Hollographic Visualization

[impaul99]

I haven't been able to reproduce the Holographic visualization I experienced a few months ago, but the experience has left a trace of something else for me.

Since it happened I've been able to lie down and close my eyes on the couch and with my eyes closed and still conscious I kind of keep my eyes closed by I try to "see" through my eyelids, almost visualizing them disappearing so that I can "see". I've gotten to the point where I can relax and actually feel as if my eyelids are not there anymore. Meaning I no longer feel them on my eyeballs. I still see darkness and haven't been able to see images yet, but I feel like I'm really close. It's almost like I'm starting to feel images, just not see them yet.

For example if I try to see buildings made out of bricks like they have in Europe, I can feel them with my eyes closed, just not see them yet but it's very close.

Just wondering if anyone else has played around with visualizing with your eyes closed while being fully awake. It's similar to lucid dreaming, except it's not about waking up in your dream, it's about dreaming in your waking state.

Maybe this is what meditation is all about, and everyone already does this, and I'm the last person to discover it? It seems so cool to be able to do this.

[Acting Like Godot]

Wow, Paul, this is a really big surprise to me! I thought everyone who does visualisation, does this .... In fact I'm not sure how else one could do visualisation.

Maybe you ARE the last person around here to do it.

Now, HOW exactly were you doing your visualisation in the past?!?

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Wow, Paul, this is a really big surprise to me! I thought everyone who does visualisation, does this .... In fact I'm not sure how else one could do visualisation.

Maybe you ARE the last person around here to do it.

Now, HOW exactly were you doing your visualisation in the past?!?

I can close my eyes and think about something and I get the general feeling of it, however I don't actually SEE what I'm visualizing like I do with my eyes open.

Does that make sense?

[Anagogy]

For most people, it takes quite a while before their visualizations reach the same level of vividness as the "external world", but it is well worth developing. It, much like everything else, is like a muscle, which can be honed and developed through consistent practice.

[RT Wolf]

Different people have different modalities, some go by sight, others by hearing and others by feeling.

A tip for someone who's trying to visualize with sight: The way many of us imagine things in our head are small and faraway, as if on a tv screen, and really dim. So, try making your mental images bigger and making them brighter. Takes a bit of practice, but makes things a whole lot better nad more interesting

[Acting Like Godot]

Hi Paul:

It's not going to be as vivid as something you see in broad daylight with your two eyes wide open. But it will get (a lot) more vivid, with practice.

Okay, you try something like this, play around and see what happens. Close your eyes, relax, breathe etc etc, then pull up an actual memory. For example, the memory of the house you lived in when you were a kid.

Now, an image will pop into your mind. It could be something like the way your house looked, from the outside. Hold the image gently ... gently .... gently.

Now start visualising it in greater detail. The colour of the walls. The colour of the door. The design of the gate. The position of the tree in the garden, relative to the rose bushes. The texture of the pathway leading to the front door. The bicycle on the right hand side of the porch.

Excellent!

Now ........ walk through the front door .... and go through every room. The hall, the kitchen, the dining room, the bedrooms. Pay attention to where everything is, slowly fill the image with details of things that you recall were really there in your old house .... the wooden floor, the green sofa on the wooden floor, the square cushions on the green sofa, the cat sleeping on the square cushions .... and so on.

Okay .... that was visualisation practice. Here you're working with an actual memory, a place that really existed, a place that you knew well.

Now ... for purposes of LOA/IM, it's the same thing but you don't have to work with an actual memory. You just visualise whatever you want (eg your desired dream house), and start filling in the details - as you had filled in details for your actual house.

With practice, (and I emphasise - not immediately, but with practice), this can become a very vivid kind of experience. It's not limited to "image" purely ... it will be 3D, you can fill it with sound, touch, movement, even taste ....

..... eventually go a few steps further, sink really deep into alpha, and you might meet a couple of walking, talking entities in your visualisation exercise. (like Napoleon Hill's counsellors).

While furniture, houses and other inanimate objects in your visualisation exercise will generally appear and behave exactly as you want them to, don't be surprised if the walking, talking entities DON'T. You can make them disappear (or you can just "wake" up and end the visualisation) but you can't order them around to do things. They have their own free will.

If you meet a bunch of them and they call themselves "Abraham", let me know. I'd love to meet them too.

[mochamajesty]

Originally Posted by impaul99

I can close my eyes and think about something and I get the general feeling of it, however I don't actually SEE what I'm visualizing like I do with my eyes open.

Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense to me. That is how I also visualize.

[petewilliams]

A couple of times recently during meditation I've had a similar experience, and it's seemed as if I can see through my eyelids. This is all pretty new to me too, so I'm going to keep working on it and see where it goes.

The comment about meditation being like a muscle ring true with me. I find that if I don't meditate for a while it takes me a few sessions to get back into it, and with each session I feel like it's easier to reach a deeper state. One of my intentions for the year is to make meditation a twice-daily exercise so that I can really develop this deeper feeling rather than just 'skimming along the surface' like I have been up until now.

Pete