Ultimate guide to crystals and stones - Uma Silbey 2016

Visualization and Crystals
More Quartz Crystal and Stone Energy Practices

Visualization is a picture that we build in our mind’s eye using a series of interlinking thoughts, each thought creating an aspect of the picture. The larger or more complex the picture, the more thoughts are needed. Our concentration and clarity of mind are necessary to hold the various aspects of the picture together to finally create one complete vision. The use of our will underlies the creation of the thoughts as well as the ability to maintain our focus. The visualization that we focus on both creates thought waves as well as an actual thought form that matches what we are seeing in our mind’s eye. The quality and strength of our vision and thought determine the exact nature of the thought waves and form.

To visualize, we need to use two abilities. The first is the ability to maintain the clarity and focus of our mind, a development that was discussed in Chapter Three. The second is the ability to use our thought to create the pictures themselves that we then view internally. This ability comes naturally for some of us, while for others it comes with some difficulty. If visualization is difficult, the following is a crystal practice that can help.

INCREASING THE ABILITY TO VISUALIZE USING QUARTZ CRYSTALS

Sit comfortably with your spine straight opposite a large quartz crystal or a quartz crystal ball. It is helpful to darken the room and put some form of light behind the crystal for illumination.

1. Close your eyes, clear your mind, and ground and center yourself.

2. Next, open your eyes and gaze into the crystal or crystal ball for one minute.

3. After a minute, look away from the crystal and close your eyes. Try to maintain the picture of what the crystal looked like in your mind.

4. While recalling what you saw, say it aloud or dictate it into a tape recorder. This process will help you maintain the picture in your memory. Do this three times.

5. Next, gaze into the crystal or crystal ball for two minutes and again try to remember what it looked like as you speak of what you saw.

6. Again, gaze into the crystal or crystal ball for three minutes, noticing even more of the details, recalling your vision as you dictate it aloud.

7. You can eventually increase your time to ten minutes and see if you can recall every detail that you saw in that time.

8. When you are through, clear the crystal and yourself. It is not important that you keep this information unless you discover something important for yourself.

This process will help us to retain ever-larger pictures in our mind’s eye. When recalling and dictating what was seen in the crystal or crystal ball, we should attempt to look into our mind’s eye, remembering what the crystal looked like, rather than remembering our thoughts about the crystal. The crystal or crystal ball will help amplify what we see in our mind’s eye and will help in our remembering. If we wear a crystal over our third eye, harmonizing it with the crystal we are gazing into, it will help with this process. Wear a single-terminated crystal in a headband or hold it over the third eye with the tip pointing upwards.

Sometimes people may feel that visualization is only imagination and therefore dismiss its power. Whether we want to call it visualization, imagination or any other similar word, because of the strength of the mind—body connection, it is more powerful than we suppose. In fact, it could be said that the human brain doesn’t know the difference between visualization and reality. When we visualize an action, for example, we stimulate the same regions in the bran that we do when we actually perform the action, so visualization has a very similar impact. Both increase performance. In other words, our mental practices can be almost as effective as our physical practices, and doing both is more effective than doing either one alone.

Visualization is good for altering our emotional states as well as our physical abilities. Since our emotions are a result of our thoughts, if we can alter our thoughts, we can alter our emotions. So, if we are feeling depressed because we think we aren’t good looking or are in some way less capable than others, for example, we can employ positive visualization to change the depressed emotional state to one that is more positive. The same applies with attempting to reach a goal. If we visualize or imagine ourselves reaching our goal with as much detail as possible, allowing these images of success to reach deep into our subconscious, we are more likely to duplicate these images of success in the real world. (Of course, some may argue that our entire world is merely a manifestation of our thoughts, that it is the way it is because we experience it through the filter of our expectations.) Because illness is so often influenced by our thinking and expectancies, and since visualization has such a strong influence on our body due to the body—mind connection, visualization is an equally powerful aid to healing.

All in all, mental imagery impacts our cognitive processes in the brain, our motor control and performance, our attention, our perception, and our memory. When we activate several of these processes, we can use visualization to experience far-reaching subsequent physiological, psychological, or social effects.

For visualization to be successful, it is important that we not only use mental imagery or visual images, but also that we reinforce it with all other types of sensory processes by including smells, tastes, sounds, imagery of touch and texture and even of temperature, and any of the other myriad sensual or perceptual stimuli that our mind can receive, store, and re-create. All perceptual stimuli can affect our brain the same way, not just our visual perception, and each of the differing perceptions will reinforce the others, strengthening the power of our visualization.

Last but not least, it is important to see ourselves as having already reached our goals or already having had a particular experience when visualizing. In other words, it is better to visualize ourselves as already having been healed rather than in the process of being healed, as already having found someone to love, or as already feeling more confident and self-assured.

Because of their power to amplify thought and intention, as well as to stimulate the creative and psychic energy center of the third eye, quartz crystals are powerful tools to help us be able to visualize. Quartz crystals and other stones can be used to help us maintain our focus so we can hold a visualized thought without wavering, thus making our visualization stronger. The power to visualize also helps us to do such crystal and stone work as thought and imagery projection, maintaining a strong focus without the intrusion of conflicting thoughts, apprehending and changing subtle energy pathways in the body, charging stones with energy, programming crystals and stones, and in the many other ways mentioned throughout this book.

WHAT CAN BE VISUALIZED CAN BE MADE REAL.

Yellow jade, amethyst, green malachite, and clear quartz crystals combine to bring energy and personal power, the insight needed to discover and reach our goals, and the wisdom of the heart to boost self-confidence. Sit and meditate with this energy grid.

VISUALIZATION FOR SELF CONFIDENCE

1. Sit upright on the ground, floor, or in a straight-backed chair if you are unable to sit on the ground or floor. If you’re sitting on a chair, place your feet flat on the ground.

2. Surround yourself with the basic energy power grid using four single-terminated clear quartz crystals, preferably at least four inches in length. With their tips pointing inward toward your body, place one crystal in front of you, the other behind you, one on your right side, and the other on your left side.

3. Place a yellow or golden colored stone between each clear quartz so you are also surrounded with four yellow stones. If they have tips, point them in towards your body.

4. Place one smaller amethyst on top of each of the four clear crystals. If they have tips, point them in towards your body.

5. Hold a gold or yellow colored stone, one in each hand. If the stones have tips, point them upward towards your arms.

6. Place a double-terminated, round, oval, or marquis-shaped green stone on your heart chakra, either wearing it as a pendant (usually requiring a twenty-four to twenty-six-inch chain) or securing it with tape. Place another gold stone slightly below your navel point, about two inches below your belly button, either by wearing a low-slung chain below your waist or securing it with tape. If double-terminated or marquis shaped, point the tips vertically upward and downward. Place a small round, marquis, oval, or double-terminated lapis, sodalite, or royal blue stone on your third eye chakra, either by wearing a headband or securing it with tape.

7. Gazing at the circle of stones surrounding you, imagine that they are connected with one another to create a ring of golden light that blazes brightly surrounding you.

8. Close your eyes and feel that this golden firelight, charged by the large clear crystals, shines with increasing brightness, so much so that the golden light rises up to surround you completely until you glow as brilliantly and powerfully as the sun.

9. Next, imagine that this golden sunlight joins with the stones in your hands to flow up your arms to fill your body with light so that you are eventually one with the sunlight surrounding you, one glowing sunlit orb of light inside and out.

10. Now, imagine that the green stone on your heart chakra begins to glow brightly, so much so that its energy enters your heart chakra, completely filling it with bright green, glowing light. See your heart chakra as opening wider and wider, eventually becoming so open that there are no longer any edges to it, and it is only a glowing green light-filled endless space, powerful yet calm.

11. Imagine that your breath flows in and out of your heart center. Continue to breathe through your nose with long, even, calm breaths, each breath filling you with loving strength.

12. Now imagine that the stone on your third eye begins to glow with a royal blue radiance, your forehead, face, and head relaxing more and more as the royal blue glows.

13. Bringing your attention back to your green glowing heart center and the radiantly brilliant golden glow throughout and around you, silently repeat these words to yourself: “I am.” Silently say the word “I” with every inhale and “am” with every exhale.

14. Continue to repeat the words “I am” for ten minutes. If you like, you can continue for up to an hour. If you cannot maintain your focus for the ten minutes, start by repeating “I am” for at least three minutes. If your mind wanders, just bring it back to the repetition of the words.

15. When you are done, sit silently, basking in the feeling of “I,” feeling strong, complete, satisfied, and perfect just as you are. As “I am” you are free, capable, confident, strong, loving, and wise … completely perfect as you are.

16. When you are done, open your eyes and, one by one, remove the third eye stone, the heart chakra stone, and the stones from your hands, placing them on the ground in front of you. Then remove the stones surrounding you in the order in which you placed them, dismantling the basic Personal Power Energy Grid. As you do this, retain the state of consciousness of “I am.”

17. When you are ready, rise up, making sure that you are grounded before you leave for your daily life. Be sure to clear your stones.

18. If you like, you can keep one of the stones with you as you go about your life. Every time you see it, think of it, or feel the stone in your pocket, let it remind you of the “I am” state or consciousness, which is always with you and can never be taken away from you by anyone or any circumstance. Let this state of consciousness always bring you joyful, loving confidence and strength.

Note: A variation of this visualization practice is to do it lying down. Some of us will find that to be more comfortable. However, the danger in this is that we can become so relaxed that our mind drifts and we lose our focus, or that we actually fall asleep. If we decide to lie down, instead of taping the stones, just place them on the heart chakra and third eye.

Visualization and Achieving Our Goals

As mentioned earlier, visualization is a very powerful tool to use to help us reach our personal goals. However, even though it is powerful, visualization alone generally won’t be all that we need to do to reach our goal. We still have to act, to do those things or perform those actions in the real world that, along with visualization, will successfully bring us to our goal. Visualization can help us see clearly what actions we need to take, the ways we may be stopping ourselves from achieving our goals, emotional blockages we may have that block our way, and other impediments that may exist in the real world and ways that we can go around them or break through them. Besides helping stimulate our brain in the ways needed, visualization can also bring us the motivation and willpower that we need to achieve our goals.

The following is a good crystal and stone practice that will help. For this practice we will be setting up a basic Manifesting Power Grid, which will help power us toward our visualized goal and help us see what we need to do to achieve that goal. It will also help balance our resulting personal empowerment with our open heart so we won’t become power hungry, greedy, or insensitive. An open heart will help us regulate our energy output so we won’t burn out.

PRACTICE: ACHIEVING GOALS WITH VISUALIZATION, QUARTZ CRYSTALS, AND STONES

1. Sit upright or lie down as in the prior visualization practice. Surround yourself with four lava or igneous rocks of similar size, one in front or over your head, one in back or under your feet, and one on each side. These rocks should be at least five inches in diameter or four inches long. If they have been formed into points, face the tips toward your body, bringing the energy into your aura and body.

2. Place four bright red jasper, garnet natural crystals, red carnelian, or other red stones in between each igneous or lava rock. Preferably, these should be at least two inches in length or diameter. The brighter and clearer the red stone, the smaller it can be. If these stones have been formed into points, point the tips in toward your body.

3. Place eight single-terminated, equally powerful clear quartz crystals between each red stone and igneous or lava rock with the tips facing your body. These will amplify and unify the power of the red and lava rocks.

4. Next, place one red or orange aventurine or any other orange stone in each hand, making sure they are similar in power to each other.

5. On your third eye chakra, place a Herkimer diamond (preferably) or a very clear and bright double-terminated quartz crystal with the terminations pointing vertically upward towards your crown and down towards the bottom of your spine.

6. Finally, place a rose quartz, rhodonite, pink calcite, or any other pink stone on your heart chakra to balance the fire-like manifesting energies of the other stones.

7. Gazing towards the stones surrounding you, imagine that they connect with each other to create a glowing, warming circle of fire.

8. Close your eyes and breath naturally through your nose, maintaining the vision of the fire. Holding your palms upward in front of you, silently beckon the power of the flames to flow up through your hands and arms, through the manifesting orange stones so that their twin energies slowly fill your entire body in glowing firelight. The more you fill with light, the more power you draw into your body and mind, so much so that you soon radiate pure energy and strength, fueled by the fire and earth, tempered with your open heart. Know that with such strength comes the ability to overcome any obstacle and fuel any dream.

9. Now, retaining this feeling of radiant power and strength, bathed in red and orange, anchored both by the black volcanic earth and the pink open heart, shift your focus to your third eye and the clear quartz or Herkimer diamond. In your mind’s eye, envision a goal that you would like to achieve. It can be something physical, mental, or emotional.

10. As you create this vision in your mind’s eye, imagine yourself as already having reached your goal. After envisioning yourself as reaching your goal, notice any feelings, thoughts, or instructive ideas that may come to you. These can provide instruction and guidance.

11. Next, imagine that the orange light from the second chakra, orange manifesting stones in your palms, flows upward to join with your third eye and clear crystal. See that you are at the same time supported on a seat of black stone and red fire. Together these energies form an energized triangle, the red and black on the bottom, the orange on the sides, and the third eye its pinnacle.

12. While remaining concentrated in this powerful vision, feel as if this triangle of light forms a powerful manifesting, upward pointing pyramid—a volcano of fire bringing new life and new beginnings. With each inhale, draw this volcanic power into the center of your being. As you do so, it will bring you further strength and ability and further fuel the achievement of your goal.

13. Retaining this powerful feeling, again shift your attention back to your goal and see yourself as having achieved it. Feel yourself as satisfied and happy, your goal achieved. Feel the volcanic, creative energy that lies within and is supporting you in the realization of this goal.

14. Looking into your mind’s eye once again, see each step that you took to achieve your goal, the critical, undermining, judgmental part of your mind silent, overpowered by your sense of capability. Learn from this so that you can replicate this later in real life after this visualization.

15. Remain in this visualization, while retaining your feelings of power and strength, and silently repeat this affirmation over and over: “I AM CAPABLE, STRONG, AND GOOD.” Hold your hands in your lap with your palms facing upward while still holding the stones.

16. When you are done, place the orange stones down in front of you, remove the third eye stone, and then the clear crystal. Remove the stones from their circle in the reverse order in which you laid them down, seeing the fire slowly disappear, becoming one with Mother Earth.

17. Keep one of the orange stones with you in your pocket or place it where you can see it often. Let it help empower you as well as remind you each time you feel it or see it.

18. Clear your stones (except for the orange one you are carrying) and yourself.

This visualization can help us achieve any goal that we desire. It can also show us the ways that we keep ourselves from reaching our goals, whether it be from feelings of being undeserving, unworthy, unenergetic, or incapable; by certain ways we act or don’t act; or any other form of self-sabotage that so often leads to failure. From feeling like a victim of life, we can, instead, feel inspired and creative with the power and energy to achieve anything we desire.