Imagining Things

Exercise 1: Variation

Imagine your kitchen. Remember whatever sights, smells, sounds, and feelings from your kitchen seem important to you.

Once you've recalled that memory, try changing the floor of your kitchen in the memory. Remember the floor from another room in your house, and imagine a version of your kitchen with that floor. It may look different, or squeak more or less, or feel different when you walk on it because it has a different surface. Let this imagined scene become more and more real, getting as close as you can to really being in a strange version of your kitchen with a different floor.

Now change something else about your kitchen, but this time make something up instead of remembering something you've seen before. Try changing the color of the walls, or the view out the window, or the sound of the running water, or the temperature. Imagine your kitchen as it was the last time you were there, but with one aspect changed to something you've never encountered before, but created from scratch.

Exercise 2: Selection

Try to remember someone who has a behavior that annoys you. Remember the last time you were subjected to this person's behavior. Perhaps, for example, you were talking to someone who kept tapping a pencil against the table, and it was driving you nuts.

What, exactly, about the behavior annoys you?

Try imagining slight variations on the behavior. Keep varying different things until you've found some examples of the behavior that continue to be annoying, and some that don't. At first, it may not be obvious whether certain variations would annoy you or not. In this case, try to imagine it as vividly as possible, and keep imagining it until you start to feel what you'd feel if you were actually there.

For example, perhaps I'm not sure if it's the sight of the pencil moving or the sound that bothers me. I'll therefore imagine that my back is turned to the pencil-tapping, but I can still hear it. Does that bother me? Then I'll imagine that the pencil is being tapped on a piece of soft foam, so I can see it, but it isn't making any noise. Does that bother me? I'll play back these constructed scenes and imagine being there until I start to feel annoyed or relieved.

Exercise 3: Composition

Look at one of the chairs in the room with you (if there are no chairs, go to another room or pick another type of object).

Now, think about the component pieces of the chair. Think about their materials, and shapes, and how they fit together. Concentrate on the pieces until there is no more chair, just pieces. Of course, the chair is still "there", but you're not thinking about the chair - you're thinking about the pieces. It's somewhat similar to the way a word loses it meaning if you say it over and over enough times. Keep thinking about the pieces until you can think about them without needing to think about the chair as well.

Allow the pieces to recombine into a chair. Think about the rest of the furniture in the room, and think about the chair - but only as a whole chair. If you find you're still thinking about the pieces of the chair, try to think about more and more furnishings at once, until the pieces disppear and only the whole chair is left. Once you can do this, think about the chair as a whole chair without also thinking about anything else.

Comments

If you had trouble with any of these exercise, try them and variations on them over the course of the next few days. The whole point of the exercises is to increase your proficiency at certain types of thought, so don't be discouraged if you have trouble at first. That just means you're getting something out of it.