Creating Happiness Intentionally. Sandy MacGregor
them back in later if you want to. If they do not leave, then build yourself a new Peaceful Place.
–You can also invite people in to be your adviser for a short while. You can invite them in and say “I want some help and I’ve got some questions for you” – and it’s amazing how many answers you get. You can do this all in your imagination. The key thing is that you control it. You are the boss.
INDUCTION
Basically this process is used to help you go from the Alpha state to the theta state, that is, to deeper relaxation. You know you are in the theta state when you can’t feel your arms or legs. That’s right when you’re in deep relaxation you don’t even know what position your arms or legs are in because you can’t feel them it’s just great. I’ll put the words of the Induction here and then when the words of a specific guided imagery are quoted in the rest of the book I’ll just use the words “Induction from Page 33” and you can follow that by the written words of the guided imagery. If you’re playing the appropriate tape then the words of the induction will be in the tape. If you’re having a friend read the guided imagery, or making your own tape, then you’ll be reminded to refer to the words on Induction Page 33.
Now the first step is to get into a comfortable position, choose a position whereby you know that you'll be comfortable for about 20 minutes or so without moving. What I suggest is that you sit in a chair, with your feet slightly apart and your hands on your knees. You may choose to lie down and if you do, there is a tendency that you may not stay awake and I want you to know that this meditation is an active meditation; you actually direct your subconscious mind with your conscious mind and in doing that you need to be awake.
So now take a deep breath and release it, letting go any cares and tensions of the day as you breathe out. Take another deep breath in, breathing in the loving and letting go any anxiousness remaining as you breathe out ... and now breathe in, down to your abdomen, gently, follow the air to your abdomen and as you breathe out just slowly close your eyes. You'll hear the sound of my voice and you'll hear the music in the background and you'll be drifting deeper and deeper into relaxation. You know at all times that you are in control and that at any time that you hear any sound, other than my voice or this music, use that to your advantage by telling yourself as you hear any extraneous sound that you go deeper and deeper into relaxation. Now seek and find your Peaceful Place ... that calm, serene, real tranquil scene that you perceive inside your mind and if you need to go through your relaxed place first and then on your pathway, then do so. And now, at your Peaceful Place, check it out through 360 degrees around you ... just recall it by seeing, or sensing, that you see all the things around you. Are there parks and gardens or forests, mountains or sea, beach, flowers, what other wonderful sights are there. And you can tell yourself that you're seeing all these wonderful sights, maybe you can hear some sounds or sense those sounds, listen for them? Do you hear the sound of water trickling along or perhaps the sound of the surf, or perhaps the wind whispering in the trees. And in your mind what can you touch around you. Is it soft or hard? Is it smooth or rough. Can you feel the warmth of the sun or can you feel the cooling wind. Now you move to inside your Peaceful Place, once again familiarising yourself, checking it out and then sit in your chair ... your special, magic chair. Just let your mind float and as it floats you notice with your inner eye a red cloud flying by, and as the red cloud comes floating by it touches you and you breathe in the colour red. You sense the vibrations in every cell of your body. You gently breathe it out and that cloud passes on by. Its place is taken by an orange cloud which moves in, touching you, enveloping you. Breathe in the colour orange – you can feel the vibration. And then breathe it out. You see or sense the cloud drifting on by. Now a beautiful yellow cloud comes drifting in. See or sense that you see that yellow colour, and then breathe it in, permeating right through you ... and breathe it out slowly ... it drifts on by once again. A green cloud comes in to view – a grassy green colour. You breathe in the colour and you breathe it out again, feeling it throughout your body. It drifts on by and then a light blue cloud comes floating by. It’s the same colour as the sky. It touches you and you breathe it in ... hold it ... you then breathe that out too, and it drifts on past. A darker blue cloud comes in ... you’re enveloped in it and you breathe that colour in sensing it throughout your body and you breathe it out. It is now replaced by a beautiful purple cloud drifting into you, and as you breathe it in you can feel it going to every cell in your body ... and you breathe it out ... it just drifts on past. And now you see or sense a beautiful colourless white light, like the dazzling sun, coming in and drifting in to you. It envelopes you, flowing through every cell it nurtures you, it warms you and in fact it builds a wonderful shield of protective light around you. This beautiful colourless white light protects you for your highest good and the good of anyone else concerned. Always imagine this light staying with you, protecting you all the time.
You’ll note that the words of the induction start by guiding you to use your Peaceful Place quickly. Therefore you go to alpha and then you go through the colours of the rainbow, starting from the outside red and finishing on the inside purple. By that time you will be close to theta. The colours will help you go deeper. The red colour has the biggest wave length and then the wave lengths decrease as the colours come from the outside to the inside of the rainbow red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue and purple.
Many participants in my CALM Life Skills seminars report that they feel the vibration of the colours change as they bring in each colour it’s exciting, I feel them too but I still don’t ‘see’ them.
Another technique that meditators often use to go deeper – from alpha to theta – is to imagine that they are on the top of a flight of ten stairs; at each step downwards they say the number, starting at ten, going down to nine and so on, and imagine that they are going deeper and deeper into relaxation. At the number one, the last step, they are deeply relaxed and in the theta state. Make yourself a tape and see if you like this ‘induction’ better than using colours.
What do all the colours make? White? Not quite white, they make colourless light. So the tape asks you to picture and imagine colourless, bright light, like the sun light filling and surrounding and protecting you for the highest good of all concerned.
Chapter 4
Using Creativity to Find Answers
The tape that is appropriate for this exercise is Peaceful Place (PP) No. 7 – Tapping Your Creativity. In the Introduction of this tape it will ask you about your ‘Challenge’. Your ‘Challenge’ in this case is “What is My Life’s Purpose?”.
Make sure that a pencil and a piece of paper are close at hand so that you can write down some answers that come into your mind. It is OK for several things to come into your mind and compete with each other at this stage. Write them down. The fact that several things come into your mind and compete is certainly a sign that your mind is active about the subject. The fact that some of these ideas may be jostling for your attention simply means that you have not yet mentally allocated the priorities between all the competing concepts of ‘purpose’ that you may be carrying around in your head.
At the end of your period of meditation, summarise the points that you have made into a ‘Statement of Life’s Purpose’, or if you haven’t jotted down points during the meditation, then still write the above statement – that is, whatever you think it is. The process of working through this book will give you the tools to refine your statement of Life’s Purpose until it is absolutely and clearly a statement of what you really want to do, both consciously and subconsciously.
1.Allow yourself 20 minutes of uninterrupted time in a quiet place to complete the next stage.
2.Get into a comfortable position.
3.EITHER ...
A)Play Sandy’s tape, Peaceful Place No 7 – Tapping Your Creativity, Side 2 (the words are below)
OR ...
B)Play some baroque music and your friend can slowly read out the guided imagery words to you.
PP7