Working with an Imaginary Mentor

Imagination is everything. It is the preview to life's coming attractions. - Albert Einstein

I've been asking myself, how can I best help empower others at this time of great global change. The first answer that came in the flash of inspiration was the word imagination. Einstein regularly insisted that imagination is more important than knowledge. But the thing is, it's not just for geniuses. It's for everyone. We have just be taught to favor the rational mind at the expenses of capacities that actually can help us in amazing ways. It's easy to reclaim.

Years ago I learned an exercise from Jean Houston, noted author, visionary and one of the founders of the human consciousness movement. It involves working with an imaginary mentor to get advice on any question that we have for any area of our life. Using our imagination and intuitive mind give us access to a deeper wisdom and way of knowing beyond the capabilities of our linear mind.

I have used this exercise for years in teaching writing and with creativity coaching. I have been amazed and delighted that my students get much better advice than I could have ever given with all my years of experience. Everyone in class could hear the wisdom coming through as we shared our answers. Most remarkable is that the answers actually sounded like they were coming from the individual asked. If someone asked Mark Twain, the response would sound like something Mark Twain would write. Tapping your imagination and writing in flow can give you access to expanded awareness and better answers you could think up.

TRY THIS: Pick someone you think would give good advice. It could be Einstein, Plato or your grandmother. Imagine you have written him or her a letter asking a question you have about anything in your life. It helps to be specific. Then using the technique of free writing (writing as fast you can without censoring) you write the response to you as if it is coming from your imaginary mentor. Really let go on this one. Don't think. Just let the answer flow out of the pen or the keyboard for at least ten minutes. Then read the answer with an open curiosity as if you really have just received this letter in the mail. Be open, be objective. The more you play with this, the stronger the muscle of your imagination grows.

OR TRY THIS: You can also go for a walk with your imaginary mentor and have a conversation with them in your imagination. The key is to play and be open. Let go of thinking that you have to figure out everything with your mind.

Living and Creating with the Unknown

The scope of challenges we face in the world today is staggering. Everything seems uncertain. We can feel overwhelmed and very uncomfortable in the face of so much unknown. Yet the unknown is really the only place for any new creation. How do we work with it without feeling paralyzed by our fear of the uncertainty?

Trusting that something larger than our everyday selves is available to support and guide us is essential. Creativity, our ability to come us with new ideas and solutions in every area, is impossible without a willingness to be open and surrender to the inspiration that wants to come through us.

Creativity is all about working with the unknown. Whenever I start a piece of writing I rarely have more than a vague idea of where to even begin. Yet as I show up inspiration arrives to guide me as I go. I may ask a creative question, like what is this newsletter about, then let it go. This month I got living and creating with the unknown as the topic. As I sat down to write it came to me in pieces that I could weave together from my intuitive knowing. That’s how we can create anything, even our lives and our world.

Visionary creative Jan Phillips suggests “once we begin to see ourselves as creators of our lives, we can start to see ourselves as makers of the culture. And from there, we can weave our personal hopes and commitments into the social fabric around us . . . No political leader has the power to override or diminish the public imagination.”

We often resist playing with our imagination and opening to create new possibilities because some part of us considers the unknown to be unsafe. We can experience a physical sense of discomfort in our body that can keep us from even trying something new.

Try this: Close your eyes and take a few slow deep breaths relaxing your body on the exhale. Relaxing your body can make it easier to access your imagination. See your mind a blank slate as you continue to breathe. Focusing internally in a meditative way actually slows our brain waves down from everyday beta waves of the analytical mind to alpha waves of the intuitive mind. This doesn't need to take a lot of time. In ten minutes we can feel more peaceful, centered and open to our creative imagination and the flow of new ideas and new stories for our lives and our world.

When we get a new idea that feels inspired we can act on it. Step by step, we can create new ways of being in the world and navigate these uncertain times with grace and empowerment seeing all the changes and challenges as a tremendous opportunity.

Using the Power of Your Imagination

Everything you can imagine is real. - Pablo Picasso

Imagination is at the heart of creativity. It offers us offers us a doorway to expanded possibilities and ways of knowing. Imagination is a powerful capacity for creating not only stories or pictures or music but our very lives. With it we can find solutions to problems, for ourselves and the world, that our rational minds couldn’t solve.

In my own creativity as a writer and photographer as well as my work as a creativity coach, I’ve always insisted that our imagination is smarter than our mind. It allows us to access expanded states of consciousness where fresh ideas spark and we find the flow of infinite possibilities and intuition. If we can imagine something, see it in our mind’s eye or get feeling sense of it, we can create it, often in ways that seem miraculous.

Most of us have been discouraged from engaging our imagination with comments like "stop daydreaming” or “why are you wasting time staring out the window.” or “oh you’re just making that up.” These activities all allow our creative mind to run free to make new connections and give birth to new ideas. Rather than being encouraged to dream big, to ask questions or expand our awareness beyond our linear rational mind, we have been consistently schooled in restricting our imaginative potential.

As adults we often define ourselves as not being creative and imaginative. Yet it is a gift we were all born with and something we can easily reclaim by our willingness to play with it. One way to start is with “just pretend”. Just pretend what you want your creativity or life to look like if you had no limits and all was possible. Imagination is the faculty that can take you there.

Our imaginations are like muscles. If they haven't been used they atrophy and we to strengthen them to allow for optimum access. As we start to exercise our imaginations we actually form new neural connections in our brain.

Try this. Take three deep breaths all the way down into your belly and with each exhalation let everything go and let the peace of simply being present in the moment enter you. Then imagine being in a favorite place. What do you see. If you are not visual, don't worry about it. Instead focus on what it feels like to be there. What sounds, scents, tastes are involved. Use all your senses. The body can't distinguish between a real experience and something that is imagined so this is a great way to give yourself a mini vacation without leaving home.

Then try this. Try using your imagination to talk to a tree, a squirrel or a stone. See what they have to say to you. Just pretend and play with it. Have fun.

Imagination Can Transformation Our World

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

Imagine all the people living life in peace . . .
- John Lennon

Consider that your imagination is real. It is a creative force. Our bodies can't tell the difference between an actual event and one that is imagined. If you have a fear of heights and lean out over the railing to look down on the Grand Canyon your body will begin to feel a sense of panic, dizziness and butterflies in the stomach. Close your eyes and imagine the same scene in detail and you will feel the same visceral reaction to a fear of falling.

With the world in tremendous flux we have an opportunity to create a world of peace and harmony that works for everyone. "Just pretend" that it is possible. "Just pretend" is another way of saying" imagine", because when we use our imagination we feel we are just making it up and that it has little to do with "what is real". But what if imagination is more than that. What if through the force of imagination we can be the creator of our lives and our world. What if now is the time. What do you want to create for yourself, your community and the world at large. You can start with "just pretend" to begin to access your imagination and deeper knowing.

Start to see what you want in your mind's eye or feel it in your body. It can be as simple as I am the experience of joy, love, and freedom from the place of your heart. What would that look like for you? What is calling to you from that place of your heart and your joy. What do your want to choose. What we put our focus on is what we create. Intentionally using your imagination for creation helps you focus on what you want and bring it into being. Imagine we can all be the agents of transformation in the world. What would that look like?

Here's a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (likely the great spiritual poet of the early 20th century) that feels to me like it was written for just the time we now find ourselves in.

All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.
And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.
No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

- Rainier Maria Rilke

Imagine how you want to serve the Earth, how do you want to be used.

Play Is More Important Than You Think

Once people understand what play does for them they can learn to bring a sense of excitement and adventure back to their lives. - Stuart Brown

I recently discovered a book by Dr. Stuart Brown titled Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul. I’ve long known that play was essential to being creative, and while Brown agrees, he takes it a step further saying that play is crucial to our overall sense of well being. Humans are not alone is this need. Play is deeply embedded in the natural world. Bears, bobcats, deer, octopus, elephants, aardvarks and sparrows, to name a just few, have all been observed at play.

Many of you may have seen the photo or video of a Canadian Eskimo sled dog playing with a polar bear. Brown offers the backstory which makes the scene even more remarkable. It was apparently a very hungry polar bear since the sea ice was late in freezing up so it hadn’t been able to hunt seals. Rather than eating the dog, the bear approached with a relaxed posture that invited play. The dog naturally responded. The two frolicked for quite a while. The polar bear came three days in a row to play, then as it got cold enough for the ice to freeze it headed off to hunt. This seemingly remarkable interchange suggests that play provides something essential to living beings beyond what we understand.

Brown defines play as a state of being where we engage in something for its own sake. It puts us into an expanded state of consciousness where things seem to flow and it lightens our mood. Play has been shown to improve brain function and accelerate learning. It gives us a hit of dopamine, the feel good hormone naturally produced by our bodies. It contributes to our overall sense of well being. Play has been shown to diminish antisocial behavior and a predilection for violence in abused kids.

Play is certainly at the heart of creativity. A willingness to play which allows us to get lost in what we are doing is essential to being creative. That it also really contributes to our overall well being makes it even more important than we think.

Play is different for everyone. One retired researcher says he continues to do research because for him it actually feels like play. For me being creative is part of my play whether I'm writing, cooking, taking photographs or dabbling in watercolors. Take a moment and consider what feels like play for you. Where do you feel a sense of timelessness. Expand your definition of what you think play needs to look like. Let yourself be surprised by the answer. Then ask what do you need to do to bring more play into your life?

Playing with the Imagination

Imagination is more important than knowledge. - Albert Einstein

You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born . . .
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity
- Rainer Maria Rilke

I often say to my writing and creativity coaching clients that your imagination is smarter than you are; like intuition it gives you a deeper, faster, more expanded means of gaining critical insights and making important connections than the more limited workings of your linear, rational mind. Whether you want to write, engage your creativity more fully or develop an ability for creative problem solving, your imagination is an essential tool. To exercise your imagination try the age old favorite of looking for shapes in the clouds; or go sit outside on a bench to watch people go by and make up stories about their lives; or go to a park and lean against a tree and imagine what it would say to you if it could talk; or lay down on the earth and ask her what simple thing you could do to help the planet. Then be open to the ideas, images or thought that arise in your mind.

One exercise I like to work with is asking advice of an imaginary mentor. You think of a question and then write the answer yourself as if you are getting a response from someone you admire. You can ask Einstein, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson or your grandmother. A woman I worked with did this exercise and received what was clearly really good advice. Unaccustomed to using her imagination in this way she asked, "how do I know if I am actually channeling this person or if I'm making it up". It's a great question because when we use our imagination it will feel and seem like we are making it up. And that's exactly how the imagination works.

We have a hard time trusting the information and ideas we get because we live in a culture that dismisses the power of the imagination but saying, "oh, you're just making that up" or we tell our children "it's just your imagination". Imagination is a tool of human consciousness that is underdeveloped in the modern world. Yet the more you engage it and play with it the stronger the connection becomes and you will begin to feel the quiet excitement and joy that comes from expanding this ability, that will give you new ways to looking at problems and solving them.

You can even ask your imagination for suggestions on how best to cultivate it. Sit quietly for five minutes following the flow of your breath and calming your mind. Then be open to what your imagination has to say to you. Try writing without thinking for ten minutes as if you were taking dictation from your imagination. Or you could ask your imagination what it wants from you and then answer the question by writing or drawing or even spontaneous movement where you let the thoughts and feelings flow.

Imagination is one way we access our deeper mind. It is a place where you shed your everyday self, where sparks fly and time stands still. It requires a bit of solitude and idleness. It asks that you slow down and sit still with your mind clear and expectant. It asks that you be willing to play.

Working with the Infinite Possibilities of Your Imagination

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. - Henry David Thoreau

We use our imagination all the time, whether we realize it or not. When we are worrying about a future event we are imagining the possibility of a negative outcome. When we are thinking about our next dream vacation we are imagining the place and what we may be doing there.

When we are being creative we are imagining scenes as we write, the cake rising as we mix the ingredients for baking, or the blank canvas giving rise to color.

Yet most of us don’t think much about the ways we use our imagination and the mystery of how it works. Most of us hold tight to the confines of the mind, living from its repeating pattern rather than being open to the infinite possibilities that live in our imagination.

All creative acts arise in the imagination. If we can imagine it, you can create it. When Einstein said, “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”, he was suggesting that we need to work less with our minds and more with our imagination.

So how do we do this when we are used to trying to figure everything out and understand how to change or create something. How do we play with this incredible capacity of imagination that we all have.

It’s like building a muscle. The more we use it, the stronger it becomes and the more we can trust it to support us. A willingness to play where we just pretend some this real and true, the way we did as children is a good beginning.

Try this. Talk to a tree. Whether it outside your window or in your local park. You don’t have to do this out loud. Just ask the tree a question about a problem you are trying to trying to solve or something you wanting a creative answer to. Then take a few deep breaths, relax, let your mind quiet a bit and see what comes to you. Or you could do this as a writing exercise where you ask the question of a tree by writing it on the page and then allow the tree to answer you through stream of consciousness writing where you just let the words flow.

The key is to have fun with our imagination. Know that it is the doorway to the expanded capacities we need in our live an the world today.