Creative Meditation
Creative meditation enables us to develop and strengthen specific qualities of the mind: patience, compassion, love, fearlessness, tenderness. Creative meditation encourages us to consciously cultivate these qualities of character by thinking, speaking, and behaving as if these qualities are more fully present within us.
The practice of mindfulness develops our skills and awareness to look deeper into the reality; reflective and creative meditations transform bad habits of the mind and direct our creative mental energy with greater wisdom. Creative meditation teaches us how to channel our intuition and intention. It encourages our mind and heart to invite into our lives more possibilities and potentials. Â
Creative Visualization and Imagination
It is necessary to recognize the difference between spontaneous mental images and creative visualization. We project many images – memories, fantasies, dreams, visions and self-image. While they carry plenty encoded information about us and play an important role in our health, performance and creativity, these images little understood and rarely developed to their full potential.
Creative visualization is an active function of the mind. During creative visualization, we intentionally use our mental power to generate predetermined images. It is vital to understand that each image affects our psychological and physical health. Although an actual image may last a few moments, our imagination and memory may produce similar mental, emotional or physical reactions again and again. But we can learn to control our imagination by bringing these emotionally charged images into our consciousness.
Developing Creative Imagination
Creative meditation can be practiced in many ways. The following technique is only an example.
- Visualize yourself doing your activity or having the desired quality. You can either observe yourself or imagine yourself actually performing. Practice and find what works better for you.
- Imagine other sensations associated with this activity: sound, smell, textures. Envision yourself as real as possible.
- Regardless whether you actually see of feel the subject of your meditation, establish that it is actually present. Build your confidence with practice.
- Even if the total image or state does not appear clearly, imagine its completeness as it were a reality.