How To Engage & Utilize The Power Of Your Imagination

One of the secrets that can really help transform your life is to realize and to understand and then to start to utilize the power of your imagination.

You know,

Imagination is a feminine energy and because of it being a feminine energy it's often dismissed or discarded or discounted,

But the power of imagination.

If you remember,

You know,

Albert Einstein said,

Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.

Because if you really think about it,

Everything that exists within our physical world that we've created as a mankind,

Everything that exists had to first start its origin,

Its birthplace is in the imagination.

From the camera that's videotaping me now,

To the room that I'm in,

To the clothing that I'm wearing,

Everything had to start first in someone's imagination and idea.

And they had to see it in their mind before they could actually manifest it and make it into a physical product or a building or whatever.

So everything that exists begins in the imagination.

And imagination is a big part of our self-concept,

Meaning how do I imagine myself?

The way you imagine yourself is your self-image.

And if you have a self-image that says,

I always come in last.

That's how I see myself.

I never win.

I never get to the front of the line.

I never get ahead in life.

That's an image.

The way you imagine yourself and guess what?

That's the blueprint for the life that you will create,

The life that you will lead.

And if by chance you should get ahead and win,

Because of that self-image,

You will quickly sabotage yourself to go back to what your comfort zone is,

The image in your mind of how you function in life.

So imagination is tremendously powerful.

And here's a secret that I learned that helped me quite a bit.

Because I used to think of imagination as being able to see in my mind,

Right?

To be able to visualize.

Well visualization and imagination are two different words.

So imagination contains all of your inner senses,

Meaning to see in your mind,

To be able to visualize something in your mind is the word visualization.

That's part of your imagination.

To be able to imagine a smell.

Right now if I were to ask you to smell the smell of bacon cooking in the morning.

Now some of you vegetarians may not like that,

But I love bacon smelling in the morning.

But just to imagine the smell of coffee in the morning.

To walk down the street and to smell the smell of an orange grove or to smell the magnolia blossoms on the trees.

You can imagine what that smells like right now.

And that's a part of your imagination.

So your imagination is made up of your inner sense of smell,

Your inner sense of touch.

Right now as I say,

Imagine you're touching a flower petal,

A rose petal.

Imagine you're touching sandpaper.

In your mind you imagine the difference.

That's your imagination.

So it's your inner hearing to imagine the sound of someone's voice.

To imagine is made up of all of the different inner senses.

And visualization is just one part of it.

And people get hung up when they're taught to go into a meditation and to imagine something.

They only focus on visualization rather than looking at,

Let me smell.

You know I'm going to imagine myself at the beach for,

Let's say,

In this meditation.

What does it smell like?

To smell the salt,

Crisp air,

And hear the sound of the ocean,

That gentle hush of the ocean whispering onto the land.

To smell and to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin.

You can imagine all of that without even visualizing it.

So imagination is the full spectrum of all of your inner senses internalized into your mind,

Your mind's ability to do that.

And guess what?

Your mind is so powerful that it does not,

Your subconscious mind specifically,

Does not know the difference between something you imagine and something you actually do.

Now I'm going to give you an example of that,

Okay?

So in this exercise,

I'm going to give you an example of how this works.

For just a moment,

I want you to close your eyes.

Just close your eyes,

Take a deep breath in,

And hear the sound of my voice.

You don't even have to go deep.

I'm not going to put you into any meditation or a trance.

I'm just going to speak with you and just let your mind imagine that you're in your kitchen.

You're at your kitchen at home and you happen to notice on the countertop,

Next to the knives,

Is a large juicy lemon.

A large lemon.

You pick it up in your hand and you feel the weight of the lemon in your hand.

You feel the pitted waxy skin.

You hold that lemon up to your nose and you smell the fresh smell of a lemon,

That only smell that only a lemon has.

And now you take one of those knives and you're going to put the lemon on the counter and you're going to break the skin as the lemon juice runs down the blade.

You smell the spritz and see the spritz of the lemon juice and you smell that aromatic smell of lemon.

That clean,

Bursting smell of lemon.

And now you cut that in completely in half and you take one of the halves of lemon and you lift it up and you imagine that you're looking at that lemon juice.

You see a couple of the seeds in there and now you're going to take that lemon in your dominant hand and you're going to bring it up to your mouth and you're going to squeeze the juice into your mouth to taste the lemon juice.

You feel the cool juice swirling around your tongue and in your mouth and taste for a moment that lemon.

And what just happened?

Did you begin to salivate more?

Did you begin to activate your saliva glands?

Did I cause your saliva glands to water more?

That is the power of your imagination.

By closing your eyes and imagining that your subconscious mind,

Your autonomic nervous system acted as if you actually were eating a lemon,

Tasting the juice of a lemon.

That's how powerful your mind is.

So imagination is again,

It's a feminine energy and most people don't value it or don't utilize it,

But anything you can imagine,

You have the ability to also manifest and create.

That's so important.

Anything that you can imagine and let your imagination be there.

Let it be a tool because when you do,

When you start to value your imagination,

Then your imagination becomes a living,

Breathing imagination.

It's where imagination begins to imagine itself like going into a meditation.

I've got many experiences of this throughout my life when I'm in a meditation and spontaneously my imagination spontaneously gives me a message that I had no idea what that was all about.

Now I'll give you a quick story,

An example.

When this first happened to me was probably 25 years ago.

I had gone to a lecture in Orlando at the Spiral Circle Bookstore,

One of my favorite places and one of the topics they were talking about was on finding your spirit animal.

Now this was in the new age times of the 1980s and everybody was into what is your spirit animal and I went to this class kind of curious but had no idea what my spirit animal was and I've come to learn there's not just one.

We have several.

But during the class I was really curious about it and hearing other people's stories and then about two or three days later,

I didn't ever figure out what my spirit animal was when I left the class,

But about two or three days later I was just doing my normal morning meditation and I went into my safe place that I've created in my mind which is this beautiful hot spring in the middle of a meadow and I sit in that hot spring in my imagination in my mind and that's how I go into meditation.

So anyways I was in this hot spring in my imagination and all of a sudden spontaneously this owl swoops in and lands on the rock.

But here I am meditating and all of a sudden I sense and see this owl and looks right at me and I knew in that instant that is my spirit animal.

Now I did not go into a meditation thinking I'm going to try to figure out what my spirit animal was.

I had totally forgotten about it by then.

I was just doing my typical everyday morning meditation where I was just going there to open up to receive guidance,

To get insights,

To relax and to lower my stress levels and then spontaneously this owl appears into my meditation.

That's where imagination imagined itself.

That's the living breathing imagination that you can cultivate and it can transform your life.

That's what takes the level of brainstorming with friends and getting ideas and being creative starts to open up and expand to brilliant ideas and innovations that have never existed before because you not only honor and value your imagination but you use it regularly and you develop and cultivate it perhaps through meditation or just in daydreaming or at night when you go to bed at night to start to let that imagination come alive.

Our imagination is the common sense and what I mean by that,

When my teacher shared this with me,

It made so much sense because you know our physical senses are sight,

Smell,

Touch,

Taste,

Hearing and any of one of those can get damaged.

There are blind people,

There are deaf people,

There are people who have paralysis who can't feel.

All of them have a limitation to their five,

One of their five physical senses but imagination is the common sense meaning every human being has an imagination.

There's not one person on this planet who exists who does not have an imagination and who does not use it consciously,

Regularly.

They may not give much attention to it but they're using it all the time and it's so simple and so subtle.

Like if I were to say to you,

Where do you keep the coffee or the sugar in your kitchen?

Right now as I said that you imagine the cupboard,

The refrigerator,

The bowl,

Wherever,

You imagine where you keep it or if I were to give you directions,

You're using your imagination from the directions.

If I said go down the street,

Turn left at the stoplight,

Go down two more blocks,

Turn right,

In your mind you're tracking that,

That's your imagination.

It's always available,

It doesn't have to be loud and vivid but the more you practice,

The more attention and awareness you pay to your imagination,

That you give to your imagination,

The more bright and vibrant and alive it will become.

Just like anything,

You know,

It needs attention to grow and to expand.

Here's a couple of exercises you can do to expand and foster your own innate imagination.

For instance,

When you're flipping through a magazine and you see this image of an ad perhaps or whatever,

A photograph,

An ad,

And it's a campsite let's say.

There's a campsite,

There's a family there drinking coffee,

It's an advertisement for some kind of product.

And then you see that picture and there's a tent and there's a big redwood tree and that's all you see on the photo.

Just in your mind imagine over here,

What's beyond the page that isn't there?

Over there,

Over to the right is another tent perhaps,

A blue tent as opposed to this red tent and behind it is the rushing river next to that blue tent that you don't see in the magazine but that you stretch and reach your imagination beyond the boundaries of that image.

And you can do that with any photo you come across.

It doesn't have to be a magazine of course.

You can also do that with some of your favorite television shows.

You know,

During the commercial break you can turn down the volume,

Close your eyes and imagine a different scene or imagine the person reacting differently that you just watched a scene on TV.

Just close your eyes and imagine it differently.

That's exercising and cultivating your imagination.

Or if you'd like,

At the end of a movie and you didn't like the way it ended or at the end of a book or any of those experiences,

You can close your eyes and reimagine the ending.

Change it.

Change it to what you wanted it to be.

Close your eyes and sense it playing out as an episodic experience of your imagination.

I truly believe your imagination can help you to improve your creativity,

To receive guidance and direction.

It is a powerful force of consciousness that is feminine by nature but it's so powerful because it offers you a bridge between the everyday world and your consciousness,

Your mind.

And in your subconscious mind there's such power there.

As I did in that exercise with the lemon,

I caused your autonomic nervous system to respond simply by my words and by you listening to those words and engaging your imagination.

It's truly powerful.

And that is what imagination can be for you and that's one of the secrets,

One of the most powerful secrets that I've learned that helped to transform my life.

So I encourage you to do things that will help to foster your imagination.