The Dalai Lama tells us, “I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy.” Most people would agree with this statement, yet many of us are not experiencing true happiness. Why is this so, and what can we do? The answer may be that your current level of consciousness cannot comprehend the possibility of greater happiness. The movie-maker and philosopher David Lynch has an excellent way of describing how expanding your consciousness expands your horizons.
He says to imagine your life with a consciousness the size of a golf ball. When you read a book you will get a golf-ball-sized understanding of the writing. If you look outside your window you will have a golf-ball-sized awareness of the beauty of nature. When you get out of bed in the morning you will experience a golf-ball-sized wakefulness. Now see what happens when that golf ball of consciousness is expanded to the size of a beautiful hot air balloon: Read the book and you will get More Understanding; look outside and you will have More Awareness; wake up and you will feel More Wakefulness. What he is saying is that as your consciousness evolves and grows, you open yourself to ever greater experiences in all areas of your life. This includes your level of happiness which can increase from a limited amount of contentment (the size of a golf ball?) to feelings of joy that are far greater and more profound.  

One excellent way to expand your consciousness is through the practice of visualization, which combines the focus of meditation with the magic of your imagination. Start with a simple meditation to quiet the mind, and use that peaceful space to set your imagination free. Let it create a vision of the beautiful life that you desire. You can envision a specific positive event happening, or just a general feeling of being blissful and carefree. As you continue to focus on this visualization it will gradually seem more real, and you will begin to actually experience how it feels to be in the imagined life you have created. This opens your consciousness to new ways of thinking and being that are beyond the limitations of your old belief system, and to greater possibilities for true happiness.

A good example of this is the way that Olympic athletes think just before they are about to compete. Millions of people will be watching this event, so it might be natural to think about all the things that could go wrong and how to avoid them. But the best athletes know that they should never visualize mistakes, because picturing and imagining poor performance increases the likelihood that it will happen. This is why most top athletes are trained to visualize themselves winning the game, running the fastest race, or scoring the winning point. When they do this, their chances for success increase dramatically.

The science behind visualization is based on the creation of new neural pathways in your mind. As you continue to visualize the things that you want in your life, your brain absorbs these mental images in the same way that it would if you had actually experienced them. This trains your mind to be familiar with these positive feelings so that it is ready to accept them when they come your way. Visualization is a way of practicing how it feels to experience what you want in your life. The more you focus on good things happening, the more your mind and body will discover them in real life. Actively visualizing how you want your life to unfold expands your consciousness so that it is able to comprehend greater joy and fulfillment. Your imagination becomes the bridge between the limited world that your mind was trapped in, and the endless possibilities that await you.