Shakti Gawain’s "Creative Visualization"

Writing about Julia Cameron yesterday reminded me of one of the other goddesses in my pantheon. When I was still living in Houston I came across Shakti Gawain’s lovely little book Creative Visualization. I remember purchasing it at the Aquarian Age Bookshelf in West University. That was the first “New Age” bookstore I ever knew about. It was in an old house on a shady street and was crammed with amazing books — ideas I had never encountered before. Over the years I acquired many books from that store, attended workshops, and entered an entirely new world of thinking.

So I bought this little book and took it home and read it and was amazed at the beautiful simplicity of it. You cannot become what you cannot imagine. Think, use your imagination, envision yourself and you can make it so. I loved the idea. And I loved the little book.

I knew a little about visualization. I had taken a class in it through Houston’s Leisure Learning program with an absolutely wonderful teacher named Thomas-John Grieves. He was the owner of a studio called the Moonrise Meditation Center in Houston’s Rice Village. For six consecutive Thursday nights a group of us met at the meditation center and Thomas-John would talk about the process of using your imagination to conceive of things that you could bring into your life. He would lead us through a guided visualization that ended in a period of meditation. I was never sure if I really believed I could change things but I loved how relaxed and dreamy I felt after one of his visualizations.

So I began to follow the exercises in Shakti Gawain’s book and, slowly, I began to see myself in a more positive light. It was an enriching process. I had a couple friends who also bought the book and we used to talk about the affirmations we were creating and our experiences doing them.

About a year later I was in Aquarian Age and noticed a flyer posted by the door. Shakti Gawain was coming to Houston and was going to hold one day workshops. I immediately signed up.

When you are enthralled with a particular book or discipline or idea, there is always something slightly scary about meeting its author. You want them to be wonderful but you always harbor the awareness that it is entirely possible to confuse the magic with the magician. I was a little worried about that though I need not have been.

Meeting Ms Gawain was, simply, wonderful. She was beautiful — I knew that, I’d seen her pictures — but she was also funny and warm and friendly and reminded me of a couple girls I’d gone to high school with. I felt like I’d known her for years. That workshops proved to be a pivotal point in my life. I don’t remember exactly what I learned but I knew that people like Shakti Gawain and the people in her workshop were the sorts of people I needed to be around — and wanted to be. And I learned that all I had to do was envision myself as I would have me be and then let the process unfold.

Shakti made time to talk to each of us and when she talked to me she said something I’ve never forgotten. She said, “You have no idea how beautiful you are. You radiate light.” I had never heard of such a thing but I did so want it to be true.

This is what people like Shakti Gawain and Julia Cameron and Thomas-John Grieves have taught me, you can create your life anew each and ever day. You just need to believe. I am not a New Age person particularly. I have too much Catholic in me. But the message of these people is not dissimilar to the message of the early Catholic mystics, if we believe and we open ourselves to the light we will be filled with it. And we will radiate it to others. And that is beautiful.

Thanks for reading.