“Do I Need to Imagine in First Person?”

One of the frustrations I came upon in my spiritual journey was this common belief. If your visualization during a spell is not in perfect third person, as if you are looking through your own eyes, then it won’t work! In fact, if you visualize your scene in third person, you could manifest it for someone else! You could ruin your manifestation completely! Oh, the humanity!

If you’re like me, where a strict first-person view is difficult and focusing on one image alone feels like a chore, this can absolutely strike fear into your heart. If your visual imagination flutters like mine, with many scenes, views, or angles superimposed over one another in any given imaginal act, you can get a sense of panic and instill the fear that you’ve been “manifesting incorrectly,” and have to restart everything from the beginning.

I’m here to tell you that this is absolutely, completely, one-hundred-percent not true. It’s another limiting belief that inhabits the internet, the realm of YouTube coaches. It places fear where there should be freedom. There is absolutely no reason that you would need to force your visualization to happen in the first person, nor will it ruin your manifestation if you are less than diligent in your visualizing.

The reason is simple.

Techniques do not manifest.

The techniques are a means to an end, not the process itself. Visualizing, scripting, affirming and mantras, meditation, prayer, spellcasting, and the plethora of other methods used in manifesting, are only vessels to bring you to the real creator: feeling.

Feeling creates. Knowing creates. Understanding, and being aware deep in your core that your desire is truth and that what you desire is already yours, that is the substance that makes up the world we perceive with our senses. When you know your desire so well that it feels like a memory, when it feels so natural that it simply must be, that is the key to conscious creation. Techniques are fantastic tools to achieve the state, and should not be ignored, but they are only the vehicles to achieving the state of the wish fulfilled.

This is where the misunderstanding on visualization comes from.

Visualization is a wonderful instrument for tuning in to a feeling. As a very visual person, there’s a distinct appreciation or sense of alignment for visualizing a scene that other techniques don’t quite provide. But the key is not in “seeing” alone, nor is it in the exact way in which images present themselves.

The power in visualization is occupancy.

It’s the overall, multi-sensory vividness of the experience. Feeling your visualization with your body, smelling the environment of your scene, hearing the words and all other sounds surrounding you, the sting of wind or tingle of sunlight, even the feeling of your muscles contracting as you move through your imaginal act. Sensory and simple awareness of occupancy is the key to manifestation through visualization because it is the sum of our senses that make up our 3D experience.

Occupancy is the word that trips people up and leads to the tiring notion that the “visual” in visualization has to occur strictly as if we are only looking through our own eyes. But it is bigger than that, and it’s the sum of the sensory experience that contributes to feeling it real. It’s not one aspect that makes or breaks any technique. When someone tells you that your imaginal act must be in first-person view, or the entire manifestation has been dashed or given to someone else, they misunderstand not only the deeper meaning but also the absolute infinite being of which we all are made.

Don’t force it if you can’t naturally see or maintain visual first-person. It’s okay. Imagine the sights, but embrace the entire experience as you would recall a vivid memory. Learn to feel the scene with all your senses, and always aim for the feeling of naturalness. Your desire is still yours.

And remember: limiting beliefs are only limiting if you believe them.