Your Experiences

Putting My Heart into Visualisation

by Serafim
Athens, Greece

The practice of visualization on the candle has become one of my favourite exercises and is very important to me. I remember that in the past I didn’t do it well because I did it in a completely mechanical way; so I couldn’t understand it and I didn’t get any results.

I understood that the exercise had to be done in a conscious way, which means not to get lost in thoughts and to be disciplined and steady enough on what I do, without letting my mind fly here and there. I also understood that I shouldn’t let negative feelings such as laziness, negativity, etc, to affect my correct attitude towards the exercise.

When I manage to visualize in a conscious way, without allowing thoughts to interfere, I am surrounded by a sense of control over myself.

In one of my practices, I was trying to visualize the flame, and to be inside the flame without losing the sense of myself. This helped me to remain conscious and not get lost in thoughts. When I visualized the flame relatively well and could see how the flame moved, I visualized myself gradually getting into the flame. Then I began to ask questions to get answers about the flame, such as, “What is fire and how does it work?” I was trying to do that in a sincere way and to wait for an answer. In order for the questions to have meaning and to ask them sincerely, I tried to realize what I really knew about the flame. And I realized that I knew nothing!

After some hour, I saw the flame burning and moving in a natural way inside my heart. My heart looked like it was made from glass and inside it the flame was a glowing light, as a flame is in a dark place. This image of the flame inside my heart touched me. It was something that was so clear and vivid and it came suddenly without any warning. It was there for less than a second and I was surprised, so I lost it.

It left me a very pleasant feeling, and many times I tried to repeat this in that exercise, but I didn’t manage to see it again.

When I finished the exercise I had a sweet feeling from this result and a mood to do the exercise every day. I also had the mood to try to be more conscious during the day. This is much more interesting and meaningful than depending exclusively on my mind.