Creative visualization is a key manifesting technique for creating your reality and more specifically, your desires. It is the process of using concentrated thought power to consciously relax, imagine, feel, believe and detach from what you want to experience in your inner or outer world.
Put simply, through visualization you change your inner world with your imagination knowing that your outer world will follow by Universal Law. And the best approach is always the simplest: assume a child-like wonder. Not childish, but child-like. Let go of everything you have been taught to believe is possible (or not) and learn to imagine your wish fulfilled in the moment.
So let’s begin. This article provides a step-by-step guide to visualizing, including each of the six steps. To learn about each step in more detail and maximize your visualizing success, I suggest you read each visualization step’s respective articles linked below.
The Role of the Subconscious Mind
Creative visualization grants you direct control over your imagination at the subconscious level. The mental images you persistently impress on your subconscious mind, are simultaneously impressed on Universal Mind and are in time manifested in the Physical Plane. You can use visualization for any change that you want to accomplish, including changing your circumstances, changing your beliefs and habits, healing yourself and others and even changing your appearance and so on. How and for what purpose it is used is up to you.
The 6 Steps of Creative Visualization
The creative visualization steps outlined here harness the creative power of your mind to change your circumstances at any level and consciously choose the life you want to experience. Moreover, these steps, or a combination thereof, can be used as the foundation for other manifesting techniques such as scripting, using affirmations, autosuggestions and so on.
These are the 6 basic steps for creative visualization:
1. Relaxation 2. Imagine 3. Feel it Real 4. Believe 5. Detach 6. Inspired Action
Step #1: Mental Relaxation for Visualization
The first step in creative visualization is to relax your body and empty your mind so as to enter a meditative state. Find a comfortable seat, sit upright or lie down, breathe deeply and steadily, count down slowly from 25 to 1 while relaxing all your muscle groups from head to toe. Empty your mind by focusing on your breathing. Relaxing your body and mind grants you access to the deeper levels of consciousness known as the Alpha and Theta levels of mind, which is the perfect state for impressing your subconscious mind.
Step #2: Imagine Your Wish Fulfilled
The second step in creative visualization is to use the power of your imagination. Imagine a scene that implies that you have or are what you want to experience in the present moment. Concentrate your thought power on the imagined scene only. It is most effective to imagine from a first-person perspective, just as you experience 3D reality. However, if doing so feels foreign to you, you can also imagine your ideal scene as if watching yourself in a movie from the outside and in time project your consciousness into the ‘you’ in the scene.
Step #3: Feel it Real – Feeling is the Secret
The third step in creative visualization is to feel what it would feel like if you already had what you desire in your present 3D physical experience. Your feelings bring what you are imagining to life. To ‘feel it real’ does not mean to experience extreme emotions. Ask yourself, how would I feel if I already had what I wanted? When you already have something, then having it feels like the most natural thing in the world to you. This is the ideal feeling for feeling it real!
Step #4: Believe You Already Have It
The fourth step in creative visualization is to believe that you already have whatever it is you are imagining in the present moment. This is similar to feeling it real but also empowers you to maintain the feeling of already having it after your creative visualization session as you go about your day. The instruction for prayer from Mark 11:24 in the Bible is very clear on this: “What things soever you ask for when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them”. This is not about wishful thinking or lying to yourself. It is about having the kind of faith that is the “evidence of things not seen” based on your understanding of the conscious creation process.
Step #5: Detach from the Outcome
The fifth step in the creative visualization process is detachment. Detach yourself from the outcome you intend to see manifest in your life. Whenever you are attached to someone or something, you effectively strip yourself of your authentic power to consciously create the life you choose. You cannot be grateful or enjoy peace of mind when you are attached to the unfolding of a specific outcome, so detach, detach, detach. Detachment is effortless when backed by faith, and faith is natural when you know you are one with the Universal Mind. What you think, It thinks, and whatever is impressed upon It persistently must come to pass by Law.
Step #6: Take Inspired Action
The sixth and final step for creative visualization is taking action thereafter. Although creative visualization is premised on a relaxed meditative state and using your imagination, taking physical action is more often than not required to successfully bring your imaginings into 3D reality. You cannot, for instance, positively assume the state of meeting your ideal partner if you never leave your home. Nor can you expect to run your own successful business if you don’t take the steps to launch that business. Action is two-fold: inner mental action and outer physical action. By taking conscious mental action by way of what you imagine, the outward actions that naturally follow are inspired by the opportunities that arise.
Practice Visualization: Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
You must practice, practice, practice, which means repeat, repeat, repeat! Set aside a time each day to visualize and imagine what you want to create. The most ideal time of day for creative visualization is once in the morning upon waking up and once in the evening before you go to sleep. Both these times are ideal because your mind is already in a semi-relaxed state, the state that the New Thought author Neville Goddard called a ‘state akin to sleep’ (SATS). Once you have mastered these six steps, you’ll see your life transforming in miraculous ways. Persist and have patience!
Get on With Life, Let if Flow
Once you have completed any creative visualization session, to bring yourself back to a normal waking state simply continue to breathe rhythmically, and begin to count upwards from 1 to 5, consciously bringing yourself out of the relaxed state and slowly opening your eyes. Alternatively, if you are visualizing while in bed and before sleep, you can allow yourself to drift off to sleep while still feeling it real, which in turn allows your subconscious mind to more deeply accept whatever you have impressed it with. Whatever you choose, when you’re done let life flow – get on with your day knowing it’s done. Creation is already done!
Leave the How Up to Universal Mind
The focus of your creative visualizations must be on the outcome, not the process. Once you accept the truth about your thought power and that you are one with the One Universal Mind, you will be able to release any need to control the process. Instructing the All-Knowing and All-Powerful Universal Mind, which is the Mind of The Absolute, on how you want things to come about is telling Omniscience that you know better. But surely if you knew better you’d already have what you want? And oftentimes we cannot see the way something we want could come to pass with our limited 3D world view. Have faith and do not worry one moment about how something is going to happen.
In practice, the more you use creative visualization to imagine and assume the consciousness of your wish fulfilled, the more seeming coincidences and opportunities will arise in your life to create that outcome. You will also find yourself taking the aforementioned inspired physical actions where necessary. Actions that you do not have to think about much because they will arise naturally out of the opportunities that present themselves and the new state of mind that you have adopted.
The Mind Works With Feedback
The more feedback you give your mind the easier it is to accept and internalize a new concept. If you are new to the idea that you create your reality with your thoughts, then it is natural that your mind may demand some proof. It is a great leap of faith to go from the belief that ‘things just happen to me’ to ‘I make things happen’. This is why it is best to take it easy at first, and start with something simple or use exercises that put this concept to the test.
The Blue Feather Visualization Exercise
A favourite creative visualization exercise for beginners is to manifest a blue feather as in Richard Bach’s book Illusions. Using the basic visualization steps described above, imagine a blue feather. Then think about it as often as you can for a day or two without obsessing over manifesting it. You will find that you will experience a blue feather in some way in your physical world within a very short period of time. Have fun with the process. Persevere but if you do not see your feather, let it go and come back to it later rather than become frustrated. You will see it!
The more you experiment with creative visualization in this way and succeed in manifesting simple things to which you have no attachment, the more the synapses will fire in your brain, creating a solid belief around the truth that you create your reality. Once you believe it in practice and not just in theory, then you are pretty much home free to create anything you choose with detachment and faith.
In Conclusion
In a nutshell, creative visualization is the basic manifesting technique that you can use to activate your innate ability to consciously create your reality. There are six simple steps, which once mastered make the process enjoyable, rewarding and successful. Enter a meditative state, imagine, feel and believe you already have what you want to experience and then detach from the outcome as if you already have it. After you have completed the visualization process, preferably twice a day, get on with the rest of your day. Leave the how up to the All-Knowing Universal Mind and commit yourself to take inspired action towards your intended outcome.