Working with images is a powerful tool for healing and for transformation. As I struggled with changing my lifestyle, I’ve found my imagination to be a critical ally. We cannot become anything we cannot imagine. I consider imagery to be as integral to my healing as eating healthy food or taking supplements. Developing images that sustain you on your journey costs nothing, is a relaxing creative activity, and can build up resources inside you that continue working toward change even when you are engaged with other aspects of your life.
One of the first places I realized I needed an image overhaul was in my relationship to alcohol, as I tried to quit drinking. I found myself trapped in a place of resentment, feeling that the demand to stop drinking was being imposed on me against my will. My mind was full to crowding with images of the pleasures of alcohol – pictures of people laughing in groups as they drank, of red wine in a sparkling wineglass with the candlelight hitting it just so. My new alternative world was an empty place – tasteless like water is tasteless, silent and vacant.
I had to find a way to transfer my allegiance. If I had to abandon my pirate self, I was unwilling to become the staid accountant teetotaler. For someone with as vivid an imagination as I had through my childhood, I was surprisingly stuck with limited images. I realized that I had to create a non-drinking identity for myself that appealed to the part of me that wanted to be the adventurer, the hard-core other-side-of-the-law take-the-dare-first hip-flask-wielding character.
The real question formed: why does this particular character have to drink alcohol? Surely this is a function of our media culture. The outlaw consumes all things, smokes cigarettes and takes the women without asking and pulls out the gun when more of anything is necessary. Swigging from the hip flask is just one more macho prop in that. I started to wonder, what do I end up with if I take the alcohol out of that picture? Maybe I don’t need another type of image; maybe I just need another kind of outlaw.
I would have to become some even more radical kind of warrior, somebody who doesn’t drink because they prefer to be alert all the time, ready in an instant, someone who can’t afford to relax their perimeter. The master warrior, the kung-fu monk.
This extreme warrior has to be physically strong. This new version of outlaw refuses to participate in the aspects of the world that promote disease in the body – processed foods, sugars, alcohol. It is not a model of abstinence in which one cannot; it is a model in which I resist by choosing not to. The system wants us all as weakened couch potatoes, glued to the television, using our maxed out credit cards to order products which promise us strong muscles, but which will fail us. Our ill health is their profit. My new warrior refuses to participate.
She is willing to be uncomfortable. She is able to fast for days and sleep on the ground and climb mountains without gasping for air. (My psyche is complex. I have to go all the way or it won’t participate.)
Our extreme warrior has to be able to meditate and use energy as power. She knows her healing herbs, can generate energy from her hands to heal people, and knows how to be silent for long periods of time. She can move in any environment, wise and capable.
And there she is. In spending time, thinking her into existence, I have made her an aspect of myself. She becomes one of the voices in my head, and as time passes and I listen to that voice and develop the parts of myself she directs, she and I become more and more merged.
Suddenly, I am in a bar with friends, drinking my Nalgene of water, and the drunks look sloppy. Oddly, I am hiking a mountain, drinking tea in the teahouse, or doing yoga in the evenings. And, as with all new identities, as I allow myself to spend time being her, I become her. Right now, tonight, given the choice, with no outside influence, I would choose to stay home and play my didge to going out with my friends to a bar. She would choose this. We, together, choose this.
I don’t understand the mechanism involved, and don’t know that there is any real methodology to the process. I created an image of what I want to aspire to – as a personality, as a being – an image that appeals to certain tendencies in me. I gave this imaginary being details; she wears my face, but she is more than me, full of traits and qualities that, in her, seem attractive. I think about her when I am relaxing or meditating, and intentionally try to call the image of her up when I have to make a decision. I ponder what she would do-say-think if she were I and I were she. Then I do it, say it, think it. Slowly, I call upon her less, because I find my values and priorities are changing of their own volition. Each movement toward being her, being like her, prepares me for the next.
Take the time to develop an inner guide for yourself. Develop him or her as someone who is everything you’ve ever wanted to be. Use traits stolen from movies, from books, from friends, from the guy sitting near you on the bus. Notice the way she pushes her hair behind her ear when she reads, the way she kneels down to wash her wooden bowl in the stream, the way he mounts his motorcycle. Then get to know this imaginary friend, befriend him, turn to him for advice or direction whenever you are lost.
This is your higher self - your possibilities and your aspirations all rolled into an incredible being that belongs exclusively and entirely to you. He will teach you everything you need to know to make changes in your life. She will change as you change, expanding and morphing into even more for you to reach toward. The more time you devote to developing the image of your guide, the more power this image will have in your life. Trust her, as she is constructed of all your possibilities.
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