Can you train your visual memory?

[isis.auset5]

Hello!

Lately I've been realizing that my visual memory is close to non-existent, and that kind of worries me.

For example, I dream a lot. But, I don't dream with images. I mean, they're there, but they're very blurry and look like they're drawn rather than being, well, life-like. When I wake up, I can remember everything said, everything I felt, but nothing I saw.

When it comes to Tarot, when shuffling and thinking about the matter at hand, my house mates will visualize the people involved, whereas I can only think of words.

I can remember having a conversation with people, but I can't remember those people's faces.

Is it possible to improve this? I'm really, really worried.

Isis

[wombocombo]

Sure you can.

You can train yourself to do just about anything as long as it's remotely possible. Normally I dislike the methods of JoS, but this is an exception. Anyways, this is what I did when I was in your situation:

1. Use their Third Eye Opening exercise. Their are others like it on the internet, but they aren't as thorough. When I did it on the fourth day, I could tell. Biggest migraine I've ever had in my life. Was gone within about ten hours though.(this might not be necessary, but I'd recommend it.)

2. Practice void meditation. This isn't too difficult, but you must have patience and do it regularly. It basically consists of breathing in for a count of four, holding it for a count of four, and breathing out for a count of four. Do this until you're in a trance, you'll know it when you feel it.

3. Once you get good enough at going into a trance(i.e being able to go into it in less than five minutes), start trying to visualize while in the trance. Take a piece of paper and draw a simple shape, like a triangle. Then, go into a trance and try to visualize it as bright as you can. It will probably fade in and out the first few times and that's okay.

Do it often and you'll see that you're improving. It takes time and effort, but don't give up as it is an extremely valuable skill no matter what type of magic you do. There's likely tons of other ways of doing this, but like I said this is what I did and it worked great.

Third Eye Meditation:
http://www.angelfire.com/empire/serpent ... d_Eye.html

-wc

[isis.auset5]

Thank you very much, wombocombo

Isis

[manonthepath]

Hello Isis,

Sometimes our minds race from one thought or image to the next and this causes many to lose focus on the present moment. Sometimes we focus inward to the extent that we miss what's happening outside ourselves. Heck, sometimes we don't focus at all. An excellent exercise may be to focus your mind on what you see and to be truly present in the moment. When you are with friends make like you are seeing them for the first time. Note the hue in their eyes, the sheen in their hair, what colors they most often wear, try to determine if they are cold or warm from visual observation, try to closely observe their body language and aura. Try to use these observations to see more deeply into what's going on inside them. This may help you to improve things. It is important to control your emotions and the racing of the mind.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I have the problem most people do - ie. anything I try to hold in one place shakes, gitters, rearranges itself, etc.. Also when I try to do an exercise that requires me to either be floating away from the earth or growing to take it within myself I'm always stuck trying to think of the proper position of the sun, my lattitude, spatial orientation of the Milky Way, etc. which is something I need to just generalize out for a while in doing these exercises and backfill later.

Back when I first started dabbling with visualization exercises much I was using those suggested at the back of Rudolph Steiner's Outline of the Occult Sciences. They're okay, it's just that it was laborious enough to try and maintain images for ten minutes or to keep trying to re-create the same thing every three or four seconds for that span of time that I let go of that particular form of meditation.

Right now what I'm doing is really enjoying my LIRP/LBRP and trying to continuously add layers of meaning. Similarly if I recite the BOTA Pattern on the Trestleboard I imagine each sephira involved glowing radiantly at its appropriate point of my body with its correct color(s), having it's light envelope me when I say the sephira's key word (ie. victory, splendor, foundation, etc.), and imagining the color, Hebrew letter, and tarot key of the path inbetween. Thus if I do the PoT in the morning I start at Ain Soph (the first line) and descend from Kether to Malkuth. At night I reverse the order and follow the path of the lightning bolt back up from Malkuth to Kether and Ain Soph. The obvious challenge is Malkuth in that it's four colors - citrine, olive, russet, and black - slowly I seem to be doing better at holding them in the right order. None of this is stuff given in monograph of weekly lessons (if it comes in like that further down I got lucky) but it seems like a wonderful way to not only drill in what I'm learning but also jog my visual memory.

I think that might be the name of the game though - ie. if you're going to try visual exercises, make sure you very carefully tend the flame of your own motivation (you have a budgeted salary of discipline/motivation per day, week, and month generally speaking) and if anything find ways whenever possible to do wonderful meditations that happen to be richly visual as a secondary product of everything else they provide - ie. see if you can kill several birds with one stone rather than just trying to imagine a stationary red, blue, and green cube that the colors just won't stop flickering on no matter how hard you try and by the end your both exhausted and thoroughly annoyed. The more utility your mind can find for what you're doing the cooler the process seems, the more you'll inherently like it, and thus the more it'll motivate and invigorate rather than seeming like pure tedium or obligation.

[Solving Ennui]

Might add some of the things mentioned here to my practice eventually, for now I would say, buy a year subscription to lumosity, seriously, it seems gimmicky to a lot of us who tend towards the underground, but it has changed my internal world immensely.

[Solving Ennui]

Also forgot to add, crowley recommends meditation on the tatwas, to develop this faculty.


http://www.cornelius93.com/EpistleonTatwas.html

[elderos]

I would say the most fun technique I've done to improve visual memory was a meditation technique where I would imagine myself somewhere very familiar and visceral. That is, you can associate other senses such as smell and sound to the location. Do this meditation to some soft ambient music if you wish. For me it is a cool drizzly mountain in the rainforests of Costa Rica. I can hear the waterfall in the distance, smell the fresh dew on the ferns, feel the drizzle of rain on my skin, and taste the fresh sweetness of a clove cigarette on top of a hill. All this I associate with a certain visual scene that is very much ingrained in my memory...

As you imagine being in your world, simply explore it. While walking around, focus as much as you can on what you feel, sense, and smell along with what you're seeing. If you discover something, like a building, then simultaneously imagine and remember every detail about it. Visit this world daily, and eventually you may dream about it or do actual magickal rituals inside of it.

The purpose of this is to assert conscious feelings from other senses to the subconscious imaginative imagery stored in your brain. By visiting a location daily, consciously, you are noting down important visual cues by active imagination.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

As you imagine being in your world, simply explore it. While walking around, focus as much as you can on what you feel, sense, and smell along with what you're seeing. If you discover something, like a building, then simultaneously imagine and remember every detail about it. Visit this world daily, and eventually you may dream about it or do actual magickal rituals inside of it.

TY, sounds like I've been on track with my AMORC Celestial Sanctum. Part of it is spending time with the divine masculine and feminine while the rest is detailing/rendering the world we've created together.