6. "Door" much the same as with #5 just above, except instead of a garden, park, or remembered beautiful scene, have your partner imagine being in front of a closed door. Have your partner describe that door, and the feel of that door as if s/he had just put a hand on it. Then have your partner suddenly fling open that door to catch by surprise whatever's there to see on the other side of it, and ask his or her first impressions of what was there or "what might have been there." Get your partner to describing that impression, even if it were hardly there, as if it were still there, see what else comes into view.
If nothing at all came, repeat the door procedure but with colorful, textured window curtains, or with jumping around the end of a high wall, with the idea that something unexpected but valuable or useful will likely be in view on the other side if partner opens that view suddenly enough. The more unexpected the contents of the imagery, the better your chances that the image is coming from further ranges of the brain and not just the conscious treadmill portion (which is likely to deal up pictures of what you already consciously know about the context or present situation) . The more surprising the imagery contents, the better your chances of getting sensitive, comprehensively based fresh perceptions and insights.
Both you and your partner please note: after you have become conscious of your imagery and have some practice in observing and describing it, you can also use such doors, curtains, corners, etc. as a way to find ingenious possible answers and solutions to questions and problems. In contact with this side of the visual barrier, pose your question. Then, suddenly, look into the "answer space" beyond and describe your first impression of what's there, with the expectation of being surprised. If your answer is metaphoric and hard to understand, as sometimes happens, find second and third such "answer-spaces" but program to be shown exactly the same answer to the same question, though shown to you in a wholly different way or picture. What's the same when everything is different, becomes key to the meaning: inductive inference. Take any answer, however clear or certain-meaning, with a grain of salt, verify it as you would ideas and answers from any other source.
Key to the above, the following, or any other "back-up" procedure to ensure visual imagery happening, is: Once you find any kind of impression at all, "describe the dickens out of it" as if it were still in view, until more appears. Keep finding fresh things to say about it which describe it, even if it's long gone, until more appears. The ideal discovery state, and the ideal personal growth state, is the process of rapidly describing in rich, accurate detail the flow of visual mental images which are undirected except for their intermodulations with your rich treasure-trove of beyond-consciousness understandings and perceptions.
The ability to Image-Stream is natural; the difficulty some initially have is learned, artificial. Children just don't have any difficulty seeing their inner images. The very highest incidence of people having difficulty "getting pix" this writer has thus far met have been people who train other people in imagery or in various forms of meditation! Yet none, even of these, is able to go through all 6 of the above back-up procedures and all of those following below, without "getting pix" and starting to get the benefits of visual thinking.
It almost doesn't matter how you get the rapid flow of detailed, sensory-rich textured description going. Once you do have it going, to report accurately actual ongoing inner phenomena is so much more rewarding than is "just making up a story" that, over time, this reinforcive effect in the practice of Image-Streaming will train anyone to be a highly efficient, sensitive, accurate observer, not only of his inner imagery but in all senses, interior and exterior. It's getting the richly textured flow of describing started, and keeping it going without interruption, pause or much repetition, that's important: the rest will naturally take care of itself. Here are some more ways to get that initial flow going:
7. Music Listen to some richly textured music with your eyes closed (and tape recorder ready to record) preferably classical music, French Impressionistic music or progressive jazz, with "enough music per unit of music" to attract and involve your more sensitive faculties. Notice when you have an image or images and begin describing, persist in that describing. (A very old idea indeed remember Walt Disney's Fantasia?) If you've really had a problem visualizing, up until now, a live partner could be invaluable at this point, not only as your live listener but to spot your attention-cues when some especially strong image starts to catch your attention: eye movements under the lids, or breathing pause, or shifts in face and neck and shoulder muscles ...
8. Background sounds Pick up a record or tape of background sounds, at one of the "New Age"-type record shops or bookstores or health food stores. Listen to these background sounds with eyes closed. Detailedly describe, to tape or to live listener (who can also act as your Spotter alerting you when you are responding with attention-cues "what were you seeing just then?") what images these sounds evoke for you (which may or may not be the images those sounds logically should evoke for you go with what actually comes up). Let the sounds end but keep on describing, noticing when other images emerge and describing these in turn, since this use of evocative sounds is a form of directed imagery and you wish to go on to the undirected form i.e., Image-Streaming.
9. House blindfolded Go around your house blindfolded feeling different objects. Describe at length the appearance of each item you feel. Or, get someone to set up a grab-bag for you, of many highly diverse objects, each object for you to feel, to describe the feeling of, and regardless of whether you successfully identify what it is, to describe the appearance of. See if at some point in working through your grab-bag this way, eyes closed or blindfolded, you don't notice other images also coming.....
(This is also a mildly effective creative problem-solving technique. If you've been working to solve a problem and haven't yet gotten your a-ha! to resolve it, you can turn to perception by asking yourself, 'How would a blind man experience this problem differently than I? How would he see it differently than I'm seeing it now?' or deaf person? Or any other sense handicapped? or dwarf? Or
7'2" basketball center? Anything to change the way you are looking at the problem and to get you from your stuck "knowledge" and your neuronal habituation into perception...)
10. Air sculpting with eyes closed (and other people not about!) begin "sculpting" from thin air (or even from clay) some object d'art. Keeping eyes closed, then "hold your sculpture in your hand" and describe its appearance in detail. See if other images don't also begin to emerge for you.
11. Passenger when riding as a passenger in train, bus or car, describe in detail with your eyes kept closed what you think is the appearance of the landscape or street scenes you are riding through. See if after some of this you don't notice other images also happening.
Each of these, you see, is calling on other resources to help you visualize your way through these situations. How many times have you had to feel your way through the dark to some goal, even though in your own house such as going to the bathroom without waking anyone else. What about all those fictional stories about being kidnapped and the victim figuring out where he was while blindfolded in the escape car?
Another item of the same type, setting up a situational, multi-sensory demand upon your imaging faculties to bring their response above conscious threshold:
12. Eat Blindfolded describe the appearance, in detail, of what you're eating and see if more pictures don't also come.
13. Arrange 4-5 different delicious aromas from your spice rack. Set them before you, unstoppered. Shuffle them around with eyes closed and with eyes kept closed, try to identify them. See if any of the aromas trigger further visual images. If they trigger only memories instead, describe a scene from one of those memories in as vivid detail as you can, with eyes kept closed, and see if other images don't develop which can then also be described ....
Another type of method, again the goal being that of providing some visual stimulus from which to begin the rapid flow of describing to pull onto line other, subtler free imagery also to describe ...
14. At night with all lights out, just inside your bathroom, eyes open, orient toward the lights, turn them on and immediately close eyes! You should find some rather elaborate after-images or even a scene of some sort describe the dickens out of it and see what else comes.....
Variant: flicking the bathroom lights on and off several quick times with eyes open, then closing eyes and proceeding as above. See how your after-imagery comes out with the lights finally out; and with the lights finally on.
15. Obtain a simple stroboscope (IF you are not epileptic!). Set the stroboscopic light to somewhere between 4 and 12 beats per second. Look into that stroboscopic light with eyes kept closed describe as best you can the evoked colors and patterns for awhile and be alert to other images also happening.
IF no other kind of image happens after 10-15 minutes of this, start describing some imagined or remembered scene in detail, while continuing to look into the strobe light with closed eyes and be alert to such imagery as may develop for you .... If nothing additional still comes, try again with the strobe set to different frequencies, whatever frequency makes the greatest color and pattern display to your closed eyes ....
Another type of method
16. Read a good, fully entertaining novel, or at least a story long enough to get really into. Then with tape set up and eyes closed, "word-paint" some scenes from the story besides those described by the author. See if more also then unfolds. Or, remember a very favorite story or novel and do likewise with that. Again, see if you can pick up on noticing other images also happening as you get well into the rapid descriptive flow, so that you can move from directed to undirected free association imagery.
The key in any event is (1) to get anything at all started from which to describe; (2) to describe so rapidly, run so fast, that to keep up the flow you have to reach beyond what you've consciously calculated, so that you can (3) force your loud-conscious mind to accept for processing fresh inputs from your subtler resources from beyond where it's already got everything all paved over.
You can make work out of this, or each of these and other options can be a fresh, enjoyable new exploration bringing you new experiences and opening toward new skills. Because we perceive more with pleasure than we do when not experiencing pleasure, we suggest that if you need any of these resources to get your Image-Streaming going, make that ploy as enjoyable an exploration as you can. To do so improves the chances that your senses and mind will open to fresh new perception, which is your purpose.
Other "Start-Up" Procedures for Anyone's Use:
Guided Paths Into Unguided Image-Streams
Favorites of many people are the 8 following procedures. Each provides a special guided imagery device which then can open for you into some especially enjoyable unguided free-flow Image-Streams. So much so, even if you are already normally able to simply "look in" and "get pix" with which to start describing to tape recorder or listener, you may want to occasionally vary your entry into the Image-Stream with one or another of the following guided starts one of this author's personal favorites is this next procedure ....
17. Tree and Cloud Imagine, and describe, walking in a meadow. Find yourself going uphill in this meadow toward a single immense tree at the very top of the hill. Engage all your senses in the experiencing of warm breeze, sunshine on your neck, face and shoulders, smells of the meadow, the pull of walking up a gradual slope for a long time, the variety of wildflowers, the sounds of the grasses, the sounds of your own steps in those grasses, and of your breathing .... To rest up from climbing that long hill, lie down in the soft moss at the base of the tree look up the tree's immense trunk, between its branches low and high, near and far, at the sky. See the clouds moving across the sky, as you lock at them up the trunk and from between the branches. See how the movement of the clouds makes you feel like the tree is moving instead. Experience how the movement of the clouds across the sky makes you feel as if it's the tree, the hill and you who are moving instead of the clouds .... Let that movement, let that experience, take you wherever, describing as you go.....
18. Windblown Leaf Be a leaf, or a fluff of dandelion, blowing with the wind, around corners of buildings and over trees and swiftly racing across an immense landscape..... Describe as you go, toward wherever ....
19. Beneath the Boat Imagine riding a boat gently onto the lake or downstream in a broad slow river. Peer down into the water, past the sparkle and the ripples, try to make out what's below there. At first maybe you see only the water reflections, ripples and sparkle in this imaginary boat ride but as you peer more intently, you begin to see .... ?
20. Climbing a steep hillside or mountainside, through a forest: describe this fully multisensory experience. As you approach the top, you near a clearing, the scenery unexpectedly opens up to show you .... what?
These next three are liked especially by those who are oriented toward science and technology
21. The elevator you are on is stopping, its door is opening where? (Some scene you've not seen before, some place you've not been before, the door slides open and (fast, very first impression!)
22. Be a seed or spore, floating in far outer space, cocooned and having floated comfortably and safely in space for millions of years. Now approach some world, different from any world you've ever seen before. Drift down onto that world, reporting back here as you go there, rapidly describe in detail as you see and experience more and more of this new world ....
Now be a person on that world. Suddenly look down where your feet would be if you were human, what do you see? What surface are you on? Continue describing from there ....
23. Radio Pulse imagine what it might be like, simply flowing as a pulse of electricity along some wire into a great radio telescope and transmitter what would it be like to be a radio wave pulsed out through that telescope? across deep space, between stars, between galaxies, to..... where? First impression: describe ....
This last device for now is of a type which frequently gives rise to truly high, great, illuminating experiences.....
24. Tremendous light you sense is on the other side of the door (or curtain), at the head of a long climb of stairs. A sense of excitement, expectation, high exhilaration, seems also to await you on the far side of that door (or curtain) . Describe that door or curtain, feel it, stroke it, describe it further; you sense something very bright or very powerful or very illuminating behind it. Suddenly: open that door, rise exhilarated into that light! So much light, at first you can't quite see what's there, but you begin to clear the air by breathing in the light, slowly and luxuriously and feeling more exhilarated with each breathful of light you take in, and there you begin to see around you.....what?
You can easily think of hundreds of other such devices for "triggering" a flow of images and experiences, and for shaping or partially shaping contexts without directing the images themselves.