Creative visualization is one of the most popular metaphysical techniques in the world. If you have been reading the articles here at Create Good Things for a while you will certainly be familiar with the concept: If you want to manifest something or some quality in your life, you should sit down on a regular basis and visualize yourself as already having that thing or quality.
Unfortunately, some people find that they can’t seem to make visualization work for them. It doesn’t matter how hard they try, the results just don’t come. It’s as if something is actually preventing the manifestation from taking place.
In most cases, something really is preventing the process, and that ‘something’ is the self-image of the individual.
Your self-image is the mental representation of who you truly believe you are. In most cases it consists of one or a series of mental images which represent, as far as your subconscious mind is concerned, the ‘real you’.
Now here is the vital point: Your subconscious mind will never allow you to experience anything in life which is in conflict with your self-image. No matter how hard you work, visualize, affirm or meditate, your self-image will always dictate what can and what cannot be manifested in your life.
Since this is the case, you should now be able to understand why visualization and other similar metaphysical techniques don’t work for some people. In almost all such instances, the self-image of the individual over-rides all metaphysical efforts in an effort to preserve the ‘status quo’. Let us give you an example of how this often takes place.
Jane, a young lady in her mid-twenties, had learned about creative visualization and decided to begin using it to increase her level of career and financial success. Every day for several months, Jane sat down and visualized the things she wanted in her life – a fine home, a smart automobile, a rewarding career and financial independence.
Now during the course of this visualization programme, several opportunities arose which could have enabled Jane to realise her ambitions. Yet when she came to take advantage of these various opportunities, every one of them vanished. Job offers were withdrawn for no reason, help which she had been offered from friends and acquaintances was not forthcoming and so on.
After several months of such let-downs, Jane lost her faith in visualization altogether. ‘It just doesn’t work,’ she would tell her friends. ‘I’ve tried as hard as I can, but even when things start looking up, something happens to take me right back to square one.’
The problem in this case wasn’t creative visualization at all. As many thousands of people can testify, visualization is one of the most effective metaphysical techniques there is.
So what was the problem?
The problem was that Jane’s self-image was in direct opposition to the things she was visualizing. Far from seeing herself as a person worthy of success, Jane always felt inferior. She viewed successful people as though they were automatically better and more deserving than she was.
In other words, Jane’s visualization efforts failed simply because she was trying to achieve something which would actually jeopardize her own self-image, and because of this her subconscious mind set to work – acting to prevent her visualized goals from ever becoming a reality.
Now the idea of one aspect of an individual working against another aspect of the same individual may sound strange, but in fact it happens all the time.
Consider a person who wants to quit smoking. He tries once, twice, three times, but he always ends up lighting another cigarette.
Or consider the person who wants to succeed financially. He tries once, twice, three times, but he always seems to end up right back where he started.
In both of these situations – and in a very many others – all that is happening is that the subconscious mind works to ensure that the individual fails. Why? Because the man who smokes has a self-image of himself as a smoker, and the man who wants to succeed financially actually has a self-image of failure and poverty. In both cases, the subconscious mind simply must ensure that they do not reach their goals, because if they did their respective self-images would be shattered.
In the world of metaphysics, the self-image can be likened to the ‘homing device’ on a powerful missile. The homing device is pre-programmed with a definite destination. When the missile is launched it always looks to its homing device for directions. Of course, the wind may blow the missile off track on occasion, but in these cases it simply refers once again to its homing device and corrects its own path so that it finally reaches the destination that has been pre-programmed.
If you are not progressing as quickly as you think you ought to be, in whatever area of life, then the chances are that your self-image is pulling you in a different direction.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can deliberately re-programme your subconscious mind with a brand new set of instructions which are automatically geared towards helping you to manifest prosperity, happiness and success in all areas of life, and this is where creating a new self-image comes into play.
