Creating vision with reality

Whether we realize it or not, we mentally see the flash of everything we are about to experience, or about to happen to us. Although it may look to us that things are happening to us, in fact we are making them happen through our imagination. To be more accurate, we ourselves manifest the very event that happens to us. This is the highest technical fact of life. On the day-to-day basis, the visualization happens so fast and spontaneous that we hardly notice it. So, not being aware that we are the one who actually create the events around us, we think that the God which is assumedly separate from us made it happen. Contrary to our belief, there is no absolute reality, but only relative reality which looks absolute because many think it is absolute. All the time, we are the one who manifests our own “reality” without even being aware that we are responsible for it. Most of the time, we are cutting and pasting realities from the past, passed on to us by our parents, family and society.

In fact we can be the producer, director, actor, and light men of our own life. In that sense, we are born visionaries. What happens in our life is just the reflection of what goes inside our minds. So if we agree to the fact that what happens to us is what we choose to believe or visualize, then we should also agree that we could deliberately manifest any reality we want by deliberately visualizing it. The importance of visions and visualization process had already been recognized which is evident from the expression used: You get what you expect.

The key word here is “VISION”. The process is called VISUALIZATION. The result is the “REALITY” we want to create. The raw materials for building visions are our imaginations, thoughts and beliefs.

Does the visualization approach looks commonly impractical? Yes, because we don’t do it. But then, does going to temple to ask the god to fulfill one’s dream sound practical? Yes it does, because we have been doing it and we want to rationalize it.

So are we committed enough to change the reality that is adverse to us? Can we recreate new and more favorable reality for us by deliberately visualizing what we want? “Yes, we can! And many of us have been doing that for a long time. What we get is what we see in mind.

We can control our life through visualization process, right from controlling how we should feel, or look to what we achieve in our lives. Through visualization, we can learn to feel sexy and to be beautiful, rich and confident.

Sometimes we feel inferior, other time we feel superior. These are all manifested states of our mind/s namely conscious mind of which we are aware and the subconscious mind, of which we are not aware. While the conscious mind represents our present on-going thoughts and beliefs, the subconscious mind represents our old experience and memories buried below our general awareness/memory level. But both aspects of minds are equally responsible to make us feel what we feel and do what we do, or become what we become. Precisely, our mind is responsible to manifest the world that we individually see, believe and finally own it.

A vision is the mental image of what we want to happen to us.

If we allow our mind to pick up whatever it wants, it will use old memories as the source of raw materials for vision. And sometimes, old memories are full of bad experiences. So naturally the visions made of bad memories will manifest negative reality in our lives. On the other hand, if we craft a vision based on happy memories, we will create a happy vision, that will lead to a happy reality.

The raw materials of vision are thoughts, beliefs, and commitments, which are stored in conscious and subconscious minds. The QUALITY of vision depends upon quality (as we define) of our thoughts, imaginations and creativity. If we aim to earn $ 1000 a month, we cannot earn $ 10,000. The qualities of thoughts are determined by education and basic beliefs and values of life. The children of rich people will automatically think of earning $ 10, 0000 while the children of less rich will think of earning $ 10000 if they are given isolated choice. This identifies the need to raise people’s expectation, people’s imagination for better life through education and exposures.

There are individual vision, and shared vision. When a number of people share their individual visions, it turns into a bigger vision, and therefore a bigger reality. Just like American reality is the collective realities and visions of the American people, Nepal’s reality is also the collective reality of Nepali people. Unfortunately in the absence of effective leadership, Nepal has a big adverse reality, which needs to be changed. In order to do it, we need to divert our considerable energy and resources to change people’s mindset through improved quality of education.

What is the effective way to achieve a vision and create new realities?

Firstly, the Vision needs to be deliberately crafted. If we leave the task of crafting vision to natural course of life, it will use the old painful memories and adverse experience as raw materials. This will result in the manifestation of undesirable realities of life. At the national level, the example of such phenomenon are the extreme level of agitations, terrorism and violence as happening now in Nepal, that resulted from the visions manifested by extreme leftists which believe in violence to achieve their political goals.

Secondly, vision must be stated positively. Negative visions do not work. Try visualizing not smoking a cigarette. In order to visualize not smoking, you have to imagine smoking first, and then imagine not doing it. Since mind does not understand the negative statement, the mind will automatically take “ not smoking” as smoking. So negatively stated vision creates only confusions. Following this school of thought, the vision for “poverty alleviation” will create more poverty, as minds do not know how to visualize ‘alleviation” which is a negative word. This vision would have been more effective had it been stated in positive language, for example- the visions that says “creating affluence” or “providing people with basic necessity” would work far more effective than the that says” Reduce poverty”.

Thirdly, the vision should be clear and specific, not vague. If we do not visualize exactly what we want in our mind, then again the task of creating reality will go to old bad memories that will create unfavorable reality for us. For example, it is too vague a vision to say “I want to become rich by 2010; in the absence of definition of rich which varies from country to country and society to society, this vision can not achieve proper result. It would be more accurate version of vision if we say we want to own a modern house, a car and a profitable business, than just to say ‘ being rich’ in distant future.

Fourthly, a vision must be time bound. If our vision is specific but is not time bound, to commit ourselves when we will achieve it, we may have to wait our whole life to achieve what we want. So, a good vision will always be followed by a date by which it will be achieved. For example I will own a house, a car and a successful business by the end of 2010 work better.

Fifthly, however odd it may sound, a vision will work best when it is expressed in the presence tense. Whenever something is memorized, remembered, or imagined it comes to present tense in our mind. If we remember having a wound, the past pain comes to present tense. We see dream in present tense. We mentally see going home in present tense, before we actually go home. Except in the grammar book, there is no past tense or future tense. There is only present tense. So vision stated in future tense may look futuristic, and therefore good, but in fact may not work specially if it a personal affirmation.

An ideal vision would be stated positively, in presence tense, specific enough and time bound. An ideal vision would rather look like a news-reporting, with only difference that news-report reports events in the past, but a vision statement reports news to be manifested future. For those who are familiar to practicing personal affirmation in the morning as a part of their yoga exercise, vision is pretty close.