Come on, use your imagination!
by Francis O’Neill
This article is now included, and developed further, in the mind, body & spirit self-help guide Steps to Health, Wealth and Inner Peace. Get a copy here. This book is also available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iBooks, Nook and Kobo. [ Come on, use your imagination ]
How often may you have heard those words, ‘Come on, use your imagination’ and usually as some kind of judgement on one’s ability, or more likely inability, to work something out.
Actually, if we look at it from another perspective it is not such a bad suggestion.
Our imagination is more powerful than we might think, and we could do worse than getting into the practice of using it. [ Come on, use your imagination ]
But I’m talking about using your imagination in context with visualisation.
Creative Visualisation
The intention of this article is to encourage you to use your imagination for the purpose of creative visualisation, and also provide you with some links that you may find useful in exploring the matter further.
This term has been kicking around probably for about 40 years or so. Creative Visualisation has kinship with the much popularised Law of Attraction, in that it is using the power of the mind to change something or bring something towards one.[ Come on, use your imagination ]
Similarly this visualisation technique has kinship with using affirmations and self-hypnosis – both of which may be used in tandem with creative visualisation.
Matthew Manning and creative visualisation
He encouraged the vision to be powerful, uncompromising. If you had a cancer for example you might conjure up your immune system as a powerful army that is mobilised to blitz the cancer — three or four times a day — until it is eradicated. [ Come on, use your imagination ]
This was to be used alongside the orthodox medical support the sufferer was also using. It certainly was an alternative medicine that according to Matthew worked well for a great number of people.
Robert Fritz and Technologies for Creating
I so recall how exciting it all was and how things really did happen as wished for. I got really sold on the idea — which is using creative visualisation in context with ‘tension resolution.’ I use the technique learnt back then in attracting the things I want in my life today.
Okay I’ll admit I’m still very much the learner with getting the recipe right on the bigger things I want to happen. Robert Fritz would point out, this is an art, a skill to learn – you get better at it the more you practice and get the technique right. [ Come on, use your imagination ]
Natural visualisation in action – daydreaming
Probably the biggest success I’ve had so far was one when, at the time, I hadn’t even heard about creative visualisation. Rather this was me daydreaming, conjuring up a lifestyle that entailed some kind of scientific research and working in a modern building, in a location that had open parkland, and water – a river close by and lakes in the area.
I had sort of a snapshot in my mind of this scenario that I dwelt on as something I would like to have happen. At the time I was working as a sheet-metal worker, on an industrial park, and so it was a bit of a leap in the imagination for sure.
A few years down the road and my sheet-metal job came to an abrupt end during a workers strike. It was to be a turning point in my career. Not yet following my then heart’s desire I looked into other sheet-metalwork posts, attended interviews got offered work but in the end gave up on the idea – it just wasn’t me any more.
A bit of synchronicity… via the Leicester Mercury
Then a remarkable bit of synchronicity happened…
I was in a pub, in Leicester, talking to a friend of mine, John, about where I was at with looking for work and how I wanted to get into some kind of community service. I had been thinking of doing something outside, and archaeology was on my mind as a direction. Anyhow we had arranged to meet up the next day — part of our routine — and this time he had something to show me.
He handed me a local newspaper, the Leicester Mercury. It was from the previous day. In it there was a plea by the local archaeologist, Jean Mellor, for volunteers to come along and help finish an important Roman rescue excavation in St Nicholas Circle (this links to Jean Mellor’s review of archaeology in Leicestershire 1965-1990 which includes St Nicholas Circle), Leicester – before the bulldozers moved in.
Well, how spooky was that – what a coincidence. Here was a big green light if ever there was one. The next day I went along, joined the excavation as a volunteer, and thus began what was to become a 10 year career as a rescue archaeologist.
By this time the life vision I had been holding was still there but had taken a bit of a back seat with all the adventures I was now having. But then about four years into that career I took up a permanent archaeological post in Peterborough.
Suddenly it fell into place…
In context with the post, I was invited to live in a flat, within a circa 1930s house, that at the time had just had a purpose-built archaeological field centre attached to it. I was a site supervisor by then and now also caretaker of the building.
The building stood alone within surrounding fields – some of which were soon to become part of a golf course – and with a steam railway running close by.
Much of the surrounding land had also been quarried for gravel and at the time I moved in the Amey Roadstone company were finishing up, and the whole was being developed into a park, with big areas of gravel excavations were being turned into lakes. There was a nearby river, the River Nene, running past it. [ Come on, use your imagination ]
Suddenly it all fell into place. Here I was doing research – I was now, after all, employed by the Nene Valley Research Committee. I had the lakes, the fields, the river.
My daydream had now become a reality – Wow! I still get tingles when I think about it. I lived there for another six years before moving on. By then it had become well established as Ferry Meadows park.
This stuff works alright…
This stuff works alright – sometimes if sneaks up on you following a less than direct route. When it has been working for me it reminds me of being on a wind surfer and getting that rush of wind as you feel you are being pushed or pulled towards your goal.
I’ll say a little more about the practice of creative visualisation in a later post but meanwhile, if it interests you, check out some of the links above – and below.
Associated links:
The Master Key System
8 Tips for visualising success
There Are No Secrets To Success
Check out Steps to Health, Wealth & Inner Peace