visualizations, so they work?

[epyon]

i have been seeing alot of stuff about visualizations and how they work with everything from cultivating chi to regenerating bone and muscle tissue, any thoughts and/or first hand experience with such?

[de_paradise]

Funny you should post. I was hit off my motorbike by a speeding truck the other day and am doing this self-qi-healing regeneratino meditation. The mantra is "healing-regenerate" I am testing for a powerful way of doing this.There's the route of visualization of regeneration, maybe like

Claire Bennett wounds and stuff zipping up. The other route is a bit more etheric, where you try to get more into the qi body, or "emptiness" of a deity, instead of tackling the problem head on, since these will generate more healing qi than just picturing in you mind the problems going away.

 

I think it will all work, even the mantra because the words generate ideas and picture below your conscious mind, that serve to keep a healing flow going. It probably come down to how long you can do this type of medtiation and the intesity or feel that you can attach to the visualization.

 

For me, in alot of pain and not at all feeling lovey-angel, its hard to attach good feelings to a meditation, so I just go with more of a nuts and bolts Claire Bennett style vizualize with mantra.

[Thunder_Gooch]

i have been seeing alot of stuff about visualizations and how they work with everything from cultivating chi to regenerating bone and muscle tissue, any thoughts and/or first hand experience with such?

 

Actually feeling energy works better than visualizing it.

[Jetsun]

Isn't the saying "where the mind goes the qi follows" or something like that, so visualising say a healing light on an injured body part may help the flow of qi there.

[baiqi]

意到气到

 

Where the intent goes, so does the qi.

 

So yeah it works, to some extent.

Edited April 20, 2012 by baiqi

[Thunder_Gooch]

Isn't the saying "where the mind goes the qi follows" or something like that, so visualising say a healing light on an injured body part may help the flow of qi there.

 

Yes it may help, but feeling the energy there is a million times more effective.

 

Think of it as tactile visualization.

[Birch]

Funny you should post. I was hit off my motorbike by a speeding truck the other day and am doing this self-qi-healing regeneratino meditation. The mantra is "healing-regenerate" I am testing for a powerful way of doing this.There's the route of visualization of regeneration, maybe like

Claire Bennett wounds and stuff zipping up. The other route is a bit more etheric, where you try to get more into the qi body, or "emptiness" of a deity, instead of tackling the problem head on, since these will generate more healing qi than just picturing in you mind the problems going away.

 

I think it will all work, even the mantra because the words generate ideas and picture below your conscious mind, that serve to keep a healing flow going. It probably come down to how long you can do this type of medtiation and the intesity or feel that you can attach to the visualization.

 

For me, in alot of pain and not at all feeling lovey-angel, its hard to attach good feelings to a meditation, so I just go with more of a nuts and bolts Claire Bennett style vizualize with mantra.

Wow, what a hardcore way to test it.

Sorry to hear about the accident.

Wishing you fast recovery!

[de_paradise]

Thanks Kate. I appreciate it.

 

I just noticed that none of us directly answered the OP's question as to how visualizations work. There's more than one answer to this.

 

Visualizations are inherently one-pointed focus activity. So whether you visualize a deity or a pack of gum, you are going to increase your qi flow just by that action of one pointed focus. That in itself is a good thing, a meditation.

 

As far as visualization of places on your own body, you will stir the qi, or enliven the qi with your mind at the place you are think of. (feel it if it more effective that way)

 

More complicated to explain is making things happen by kind of manifesting the action or a similar type of action, such as thinking of healing a body part, or thinking of flowing cleansing water,etc. This is where it gets pretty interesting. Can your hallucinations become reality? Indeed, yes, but much depends upon the skill and level of the practitioner. We always speak of intent as being the key driver, not the pictures that guide the intent. Our mind works with pictures, much of it is so fast and beneath our conscious mind, so there's argueably always elements of visualization in anything we do. Yet, to understand how to have your healing hallucinations become real healing modality, we use the word intent.

 

Thats the basics. The next level is to understand which type and how of the visualizations, the character of the consciousness when one visualizes. Its something one has to do on one's own because its all a bit fidgety to explain beyond a basic level, or may not translate to the next person.

Edited April 20, 2012 by de_paradise

[manitou]

I'm going to go over the top on this topic.

 

Visualizations works because We Are God. We are The Void. In order to have visualizations work, the first thing is to stop calling them visualizations. Instead, call it Pretending. As a child would pretend. Even the J-Man told us this; we must become 'as a child'. The creative process involves pretending that we are making something happen, and then fully trusting the fact that it is happening. As naive as a little kid.

 

A friend of mine is a famous artist in Palm Springs. He paints incredible things that spring from his mind, his separate reality. I asked him how he finds his motivation. He smiled and did a little pirouette and pretended to pick up a hat off the table. He pretended to put it on. He merely said,

 

"I put on my Picasso hat".

 

This seems ridiculous, I know. I have proven this to myself by roping an escaped stallion with an invisible rope. I pretended I roped him, and he pretended that he was roped. We walked with his pretend halter back across the highway and back to his corral. I don't expect a soul in the world to believe this, other than me. But did it happen? Yes.

 

To make the pretending work, it must be accompanied by a vacuous mind that has no thoughts running through it, and an intent that is impeccable. We are bordering on sorcery in the wu-wei with this.

[manitou]

Sorry, double post.

Edited April 20, 2012 by manitou

[Thunder_Gooch]

I am sorry to hear about your accident. I hope you feel better soon.

If you have an mp3 player I made a meditation mp3 for the bums to use in meditation, just ocean waves and singing bowls no binaural beats. Spring forest qigong also is a great system for healing as that is it's focus.

 

 

Look at what wim hof (tummo/inner-fire meditation master) can do with his meditation, his feet were nearly freezer burnt off after he ran barefoot 26km in -26* temps above the arctic circle, he claimed to use his energy to bring them back to life and lost no toes or suffered any major frostbite.

 

Here is a video of him under observation while he controls his immune system at will.

 

 

 

 

Funny you should post. I was hit off my motorbike by a speeding truck the other day and am doing this self-qi-healing regeneratino meditation. The mantra is "healing-regenerate" I am testing for a powerful way of doing this.There's the route of visualization of regeneration, maybe like

Claire Bennett wounds and stuff zipping up. The other route is a bit more etheric, where you try to get more into the qi body, or "emptiness" of a deity, instead of tackling the problem head on, since these will generate more healing qi than just picturing in you mind the problems going away.

 

I think it will all work, even the mantra because the words generate ideas and picture below your conscious mind, that serve to keep a healing flow going. It probably come down to how long you can do this type of medtiation and the intesity or feel that you can attach to the visualization.

 

For me, in alot of pain and not at all feeling lovey-angel, its hard to attach good feelings to a meditation, so I just go with more of a nuts and bolts Claire Bennett style vizualize with mantra.

Edited April 20, 2012 by More_Pie_Guy

[eye_of_the_storm]

In terms of visualization also - what are peoples thoughts on - Tibetan Buddhist practices of imaging "golden Buddhas" etc to enter your body? I wouldn't do it... thinking maybe inviting unwanted entities. z

 

I could see the benefit in imagining/ feeling oneself to be a Buddha though... hmm

Edited April 21, 2012 by White Wolf Running On Air

[Fū Yue]

In terms of visualization also - what are peoples thoughts on - Tibetan Buddhist practices of imaging "golden Buddhas" etc to enter your body? I wouldn't do it... thinking maybe inviting unwanted entities. z

 

I could see the benefit in imagining/ feeling oneself to be a Buddha though... hmm

 

I think the point is to know that those buddhas are you. They are what you are, what you can become. Every single cell in the body is a buddha, standing tall inside himself even as he sits atop a lotus. A mandala is your body, the mandala deity is your mind, the silence of all is the truth.

 

Or whatever. Don't quote me.

[konchog uma]

@white wolf

tantric deity practice in the tibetan tradition are meant to instill the energy of the buddhas into one. One is not actually absorbing Tara or Medicine Buddha themselves, but the essence of their energy. It isn't an entity as such, although as a pattern of energy it may react intelligently.

[de_paradise]

Thanks MPG, good suggestions. I've watched Wims videos in the past, I wonder if there has been examples of rapid healing not related to cold or the tummo, or if rapid healing of wounds and sickness is part of the tummo attainment.

 

Yesterday I fell into a reverie lucid dream meditation state where I was moving qi in my body in a more enhanced way than I was able to in the past, and actually healed myself mentally in that state. In fact the interesting part was the dream body was also the physical (qi body), where normally the dream body is quite seperate or just some mental construct that seems physical. Perhaps the enhanced ability was caused by the necessity of the accident.

 

I do have my own teacher and lineage but I'm sure Spring Forest is good.

 

For the discussion of White wolf and letting Buddhas into your body, I remember a time when I was concerned about this. It is similar to allowing Jesus into your heart, etc, or some other deity. Most of this type of meditation is to build an idea of an enlightened or perfected person, deity in your mental space so that you have some kind of reference to go towards. You dont need to have the buddha move inside you at all, you can have him outside sitting nearby, etc. If your mind tasked with feeling the traits of the buddha, that buddha is inside your mind already. No need to take it so literally, but you can if you want, because its easier to build a construct in your mind when you have some stated traits and facts. But really, you are trying in this type of meditation to feel the enlightened state, dharmakaya, the emptiness "body" of these beings. If you were to make an image of yourself as enlightened or a bodiless being in a higher plane of existence, and since we all have memories or access to that type of feeling somewhere, then you dont need a Buddha. I find using Buddha work better because they are free from all the thoughts and feelings of our present unenlightened selves that might bog a person down when trying to form a good model.

[eye_of_the_storm]

thanks for your input - very helpful

Edited April 22, 2012 by White Wolf Running On Air