The next step for you to practice is to take a photograph of some room or place outside of your home, or a picture from a magazine will do. Sit down and study it carefully. Note all the little details of the furnishings, the lines and positions of the furniture, even the wavy decorations. After close study of the picture, recalling one by one the different things that you studied in it, close your eyes and try to visualize the same picture until you have it complete.

If you find afterwards that you have forgotten or left out some of the details of your mental picture, do the work all over again. It is not only a case of memorizing the details of a room or a picture, or your impressions of them, but also of putting them into your own mental picture so clearly that you can see with your eyes closed. For unless you see the picture it will never be projected.

Next week I will tell you how to release such a picture from your mind and let it go forth. But this step should be undertaken when the picture is perfect, otherwise it will not appear correctly, if it appears at all, at the place where you wish to send it. All these points are just as true in sending messages as they are in sending pictures, as you will learn very soon when we come to that phase of the work.

Consider yourself a mental artist. Instead of using a brush, pen or color pigments, use your emotions, your wealth of imagination. If the scene you are to project is a rural one, try to hear mentally the running stream, recall the fragrance of new mown hay, the warmth of the mid-summer rays of the sun. Try to recollect the pleasing sensation of the inhalation of pure air. In other words, make your mental picture vivid, feel it as well as mentally seeing it.

Mental depression and despondency are generally caused by infrequent visualization, therefore lack of enthusiasm. The man or woman who lives a life of daily events just as they occur – in other words, those who accept life just as they find it – eventually find it monotonous, and they become apathetic. On the other hand, those who find happiness in life are the ones who live not for life, but for some other purpose. Life to them is a means to an end, and that is a mental desire or ideal. Things which you experience become merely events of the past in your consciousness. They are not incentives for future progress, nor do they arouse enthusiasm or a zest for life.

That which has not occurred and which you wish to bring into realization, is the force that draws you on in life. Your ideals are an imaginary existence not yet attained, and they are, therefore, magnetic attractions. They keep you enlivened. Consciousness of them brings you pleasure and happiness.

Start today to visualize something in life you earnestly feel you can eventually attain, for which you will strive. Elaborate on them ideal until your whole being thrills and pulsates with the thought of its possibilities. Live that ideal hourly. Of course, you should establish an ideal that is within the realm of personal accomplishments, so that you gradually attain it, and become encouraged by your daily success. You will learn how this idealism can change your life to one of hope and bring joy of living which is the greatest of all riches any man or woman can possess.

 

Photo by Frank McKenna/Unsplash