The Power Is in Your Imagination

I-Magi-Nation
Watercolour by Beverly Blanchard

Everything and all experiences have their starting point in imagination.  The computer you are staring at was at one point an image in someone’s mind.  The building you are sitting in was first created in someone’s imagination.  The contract you just wrote for your client began in your imagination.  The fight you had with your boss or partner, you created it in your imagination.  The activities of the imagination are what drive our world.  As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  

 

Also called the faculty of imagining, imagination is our ability to form new pictures and sensations that are not perceived through the physical senses of: sight, hearing, taste, feeling or touch.  The word imagination comes from the Latin word ‘imaginari,’ which means ‘to picture oneself’ and depending on how you use it, your imagination can either empower or hinder you because your imagination creates your reality.

 

Regrettably many of us have been directed away from consciously using our imagination.  We have been told that imagination is nothing more than fantasy and has no place in our real world.  We have been taught that imagination is only for those in the creative fields or children.  Yet, your imagination is always operating.  You are utilizing the faculty of imagination on a continual basis to explore and create situations and experiences.  Within your imagination everything is possible, and there are no limits.   As French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”  

 

If you employ your imagination consciously it can become your greatest collaborator.  It can allow you to move the mind from ‘what is’ so that you can create ‘what is wanted’.  Taking conscious control of your imagination involves shifting your focus from reality, and allowing your mind to live within the creative power of the dream.  In other words, you occupy the dream as if it was already fulfilled.  

 

Imagination is not wishful thinking.  Wishful thinking is a function of the mind in which you are thinking about something but not in it.  Recalling past memories is not imagination; although you can use past memories to embody the imaginative senses in your dream.

 

In order for your dream to become reality in your life, it must first be created within in your imagination.  To do this, you begin by removing your awareness from your current reality and place yourself in the reality of what you want.  In the mind’s eye, you begin picture the experience as you want it to be.  You hear it what you what to hear.  You add all the senses to what you are imagining and you step into the movie.  The more you occupy the mind’s movie in its totality, the more likely you are to manifest it on the physical plane.  This is what Henry David Thoreau meant in his quote, “If you built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

 

Next post I will show you techniques for expanding your imaginative capabilities.  In the meantime, here is a short clip of Carl Jung discussing the power of within.