A curiosity in creating a vision is the single most important thing an individual can do to make a positive impact on themselves and their world. The journey of fulfilling a vision teaches us about reality and ourselves, and demonstrates the importance of the imagination - it's not just a useless illusion manifested by our brains - but a really powerful tool for shaping reality.
This article will give you the 4 keys to creating and maintaining your vision. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you are struggling with your visions, or want to know more about creating them. Our vision is to enable others to have their own visions to you'll be doing us a favor by reaching out.
TL:DR Summary Version:
A vision is your life’s architect, and is accessed via the imagination. It bridges dreams to reality. A sentient vision is a vision that has been given life via active imagination.
The 4 keys to an engaging sentient vision:
1. Know what you want, or what the world needs, but never forget it is temporary.
2. Some “discipline”; saying yes to opportunities and completing them, and putting aside a very small amount of time each day imagining your vision. Give the vision a chance to work it’s magic.
3. Faith and courage that saying yes will be rewarded, and that your vision has an intelligence of it’s own design.
4. Record the vision; and try to make a visual reference of it at least and keep track of it in some form - thanks to retro-causality; future knowledge of the vision will give it more energy in the present.
And the extended version:
What is a vision and how is it relevant for you?
A vision is the probability architect of the future. In one way it is how we can assert some agency over our fates. It provides a roadmap for your unconsciousness to curate probability and chance encounters to your will. It sets the determined path that life will follow - it’s where free will and determinism meet.
With a vision you can actively choose your fate, or co-create the fate of ideas or communities by working with the vision of an idea or of other people.
It usually resembles a static picture in one’s mind of an idealized situation or life setup, or for the linguistic minds a statement which neatly sums up an idealized future.
A vision is a projection of your life, or the life of an idea that you have a vision for. It is “only” limited by the collective imagination - but this is a double edged sword as the imagination is also limited by the sum of experiences, creativity, and courage.
Creating a vision isn’t a novelty of the new age movement, or the baby of the flat hierarchy business cultures that promote vision setting. Vision setting has been around as long as the imagination… which is a very long time and it is only recently, peaking around the spirit of the time of post enlightenment, that we have reduced the imagination to an illusion inferior to the more “real” material world.
The bad news is we live in a less enchanted world because of the rise in prioritizing the physical world (although many great things have been born out of this physical focus too!), but the good news is those that understand how to create a vision in our materialist aeon, will stand out and have a relatively more remarkable journey. Those that make visions can have more impact on the world.
Every notable person in history, destructive or constructive, had some form of a vision; and that isn’t a coincidence (If you can think of someone notable without a vision please comment! I’d like to disprove this). Napoleon, Hitler, Gandhi all had a vision to assert their version of reality onto the world which started off in their imaginations. While they had different outcomes, they had in common a faith in projecting their version of fate onto the world.
A vision also has a remarkable effect on your psychological development. Through trial and error of multiple visions, you will understand both the nature of your deepest desires and the nature of reality. Rarely will a vision ever last or stay unchanged, while some people will only have a handful of vision in their lifetimes, those more experienced can go on to create a new vision every day after the completion of an old one - these people have very active lives!
What is the difference between a vision and a sentient vision?
Basically it’s two ways of looking at the same architect of fate - each with valid arguments aligned with the paradigms that they are perceived from. One perspective, the sentient vision is much better at engaging the imagination and producing remarkable effects as it assumes that we are engaging with something sentient when creating a vision; while a typical vision is packaged as more of a motivational tool or practice.
A (non-sentient) vision course 101 is either something you have heard business leaders tout and management consultants promote for large sums of wealth, or self-help authors promote as a means of changing your life. They are often focused on the outcomes of giving yourself inspiration or creating a 5-10 year plan as an objective based mental tool.
This way of looking at a vision leans more towards the materialist reductionist perspective that dominates modern thought, and it’s not wrong, it’s just that reducing a vision as merely a utility towards an objective takes away a lot of the meaning that a vision could have. And more meaning means more narrative power which is a much more powerful tool for the unconscious mind to work with.
A sentient vision on the other hand, is looking at a vision as a relationship between oneself, and another sentient entity, e.g. a spirit, the sentient essence of a technology, an ancestor, an archetype, a movement etc. It’s the belief in an animist paradigm (the belief that most things in the universe are alive in some form), combined with a vision.
If you are creating a vision about embodying the sun - with the desire to radiate warmth and positivity in your environment, with a sentient vision perspective the archetype of the sun is also embodying you. A sentient vision is the perspective that engaging with things in the imagination is a two way process; as Nietzche says “when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back”. It’s not a human centered approach to life, and this comes with it’s own pros and cons - a topic for another blog.
Working with the assumption that when we create a vision we are also working with other archetypes in manifesting it’s spirit or essence into the world, gives a vision more inertia and willpower. What could provide more results than combining forces with a universal archetype that pre-dates humanity?
Hopefully we’ve sold you on the purpose of creating a vision, and approaching it as a relationship between yourself and another sentient agent, so as promised...
Here’s the 4 things to keep in mind for engaging with a sentient vision:
1. Know what you want, (or what the world needs), but never forget it is temporary.
Arguably the most important part of creating a vision, and the hardest hurdle to get across in the first instance, is knowing exactly what you want. For those that are creating a vision for the first time, usually the biggest hurdle can be in accepting that we have free will to choose our own destinies. An entire philosophy branch is dedicated to this predicament (existentialism), and it is one of the core themes of struggle in many people's lives. What’s more daunting than being responsible for everything that happens in your life?
But don’t lose hope, unless you are Buddha or a level 999 wizard, you probably don’t know what you really want. It’s a process of trial and error, and only through starting to actively pursue what we want, do we eventually figure out the depths of our needs and wishes. I only figured out what I really wanted after 10 years of creating visions for myself, and I still discover more every day.
The key to knowing what you want is paying attention to what you pay attention to. We’ve got a section on this here. Ask yourself what do you lack, or what is causing you grief, or what do you wish to have more of.
“But Sam, isn’t this embracing desire and attachments going to lead to more suffering?”
Basically yes. But we need to be aware that unless we are a level 999 wizard we will still have pretty basic desires and attachments - if you have transcended desire then well done, but the rest of us will need to catch up. Acknowledging that we have desires, or needs, is the first step to understanding the nature of the desire. We cannot explore why we are wanting unless we accept that we are wanting. Creating a vision is the most direct method of exploring why we have a desire, and what the true nature of that desire is.
Just remember when determining what it is you want, try to reduce it to it’s first causes, i.e. ask why you want or need it, and keep asking why until you have exhausted the answers and the only way to know the next why is via the experience of obtaining it - there's more on how to do that here. If I had consciously and explicitly known that what I really wanted was financial independence during my first vision setting 10 years ago, I might have created a more direct vision for obtaining that and saved myself a year or two of purposeless drifting.
Once you have realized your vision, you will also realize you have new desires, or paths to spiritual progression. Nothing is permanent, and that includes a vision. Keep in mind when creating your vision that it is adaptable, and treat it as a journey rather than a destination. Be ready to let go of it once you have fulfilled it so you can continue growing.
2. “Discipline”; saying yes to opportunities and completing them, and putting aside a very small amount of time each day imagining your vision; give the vision a chance to work it’s magic.
If the word discipline is a bit daunting in this context, don’t stress. I don’t intend for people to feel pressured into a military regime in a rigid structured sense of obedience. Discipline here is used in the loose sense that you must commit to finishing an opportunity that has been presented to you, even if there is some discomfort in doing so, and commit to spending at least a minute or two of your day meditating on your vision.
Becoming a yes person.
When you meditate on your vision, you will set off a chain of probability vectors that will manifest as luck encounters in your life that will lead you closer to fulfilling your vision. These chains of events cannot proceed if you do not act on them to completion. You need to be in the right place at the right time, and to do that you need to be engaging with the world.
Let’s say your vision is to stand up on stage and present to the largest audience you could imagine.
The day after you create this vision, an opportunity to meet a few friends arises who you feel slightly out of your comfort zone spending much time with. You decide to do so, in good faith that you will make your vision work, and sit awkwardly for a couple of hours with these out of your comfort zone fringe friends. But then maybe you overhear one of the friends speaking about facing one of their fears standing in front of an audience. At first it seems like a benign event, people speak about this often.
Then let’s say you also say yes to an event the next day to go out with work colleagues for lunch who you don’t normally go out with - and one of them is speaking about the same thing. You start developing an attention for synchronicities - and once you start this you will see it more and along the way you will be picking up skills for being able to achieve your vision.
After a few of these chance encounters, you will start seeing how they happen more frequently the more you say yes.
On a metaphysical level, you can imagine this process as moving yourself into the dimension or parallel universe where you are standing in front of an audience sooner rather than later. Every possibility is already out there, it’s your choices that direct your being into the dimension with the aligned probability for achieving your vision.
Especially with sentient ideas, when we start aligning ourselves to an archetype by our choices, we will find the opportunities increasing exponentially until we no longer see the synchronicities because we have become the synchronicity.
In summary you need to be a yes person; allow the magic of good fortune take you on a journey out of your comfort zones.
Committing to at least a couple of minutes of your day meditating on your vision
All universal energy has a tendency to follow their path of least resistance; a lion won't hunt if it’s not hungry, and electricity will not flow if there is no path. We are wired to conserve energy and only expend it when deemed required. With no vision, the path of least resistance is idle mode - like an idling engine ready to be accelerated but with no driver.
When we focus on a vision, we are setting the coordinates of our next destination - and our path of least resistance is no longer programmed towards idleness. Without the coordinates, we will feel like we are expending too much energy taking action without reference. Sitting becomes more enjoyable than doing, because sitting is fulfilling a non existent vision, i.e. heading towards nothing. Discipline in these cases becomes tedious and a chore, rather than passion and full of inspiration. Motivation is a by-product of purpose, so make sure you have brought your attention to your purpose.
Spending a few minutes a day meditating / focusing on your vision will make discipline seem less like a chore, and more like a fun activity.
The added benefit to applying some discipline (or passion if you are doing it right) is for troubleshooting when things aren’t working out. If your vision isn’t coming closer to fulfilment, and you are consistently following through on the opportunities presented, then you can focus on what is wrong with the vision itself - maybe it’s not what you really wanted, or maybe you already have fulfilled it. Perhaps your vision is in conflict with another desire, or another person’s will. You can only explore these possibilities if you have given the vision a chance to work it’s magic by following opportunities to completion, and have ruled out discipline as a potential problem.
3. Have faith and courage that saying yes will be rewarded, and that your vision has an intelligence of it’s own design.
This is difficult in the first instance, as you won’t have the faith in how visions work from your own experience, and you will need to trust the source of authority that led you to start making visions. This leap of faith isn’t that daunting if you perceive it as being a very small risk to take.
What is the downside to putting faith into the unknown? This is where you will need courage to take a chance and overcome skepticism.. If there are no results from your vision, then hey you tried it and what’s there to lose. If you are scared of being judged by peers because you are into airy fairy supernatural nonsense, then don’t tell them for the first few attempts!
The first few times creating visions, the most important thing is to make sure you do whatever you can to create faith in the process. Without faith, you won’t be investing much energy into the process and you will have a self fulfilling non-result. Sometimes that means keeping the vision to yourself, so you don’t get negative feedback right away. Later on with enough faith, negative feedback can be very useful as you can integrate it into the vision, without being deterred from the entire process itself. The vision creating process, and vision fulfillment gains inertia too, so remember it will get easier as you progress.
When you are encountering a sentient vision, (which is almost always unless you prefer the materialist paradigm) it’s also beneficial to have faith that whatever archetype you are encountering in the vision, or the idea you are working with, is also sentient and aware of you. It has adopted you as you have adopted it. This is a process of co-creation with the universe, and believing in that gives even more influence to the process. If you don’t believe in the sentience in the vision, then it will be reciprocated - and it won’t believe in your sentience.
4. Record the vision; keep track of it in some form - thanks to retro-causality; future knowledge of the vision will give it more energy in the present.
Recording is the way of signaling to your future self, and ideas or archetypes you may be working with, that you are moving towards fulfilling the vision. Recording may take the form of writing it down, voice notes, or keeping a journal of how the vision is unfolding - maybe there are synchronicities occurring around your vision theme… write those down! The more attention you give to these events, as mentioned before, the more energy you are investing into creating more of these events.
Recording the event can also take the form of expressing the vision in a picture format, or meditating on a static image of the vision for long enough that it burns an image into your head you could never forget. It doesn’t necessarily need to be recorded in the physical world, but it does need to be firm and consistent enough to recall with a moment’s notice.
By observing a recorded vision in the future, you are in a way cementing that future memory. You realizing that you have fulfilled the vision is creating a future memory. This is better explained by Jordan Peterson as he explored the concept of attention from his study of Jung;
"The thing that grips your attention and directs it to one place or another is a manifestation of what Jung called the self. Jung thought that the mechanism that directed your attention in the present was your future self attempting to manifest itself in the present world."
In other words, attention in the present is your idealized future self directing your focus onto things that will lead you to your idealized future self. There are multiple idealized future selves, but by recording which one you want to be, and keeping track of the progress, you are cementing the future self that you choose in the present to be sending back clues of how to reach the idealized future self.
So pay attention to what you pay attention to, and record what you pay attention to so that your future self can direct your attention better!
That’s the four keys, and if you have any questions for creating a vision for yourself don’t hesitate to get in touch! These four keys also apply to creating a vision in a workplace, for a new idea, or even a theatre performance - it’s not limited to yourself.