Visioning Step 6: Create the Collage

When we reach this step of the collage process, we have learned how to listen to our heart's message, clipped images, sorted them, composed our design and wrestled with the doubting Critic. However, just because we are out of the woods and actually gluing images and words onto our heart-sized paper, we are not necessarily immune to the fear-based rational mind.

In spite of having created many collages, I never fail to be delighted and surprised at my completed Vision board. The initial composition, images and words set on the page before step 5, the step where I dialogue with the Critic and stand up for my dream, always shifts in this stage—IF I ALLOW IT TO TRANSFORM.


Photo from www.inhabitat.com


Here's what one of Lucia's workshop participants experienced:

“For example Clare was completing a Vision collage and noticed a big empty space under a photo of a bespectacled photographer looking out from behind the lens of his camera. Clare had interpreted the photo as symbolizing her need to focus on her dream. Suddenly her eye glanced over to a discarded ad in her reject word pile. A caption and paragraph jumped out at her and spoke to a far deeper meaning in the picture. It read:

Visionary
Our eyes are capable of seeing many things in life;
what is common and familiar, or what is rare and extraordinary.

Clare took this to mean that she needed to look at everything in life with new awareness and attentiveness. A camera lens is a mundane and quite literal illustration for the idea of focus. On the other hand, the word “visionary” and its accompanying text allude to another, deeper level of perception.” page 117, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams.

By allowing Clare to stay in her heart space rather than head space, she was able to notice and retrieve her word caption from the discard pile.

As Lucia states in her book, Visioning is a form of active meditation. That is, both practices seek greater connection to our Creative Self. This Visioning principle applies to our daily life as well. Of course we all wake up with a plan of what we need to accomplish, but allowing our heart to gently guide us through our to-do list makes an ordinary day, extraordinary.

Dorothy Segovia is an author, songwriter and certified Visioning coach practicing in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. She can be reached via her website at www.writeinside.com.