I wonder, with all the TV ads and psychosocial engineering
we’ve gotten used to, we’ve lost track of the power of imagination. It’s been
reduced to “wouldn’t it be nice if…” like owning a new car, winning the
lottery, getting laid; it’s been confused with dreaming. Dreaming is an
enjoyable pacifying pastime. Like the American dream it captures people,
immobilized by pleasant thoughts of moving. Imagination is very different, a
powerful, deep and delightful tool, an adjunct to reality, not an alternative.
I see my body/mind as containing far more than my puny conscious and habitual
body used like a donkey to walk and talk. Unleashed by imagination they can
both experience from within themselves elevated realities wondrously different,
but always, always real. As humans we have a highly developed sense of how we
reflect each other, a facility we so easily get lost in. We fall into being
actors for the viewings of others and lose our own presence. Similarly our
unconsciously held imaginative realities can be usurped by unreal conscious
dreams. In a sense we are actors when we need to be real and drab realists when
we need to enact our imaginative playfulness. Yet it’s so hard when we have one
eye on the mirror of what we look like. But imagine the mirror is gone and one
is not alone, simply free of it’s stare. And with this freedom comes the
reality of being. And with this reality of being comes the equal realities of
imagination. The turkey gabble of human mirroring becomes a pauper’s prison. To
imagine one must find some secret pool away from this constant gaze, catch a
bus if you will to somewhere else. The bus stop recedes and one is travelling
in all the unconsciousnesses that one holds in one’s mind and body. We have
mirror neurons that fire when we see a movement in the exact same way as when
we do a movement so as we see we also secretly do unconsciously, so seeing a
beaver swim on a wild life documentary and we’ve done it with them and
somewhere hold the memory of it. This is human mirroring put to good use. In
imagination we can inhabit their watery playground and experience their
reality, their lunge for a fish, returning swim, trot to a favourite eating place,
trap it under a paw, take the killing bite, be wary for possible stealers of
it, eat fast and roll over full. Or on the other hand dance like Beyonce; it’s
all there in your imagination. This is in no way ‘pretending to be’ or look
like; it’s a process of imaginatively ‘being’ in that reality. It comes not
from your conscious mind consumed by ‘your’ reality but a vast wellspring of
what you hold unconsciously in your body/mind.
Imagination is no daydream, it’s muscle, a powerful tool
that takes practice and focus to dive deep into and be always, always real in.
It can be practicing a skill without moving, finding an answer without thinking
or healing your body by picturing the ailment and wrapping it in loving
attention or extracting some malignant cause. It can be the powerful resource
we often call magic.
