Creating a Vision for Your Life

Choice, Will, and the Power of the Imagination

While many of us may say or feel as if we have a vision for our life, it’s usually more of a vague idea that we keep running through our mind about what we want to do or what we’d rather be doing instead of what we’re currently doing. Sometimes it’s formed as a fantasy or daydream that we engage in as more of a leisurely thought that provides us with a form of coping mechanism or escape from our present situation. It’s hardly ever formulated into a precise idea shaped with vivid details, or formed into a strategy with steps that we take consistent action towards achieving. And while we can certainly say that a goal written down is far more likely to be accomplished than one that’s not, we can go a step further and say that a goal that’s turned into an actual vision of reality or a well-formed outcome that’s imagined as an actual experience, and then acted on in a consistent manner, is nearly always accomplished.

Many of us set up our life initially through random situations and relationships that we engage in spontaneously and then try to weave together in as harmonious and congruent manner as possible. We find ourselves in a particular situation through a form of default, or we start off with a dream for our life and then end up getting side-tracked or pulled into other things that lead us away from it altogether. Sometimes we end up in a situation that we like even better, or sometimes as a means of sacrificing our dream for others and putting it on the back burner for someday, or giving it up altogether, only to end up feeling unhappy or unfulfilled, where resentment and regret sets in and begins slowly eating away at us, little by little until we can’t even remember what our dreams were. Still others get pulled into the currents of their life early on and never really had a dream, or looked to others and their relationships to tell them who they were by building their identity around it, only to have it shattered at some point along the way when the relationship ran its course, began changing in the fundamental sense, or ended altogether, throwing them into an identity crisis of some kind.

We are all born with some kind of dream for our life that’s formed naturally out of our essential nature, which exists as a basic form of spiritual guidance that’s meant to ultimately lead us into our soul’s destiny. We’re all born with an energetic composition that serves to form our personality and basic character, out of which our identity gradually emerges as a completely homogeneous outgrowth. We form thoughts and ideas about our life that stem from our character, the situation and types of relationships we grew up with, and activities we were naturally interested in and attracted to that we engaged in somehow. We all have an innate desire for certain types of experience and ideas that we feel compelled towards and have a natural connection to. There are certain ideas that we love, gravitate towards, and feel a strong curiosity around, where we’re always moving into them in a completely natural way. We can easily see ourselves in those types of situations doing those types of things, where it feels completely natural to us and gives us a heightened feeling of being alive.

When we participate in certain types of ideas and activities, we enter into a state of rapport and sympathy with them, uniting with them in body and mind, and have a heightened sense of being fully present in our own life as a form of natural concentration. We enter into an invisible current as a flow of consciousness where we lose all awareness of ourselves as separate and apart from our experience, and we literally have the experience of becoming one with something that’s greater than ourselves. Whatever we dream of we have a desire to become one with as a means of experiencing ourselves through the feeling it gives us. We have an internal longing for certain types of experiences that keeps us dreaming of them and actively seeking them in whatever manner is available. This dream, formed fluently in our imagination that gives us a pronounced sense of ourselves, forms a deep longing inside that’s relentless in nature and never really goes away, no matter how deep we bury it or how hard we try to ignore it.

You create a vision for your life by recognizing what it is that you always feel drawn towards with a sense of love and innate desire for experiencing. You then imagine it as if you’re experiencing it while embellishing it with sensations that make you feel alive and are very pleasurable and compelling. You then tell yourself a story about it that makes it meaningful and profound in some way. As you imagine it as an actual situation or scenario, imbue it with sensory details that bring it alive with sensation. Create details that crystalize it by asking yourself . . . what am I seeing? Then enhance the visual aspects in full vivid Technicolor. Then, what am I hearing? And create any sounds involved, no matter how small. Then, what am I touching and feeling? Create textures and what your feeling through bodily sensations. What am I smelling or tasting? What am I thinking about and telling myself about my experience? Once you have a full sensory experience that’s sensuous, pleasurable, and life-like, allow a feeling of love to rise up and form within of you. As you feel a love for it, infuse it with a series of positive emotions that make it very desirable and compelling. Then allow it to take on a life of its own while noticing how you’re feeling being in that situation and experience. What parts of you begin vibrating in harmony with it and rise to the surface giving you a sense of yourself as being a particular type of person by how you relate and associate with your experience. Notice who and how you become by way of the experience that’s different from the way you normally feel.

Once you’ve shaped it into a pleasurable experience and have it just the way you want it, replay it over and over in your imagination until you can recall it instantly without having to think about it. Once you’ve formed it as an initial pattern-idea, incorporate it into all other areas of your life to see how it will affect them, while making whatever alterations and adjustments you need to in order to incorporate it in as congruent and harmonious way as possible. Keep modifying the vision until it becomes fully integrated in a way that works well in all areas of your life. If you can’t integrate it harmoniously with a particular area or relationship in your life as it currently exists, then you know what decisions and changes you need to make, and what you need to give up or let go of in order to do it. Conflicts and inharmonious ideas will only act to sabotage, contradict, or oppose the idea you’re going for and will ultimately prevent you from accomplishing it. In order to truly manifest a new reality and way of being, we have to form an alignment with all areas of our life in a sympathetic and harmonious fashion, or the conflict will cause emotional blocks and internal conflict, which will ultimately prevent or hinder our ability to create it or leave us filled with some form of guilt.

Once you have a fully integrated vision for your life, play it like a movie over and over in your mind as various experiences within your daily life that give you more of the same feeling, until you form it into a virtual memory that imitates an actual memory. Your subconscious, which is the part of your mind that forms what you perceive as your outer world, works to build experiences of reality out of existing memories, or imaginary experiences that simulate memory. Your subconscious will use it metaphorically (a pattern infused with a feeling) to connect you with the same idea as a feeling and emotion in everything around you. When we concentrate on an idea, shaping it into a reality in our imagination, infused with desire and pleasurable emotions, we literally infuse it with our life-force energy which generates an electromagnetic field causing it to take on a life of its own. We create the idea as a vibratory frequency (living idea) that forms a perceptual filter that acts to stimulate everything around us with that same frequency, ordering and organizing it into a corresponding idea, setting the stage for producing an equivalent outer experience of the same feeling and nature. Whatever we shape into an imaginary experience that’s infused with a strong emotion, forms a frequency as a metaphor that’s transmitted throughout our environment, forming a magnetic field of attraction and repulsion. An electrified idea acts as a self-organizing mechanism that orders and organizes the outer field of possibilities into a particular possibility, setting the stage for experiencing it outwardly.

We give life to ideas by concentrating on them and shaping them into a sensory reality in our imagination which acts to naturally invoke a complementary emotion in response and relationship with it. The idea acts as a metaphorical pattern that’s correlated with an outer theme of the same nature, that sets the stage necessary for producing more and more experiences of the same kind (feeling). All matter is comprised of subtle energy that’s shaped into detailed patterns by the mind through the creative faculty of the imagination. Will is exercised and set in motion as the basis for creating through active use of the imagination. A desire for something acts as a unifying, self-seeking force that connects us outwardly with the object of our desire. We only desire what we love, and we can only love what we first understand, and we only come to know and therefore understand something by uniting and becoming one with it in mind and spirit. What we love we desire to become one with, and in union with it, we gain knowledge of it by being it. Love and desire are the attractive, unifying force of the cosmos, and is the most natural use of the will, both higher, divine will and lower, personal will. We always know what we’re meant to do by what we have a natural connection to and ongoing desire for.

An idea imagined as an emotional experience, creates the metaphorical pattern of the idea as a vibratory frequency that possesses electromagnetic properties. Thought shapes light as essence into archetypal forms that become prototypes for producing an equivalent, corresponding outer reality of the same nature. An idea or archetype that’s concentrated on consistently and infused with intense feelings and strong emotion, is the most basic form of prayer that serves as a request for a particular type of experience. Will is exercised as desire imagined as an actual experience which serves as a command that directs and organizes the elemental forces of the subconscious mind and material world, shaping and drawing us into the same type of reality in our immediate environment (through resonance).

Whatever we focus on and give our attention to, we move towards and interact with in our environment. Attention is an active force that stimulates whatever it is we’re thinking about in everything around us, bringing it into an active state of expression. As we form a vision for our life that provides us with an experience that makes us feel a certain way, we can simultaneously realize what’s involved in creating that reality. Through the realization formed we can shape a strategy as a step-by-step process for producing it by connecting with it mentally and interacting with it emotionally. All creation works by way of fundamental laws as natural processes that generate, grow, and produce living forms as thematic (archetypal) realities. So all mental ideas shaped as a reality have a growth process inherent in them that’s necessary for creating them, as well as a particular state-of-mind which acts to animate how it unfolds, all of which exist within it as an inherent part of it’s creator. The fulfillment of the vision doesn’t come in the material circumstances themselves, which can come in a number of different ways, but in how you feel and what type of experience you create through those circumstances.

As our vision becomes a reality for us and we can see the components involved that make up its structure, we can form the strategy as a progressive process necessary to grow, formulate, and produce it naturally. Once this process becomes evident, we can form a series of smaller goals that need to be accomplished in order to lay the foundation necessary for it to spontaneously occur as a personal creation, and more importantly, maintain it as a new lifestyle and natural way of being. Out of these goals we organize priorities in terms of which ones need to come first in order to lay the foundation necessary for the other ones to naturally take shape. Ideas, like everything in Nature, grow, mature, and blossom. Once our process is laid out in a hierarchical format, we commit to disciplining ourselves to consistently take the action necessary to achieve each goal in an incremental fashion, while cultivating an attitude of perseverance and mental fortitude in pressing through any fears and challenges that may arise, until each step is accomplished providing the basis for the next step to naturally take shape.

Remember that any strategy is an approximation formed out of the vision for the end goal, and always remains malleable and metaphorical as a work in progress. As you begin executing your strategy, you set a feedback loop in motion that will begin giving you immediate feedback as to the effectiveness of your methods, allowing you to make whatever adjustments you need to along the way. The initial plan as a strategy simply provides you with an organized process for beginning, and is not meant as a rigid set of rules that you adhere to even when they’re clearly not working. The implementation of any plan is always a work in progress that we allow to take on a life of its own as we begin manifesting it, and we modify and tweak it based on feedback, new information, or better ideas that become apparent for doing the same thing.

A goal is always about producing a desired outcome, not defining the process necessary to create it. We have to remain flexible and able to go with situations as they arise, because a vision is a form of thematic idea that may not come about in the exact way we imagined it, but rather by using whatever is available and can be used to form the same idea in our immediate environment. The elements used to shape our idea as a reality may appear different from the way we imagined it, but they’ll serve metaphorically to shape the same type of idea as an experience that gives us more of the same type of feeling. The imagined idea acts as a prototype or thematic template for organizing and ordering ideas of the same nature. So they may not show up the way you think they will, but you can recognize them by how they make you feel and what they seem to be about as a type of experience.

In order to create a vision for your life as a means of willfully creating and becoming self-determined, start by formulating an idea about who you truly are deep inside, what feeling you want more of, and what kind of life you would be living as a result, into a detailed, sensory reality that you feel a deep sense of love and soul connection to. Make it into an actual experience internally as a form of virtual memory that will serve as a metaphorical program for your subconscious mind to connect with externally, while also directing to your attention anything that pertains to it as a form of coincidence or synchronicity. Integrate this idea into all areas of your life in a congruent and harmonious fashion, forming an alignment. Notice how it feels to be in this desired situation, and concentrate heavily on that feeling so you can recognize it in any situation.

As you live out this vision internally, notice the elements involved and what type of things are a part of it and formulate a creative process as a strategy for producing it in the practical sense of action steps or smaller, incremental goals. Then commit to taking consistent action on each of these goals until they are accomplished and become real. Remember your vision is more of a theme for your life, and remain flexible through the whole process as it may not come about in quite the same way you imagined it, though it will hold true to the theme of your vision while giving you more of the feeling instilled in your vision. Recognize any fears or inhibitions that may arise around what it takes to fulfill your goals, and be prepared to push through them without letting them stop you. Avoid the tendency to make excuses for things that make you uncomfortable or cause you to feel afraid somehow. Tweak your plan based on feedback and discovering new information that you hadn’t anticipated in the beginning. Adapt and adjust as you go along, and always keep moving towards it with a sense of love and determination, until it becomes an actual reality as a part of your everyday life.

Dr, Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Integrative Health Consultant and Spiritual Mentor

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