Imagination – “As Opposed to Creative Visualization”

The tendency to represent the idea of imagining something as visualizing it, can make the idea seem fairly confusing. Visualizing indicates forming inner images, pictures and scenes as movies that play out in the mind as a form of anticipated or wished for experience. Then, because its portrayed this way, many get confused as to how to visualize, what it means exactly, and believe that it means to see fully detailed, colored images and scenes that play out with precision and detail, and while it certainly can be this way, especially for a well developed imagination, for most people it’s usually much more impressionistic. Most visualization resembles the type of image we see as a reflection in glass or water, or a reflection in a dark, shiny surface where it’s more shadow-like and formed, yet not particularly detailed. This resembles what is referred to as thought-forms that exist in the astral field of the mind as shadowy images that we form through thinking about or dwelling on ideas, or recalling a memory of some kind.

 The imagination however, is a faculty of the mind that forms a full sensory experience that while it’s main component is visual images and impressionistic shapes, it also focuses heavily on hearing and sounds, feelings as intuitive and as touching the surface of material reality, any forms of smells that would be inherent in the experience, and taste whenever appropriate, as well as the internal dialogue as thoughts that we naturally have while engaging in any type of experience and the emotions the experience elicits. Our inner dialogue is what we are telling ourselves “about” the experience that makes it mean something. The imagination takes an inspired idea as unformed, and shapes it into a full 3-D sensory reality that is realistic and believable, and therefore possible. The true use of the imagination however, places the greatest emphasis on feelings that we have as a result of the inner experience we are having. The feeling is the full-body intuitive sensation that blends the visual into a holistic experience as a form of memory that is complete with emotions, thoughts and meaning that brings realization around an idea that can only be obtained through the experience of it. This reality formed in the imagination through thinking, creates a form of template that makes us a channel for the imagined idea to become a reality as an outer expression that’s a correspondence to the inner experience.

This is the creative power of the mind to create experience by first creating it internally while shaping it with sensory detail and definition that sets the vibratory patterning that attracts and organizes the outer experience as a correspondence. The outer experience is not exact to the imagined one, although it can be, but is rather analogous to the inner experience. It’s of the same nature and theme as the internal experience, yet modified according to the elements available in the immediate surroundings, and the will, personality and interactive quality of those participating in the orchestration of the outer experience. Because the outer requires other people, situations and events, the original vision is modified accordingly as a basic requirement to incorporate the ideas and desires of all who partake in the over-all experience that is co-created as a shared reality.

 This is why the emphasis is always placed on the feeling of the experience rather than the visual aspect. Visually it may be entirely different than you imagined it, yet it will feel the same. It’ll be the same type of idea as a form of theme, which is being illustrated in a modified and varied manner. The feeling, as the vibratory frequency is what composes and structures the experience to be of a certain patterning that beautifully conforms to the influences that everyone participating contributes, while maintaining the same basic idea as the essence of the over-all experience. You will recognize the fulfillment of your wish, not by what it looks like, but by what it feels like as you realize you’re in the process of having it.

Dr. Linda Gadbois
Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher