Who Helps You Cross the Road?
Article Published in spirituality and health magazine
HERE’S A SIMPLE EXERCISE TO TAP INTO YOUR DEEP SUPPORT SYSTEM.
For this exercise to be helpful, you must have the time and be in a frame of mind to read the directions below and follow the sequence. If you don’t have five minutes now, stop and come back when you do. Ready? With your eyes open or closed, allow the following images to form in your mind’s eye. As you see each image, take a few moments to let the information unfold and become clear to you.
1. See yourself crossing a road to get to a shop that you often frequent on the other side of the road.
2. Notice how you cross the road. Are you hurried, careful, joyful, or at ease?
3. Now, keeping your mother in mind, see yourself crossing the road to reach the shop on the other side. Your mother should not appear in the image; just think of her as you see yourself crossing the road. Let the image unfold.
4. Did you cross the road differently with your mother in mind than when you crossed by yourself? What was that difference?
5. Now, keeping your father in mind, see yourself cross the road to reach the shop on the other side. Your father should not appear in the image; just think of him as you see yourself crossing the road. Let the image unfold in its own manner.
6. Was there a difference in how you crossed the road with your father in mind than with your mother in mind? What was the difference?
7. Did one parent give you more energy crossing the road? Was one parent more obstructive?
THE RESULTS AND HOW TO USE THEM
You may find that one parent is negative and the other positive. Or, both may be negative or both positive. If you find that one parent affects you negatively and the other positively while you’re crossing the road, you can consciously alter your automatic responses by keeping the “positive” parent in mind as you do things in life. For example, the next time you are dealing with a difficult person, visualize an image of this person and keep the positive parent in mind. You will immediately notice your natural constructive abilities emerge in dealing with the difficult person.
If both parents are positive, you can use the positive quality offered by each parent for different tasks. For example, one of my clients found that keeping her mother in mind gave her focusing ability while keeping her father made her feel full of love. Each time she had to focus on work, she kept her mother in mind to help her think clearly. When she found herself getting into a power struggle with her children to clean up their rooms, keeping her father in mind allowed her to feel more love and to better communicate with her children.
If both parents are negative, it is useful to see how your parents affected you so that you can become conscious of habitual negative or self-defeating behaviors. In this situation, keep in mind a significant person in your life who positively affects you — a mentor, therapist, teacher, or a religious figure who deeply moves you. The image will bring out your best abilities.
WHY THIS WORKS
In clinical research with thousands of subjects, psychologist Akhter Ahsen, Ph.D., discovered that images, such as those of our mothers and fathers, are neurologically encoded in specific locations in the brain. When these images are evoked — consciously or unconsciously — they can affect our physiology and our mental and emotional states in powerful ways. Ahsen’s findings were first published in 1965 in the book Eidetic Psychotherapy, and imagery research has been studied at universities worldwide. Ahsen’s goal is to teach people to consciously use these high-intensity images, known as eidetic images, for self-awareness. If you are interested in learning more about how mental imagery works and how to use it to clear blocks in your own life, I will be teaching a special Spirituality & Health online Imagery Workshop at SpiritualityHealth.com.
By Jaqueline Lapa Sussman