I’ve moved house five times in the last two years.
My kids and I are about to embark on the sixth move.
The first time, I had to make up my mind and switch countries from Switzerland to Seychelles within three weeks. I stayed at a friend’s home for a month and then moved to my own place. This was a horrible dingy little house in the middle of the bush. After 4 months, I was given a month’s notice by my landlady and found a bedsit to share with my two teenage children just two days before I had to move. The place was small, but nonetheless a step up from the previous shack. (We had luxuries such as hot water and proper tiles.) The story repeated itself, but this time I had just one day to move out. The house was larger, but started falling apart on us due to termites attacking the wood. This enabled rats to get in and we had to move out before we all died of leptospirosis...
I’ve been in this house for 10 months now, which is a pretty long time considering the track record of the last couple of years. The house is once again an improvement on the previous accommodation; we have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and unlimited hot water. Not to forget a fantastic view. My landlord now wants to tear the house down to build luxury condominiums and is going to start work on the site by the end of this month. So, once again I’m on the move.
To make matters worse, it’s becoming nearly impossible to find any kind of rental. The prices have shot up in these last few years and there is a huge shortage of accommodation even in the higher priced category.
So what do I do facing these impossible circumstances? I ask the Universe for the absolutely impossible: a house on the beach.
I’ve been yearning for a house on the beach before I even got here. Upon arrival I “realized” that there are only a handful of beach houses for rent and their prices are exorbitant, so I gave up on the idea, thinking it was impossible. Of course, with this attitude, my first home was miles away from the beach. Looking back over the last two years, each move has been an improvement and I’m getting closer to the beach as well. It no longer feels impossible.
These last couple of years have truly been an exercise in trust. I had quite a few dark nights of the soul where I lost faith and had to find a point where I regained trust despite the seemingly hopeless outlook of the situation. Each time I managed to dredge hope from the depths of my soul, the tide turned and a roof over my head was provided by the Universe.
Last month an online friend sent me a lovely link where one can wish upon a star. Without stopping to think, I spontaneously wished for a beach house. On a few blogs I visit, I stated my dream of living in a beach house and writing a novel. I’ve looked at my vision board on my desktop, built myself a beach house on Sims2 and starting visualizing.
Meanwhile, in the “real world”, I’ve placed an ad seeking accommodation, looked at a couple of places (not on the beach), but they haven’t worked out. I’ve got two weeks to go until I have to move out and I’m working on not feeling the fear and trusting that I will have a roof over my head.
I live in hope and surrender…
Related articles:
Sims2 as a Creative Visualization Tool
5 Steps to Surrender to Your Life Purpose
How To Put a Vision Board on Your Desktop
How You Can Easily Visualize Your Day Using the 5 W's
Put the Fun Back into Creative Visualization with Magic Rituals
Has this post added any value to your life? Or are you just in a giving mood? Improve your karma with a donation. Thank you!
The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Related articles:
Sims2 as a Creative Visualization Tool
5 Steps to Surrender to Your Life Purpose
How To Put a Vision Board on Your Desktop
How You Can Easily Visualize Your Day Using the 5 W's
Put the Fun Back into Creative Visualization with Magic Rituals
Has this post added any value to your life? Or are you just in a giving mood? Improve your karma with a donation. Thank you!
Creative visualisation is all about using your imagination in a creative manner to manifest your goals. The more lighthearted you are when using creative visualization (detachment), the more successful the outcome. A playful attitude is really helpful when manifesting your reality and taking control over your life.
And what better way to take control than by playing Sims 2? Sims 2 is a life simulation game where you have total control over the life stages, needs, personality, relationships, career and even death to some extent of the characters you create. What’s more, you can build some pretty cool houses.
My suggestion is that you create yourself and the people you want in your life (and of course those that are already in your life) and live your dream life in simulation. As you play the game, you will feel the the excitement of being in love, the satisfaction of living in your dream house and buying all the goodies you want.
In the past, I’ve actually manifested an apartment and a marriage with this technique. Of course, I should have known the marriage wouldn’t last; we were constantly at loggerheads in the game…
In my current game I’ve built and am living, with my kids, in a beautiful white wooden house on the beach. My house is not too large, but it has ample space for creative and meditative activities. I wake up in the morning, have a coffee from the espresso machine whilst sitting on my wooden verandah admiring the view before going for a swim in the ocean. I take a shower, eat breakfast and go into my creativity room to write my novel. After a light lunch, I create lovely works of art. The kids and I usually just barbeque our dinner on the beach and we have lot’s of beach parties. I’ve just created my dream man and am about to experience falling in love with him.
This is the life!
Has this article added any value to your life? Or are you just in a giving mood? Improve your karma with a donation. Thank you!
How To Put a Vision Board on Your Desktop
How You Can Easily Visualize Your Day Using the 5 W's
Put the Fun Back into Creative Visualization with Magic Rituals
Monday is ruled by the moon. And the moon rules dreams and emotions. I intend to post a quotation that speaks to my heart on the first day of every week. This is the first of the series.
If you would create something, you must be something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Related articles:
How To Put a Vision Board on Your Desktop
How You Can Easily Visualize Your Day Using the 5 W's
Put the Fun Back into Creative Visualization with Magic Rituals
(click on the image for a larger view)Since living in the Seychelles, I don't have access to a lot of magazines (there simply aren't that many on the island), so when I came across the idea of Photoshopping Your Dreams: Visual Goal Setting, Goal Movies and Vision Boards by Clay at The Growing Life, I leapt at the idea. It has the added advantage of being ecologically pretty sound as well. I am thinking of the trees I've been helping to save since I am no longer surrounded by piles of paper...
It's also a lot of fun looking for images on the internet. When I was looking for a house to put in my vision board, I came across many really beautiful homes (and men!) that made me drool. I finally decided to put in a more modest beach house, because that is what I really want. I didn't choose a more modest man, because that's not what I really want...
Some things to remember when using a vision board:
- Be careful what you wish for; you might get it. If you want a beach house, don't put a condo on the page. If you want a gorgeous hunk, don't put in Woody Allen.
- Set your photoshopped vision board as your desktop. This way you'll see it many times during the day (if you spend as much time as I do on the computer that is).
- Review your treasure map every day. Spend time absorbing the images. See yourself experiencing what you desire with all your senses.
PS: Disclaimer: The head is me, the body is not.
In one of my many incarnations in this life, I was an English teacher. Usually, at some point during the year, I would ask my students to write out their ideal day using the 5 W's and How. It's an exercise I've done myself as well and find very useful as a creative visualization aid. (And as long as there's nobody around to check your grammar, writing down your ideal day is a lot of fun.)
The 5 W's are:
When? What? Who? Where? Why?
Add the How? to flesh out the details with sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.
First, grab a pen and paper and make a diagram or list of sorts.
In each of the areas jot down some ideas of how you would spend your ideal day. Write down or sketch as many details as you can. You might want to break up the activities into chronological time frames as well, i.e. a separate chart for the morning, afternoon and evening.
Here are some examples:
When?: after waking up in the morning at 7 a.m.
Where?: on my wooden verandah overgrown with bouganvillea, in my cane rocking chair, overlooking the sea
What?: drinking a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and enjoying a breakfast of sweet juicy papaya and crispy toast
Who?: together with my beloved soulmate
Why? starting my day in a relaxed manner
How? contemplating the view and enjoying the intimacy of conversation
or:
When?: at 10 a.m.
Where?: in my large airy violet-walled art studio stocked with everything I could possibly need
What?: conducting a workshop on collage
Who?: together with lively creative workshop attendees
Why?: this is the course I'm currently giving
How?: with active participation, music in the background,
Spend some time imagining and filling in your diagram or list, then write down your story in the present tense as though you are living it. Fill it with details and make it vivid. Get excited about it. This is, after all, about creating your ideal future.
Read your ideal day visualization out loud to yourself every day or week with enthusiasm. If you visualize an event in great detail and with a lot of emotion, your subconscious mind will be "conned" into believing that it’s really happening. This is important, because once your subconscious believes your visualization to be a fact, the Universe will start sending you an endless amount of ideas and opportunities to start living your ideal life.
I first came across the term creative visualization when I read the book of the same name by Shakti Gawain in the early 1980s. The term may have been new to me then, but not the concept. I had been doing magic rituals for some years before and realized that creative visualization and magic were one and the same. Dion Fortune defined magic as "the art of changing consciousness at will" and I recently came across this definition of creative visualization: "Creative visualization is not just a technique. It is a state of consciousness. It is a consciousness in which we realize that we are the continuous creator of our universe and take responsibility for it. "
The idea is that we are always creating our own reality; what we need to do is start consciously creating it. This thought has been flying around the personal development scene much more recently with all the new books and sites about manifestation, Law of Attraction, etc. I truly believe it is a good thing that more and more people are becoming aware and living more consciously. BUT ...
Where's the fun?
A lot of the information concentrates on manifesting abundance (many seem to focus on money) and is presented in a deadly serious manner. I'm not saying it's not a serious business (literally business for many!), but a little lightheartedness and humour might not be amiss. My daughter actually pointed this out to me the other day when she said she was sick of the whole spirituality shebang; it used to be much more fun when we sat in front of the altar chanting spells and dancing around standing stones. Out of the mouth of babes ...
We shouldn't just listen to our kids; we should emulate them and PLAY more. Rituals are a good way to play with your imagination. It is much more fun to dress up in red flowing clothes at the full moon and chant spells on the beach or even in front of an altar filled with visual images, candles, etc. Adding a little drama to your visualizing puts you in the mood and prepares your mind and gets those alpha brain waves going.
Once the scene is set (yes, I think of it as a play), it is so much easier to focus on the actual technicalities of creative visualization. Then you can sit down and let your imagination run wild on what you want to manifest. For instance, if you want to manifest love in your life, you might dress in red, light a candle or two, burn some rose oil in an oil burner, put on some music and then visualize your ideal relationship. The principles are the same: use all your senses in imagining you and your beloved being together. Enjoy the feeling of togetherness and love, smell your happiness, hear the violins playing ... Just engage all your senses in some way even before starting the visualization. You'll already be in "pretend mode" and visualization is all about "acting as if".
You might want to end your ritual with a statement. This one works for me:
This, or something better, now manifests for me in totally satisfying and harmonious ways, for the highest good of all concerned. So mote it be. Blessed be.
Then let go of the ritual and start enjoying the moment. Have fun!
