Why Creative Imagery Has Such A Powerful Effect On The Unconscious

Why does creative imagery have such a powerful effect on the unconscious, and consequently your life? Imprinting a thought-form in your mind (words and/or pictures) is like planting a seed. It may take a while before you see the results, but every time you focus on that thought, the roots are burying deep. Eventually the fresh green shoots appear, and the more emotion and enthusiasm you put into it, the sooner it happens. Once an idea takes root at this deep level, it’s extremely difficult to shift.

Here are the main reasons:

1. The unconscious thinks mainly in pictures and feelings

The unconscious ‘thinks’ mainly in pictures. It also processes feelings. It is accessed mainly through the right side of the brain, which is more receptive to these than language (which is largely a left-brained function). For most people, the best way of impressing anything on the unconscious mind is to ‘show’ it a picture, and back it up with emotive words and feelings.

That’s why advertisers display their products against glamorous settings. The viewer unconsciously associates the product with drink with aspirational people. But if the advert said ‘Us this product and become one of the jet-set,’ you would dismiss it as a load of rubbish. Putting the message across VISUALLY and creating EMOTION circumvents the critical faculties of the conscious mind and impresses it on the unconscious.

2. The unconscious cannot distinguish between fact and fantasy

The unconscious is incapable of knowing whether the information it receives has come through your five senses or from your imagination. It responds exactly the same to all input.

Show your unconscious an image, and it accepts it as real. It stores the event in your memory as if it really happened, together with the emotions you were feeling at the time. Have you ever woken up at night in a sweat after a bad dream? You knew it was just a dream, but your unconscious didn’t. That’s why you reacted as if it was real. Have you ever cried at the cinema? You were watching artificial lights flickering on a screen and listening to recorded sound! You knew this all along, to why did they have such a powerful influence on you?

3. The unconscious cannot distinguish between good and bad

The unconscious does not question whatever you feed into it consciously or subconsciously. It has no way of knowing whether your instructions are good for you or bad for you. It simply does as it believes it has been directed.

4. The unconscious controls your automatic bodily responses

The unconscious also controls your bodily responses through your nervous system. If you are not convinced, try this exercise:

Sit comfortably, take a few deep breaths and relax. Pretend you have a mental screen, like a TV screen, inside your forehead, just above the level of your eyes. Imagine that a plank of wood is lying on the ground just in front of you, ten feet long and a foot wide. Now imagine that you’re walking along it. How do you feel? Almost everyone can do this easily. Now imagine that same plank twenty storeys high on a building site, suspended between two steel girders. Go on, walk across it. Now, how do you feel? ‘Nuff said?

5. Creative imagery is the most effective way of accessing unconscious material

It is also the most effective way of inputting new, empowering material into the unconscious. You can feed in positive thought forms – words, feelings and images – which programme the unconscious for whatever you desire.

Creative imagery is not some fanciful idea – it has been used successfully in business, sport, academia, psychotherapy, the entertainment industry and many other areas of life to change unhelpful patterns and improve performance. Now you know some of the reasons why.

©David Lawrence Preston, 30.7.2016