Innocent question for you…
When was the last time you consciously exercised your imagination?
Maybe sitting around, dreaming up something new? Or envisioning a different future from the one stretching before you? Or creating something that has never existed before, with your own unique stamp on it?
Or maybe you’ve found yourself imagining a life beyond the one you currently inhabit… or a self beyond who you currently are.
We tend to associate imagination with possibility. With invention, creativity, and originality. And with the ability to see past what is already here.
And certainly, imagination does make all of these things possible.
But what if your imagination is far more active than you realize, in ways you’re not necessarily conscious of?
What if you've been using that powerful imagination of yours all day, every day, without even noticing it?
Consider how often you imagine what someone else is thinking...
Or what might happen tomorrow…
Or what a particular encounter means…
Maybe you receive a text message and imagine what the intention behind it is. Or maybe someone doesn't respond to you, and you find yourself imagining why. Or maybe you anticipate an upcoming conversation and imagine how it might unfold.
You may imagine what others think of you. What you might accomplish. What could go wrong. What might never happen.
And sometimes you imagine what is possible for your life based almost entirely on what has already happened.
None of this necessarily feels like an exercise of imagination.
It feels like thinking.
Or worrying.
Or planning.
Or remembering.
Sometimes it feels like simply being savvy about what’s what… and simply knowing how things are.
But imagination is there percolating all the while… silently participating in how you interpret your experiences, in how you understand your circumstances, and in how you anticipate what comes next.
We tend to notice our imagination when it takes us somewhere novel and unfamiliar. We are less likely to notice it when our imagination keeps us somewhere familiar, and possibly even stuck.
And that, to me, is well worth giving some consideration to.
Because imagination can powerfully catalyze us and generate possibilities beyond what we already know…
Even as it can also help us reproduce—and thereby strangely prove to us—what we already believe.
Take, for instance, when we imagine how a familiar situation will play out. Or when we imagine the response we expect from a particular person. Or when we imagine the limitations of our circumstances, the boundaries of our capacities, or the likely outcome of our efforts.
When we imagine such things, we often, without even realizing it, begin to inhabit these imaginings of ours as though they were simply descriptions of reality.
Of course, let me be clear, our interpretations are not always mistaken. Experience does teach us things. Perhaps even conferring a certain measure of wisdom. Patterns we track and base our reading of reality off of can absolutely be real. The anticipation of a particular unfolding or another can absolutely be sound.
But there is a difference between recognizing a possibility and assuming we already know what will happen. And that difference can be subtle… surprisingly difficult to detect. Especially when our imagination is operating so automatically that we no longer recognize its participation in our view of reality.
What intrigues me is that we can spend a great deal of time imagining without necessarily exercising much imaginative freedom. We can imagine the same outcomes, rehearse the same fears, anticipate the same disappointments, and tell ourselves the same old stories.
And that means our imagination can be extraordinarily busy, and yet without ever taking us anywhere new.
Which raises an interesting question:
Have we truly met our own imagination… and if so, how well do we know it?
Yes, in order to answer this question, we could reflect on whether we consider ourselves to be imaginative. Or whether we are fundamentally artistic, creative, visionary, or gifted at dreaming up possibilities.
But we ought also to probe into whether we recognize the ways imagination is already participating in our lives… to ask ourselves with a measure of introspection:
What does your imagination tend to imagine?
Where does it wander?
Where does it refuse to go?
What possibilities does it entertain readily, and which ones scarcely occur to it?
What does it help you see?
And what might it be preventing you from seeing?
In contemplating these questions, I find myself wondering whether becoming more imaginative sometimes begins less with imagining something new, and more with recognizing what we have already been imagining.
For it may turn out to be the case that some of what we have taken to be inevitable, obvious, or simply true has involved a little more exercising of our imagination than we had ever realized.
I’m not making a crass case for “reality being whatever we imagine it to be,” which is obviously an overstatement. I’m making a more nuanced argument, suggesting that our experience of reality is never entirely separate from the meanings we ascribe to it.
So perhaps the invitation I’m issuing here isn't simply to use your imagination more than you already are. Perhaps it's to become more acquainted with the imagination you're already using.
Consider this an invitation to notice the habits of your imagination. To become curious about its assumptions. To recognize its extraordinary contributions to your experience of being alive.
And perhaps, every so often, to ask:
What am I imagining… that I haven't realized I'm imagining?
And what might become possible if I imagined otherwise?
🗝️🌀
Love + Oneness,
Naomi
