Visualization

I have a cousin.
He happened to mention during a casual conversation, that he considered himself very fortunate in being able to effortlessly ‘visualize’ when asked to do so, as a part of some training exercise etc.
We usually end up (or rather begin, to be more precise), with such abstract looking topics of discussion, soon after the brief preliminaries, when ever we meet. And over a period of time, I find that our lack of proximity did not dull our intimacy in the least. On the other hand, we find ourselves having transcended the need to remind ourselves being ‘cousins’ to each other!
I therefore learnt that as far as humans are concerned, proximity is not a ‘must’ for intimacy. And intimacy at subtler levels, are of greater refinement in quality, and obviously therefore, add to deeper experience of relationships!
When he told thus about visualization skills, it led me to wonder if it is really true that some others are not so fortunate to have those skills, when they seem to struggle to visualize! If they do not have even the potential, how come dreams occur to almost everybody? Then it is merely a question of converting the potential into a ‘capability’!
And to what purpose? Well, intuitive skills ‘lean’ a bit on those ‘visualization’ skills, if I may venture to infer. Those who are fairly ‘well settled’ in life may try to ward off this skill saying that they are able to manage ‘life’ even without it. But not really so. It takes some effort to discover this newer dimension of ‘conscious’ living to decide or abstain to ‘choose’ how to live. ‘Out of box thinking’ can come handy to almost anyone, in daily life situations too. For that we need to step out of our mind’s box (the ‘set’ attitude or style of thinking). That reminds me, if “sentiments” have something to do with that out of box thinking! Visualization skill is an integral part of ‘out of box thinking’ since there has to be a ‘design’ or lay-out, for something that is being tried out for the first time as far as an individual is concerned. Students need no further emphasis regarding use either of these.
Perhaps, simple tasks that we perform in our daily life, can be tried first out as ‘visuals’ , at least a few moments ahead of our physical performance. This really requires not great effort, leisure etc. On the other hand it would enhance better focusing abilities too. And with sustained efforts, those simple tasks which look like a drudgery, or fatigue causing could turn up to be energizing ones instead! Because we are now at a game, trying to match the visuals and its actualizations! As an example, if we look at words in a sentence, each group of words has a ‘picture’ associated with it. If we try to ‘create’ that picture, the very words seem to sink a bit deeper into us, and memorizing would seem a bit easier. Students who seem to struggle with memorizing exercise could benefit from this simple technique. But this cannot be a ‘last-minute’ deal. Initially it takes time to acquire this skill, so some planning is needed for optimizing the time management.
Our ancients had that ‘story-telling’ sessions during bed-time, for children. This took care of converting the potential into a capability. Now, only ‘good’ schools seem to think about allotting some sessions towards this!
The mention of ‘sentiments’ might have raised serious doubts, regarding its relevance in the subject of discussion. May be it has not much to do with visualization skills. Basically, what we call as ‘sentiments’ is something that has crystallized out of a pattern of emotions. We actually ‘grow’ into what ever kind of sentiment that we seem to carry. It does not happen right from birth itself. May be there is some ‘polarization’ due to birth reasons. Sentiments seem to distance itself from logic. They come closer to emotions. We at times, ‘drop’ our logic, and oblige to somebody’s request, when they ‘touch’ our sentiments with a bit sensitive use of words! But again, not all emotions are some sort of sentiments. We have that ‘family’ sentiments, ‘caste’ sentiment, racial sentiments, patriotic sentiments, religious sentiments, social sentiments, etc etc…. Even the belief in ‘superstitions’ is a very strong & personal sentiment! And also what we have ‘conveniently’ named as ‘negative’ sentiments. Negative to whom and why is debatable! I tried to find an ‘exact’ matching word in other languages, for that word ‘sentiment’. English dictionary itself attempts to give only a ‘feel’ of the word, leaving it to the readers to ‘grasp’ its true meaning from contextual use etc. My limitation is the proximity that I have to ‘other’ languages, that is just the Indian languages. But this limitation seems to offer a ‘blessing’ in disguise. The difficulty in extracting an exact word, leads me to wonder if our ancient people chose, not to pamper any kind of ‘sentiment’. I am tempted to give some credulity to this theory because, sentiments of any kind seem to cause some kind of obstacle to spiritual evolvement. So, at some time or other, one has to get out of the shackles of these sentiments to be able to climb further into spiritual path. The crude practices of ‘aghora’ yoga seem to substantiate the urgency we find in their effort to ‘drop’ such strong sentiments!
Even in intimate relationships, if there is a ‘clash’ of mismatching sentiments, the quality of relationship is at stake! Even if one person is sentimental about something, and the other is not, it is a fight of logic versus ‘illogical’. And when we are trying to deal with something ‘illogical’, we ourselves cannot deal in an illogical way. We have to logically understand and accept the fact that we have only few choices. Put up with the other persons sentiments, compromise, avoid confrontation, etc. The last choice would be to help the other person to come out of such sentiments. Last, because it the toughest one, time consuming and painstaking too, effort-wise.
So, I felt that sentiments do tend to curb the freedom to visualize, to some extent. We find some kind of ‘rigidity’ with people who carry too many sentiments. There is nothing wrong with sentiments. We cannot unite unless we have a ‘spirit’ of patriotism. The spirit of self-sacrifice is usually boosted or ‘fuelled’ by some of the ‘good’ sentiments, or shall I say ‘healthy’ sentiments! Personally I would like to have all my sentiments well under my control, to be invoked ‘at will’! Oh! , if that does happen, then, I wonder if such items will have to be taken ‘off’ the list of ‘my’ sentiments? Here I spin the web of confusion around myself! I wonder if I am tooo sentimental about sentiments itself, or whether I lack the ‘visual’ skills to imagine the difficulty & discomfort I cause to readers, who therefore abandon any possible inclination to even send a feedback or response!
Regard fully yours,
Psn (5th April, 2009)