Imagination Exercise: Connecting to Your Inner Senses - Notes

These are the notes I wrote for the Mysterious Studies Imagination Exercise: Connecting to Your Inner Senses. Feel free to use these notes as a help if you want to do this exercise on your own (without me guiding), or want to record your own version. If you want to access the audio file with the guided exercise, you can find it here.

Introduction

If you are unfamiliar with listening inwards, trusting your intuition or imagination, it can be difficult to know where to start. One first step can be to just start by testing out and becoming curious about how your own inner senses work. There are individual differences between people but just as with everything else, you can practice your inner senses too.

With inner senses, I simply mean that capability to receive information from the inbetween or inner realms. Some call these the astral or ether and divide these up into their own categories. But I like to keep it simple and don’t usually divide it up in that way. I just know it’s the place where the imaginary layer is alive and active, that I can access more easily when closing my eyes to the physical representation or the outer realm. Though obviously these two are not as separate as they seem but are deeply intertwined. Still, for simplicity’s sake, I am here separating them into their own: the outer, physical reality and the inner, spiritual reality. Since I have lived with a gross over-emphasis on the outer and an almost total ignorance of the inner, I have noticed a need to now right that balance by showing more attention to the inner. But in the long run, I believe these will not be as separate as they now seem. Feel into yourself how that balancing act functions for you.

And then, in this episode, I simply want to share a kind of “diagnostic tool” for getting to know, and testing out what your capability to visualize or imagine looks like. Is it easier for you to see or hear or feel? Do you have a way of visualizing in images, or even as smells or just energies? For this exercise, I will present you with a list of 10 different items, connected to different senses, and you will test out how naturally that particular sense is to use for you. If you want to save the info, you can take a pen and paper and write out the ten numbers, and then next to each number, write out how strongly you felt that particular sense. For example from one to ten, with one being not at all and 10 being totally immersed. This diagnostic tool/approach is very much inspired by the more comprehensive diagnostic test that is presented in Mary K. Greer’s book 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card (a book that is an incredible resource for both tarot but going way beyond that, to also areas such as accessing the intuition or imagination, so I can highly recommend it for both). But I have simplified it to the most usual senses: touch, smell, vision, hearing, taste, and imaginary creation.

In this exercise, I will first guide you into a meditative state, and then go through the list of senses that you can feel into. I recommend you to close your eyes during the exercise, but if you want to write down how strongly you felt each sense, you can peek at your pen and paper inbetween or try to scribble with your eyes closed…

Imagination Exercise: Connecting to Your Inner Senses

Sit or lie down in a comfortable position and focus on your breath for a few moments. Notice how you are feeling and just allow yourself to feel that way, allow any thoughts that come up to come and go. Or remain if they want to.

Clearing, CEntering and Grounding

Now, let’s do a simple energy clearing. Focus your awareness on your breath and imagine any excess energy leaving you with each breath out. And with each breath in, take back your own energy that you need to feel centered and whole and present.

Then, feel how the earth is carrying you. You are connected to it. Rooted and anchored into the earth. You can share energy with the earth through this root, either to get a energy boost or release any remaining excess energy that the earth can transmute. This root helps you stay grounded in the physical, outer realm, while you travel further and deeper into the inner realm.

You are here, right now, centered into yourself, rooted into the earth. Now we will start connecting with your inner senses through a list of imagination exercises. I will say the number of the list item in turn, so that you can write your reaction to it, or later go back and check which was which.

Imagination Exercise

1. Imagine the taste of a sour lemon. How does it feel to taste it? How strongly do you taste it? Notice any other senses activating, such as the smell or the visual look of the lemon.

2. Imagine the sound of a clear bell. How strongly can you hear it? Notice any other senses activating.

3. Imagine seeing a magnificent sunset over a vast ocean. How does it look like? What colors do you see? Notice anything else that you may sense, or imagine.

4. Imagine the feeling of stroking the soft fur of a purring little cat. How does it feel? How strongly can you feel it? Notice any other sensations. Can you see it? Hear it? Smell it?

5. Imagine walking barefooted through soft moss. How does it feel? What other sensations can you feel?

6. Imagine a completely new kind of animal or creature. How does it show itself to you? Do you hear it, feel it, smell it or see it? And how clearly do you experience it? Can you experience it in colors or materials that you haven’t seen in ordinary life? Or is it a combination of things that you are familiar with? Nothing is right or wrong, these questions simply serve to help you to notice the tendencies of you imagination.

7. Imagine smelling the fragrance of a flower. How strongly can you smell it? What kind of flower is it? Are other senses activating? Can you see it or feel it too?

8. Imagine tasting a piece of a soft and sweet cake. How strongly can you taste it? What kind of cake is it? Can you see it too? Or perhaps smell it? What other senses are activating?

9. Imagine hearing the applause of a crowd. Can you hear the separate hands, or is it more like a wave of sound blending together? Are other senses activating too? Can you see the crowd or imagine the situation? Why are they applauding?

10. Imagine seeing yourself from the outside. How do you experience this? Can you see yourself, or sense your own aura? How strongly do you experience this? What senses are activating? Notice how you appear to yourself in this moment.

Travel Back to the Outer

And then, connect back into yourself, feel into your body in any way that feels comfortable to you. Stretch your limbs and move the muscles in your face. You are back from the inner world, ready to face the outer world and get back into your physical form, but with a newfound awareness of your own, unique imaginative capabilities. If you want to, you can shake your body, imagining any imaginations shaking off from you. And calling back energy from the root, from the earth, that is supporting you at all times.

When you are ready, return to the outer world. If you haven’t done so already, open your eyes.

Resources:

Mary K. Greer’s book 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card