| There
is a stress here on the visual, with references to the eyes, seeing, and
the sun, and in first and last lines to "visions" -- and I suspect
that Solomon is focusing our attention on the powerful technique of creative
visualization.
Eidetic
Imagery
Over a century ago, genius and student of genius, Sir Francis Galton,
found that young children have vivid visual imaginations and what is called
"eidetic imagery", the ability to look at page then close their
eyes and still see the words clearly enough in the mind’s eye to
read them.
Although most people lose this ability as they grow up, due to neglect,
some, such as Enid Blyton and mystic engineer Nicola Tesla, practice and
retain it. Tesla was deliberately trained in the skill of visualization
by his parents as a child. Some simple visualization exercises are suggested
at the end of this section.
Dynamic
Images
The real creative power of visualization, however, lies in the fact that
mental images constantly change and mutate into new and exotic forms,
as Pierro Ferrucci describes in “Inevitable Grace”, saying:
"Everything the mind creates as though by some magic spell, comes
to life . . . Jung called this phenomenon ‘reality of soul’.
Internal images are not inert, but have an independent life of their own,
are as real as living things.
What Jung discovered was an instrument for inner exploration not unfamiliar
to many artists who had already been using it as a means of increasing
their creative powers. In some cases the images themselves appear and
speak".
Imagineering
When Michael Faraday sought to explain how some liquids could conduct
electricity, he pictured himself as a molecule in a solution, being pulled
to both positive and negative plates – soon seeing that if the water
caused neutral molecule to split into two parts, one positive and the
other negative, a process chemists now call dissociation, the oppositely
charged particles could then be attracted away in opposite directions
and so carry electricity through the solution.
Dynamic visualization also played a part in the invention of the safety
razor, as King Gillette explained, saying: "As I stood there with
the razor in my hand . . . the Gillette razor was born — more with
the rapidity of a dream than by a process of reasoning. In that moment
I saw it all: the way the blade would be held in a holder; the idea of
sharpening two opposite edges on a thin piece of steel; the clamping plates
for the blade, with a handle halfway between the two edges of the blade.
All this came more in pictures than conscious thought, as though the razor
were already a finished thing and held before my eyes. I stood there before
that mirror in a trance of joy
How
Designers Find New Fashions
Clothing designers picture a basic garment in the mind’s eye and
perhaps a person wearing it — then watch patiently as the image
takes on new forms -- lines, shapes, colours, materials and decorations.
By the same process the morphology of an ordinary animal can be transformed
into a cartoon figure.
How
Top Writers Create Dialogue
Barbara Cartland, described in a TV interview how she wrote her books
by lying relaxed on a couch, visualizing and listening to her characters,
and dictating what they said to her secretary. Charles Dickens described
a similar process, as did Hollywood script writer, Ib Melchior, who said
his characters take over and create action and dialogue which he then
records.
According his daughter, when Dickens was writing he would sometimes jump
up and rush over to a mirror where he would pull extraordinary faces and
talk rapidly in funny voices, attempting to get into the personas of his
characters. Such was his emotional intensity that he said that he “felt”
every single word he wrote. Agatha Christie, likewise, visualized her
characters and rehearsed their dialogue out loud on country walks.
Dickens said that he never started writing
a story down until he was obliged to by the mass of snippets, scenes,
characters, etc., he had visualized over the preceding weeks and months
and arranged “on different shelves of my brain, ready, ticketed
and labeled”, like boxes in a shoe shop.
Enid
Blyton’s Walking, Talking Images
The prolific Enid Blyton described a similar working method as follows:
"I shut my eyes for a few minutes, with my portable typewriter on
my knees — I make my mind go blank and wait — and then, as
clearly as I would see real children, my characters stand before me in
my mind’s eye . . . As I look at them, the characters take on movement
and life — they talk and laugh, and I hear them . . . The story
is enacted in my mind’s eye almost as if I had a private cinema
screen there . . . I watch and hear everything, writing it down with my
typewriter".
The Dutch artist Van der Beek, illustrator of the Enid Blyton’s
“Noddy” books also made powerful use of visualization, saying
that as he sat working: “Little Noddies would appear from everywhere
and crawl all over my desk”.
How
Choreographers Devise New Dance Routines
Choreographers visualize dancers moving to music, watching in the mind’s
eye as they spontaneously generate new movements. In a TV interview, Michael
Flatley, star of "River Dance" shows described how all his innovative
dance routines come from inside him, from the heart, visualized in his
mind’s eye. A choreographer who worked with Michael Jackson made
almost identical comments in an interview.
The
Business Scenario Method
In the business scenario method, which also requires well developed powers
of visualization, the business situation to be improved, such as a customer
making purchase or having something serviced, is pictured in the mind’s
eye, then patiently observed for creative changes to occur, as they will.
The creative breakthrough might be seen as a novel new arrangement or
procedure, or even “heard” as comments from the visualized
participants.
Practice
your Visualization Skills
Visualization skills can be practiced by viewing an object then closing
your eyes and picturing what you saw in the mind’s eye – and
also using simple exercises such as those below. Do not be surprised if
you find this difficult, and the images very fleeting. You will improve.
a)
Picture yourself making a sandwich. Mentally walk around the kitchen,
and find the butter and the bread — look in the cupboard, open the
refrigerator. Spread the butter. Now slice some cheese. Open the pickle
jar . . . and so on. Assemble the sandwich and try to taste it and feel
it in your mouth as you chew it.
b)
Picture a ball and let it change colour, acquire stripes, spots, then
pattern.
See it bouncing — faster/slower, higher/lower. Make it spin, backwards
and forwards.
Zoom in to see it so close you can see the rubber molecules, then so far
away it disappears.
c)
Turn the ball into a cube, a pyramid, a cylinder, a disk.
Cut the disk in half, then quarters — apply some glue and join the
pieces back together.
d)
Turn the ball into an apple, a pear, an orange, a football, a golf ball
– then make it shrink, swell and explode.
c)
Try to picture the molecules in a glass of water rushing about, colliding
with one another like snooker balls, bouncing back off the sides, some
shooting out of the surface and evaporating, crashing into more ponderous
molecules of the air. Mentally heat the water and see the molecules speed
up, see pockets of steam forming. Pretend you are a molecule or riding
on one.
d)
Count up to 20, trying to visualize the numerals being written on a chalk
board or on paper -- then count by tens up to a hundred.
e) Picture each of the letters of the alphabet in turn, seeing each one
in a variety of colours, materials, and in upper and lower case size.
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