You’ve successfully been meditating on the regular enough that you’re comfortable and familiar with meditating and can command your body to calm down. You are in control of your breathing and allow your thoughts to regulate. Now, we’re going to get into the meat and potatoes of visual meditation.

With visual meditation, you’ll be able to explore your own created universe. You can plan, plot, and anticipate projects. Dreams become more vivid, and with enough dedication, you can even lucid dream and astral project. You can also exercise and build your clairs (clairvoyance, clairsentience, etc.) to see, speak, and feel those who have crossed over.

By the end of this course, you will be able to close your eyes and vividly experience another world as if your eyes were open. The sensations you experience during visual meditation can be as real as your present reality, and for that alone, it is worth learning!

During phase 1, we’re going to start working on exercising your visual cortex and your third-eye chakra. Again, your beliefs are your own. Whatever sounds like babble to you, you can simply skip or modify to fit your beliefs. This is the longest and hardest phase to achieve because you’re exercising something that isn’t typically exercised consciously, so take your time.

In this phase, you’re going to learn how to:

1. Create and focus your attention on an imagined sensory experience;
2. Expand on that experience to become more vivid and real;
3. Begin your visual/consensus environment;

Definitions

visual cortex: (n) the region of the brain where visual information is processed; located in the occipital lobe at the back of the head

sensory experience: (n) an experience during meditation that includes all of your physical senses, sometimes with enough believability to create a sense of reality

sense memory: (n) the memory of a sense (i.e., the texture of your cat’s fur or the smell of vanilla) that can be recalled even when the stimulus is not present

visual environment: (n) a personal environment of your own design that you create through visual meditation that maintains a fairly predictable structure

consensus environment: (n) a term created by William Buhlman, seasoned lucid dreamer and astral projector; “A consensus environment is any environment or reality that is created and maintained by the thoughts of a group of individuals. For example, the heavens of each religious group are created by the thoughts and beliefs of their respective inhabitants. Like all realities, the consensus environments are molded by the group consciousness…”
pg. 93, Adventures Beyond the Body

grounded/ungrounded: (adj) spiritual term that refers to your connection with being in the present and connected to your physical body and environment;
Generally, a healthy person will feel grounded and secure, and an ungrounded person will feel disconnected, uneasy, or dissociated from their environment.

The Sense Memory Exercise

Human beings are great visualizers. Visualizing is essential to survival. We see ways in our minds to work out problems and visualize strategies to resolve them. We relive memories: the smell of grandma’s baked apple pie; the wet warmth of your dog’s breath on your nose; your loved one’s laugh. We fantasize and daydream about the good and the bad. All of these are projections from our minds. We use them daily and often subconsciously.

Despite how frequently you visualize, your experiences are more likely to be simple and two-dimensional. That’s normal. Why over-process when what you need is just some brief insight? But our sense memory can be used for far more fascinating experiences. You’d be surprised how well you can recall how something looks, smells, tastes, and sounds.

To begin, we’ll be playing with our senses. Let’s start with a simple visual exercise:

1. Begin to meditate with your eyes closed. Get comfortable. This time, it isn’t necessary to lie down, but you’ll need to be in a perfectly relaxed state so you can focus on your objective. Your eyes will need to be closed.
   
2. When relaxed, within the darkness, visual your arm reaching out. If you find it hard to visualize your arm, you can physically lift your arm as you meditate. Try to coordinate your visualization with what you feel in real-time. At first, it may seem hard to perceive. It may seem two-dimensional, lack color, or appear like a fuzzy shadow with white lines. This is normal and will strengthen with practice.
   
3. Reach into the darkness and grab an apple. See the apple in your hand. Rotate your hand. Sense the weight of it. Feel the texture. Grip it and feel the give of the flesh. Smell it. Taste it, if you’d like. The objective is to recall from memory what you know about apples and apply it to the experience. You are using your sense memory of apples.

Each time you execute this exercise, examine the apple completely. The stronger your focus, the more the apple will be perceived as real. Once you are convinced you are holding an apple, switch it for something more interesting. A stone, a book, an animal… The more fun you have, the stronger your ability to visual will become.

Tips & Tricks

• Use a blindfold or eye mask to get perfect darkness. The darkness serves as a canvas for your visualizations and makes it easier to manifest the visualization.
• If you have a hard time visualizing or have aphantasia (the inability to visualize), talk to yourself. Tell yourself what is happening and what is going on. “I am holding an apple. It is cold, but it is slowly warming in my hand. I put a dimple in its flesh with my fingernail.”
  (Aphantasia is largely self-reported and does not have a strong scientific foundation. Understand that you are completely capable of training yourself to see with your mind, and it just might take some more time.)
• Performing the sense memory exercise before bed can make your dreams more vivid. If that is your goal, perform this before bed. See what happens (no pun intended)!
• Identify which sense is strongest for you and capitalize on it. You might not be the strongest visualizer out of the gate, but you can hear the sound of a crunching apple as if it’s right there. If that is the case, you can focus first on perceiving with that sense and let the others develop as you practice. Perform the same steps, but hone in on the other sense first.
• Play, play, play! Keep it interesting and stimulating.

Opening the Third-Eye Chakra

The third-eye chakra is responsible for spiritual information received visually, such as images, symbols, etc. It is also responsible for sensory experiences like clairaudience, clairsentience, etc. Not only can it receive information, but it can also share this information with others. Ever visualized tacos and had your husband come home with tacos? Well, I have!

The chakra system is linked with the physical body and responds accordingly to it. The more you practice the sense memory exercise, the more your third-eye will open. Opening your third-eye can lead to transcendent experiences and connect you with other souls. Consider this making your brain WI-FI enabled.

Signs Your Third-Eye is Opening:

• Your sensory experiences become incredibly realistic.
• Your dreams become more vivid, or you experience lucid dreaming.
• Your clair-abilities strengthen.
• You have more synchronicities or intuitive experiences.

You can also visualize your third-eye opening. This can be done any way you like. Picture an eye opening and getting bigger on your forehead. See a spiral of light opening wider and wider out from between your brows. Visualize bright blue roses blooming from your forehead. All of these are effective as they carry the same intention: open!

As exciting as it is, take care to not overdo it. Spending too much time in visual meditation can keep the third-eye open and cause you to become ungrounded, and the effects of being ungrounded can be unpleasant.

If you experience the following, take a break from visual meditation:

• Feelings of dissociation or surrealism.
• Feelings of over-stimulation.
• Feelings of lack of control, inability to relax, or mania.
• Hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing, or sensing stimulus when it’s not present, which causes distress (i.e., smelling smoke when there is no fire).
• Changes in appetite or mood.

Take a few days away from visual meditation and try to become rooted in your daily life again.

Homework

• Perform the sense memory exercise daily during meditation for at least 30 minutes. You can include this with your regular meditation methodologies, too.

Discuss:

• How easily do I perceive the ‘apple?’
• What other items can I use with the sense memory exercise?
• Which is the easiest sense for me to perceive during meditation?

When to Move Forward

• You can perform the sense memory exercise with ease and use all of your senses with some degree of realism. It feels real, it seems real. It doesn’t have to be 100% believable, but you should feel comfortable in the routine of examining and experiencing single objects that you are familiar with.

Have a question or need assistance with this course? Reach out to me!

Ready to move on? Let’s go!

Phase 2: Creating & Expanding Your Environment