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We made it! In reviewing the exercise for Week Five of The Master Key System — “The Creative Mind” — we’ve reached the fiftieth episode of these teleseminars. Exciting stuff!
With this exercise, we move beyond the “foundation” laid out in the first four exercises. Now, we have our first “taste” of visualization.
While it is not visualization proper, it is an exercise in focusing, concentrating, and creating mental pictures.
I have found — and my Master Key Coaching clients have found — this exercise to be fun and helpful. I think you will, too. So, let’s get on with it!
The Exercise in Week Five of The Master Key System
29. Now, go to your room, take the same seat, the same position as heretofore, and mentally select a place which has pleasant associations. Make a complete mental picture of it — see the buildings, the grounds, the trees, friends, associations, everything complete. At first, you will find yourself thinking of everything under the sun, except the ideal upon which you desire to concentrate. But do not let that discourage you. Persistence will win, but persistence requires that you practice these exercises every day without fail.
The Exercise for Week Five Explained
Charles F. Haanel organised the exercises in The Master Key System perfectly. You will come to realize that as you explore them.
The first four are what we have come to call the “foundation” exercises. They built the foundation upon which all of the subsequent exercises will be laid. These exercises are essential for getting you into the “state” so that you can easily do the remaining exercises and so that you will be receptive to the results that you are seeking.
So, with the first four exercises mastered, we have this exercise for Week Five.
As usual, you are to take your regular seat and assume the position that you have been mastering since Week One: sitting with your feet on the floor, your hands on your thighs, your back erect, your eyes closed. Once you are there, you are now to make a “complete mental picture” of a “place that has pleasant associations.”
That “place” can be anything you wish! Your childhood home. A farm you visited. A beach. A city. An office. Any place!
The key is to make your mental picture “complete.” You want the picture to be very detailed, very lush, and very realistic. You are aiming to such a detailed picture that it is almost a “virtual reality.”
Within this exercises, Haanel anticipates that it may be difficult for some people. Those people may not be very “visual” people. He does ask that we persevere, though. And we should!
Haanel is building within you the ability to picture anything you wish in your mind. As we’ll see, those pictures will be very important. That’s why for this exercise, Haanel is starting us with something simple: visualizing a place that we enjoy. That makes it an exercise that we will want to do! After all, it is fun to reminisce or fantasize about a pleasant place. The difference is that we are not doing either: we are visualizing and aiming to make the picture complete and detailed, to “see the buildings, the grounds, the trees, friends, associations, everything complete.”
Do your best and make your vision as complete as you can. With practice, you will be able to see it perfectly!
The Benefits of the Exercise for Week Five
Much like going to a gym will increase your ability to run longer or lift heavier items, this exercise will begin to awaken or it will strengthen your ability to create mental pictures. You will be able to almost lose yourself in the details of your mental images.
That can be and will be a very powerful tool for you.
This exercise will also begin to fire parts of your brain you may not have been “using” prior to this.
Also, this exercise, when fully perfected, will just make you feel good. Seriously. I have heard time and time again from folks who do this exercises and actually feel themselves at the beach or on the farm. It’s amazing! They often state that afterwards it’s like they had a small vacation.
Tips for the Best Practice of Week Five’s Exercise
You can practice this exercise anywhere. To really get this exercise mastered, the key is to select just one place and continue to return to it.
The people who don’t perfect this exercise generally have one thing in common: one day they “go” to the beach; the next they “go” to their favorite city; and so on. They never just select that one place!
And that is the key here.
By selecting just one place and for one week continual revisiting it, you will access those details that your brain is storing and activate them. With each pass, you will be adding details after detail, until your picture is “complete.”
So, select just one place! Just one! And run with it.
Until next week, please get for yourself the best of everything…
As I stated in a previous email, this is almost the point where I got hung up last year when I began studying the program. While I can somewhat visualize the same place I go to each time, there is no “complete” detail. No color, and definitely not picture-like. I have been doing this portion of the program every morning for over two weeks. I tried going to the next exercise the last time and again now and REALLY have trouble with the photograph. I am very bummed out about it.
Hi Jeff!
First, don’t be bummed about anything. Some things merely require more practice than others. Take your time. As I like to tell people, this is a “race” of endurance, not speed.
For the exercise in Week Five, Haanel “warned” us that for some, this will be easy, while for others, it will take some practice. Some people are very visually oriented — they tend to think in pictures naturally. Others are not; they may be aurally oriented or more empathic. Others are about an equal blend of those. All of that is OK. It just means that for some people, they will be accessing their visual imaginative centers and really using it for the first time. It may be difficult, persist, as the results will be awesome.
To help you, here are some things that you may do. First, cease to be “bummed out” and when you go to do the exercise, relax and allow things to happen. There are no “tricks” to doing this — or other — exercises. It’s about practice.
Next, rather than skipping to the next exercise, return to the first four exercises. Remember, those first four exercises build a “state” within you — one that makes you relaxed and open. You MUST be able to achieve that state! I have a feeling that you haven’t really mastered this and that is why it is so difficult for you to get the visualization. You must be able to –
be still;
clear your mind;
let go physically;
let go mentally.
That will put you in the “state.”
After that, it’s just a matter of practice. Is it easy? For some, it is; for others, it takes a little more doing. Just keep in mind why you’re doing these exercises.
I hope this helps. All the BEST!
Have fun … Tony.
Thank you for your reply. I have been practicing what are the first four steps of the Master Key program for over three years and well prior to working with this system. Clearing my mind and “going within” is normal for me…I call it meditation and it has been taught and described by many. US Andersen, Earnest Holmes, Emmet Fox and others (perhaps most notably Jesus, the most famous metaphysical teacher of them all) have been my primary sources of metaphysical learning. I have been meditating everyday for at least one half hour in the morning for many years and it is very important to me. I cannot believe (and actually know) that the “state” to which you refer is anything other than what I already do. I am just challenged with the visualization aspect of it all, which is very frustrating because I understand the importance of the concept. Having read Nap Hill’s and many other’s books I can see that the Master Key is utilizing some similar in concepts. I never was able to visualize that pile of money Nap was wanting me to see. Please understand. I am VERY committed to working with Haanel’s system and will do my level best to study it properly. My goal is not to just to manifest a BMW or something…it is to live out the rest of my life in JOY, HAPPINESS, and abundance of all GOOD!!!
Hi Jeff!
Here’s something I want to make clear: the exercises in the MKS, especially the first four, are not meditation. They are something different. Similar, but different. Whereas meditation is passive, the state for which we are aiming with these first four exercises is active. That’s why you can practice — and use — these exercises and this “state” anywhere. It’s also why these exercises can be used in a “stand alone” fashion at times.
For example, you’re on your way home and realize that you have to stop and get milk. You go into a convenience store, grab the milk, and approach the checkout counter. A person is there before you. This person is busy with the sole clerk purchasing lottery tickets. This person isn’t merely purchasing tickets and running along, she’s practically engaging in financial planning!
As the second hand on your watch painfully makes each stop on its way around, your mind begins playing its “games.” Why is this taking so long? What the hell is this woman doing? Why is there only one clerk working the counter? Why does this happen to me? These thoughts born of frustration make you want to punch these people right in their throats!
We’ve all been there, yes?
Now, with those first four exercises, you can enter a relaxed state — one that will allow you to be an active participant. You’ll be able to consciously relax your body. You’ll clear your mind of those discordant thoughts. You’ll be able to achieve a state of clearness that will enable you to see the situation as it really is rather than as you imagine it to be. From that point, you can respond to it rationally and cognizantly rather than emotionally and reflexively. You may note the silliness of the situation. You may develop a solution.You may get (rightfully) angry.
As you can see, this is not meditation. Meditation in that scenario would be an inward quest to assuage “wrong” feelings. That’s not what’s happening here.
So, take the time to approach the first four exercises with this in mind. Don’t think of it as meditating. It’s not. You’re not so much “going within” as you are staying where you are (both mentally and physically) and allowing yourself to let go of the conscious “baggage” that you may be holding.
I hope this helps and perhaps give you a different way to view things so that you can achieve the visualization technique. Believe me, it’s there within you. You CAN do it. You probably DO do it. We’re just going to get you doing it at will.
All the BEST!
Have fun … Tony.
Thank you for your response Tony!
Please do not take this the wrong way, because I sincerely appreciate what you are doing and that you are willing to help. I think there are a variety of “meditations” or meditative practices and I want to help you become aware of some of them.
The entire first portion of what I do every morning in “meditation” is:
1.) Relax my entire body starting with my facial muscles and jaw, then working down various portions of my body to my feet until I am perfectly still and cannot feel my body. If I am having difficulty at all, I mentally tell every muscle, every nerve, every molecule, every atom to vibrate in a state of relaxation and calm. I remain in this stillness, perfectly, for as long as I choose and rarely move at all during the time. Generally I do this for the length of a non-descript, wordless, melody-less binaural sound file that I use for background “white noise” that is just over thirty minutes.
2.) I then go to a place (approximately) behind my solar plexus and establish it as a point of or “center of consciousness” or “the heart cave” as Baba Ram Dass called it, knowing that there are at least two “minds” active at virtually all times.
3.) From the “center of consciousness” I slow the endless stream of thoughts that are presented to me from somewhere outside of my center from all directions. Because I do this every day, I can usually, but not always, slow the thoughts that come to me to a very manageable level and examine each one. At this point I can do one of three things.
a.) Examine the thought and choose to entertain it, or immediately let it go (or even observe myself doing so).
b.) Cancel or overrule the thought as it comes to me with another one such as “peace”
c.) Stay in my “center of consciousness” and actively (notice the word actively) utilize affirmations or complete paragraphs of concepts to impress my/the Subconscious, Universal Mind, Universal Sub Conscious Mind, Infinite Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness or whatever one chooses to call it.
The above method was taught by another “mystic” Ulysses S Andersen in his book Three Magic Words. The mediations that he provides for the period after one enters the “state” are utilized by Kelly Howell in her guided mediation “The Secret Universal Mind Mediation II”. As you can see, this process or meditation is very active and 3-a above is very similar to, if not exactly what Haanel is asking us to do in the first exercises. 3-b is more along the lines of what I think that you are calling meditation.
With all of that said, I will continue to work on Visualization, although experience is making it difficult to maintain the correct thinking and attitude in its’ regard.
Thanks!!!
Jeff
Hi Jeff!
That’s all good stuff — and very effective. Thank you for describing your process. It’s similar to, but not quite exactly, what Haanel describes. For now, do EXACTLY as Haanel writes in the MKS. I think it will help you tap into the visualization centers.
Have fun … Tony.
My jabbering above allowed me to forget to note that, because I am aware of the thoughts that I receive, I know I can “choose” to react anyway that I want at the checkout line as you describe. I can enter the “state” almost immediately because I practice it every day as a matter of course.
I have been exposed to this kind of thing and the authors and philosophers Haanel cites since I was a child because my mother was metaphysically inclined. That is why I got excited about the Master Key System…much of it is not new to me. Somewhere along the line I must have unwittingly made manifest a very hard time with visualization.
Even with the above in Mind, I am still just beginning to do a good enough job “being conscious” as I attempt to do my “mental house cleaning”.
Thanks!!!
Jeff
Hi Jeff!
As I often tell folks, we’re all a “work in progress.” 🙂
I am inclined to think that you DO, in fact, visualize. It’s that I don’t think you realize it — or, perhaps, you’re doing it but either expecting or thinking it should be something different. That’s one thought that I have.
Here’s another idea I had: Make a commitment to study the exercises in the MKS in 2012. For now, though, drop everything — just for the Holidays. I have found that sometimes we have to step back, take a break, and then return to “it” (whatever “it” is) refreshed and with new eyes. It also gives the subconscious time to get things in place. It’s something to consider.
Another thing: When you go to visualize, are you “trying”? If so, cease doing that and go the opposite direction. Instead of trying, simple “let go,” as Haanel describes, and ALLOW it to happen.
I hope these ideas help. If not, we’ll keep trying. Every person is different. With enough data, we’ll solve your “problem.” 🙂
All the BEST!
Have fun … Tony.