Exercise: Every time before you go to sleep at night, you visualize a beautiful cup waiting to be filled with all experiences of your night dreams. The cup rests near your bed and when you wake up in the morning, you imagine drinking from the cup.
This is a symbolic way of saying that you intend to remember your dreams, to download them from the other side, you intend to merge physical reality and spiritual reality. You see, everybody travels great distances every night, but we rarely remember them.
The more attention you put on this exercise, the more you repeat it, the more the mere symbol becomes a reality – like a programming code or command executed by your subconscious.
The exercise uses the indirect, symbolic image to bring about a result. The subconscious mind is susceptible to images. After about twenty nights of drinking your “imaginary” dream experiences in the morning, your subconscious becomes habituated to the idea and then all you have to do is to imagine drinking from the cup to remember the other side.
The first time you do the exercise you verbally define what the cup is intended to do. To make it more intense you can have an actual physical cup beside your bed, but I use a visualized cup because there’s no real cup as beautiful. It should always be the same cup – for habituation. Before going to bed “This cup is filled with my dreams at night”. When waking up imagine drinking it and replaying what you dreamed.
Initially this kind of exercise can feel vague and ineffective. With repetition it gains a life of its own. Whatever you fill with attention becomes more real.
Another symbolic exercise.
Imagine wood burning in a chimney. Take a moment to imagine dancing fire, burning embers, the crackling and snapping of wood, the smell. Think of one thing that bothers you. Imagine writing it on a piece of paper and cast it into the fire. Watch it burn and disappear. Think of another thing that’s been bothering you. Imagine writing it and then burning it. Continue for every thing that is currently bothering you until you’ve burned all your worries.
Again it’s an indirect symbol for a direct result.
For added intensity, use a real fire and real pieces of paper that you write your worries on. If that’s not practical, merely visualizing also has a powerful effect, especially if done repeatedly. If you do this as a one-off it may not be convincing, but if you do it say 20 days in a row or once a week or once a month, it gains momentum. Your subconscious is much more powerful than a computer because it can manifest physical reality.
This particular exercise could be balanced out with a positive visualization. After burning all that bothers you, you could imagine things you’re grateful for. Imagine writing them on a piece of paper. Don’t burn them. You could visualize putting the good thoughts into a glass of water and then drinking the water. You keep them inside.
I gave you three symbolic exercises. I recommend you not to practice more than one or two during the same phase of your life, because the subconscious likes consistency. You could do one exercise for a few months before you set up a new programming.
I once ran a doorway exercise for a couple of weeks. Doorways, gates, entrances and exists were defined as entering a new state. Every time I saw a doorway, I intended that I emerge on the other side feeling even better than before. Then I went through the doorway. I repeated it so often that it took on a life of its own. After a few weeks of this, I didn’t even have to make the intention anymore, every doorway became an automatic entry into a better inner state.
One of my favorite exercises has been to link certain desired results to my tennis game. I’d say “this tennis game symbolizes how quickly and easily I will achieve my goal XYZ”. For example, I was intending to win a coaching-contract with a large local company and said “If I win this tennis match, I will work with that company”.
The game also shows me what attitude I need to achieve it. This is a risky exercise and it may not be appropriate for all of you, because there’s the chance of losing the game, by which I’ve programmed my subconscious that I won’t achieve the goal. But it also greatly improves my tennis game, because something “real” is now at stake.
That’s how the symbolic creation of reality works. Feel free to come up with your own symbolic exercises to achieve specific results.
