filled energy, vision, and
intention are the norm.
Putting this practice into action has three
parts: becoming aware of the heavy energies,
internal or external; letting the heavy
energies go by "feeding" them back to the
earth metaphorically; and filling up with
light or "refined" energies (called "sami" in
Quechua). Learning how and integrating the
practice into my daily life took time, and
changed my perspectives dramatically. I love
to share this work, and will be teaching
about it soon in Oregon (see Hidden Lake link).
Every meditation teacher helps us learn that
our feelings and reactions arise, then
change, then change again; our pain and
mental responses are not us.
This point of
view offers us freedom to move in and out of
feeling states with fluidity; to change our
minds; and to avoid getting stuck in those
"heavy" and redundant thoughts that occupy
75% of our thinking. Instead, fluid
awareness, gratefulness, and joy can become
our state of mind. Imagine the world when
leaders begin talking about how brilliant and
wonderful other leaders, religions, culture,
and countries are...
We need not wait for the leaders; we are the
ones we've been waiting for! We can notice
our own thought patterns, topics of
conversation, and the energies behind our
words, and learn to shift the heavy doses of
negativity we are used to. We can visualize a
peaceful, harmonious world. We can feed our
pragmatic shifts with inspiring, mystical
experience. We can set our intention to
explore cosmic sources of our inner wisdom-at
least, that's what I like to do!. (See
Meditation link).
As we near the bright, long-light time of
Summer Solstice, I invite you to play with
using visualization and lightening your
energy to see what happens!
With light,
