Your reaction to being asked to bring the sunlight down around your body will give you an insight as to how receptive you are to suggestion, and haw for out of touch or in harmony you are with your powers of imagination. Whatever the initial reaction, these powers can be fine-tuned to a higher degree. The more proficient you become in using your visualization skills, the closer you come to the source of your unlimited potential.
Occasionally, as you exhale and count down from eight to zero, visualize the numbers. Alternatively, visualize a second countdown while breathing normally. Allow the descending numbers to float into your awareness, taking whatever time is necessary. Never be concerned if some or all of the numbers are reluctant to surface. They will eventually appear as effortlessly as the images you experience in your dreams. Later on, the speed and clarity with which the numbers appear will give a good indication of how much in harmony you are with the deeper creative levels of mind. You may also become more aware of the extent to which alcohol and other temporary stimulants dull or distort access to the creative mind.
Visualization skills can be renewed by scores of other exercises, offsetting the effect of television in turning us into visual illiterates. Staying with the numbers theme, you can visualize them increasing or decreasing in size or appearing in various colors. Another procedure is to cut out of paper a blue square, a green triangle and a red circle and fix them at eye level to a wall or the inside of a cupboard door that you can open when you practice. Follow the breathing and relaxation routine, then focus the eyes on, say, the red circle. Then close the eyes and visualize the color and the design as thought you were looking from a point in the center of your forehead. Do the same with the square and the triangle. Then interchange the colors and designs in your imagination. For self-healing and personal success, there is no need to attain this level of proficiency in visualization, but if you find that you have retained these capabilities since childhood, they will prove invaluable for many purposes which will be explained later.
Conclude each practice session by centering, relaxing and affirming:
“Whenever I count from eight to zero I will relax ten times more deeply and I will visualize clearly whatever I wish to bring to mind.”