Re: Anyone feel their life moves in patterns?
"Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so." - Shakespeare
Here's an excerpt that may clarify how visualization works :
'The mind is made up of two parts, the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. We think with our conscious or rational mind and whatever we think repeatedly sinks into our subconscious or creative mind. The subconscious mind is like a computer. It cannot think on its own, it cannot distinguish between good and bad, between true and false. It takes on face value, whatever is presented to it.
When the conscious mind presents the subconscious mind with the same thought again and again, it starts taking the thought seriously and sets about bringing it into existence. Our lifetime of experiences are stored in the subconscious mind to which it has access. It also has access to the Universal mind for which nothing is impossible. It then brings about circumstances in which our repetitive thought is manifested.
In order to know how visualization works, we have to understand that the preeminent language of the subconscious mind is pictures. Though it understands words equally well, it is more easily influenced by pictures. That is why visualization is so effective in making your subconscious mind deliver to you whatever it is that you want.'
Basically, dreams aren't supposed to be "rational." You know how they say, everything is impossible until someone else does it. Nobody who ever achieved greatness deferred to "logic." Most dreams don't materialize because their owners don't believe and feel they're real. It's passive dreaming. You have to let your guard down and not just allow yourself to think it's possible, but live like it has already transpired - that's probably the trickiest part. How it'll happen isn't important - to quote Little Princess above, when your conscious mind repeatedly thinks about something, your subconscious works on making it happen.
I am nowhere near mastering this, but I think visualization is a repetitive, disciplined version of dreaming. It's a detailed visual, complete with color, sound, and feeling. Like Southie mentioned, athletes who visualize their victory in vivid detail have been documented to win exactly as they see it in their mind's eye. But here's the critical bit - they're not just pining or focusing or dreaming, they're behaving as if their visualization and focus have already come true. They achieve this through the feelings they generate while envisioning their desired outcome - victory.
Once you're feeling the right things, you're automatically vibrating at a higher frequency. And what you emit in energy you get back like a boomerang.