Visualization exercises
Here's a progressive, four-step visualization exercise to help you sharpen your skills. Don't force yourself to complete each step in only one session. It takes time to develop great skills.
Exercise 1: Get into a comfortable position, close your eyes and relax. Take a few deep breaths and clear your mind. Allow pictures to pop into your head. Choose one and hold it. Don't let anything else enter your mind. Concentrate solely on that picture. Hold the picture for as long as you can. When you let it go, end the session. When you can hold the picture for five minutes, move on to the next exercise.
Exercise 2: Choose a very simple physical object, like a pencil, book, etc. Hold it in your hands. Memorize all you can about it: How does it feel, where to the shadows fall, how does it feel in your hands. When you are ready, set the object down and close your eyes. Recreate the object with all the detail you can in your mind. Can you feel it in your hands? Do you see the shadows playing on it? When you can hold the image for five minutes, move on.
Exercise 3: This gets tricky. This time, you create an image that exists no where on this Earth. What would a plant look like that grew on a distant planet? Create that plant in your mind with as much detail as you can. What does it look like? How does it feel? What is it's texture? Look at it from all angles. Let the picture vanish. Now recall it and hold it for as long as you can. When you can hold it for five minutes, move on.
Exercise 4: Recall your made up plant from outerspace. Once you have a solid picture of it in your mind, open your eyes and "see" that plant in the physical world. Look around you, keeping that plant firmly in the center of your vision everywhere you look. Make it as real as you can, like you could reach out and expect to touch it. When you can hold this for five minutes, you are finished.
Being able to visualize energy as well as the expected outcome of our magickal workings is vital to success. Continue to visualize items to make them real in the physical world like in exercise 4. The easier it becomes for you, the longer you'll be able to hold an image and the quicker you will become at visualization.
If you are feeling ambitious, try this exercise for a moving visualization. When working with magickal energy, you will need to move it. It is a good idea to practice making an object move, fast, without losing any of its visual quality.
Exercise 5: Imagine an object, such as a hotwheels car or a train. Visualize it down to the last detail. Open your eyes and see that object. Now, without losing any detail, make the object move. Make it race across the floor, up the wall, across the ceiling, all over the room. Continue this exercise, building up to the point where you can keep your vision moving for 5 minutes.
Learning to move your "object" will be a great advantage in your magickal workings. You will be able
to direct the energy you see to move in any direction, to any place, with ease. You will see the energy flow around you as you cast a circle.
EXERCISE : THE LIGHTHOUSE
Let us now turn our attention to a visualization exercise that focuses on "man made" symbol that has become an archetypal one because like the diamond it can suggest something more subtle and profound. ·
Relax on your chair and put the recorder on, close your eyes and imagine that you are on a small ship at sea, at night. A storm is raging, and the rain beats down on the deck. The ship is rolling and pitching. All around you is darkness
Feel the rolling and pitching of the ship, hear the wind howling, feel the chill of the wind and the rain on your face. See the stormy sea at night. Experience the fatigue in your muscles and the difficulty with which you wrestle with the wheel.
Now, in the distance, you can see a dazzling light shining. Its source is a lighthouse. Its steady, radiant beam guides you through the night. You welcome this guidance with relief. Now you know where to steer. Concentrate on the lighthouse, and visualize its light radiating in all directions to help people who have lost their way, to give guidance to all who need it. The storm is raging, the wind howling, the rain falling, the night pitch-black. But the lighthouse stands solid and shining. Nothing can shake it.
After a time, let the visualization gradually subside, yet keep within you this sense of SHINING STRENGTH
Such an example illustrates how symbols, rightly used, will deepen their transformative
function, allowing us to change our inner attitudes and outer behavior. The quality inherent in the symbols not only reveals to us new ways of experiencing
ourselves and life, it also creates a new line of force in our psyche - one which can gradually become a trait in our personality and thus affect our
actions.
EXERCISE : THE BUTTERFLY
Imagine a caterpillar. You can watch it crawling about on the tree where it lives. Attaching itself to a branch of the tree, the caterpillar starts to form its cocoon. Gradually it surrounds itself with golden, silken threads until it is totally hidden. Observe the cocoon for a few moments
Now be inside the cocoon…Surrounded by the softness of silk…you rest in the warmth of the golden darkness… You are only dimly aware, so you do not know exactly what is happening to you, but you sense that in this apparent stillness a hidden, transforming intelligence is at work…
At last the cocoon breaks open, and a ray of light penetrates through a %*%*@… As the light touches you, you feel a sudden surge of vitality and realize that you can shed the cocoon.
As you feel the cocoon falling away, you discover that with it you have shed the defenses and supports of your safety and your past… You are now freer than you ever dreamed you could be; you are a beautiful, multicolored butterfly… You soon realize that your boundaries have extended infinitely… you can fly... You find yourself dwelling in a totally new realm of colors, of sounds, of open space… You experience yourself flying…being supported by the air, being gently borne up by the breeze, gliding gown, flying up again...
Below, you see an immense meadow full of flowers of every kind and color…You settle on one…then on another…then on another still, so gently that the petals are not even disturbed. You experience each flower as a different being with its own color and perfume…its own particular life and quality. Take your time in experiencing the many aspects of your expansion, your freedom, and your lightness.
Always try to record the exercise this will facilitate your inner work and visualization. (read and record your voice at the pace that is convenient and right for you)
Always keep your notebook handy to write down your impressions and insights
