What is Glimmer?! Glimmer is that image or thought that shimmers into your awareness ‘from out of nowhere’. When it comes it is captivating…if only for a moment. Almost like a little seduction…so good and tantalizing. It bleeds through from a life not lived. It grabs your attention, sparks your imagination, stirs your emotions.
In the beginning it comes for only a second…and then it is gone…just a shimmering twinkle of desire or inspiration. Often this Glimmer comes when ‘least expected’…when we are driving home and spacing out, doing the dishes while staring out the window mindlessly, gardening in the perfect warmth of the sun.
I have come to consider these glimmering visitations as inspired sparks from the Soul… calling us, inviting us to imagine a treasure we have not yet found. Sadly, and all too often, it seems we bring our rational mind to this party and everything shuts down. Our Glimmer is gone. We are left feeling silly or even defeated by our ‘daydream’ and we resignedly step back into the grind of our every day life…and the good feeling is gone.
Get practiced at Going for the Glimmer, hunt for it. Pay attention to it when it shimmers into your consciousness. Play with it, engaging in the fanciful potentials…let your imagination roam wild. With this practice the Glimmer stays a while longer, coming into a little more focus…and then it is gone again. Step by step you practice following this luminous mysterious glimmering desire for something more…and it grows in clarity.
We begin to be able to summon it and imagine into it. If we want it to grow into form in our life, it needs our attention. These glimmering thought forms and energy bodies want to find their way into form and function. Their calling on you is designed to inspire and to engage all the resources, skills and supports you have and some you may need to acquire.
Here are three well founded practices to grow this inspiration:
- Daydream! Let your creative mind wander with all that is possible with this emerging energy in your life. Have fun with this, check your problem-solving mind ‘at the door’ and enjoy the fanciful potential.
- Collect images that are resonant with what is emerging, what it looks like, feels like, capture some element of it. If it is the new home you would love to live in (even if you can’t figure out how), capture the images and create a collage/vision board or join Pinterest and give your Glimmer its own board!
- Make a list of all the discoveries you are making about your Glimmer…what are the qualities, the details, the way you feel when you spend time with your glimmering new reality? Get to know it, spend time with it and make it matter.
All of these practices invite the power of your imagination, calls on everything the research is telling us, and supports us into our own glimmering Luminous Life.
Dr. Shannon Simonelli is the co-founder of the NeuroImaginal Institute a professional development group linking neuroscience to the arts and experiential healing. She is the brilliant mind, guide and luminary behind CreativeWell Consulting and the Luminous Life Maps™ System, neurologically based creative arts experiences for professional and personal transformation. Shannon has devoted more than 20 years of her professional research, education and practice to designing engaging ways to catalyze change for and with her clients.
You can join the journey online by subscribing to Shannon’s LoveNotes and being part of her online Soulful Self-Care Program: Embodied Creativity: Re-Enchant Your Work Life. View all posts by Dr. Shannon Simonelli / View events at: https://luminouslifemaps.com/products/