We spend more time in our imaginations than most people have ever realized. No matter
what self/help book you read most of the techniques involved rely on manipulating the
imagination, but the approach is mostly indirect because few have perceived that
imagination is the sole key to self improvement and spirituality. It's almost as though no
one wants to admit that we spend as much time in our imaginations as we really do. When we
understand this basic principle, we unlock the secrets of the mind.
When we realize the time spent in positive imaginations such as planning, hoping,
dreaming, receiving impressions, perceiving, using our creative intelligence, versus the
time spent in negative imaginations misinterpreting, assuming, jumping to conclusions,
plotting, forming and using complexes, unfulfilled desires, misjudging others and
ourselves, and resenting, it can be safely concluded that the majority of our thoughts
are a product of the creative imagination. Once we realize this, we can become
conscious of our imaginations. Reality sets the stage, but the imagination creates
what we believe is the plot behind the scene. The amount of images we create and store in
our memory banks with the creative imagination well outweighs those created by sensual
input. A powerful charge is given to the images when they are fear or pain oriented. We
then use these memories just as we do images created by sensual input and usually give
them the same or more validity.
The mind is in constant creation. The creative imagination and creative intelligence
(another facet of the creative imagination) are constantly creating our reality, our
existence, our perceptions, our paradigms, our schema. The imagination is also extremely
fast in its ability to scan previously created images. If someone pulls out in front of us
on the parkway, the imagination will most likely scan over every other time such an
occurrence happened in our life and remind us of how we felt at that time through
association. As the fight or flight response focuses our imagination on the negative
aspects of our environment, we become the creators of a negative reality.
The area between positive and negative imaginations can be likened to The Great Gulf.
This is illustrated in Luke 16:26 with the story told by Jesus of the rich man and the
beggar Lazarus where Abraham says to the rich man: "....between us and you there is a
great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they
pass to us, that would come from thence."
We can rationalize away this idea by reasoning that Jesus was speaking in an analogy
about heaven and hell, therefore it does not apply to the positive and negative
imaginations. We know that Christ said "the kingdom of God is within you" in
Luke 17:21. In John 14:2 He says: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were
not so I would have told you." I perceive the first mansion to be the kingdom of
heaven found here on earth in the spectrum of positive thought or imagination.
Paul rote in II Corinthians 12:2: "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years
ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God
knoweth;) Such an one caught up to the third heaven." (italics added) If there
is a third heaven, where is the first heaven? Can it not be as said in Luke 17:21,
"...within you...," considering that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of
heaven were used interchangeably?
The Great Gulf in this first mansion is the distance between the two worlds of positive
and negative imaginations. This analogy of the rich man and Lazarus can well be applied to
our heavenly realm on Earth. There is a great gulf between these worlds. A person stuck in
the negative world can not see through positive eyes. Once a person is illuminated in the
positive world The Great Gulf is easily seen.
I once heard a man say, "I wouldn’t have seen it if I didn’t believe
it." The eyes of our paradigms can be directly related to imagination and
emotion. Emotion can be likened to eye glasses of an array of different colors.
When we put on red glasses everything looks red. Wear blue glasses and everything seems
blue. So it is when we look through the eyes of hate we find reasons to hate. Look through
the eyes of a poor image of yourself and we see many things in reality to give validity to
those imaginations. If the feeling of paranoia creeps upon us we cannot escape the feeling
it brings to every aspect of life. The thought that something, in all probability, is
going to harm us is so evident that it is almost like a revelation the way it can be seen
with such clarity. Yet, it is merely an illusion brought about by our consciousness
dwelling in this area of our imagination.
The point is not to be tricked into trusting anything you perceive while in a negative
state of mind. When we wear the glasses of love, faith, hope, patience, forgiveness,
reverence, charity, we see life in an undistorted way. One may begin to reason that I am
saying to live in a pretend world where we are not facing reality, but this could not be
further from the truth. Fasting the mind from negative thought will not produce a fool who
lives in a pretend world. This is the product of the world of negative thought. You can
spend a lifetime kidding yourself in the world of negative imaginations. It is the world
of illusion and mankind has been falling for it since time immemorial.
We cannot escape seeing reality as we are and cannot escape being the way we see
reality unless the negative mind is unplugged. Then we will see reality as we must in
order to find the view point where we can realistically create positive imaginations in
our thoughts and hearts as a child of God. This view point on a feather, blowing in the
wind of a hunger for divine thought, will guide us through our trials and tribulations,
and give us the perspective on life that will permit us to experience life's interactions
without the illogic of the negative anti-world.
Imagination is limitless, boundless, misunderstood, and most of all, has had little
research. I was reading a psychology book that had a foot note after a mention of
imagination. The notation was that there needs to be more research on imagination. We are
entering the 21st century and know little about imagination, the area that people spend
the majority of their time. An area that has more influence on us in every facet of our
existence than we can perceive.
I cannot emphasize enough that we spend more time in our imaginations than anywhere
else. We are planning, setting goals or dreaming, reminiscing, plotting, loving, hating,
enjoying, sorrowing; what we term thinking, which engulfs all. We think, but what we think
about is within our imaginations. So we are deluded into conceiving we are merely thinking
when we are really engulfed in imagination. We do not merely think. We are creating or
scanning multiple realms of imaginations which become our thoughts. We are either creating
new images through the creative imagination or we are scanning the previously created
images. We call this thinking.
Each group of images sift reality for validation to satisfy the very their birth into
existence. It is our nature to justify our thoughts. The only way we can truly control our
thoughts is through faith. We must with a faith that is a blind faith. A faith blind to
our own justifiers, our own reasoning, our own sensual input. I say this because a major
part of our reasoning is born of a negative state of mind. When we are hurt or experience
fear, we conclude and develop a thought process to insure ourselves that this pain will
not come into our lives in the future. The problem with the mind's capacity to reason in a
negative state of mind is evident when we examine our own case makeup. All
irrational thought in response to our environment can be traced to fear and pain. These
thought processes born of fear and pain simply do not work. They are conceived while the
mind is in a negative state and can only lead to irrational thought.
Within irrational thought is found irrational imaginations trying desperately to feed
themselves from anything they can sift from reality. I use the term sifting reality
because this is exactly the case. These negative imaginations break down reality into many
facets such as time, space, people, places, things, words, phrases, gestures, facial
expressions, events, intentions, motives, smells, tastes, feelings, comparisons to earlier
similar situations, past memories, and preconceived notions. This opens the door to the
possibilities of selecting bits and pieces of reality to reinforce or validate these
imaginations. When a person is positive in thought, their tendency is to attempt
considering the whole picture of reality. This can be difficult to do without a mind
trained as well as Sherlock Holmes, but at least a rational person will try. This merely
gives us the difference between acting out of ignorance as opposed to acting out our
irrationalities through the negative mind.
We can see this exemplified when a child tells his parents that he knows they hate him
because they will not let him play with John now. The conclusions is reached from the
illogical, negative mind during an emotional episode, and overlooks all other
considerations. On a much more grand, adult scale we can observe the same type of
overlooked considerations. John forgets to get his wife a birthday present. She says that
she knows that he does not love her and this proves it. John has been working two jobs
because his wife’s car was wrecked and was so fatigued that he forgot. The hard work
and loyalty is not considered. Reality was sifted for a sign of validation to justify an
otherwise unjustifiable imagination that manifested as an inappropriate emotion probably
based on insecurity.
The basis to all delusions is the failure to consider the whole of reality. The
negative imaginations that we harbor become like a demonic possession to the extent that
they cause the mind to fail to give the appropriate considerations of the whole of
reality. Negative imaginations also cause a selected memory loss of other considerations
because the importance of a sifted validation is highlighted to a highly memorable state
where other considerations do not have such an importance and are forgotten as well as
overlooked.
Our personalities are born out of our imaginations. We hold ideals, heroes, our goals,
our dreams, in our imaginations until they wholly or partially manifest into reality. The
thought processes that we develop in a negative state of mind will delude us into choosing
the wrong ideals, the wrong heroes, the wrong goals, the wrong dreams. Blend this with
inappropriate emotion and we struggle not only through reality, but for reality. Lace this
with enslavement to superstition and tradition and we have a concept of mankind's state of
mind. And it is all in the imagination.
A beautiful book that I would wholeheartedly recommend for anyone to read is A
Stranger By The River, by Paul Twitchel. The books character, a master, Rebbazar Tarz,
states: "Now know this. God is All. You cannot believe that God is All. In your
imagination, you have and create ideals and idols, and then believe that is God. There are
only the attributes of God; for once you transcend time and space, beyond all creation,
you meet perfection and find in the end that perfection is all, and all is perfection.
This is God."
He further adds, "Let me tell you this. Mind is of a duel nature, for it can
change from the good to the negative, from the negative to the good, within the minute
fraction of a second."
The duel nature of the mind is critical to understand if you are interested in
spiritual ascension. I see this occurring in love-hate relationships frequently. The more
emotional a person is by nature, the higher a level of this change from positive to
negative, negative to positive can operate. The imaginations experienced during these
change episodes are fantastic. Lovers can imagine a life of happiness and harmony long
overdue, then, as the emotion changes to negative, they will imagine a life of despair and
long suffering.
We create an image in our mind for each and every thought. Within our imagination we
create our ideals, role models, heros, love concepts, perceptions on how to live and
survive in life, plans, goals, ideas of pleasure, ideas of fun, concepts of pain, insult,
offence, etc. In other words, we form our personalities and life concepts around our
imagination. Our ability to create stems from imagination. What ever we imagine reality to
be, it is. Life is exactly whatever we imagine that it is.
