Imagination is the key that unlocks the prison of self. Each of us is contained within the poor four walls of our ego, and it is this containment, this restriction that visits our ills upon us, that locks us away from the source of our power.
The mental essence of the Secret Self is imagination. In one quick instant, imagination can span all boundaries, all space, all time. You, the physical animal, are only an infinitesimal creature struggling in the gigantic abyss of space and time, but you, the mental being, have the same suture as the universe itself, for your mind can perceive all and understand all, the very structure of matter and life. Imagination propels you into such understanding. Imagination is your link with the Secret Self.
The English poet and writer John Masefield wrote, "Man consists of body, mind, and imagination. His body is faulty, his mind untrustworthy, but his imagination has made him remarkable. In some centuries, his imagination has made life on this planet an intense practice of all the lovelier energies."
It has been established that whatever is maintained as an image in the mind will make its way into the outer world and manifest as a physical fact. This is not because we have changed the outer world but because we are able to see there only those things that our consciousness is conditioned to perceive. By changing our consciousness we alter our perception. Consciousness is generally altered by stimuli from the outer world.
Those born into money tend to develop a prosperity consciousness and thus to live all their lives in a condition of plenty. Similarly, those born into a condition of poverty tend to develop a scarcity consciousness and thus to live all their lives in a condition of scarcity. Insofar as this is true of each of us, we are slaves to our environment. Yet the liberating tool lies within — imagination. According to how we use this consciousness-conditioning power of our minds we are able to remake our lives.
Imagination can condition your consciousness any way you choose. Properly used, it can make you master of all events, all circumstances. No longer need you exist as an equation of reaction to the things and events that surround you, but instead you may cast up within your mental being those images that most suit your inner goals and intents. Seeing these instead of opposition and discouragement, nothing under the sun can stop you from achieving them.
Visualization
What a lovely thing is the power of the mind to visualize! Pageants, scenes, whole arenas of action may be cast up within the imagination, in full color and sound, at a moment's notice. What we choose to see within our minds we see, and this is the principal fact of our existence.
We are always no more or less than the things that take root in our consciousness, and when we determine to keep out all that detracts and restricts and limits, then we have taken our first step in making our lives self-determined affairs rather than reactions.
The Godlike part of us is mental, spiritual. What is so astounding about our existence is not our hands or eyes or heart or liver or even brain, but the fact that we think, visualize, conceive, originate. By an amazing gift of some genie we are able to choose what we will think and thereby determine our fate.
All creativity stems from the relationship of the surface self with the Secret Self, and from the dynamic effect of imagination upon the Secret Self. Authors put themselves in tune with their muse by first subordinating their surface self to some power within which they know to be great and vastly effective. They then focus their imagination on their story and their characters, and by a process that seems entirely independent of them, those characters begin to move and reveal themselves, and the story unfolds.
The author is not "making it up." It is as real to them as, more real in fact than, the chairs and desks in their room. What is happening in their mind is happening within them, and they acknowledge it immediately as being part of them, as changing them, as making them different than they were before the story came and the characters performed.
Upon the moving screen of the author's mind an intensely significant and highly symbolic drama is played, for what they visualize there is taken unto them and becomes a part of them, and their consciousness is altered by it. It is not the author who creates the book, but the book that creates the author, just as we all are creations of the mental images and ideas and thoughts that have found a home in our minds.
Next: An Artist Finds His Talent
©2023 by U. S. Andersen. All rights reserved.
Excerpted from the book The Magic in Your Mind ©2023 by U. S. Andersen. Printed with permission from NewWorldLibrary.com.
Before The Law of Attraction or The Secret, there was The Magic in Your Mind by U. S. Andersen …