Creative visualisation is simply the mental creation of visual imagery in the mind. Using this practice in order to manifest a specific result in the psychology of the individual is well known. It has been shown to be highly effective in managing anxiety and even pain. Dramatic improvements in the psychological state, and even the self identity, are also possible. In athletics, improved performance is well documented.
There is a longstanding idea that by visualising the things we want we can make them come true, even when there is no direct involvement with the outcome coming to pass. The visualisation of some desired future will bring it about. Naturally, this is a highly contentious subject. A number of esoteric sources claim that this actually attracts the intended and desired circumstances towards the individual. This is the ‘law of attraction’. Which is twaddle in the ordinary world, which is why it is greatly lampooned. But in the personal world the effect can nonetheless be real.
It is not of course that anything about the world is drawn to the individual. Confirmation bias creates strange attractors, but these operate on the individual. And the effect is that the individual is drawn toward the desired version of the future. And that makes sense. It happens by making observations that make the desired circumstances more likely in the future.
Making it Work
Given the logic presented here, creative visualisation ought to work, even when there is no direct agency, no possibility of involvement. But many people try visualising what they want only to find it seems to have no effect at all. The expectation is the key.
The trouble is it all seems so ridiculous. Used to living in the ordinary world, as we are, this involves suspending disbelief to an extraordinary degree. How can I truly expect something improbable just because I am visualising it?
Making the desired circumstances real in your mind is the key. But only some of us are naturally good at that, it seems. But hopefully, the logic of the personal, relative world creates a new awareness, a new backdrop, and in this domain one might reasonably expect that the visualised events become increasingly likely.
The key point is that each biased observation takes you to a parallel reality in which the desired circumstance is more likely in the future. So a progression of such shifts means that very unlikely future events may become more and more probable for this individual in their personal world. So there are perfectly good rational grounds for the expectation.
Practice
The main way to build expectation is repetition, but there are many practices and techniques. A well-respected resource is the book Creative Visualisation by Shakti Gawain. She describes methods and exercises that are very powerful. This is the technology in detail, the implementation. The only caveat is that her explanation of ‘energy’ should be understood as a purely internal phenomenon.
As she also describes, ‘affirmation’ can work very well. This is simply formulating a description of a desired state in inner dialogue. Then one recites the description of the ideal state to oneself on a regular basis. As quoted on Wikipedia, the famous affirmation by the psychologist Emile Coué was:
Every day in every way I am getting better and better.
He was the originator of positive thinking. The modern technique of ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, CBT, is based on his ideas. He also discovered the importance of the placebo effect when he was working as a pharmacist.
As with placebo, the expectation produces the effect. In placebo we have to take the cue from outside, a sham medicine and a smiling reassuring confident prescriber. In affirmation and creative visualisation we take direct command of the forming the expectation. Thus one specifically defines the strange attractor. This is the power of the process. This is the logic.
Of course, if you take on something big, and some issues really are big, there is a huge inertia. Just as real world issues can be far from what is desired and intended, so too psychological issues can have great inertia. So, like steering a supertanker, the system may change direction very slowly. The trick is to be the ‘trim tab‘. The trim tab is a mini-rudder on the back of the rudder. Which is much easier to move than the whole rudder. So the trim tab turns the rudder and the rudder turns the ship.
Creative visualisation is how you set the trim tab of the personal world. As your expectation grows, the rudder starts to move, and the course of life begins to change. The extraordinary implication of the logic is that we can consciously and deliberately steer the way our worlds go.
It is not that ‘like attracts like’. It is simply that when observations are altered, the path into the future is altered. This explains why visualisation does not always work the way one hopes. The observations have to change. Confirmation bias has to operate. And this can require physiological capacities that have to be developed. Gawain’s famous book is a great help here.
The Secret
There has been a tradition of great secrecy about these ideas in the past. This is seriously misguided. The trouble is a fundamental false assumption. This is the idea that one is interacting with the whole of the ordinary world. This is ludicrous, but very seductive. What an ego trip! But this also carries a terrible threat. What if our opponents get hold of these secrets and start using them against us.
As is completely clear from the logic presented here, it does not work like that. The effect operates only in the personal relative world. This alters the meaning of the whole situation. Secrecy is the last thing needed and wanted here. Everyone should know about this. In a society of such individuals, the more people that understand their responsibility the better it is for everyone, in every way, especially including themselves. This is the tragic idiocy of the great secret.
The real secret is how to make this work properly. The revelation is that the world is personal, and provided the visualisation is done properly so that expectation builds up, the effect should be significant. Understanding the logic of the relative world fosters expectation in the effect.
The next main section is Quantum Karma.