If you’re a visual person, these ideas for creating mental space can help you
In meditation, the goal is to connect with your inner self. In this connection, you calm down and feel grounded. You begin to remember who you really are by merging with the silence of your mind and cutting out the distractions that are pulling at your attention.
At least, that’s what I try to do in meditation. I’m pretty sure it’s the goal everyone pursues, generally.
Now, there are different techniques to expand on this general principle of a deeper self-connection. You might want to try to reach a higher plane where you are more conscious of existence. You might want to just detox and de-stress. And you may want no further goal at all except to sit in silence. But any way you look at it, you will want to try to remove yourself from the stream of thoughts in the mind and constant pulling of your ego toward places that aren’t silent.
So, I’ve listed a few visualizations I use to achieve that goal. I hope you can try them at home!
1. A Glass Room
One of my go-to visualizations that I developed almost ten years ago is me watching my thoughts creep up out of nowhere, acknowledging them, and then, in order to remove myself from their whims and confusion, I step into a glass room. It has almost nothing inside it — maybe a sofa or something to rest on — and it allows me to see the activities going on inside my mind without them being able to touch me.
This visualization is wonderful because it allows one to really analyze the mind. What’s happening in there? Why am I compelled to respond to thoughts and feelings that arise? And where the heck do they even come from? These are great questions to ask yourself inside that glass room.
2. The River
Our thoughts never stop coming. Don’t be mad about it. They are what they are — a stream. You can’t create a dam for that stream. That won’t work. You have to befriend it and let it flow.
I like to imagine that I am in this stream. It could be a creek or a river. I step out of it and stand on the edge, watching it go by. The thoughts and feelings keep going even when I am not “in” them. That’s fine. I let them go.
The river is a great way to find peace for a moment and remember that you are something separate from your thoughts. They don’t define you. They flow. But you can separate yourself from them and remember who you really are.
3. Inward Layers
I realized early in my meditation practice that we aren’t trying to reach a higher level of consciousness by somehow climbing up. Instead, we are in fact trying to peel away the layers that cover up our true essence. Layers of thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences, and trauma just pile on top of us from birth. We even carry some of these imprints with us in our karma.
If we can peel back the layers, going deep into who we truly are, we will find peace. Those layers define our ego. But our true selves aren’t our egos. The ego is useful in many ways to live a life, but it certainly has a lot of layers. Take time to remove them and just see what’s in there, deep down. It might surprise you.
Final Thoughts
I hope these three techniques are useful to you. Try them next time you meditate. Close your eyes, take a few deep, cleansing breaths, and then as you settle, find your way to these visualizations. They’ll help you calm down and find some inner peace, and they’ll allow you to know yourself. If you practice enough, maybe you’ll find some of your own useful visualizations or methods. There’s no right way to do this.
