Using your imagination

How can you use your imagination? Let me count the ways ...

While you’re off counting your own ways to use your imagination I’d like to share something with you. Don’t worry, it’ll still be here when you’ve finished.

You see, I’ve been blessed with information that I am honour (love) bound to share with you all. It’s about using your imagination for spiritual progress. I attended a seminar about just that topic. It was a reminder of what we have inside of us and how we can best use it to assist our spiritual journey. It was a wonderful few hours in tranquil surroundings. 

As I said, I cannot keep this information to myself, so here it is for you to take with you on your own spiritual journey. I am sharing the gift I received with you – I know, I’m generous. You can thank me later ...

Because imagination is the central force of change, I think we should all invest more time into using it. Here are a few nuggets to get your own imaginative juices flowing as you take steps on your way today. Have fun.

I          “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein

            Imagination is a private place, no one else can be in my imagination

– not even by invitation: it is mine, alone.

M       Meditation

            When you take time to listen to yourself and God you can increase your creativity.

When we give ourselves up to creativity, we open ourselves up to G.O.D.

            Good Orderly Direction

A        Active Imagination and Active Listening

            To be an active listener we need to “switch off the self”.

            Listen with your ears, eyes, heart and imagination. Listen to the whole person.

G        Gratitude

            Inspect your baggage and see what you’ve already got.

            Make a gratitude list.

Start with 20 and see how many you get. More than you thought? Be grateful.

I          Images that inspire

            Find and use images that inspire you.

Go for a walk, go to a museum, look at photographs.

       

N        Nature is a great opportunity for exercising the imagination

            Select anything you find and look at it, really look at it and think about it.

A        Award yourself a blessing

            This may seem difficult at first but it’s not.

Think of a quality, any one and make yourself a blessing from it

(find out more here).

T         Ticket to Ride

            Your imagination is your ticket to ... anywhere. You can go where you like.

            Time

            Make time to ... be at peace. Start with a minute. You have a minute, surely?

            Change your thinking and change your life in just-a-minute 

I          Imagine a world ... as it could be, as it should be.

            Change your world and you change the whole world. Imagine that.

            Smile more, be cooperative, practice total acceptance, forgive and be truthful.

            What a difference those few things make in the world.

O       Open-minded

           Be open-minded and think about what is in the way of your own spiritual progress.

           Open yourself to help to surmount the obstacles.

           Imagine what it would be like if your dreams came true.

N     Now - right now!

           Now is a good time to make the change and really start using your imagination.

“With imagination you can free yourself from the chains of your own solitary perceived reality.”

 Davina Lloyd

“Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.”

George Scialabba

Big People

When I was a child I remember my parents used to go into the sacred ‘front room’ and close the door when we had certain visitors. Well, I mean when they had visitors. Their friends and relatives would be shown into the best room and we, as children would be left outside.

If we dared to venture in to the room while they were talking we would be shooed out again especially if we dared to speak. It paid to be like the embossed flowery wallpaper – obviously there, but after a while unnoticed.

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When we spoke it was like being at a tennis match, all heads turned to us and a chorus of dissent reached our ears. This was sometime accompanied by a slap if the interruption was way out of place.

The words that were slapped into our bare legs were invariably some variation of, “Big people are talking!”

As we retreated to the dining room or garden I think we children wondered how the ‘big people’ always got their own way and got to make all the decisions.

It came to me the other day that all those people are now gone or going. A friend was talking about the death of her father’s best friend. I recently attended the funeral of another friend’s father, there is death all around and it has sadly become an intimate associate in recent times. All the ‘big people’ I knew have gone or are currently going.

It hurts. It really hurts.

The most recent departure of a loved one has made me realise that we are the big people now. We have to support and comfort each other as we journey on. We have to make the decisions.

It does hurt, but we will make it through. Together.

Underneath it all

Do you ever look under the surface of things?

Sometimes it’s way too scary to even contemplate looking underneath things because you’re afraid of what you will find and how it will affect you. An example would be not looking too closely to the tables and seats in a restaurant otherwise you’d be unable to continue your meal there.

We are used to accepting certain standards and just living with them. (Is that actually lowering our own standards? Hmmm. Do we always have a choice in that?)

What I have found is that if you look under the surface, if you look closely enough, you’ll always find a whole different array of issues than you first thought were there.

The only question is ... do you have the time or the inclination to look under the surface? 

Concentration

Some days I look back and struggle to remember what specific things I had achieved in that day. I know that I was doing things – all the time, but the exact nature of those ‘things’ often evades me.

Then I look back on a day like today and I know exactly what I have been doing.

Over the past month or so I have been making positive changes in my living environment. This includes painting and shifting things. On the days that I have been at home this week I have marvelled at the amount I have accomplished. And this is all because I wake up with a plan, I stick to the plan (maybe with some minor, minor tweaking as I go along) and I fulfil the plan.

I am able to look back at my work and feel proud at the amount I have done each day. The newly painted spaces have a sense of a new beginning and I am always ready for that.

Concentration on the task in hand can get the job done quicker.

An optional extra, that is a bit like topping on a cake, is when someone sees what you have done and says, “Awesome!” with obvious enthusiasm.

Concentration on the task in hand is sometimes like a double harvest – the extra crop resembles a whetting stone and the whole experience sharpens your attitude for positive living – just like friends do.

Start as you mean to carry on

The secret of positivity

... thus read the banner on the front of a recent copy of The Big Issue. I leafed through the pages to see what gems of knowledge were hidden in ordinary paper. There, on page 23, were all the answers you could possibly need to find out how to change your perspective.

The article was only a few hundred words long but was packed with vital information. A sub-heading jumped out at me:

What are the good things in your day?

How can you balance them against the bad?

The author, Nina Grunfeld, rightly said that in order to make a list of all the good things we would have to start noticing them, minute by minute. This is where the new perspective will come from. On this journey you will discover more about yourself as well (trust me, I know this works, I’ve been doing it – even before I read this article).

The special bonus of this shift in positivity is that you find also find out what is important to you on the way. Now, that can’t be bad, can it?

Find out more at the Life Clubs website and maybe you’ll even want to add your own discoveries to My Best Thing Today – another chance to enjoy your discoveries by sharing them with others. As the article says, “Start as you mean to carry on”.

I think I may have heard this before ... the Bible springs to mind, (so I have no reason not to continue doing it, I guess). How about you?

Ebbs and flows

A river is said to ebb and flow.

It goes backwards and forwards.

So it is with my life sometimes. There is a decline in my emotional state followed or preceded by an emotional high – a forward motion. I often experience a seesaw effect.

There are many positive times, when the river is flowing, when it is present, when all is right with the world. The sun is shining – even in the winter, and the birds are singing cheerful songs outside my window as I snuggle up to the warmth inside.

And then there is the season of the ebb, the decline, the absence, when hope seems to have flowed away with the tide. At these times all I am aware of, all I am conscious of is the uncomfortable rocks, stones and pebbles at the bottom of the riverbed that I feel on the soles of my bare feet.

It is tempting to remember the ebbs in my life more than the flow as when I am in the drought it seems more pronounced. When I am visited by the reality of a lack in my life I stop and think. Sadness often accompanies these thoughts as my heart becomes thirsty for whatever it is I am missing at the time. This is usually the company of a particular person. A person who no longer features in my life in the way I wish they did. At times like this I either go into myself or reach out to friends.

© Marjorie H Morgan

I fight against my own internal tide. It is often hard to make myself reach out when I feel vulnerable, but I am learning to do so. It has proved to be better for me to talk to someone when I feel low. Failing communicating my feelings to a friend, sometimes accompanied by tears and halting sentences, I will find another activity to take my mind of the subject. I know that dwelling on that dry area, that past area, of my life will not bring forth fruit for me in my present presence so I make a resolution:

right now I grasp the weakness in me and send it out to sea.

If I stay with my sad memories I am allowing the matters that I am pondering to become a major part of my internal life. By constantly including the sadness in my thoughts I am giving it the ability to change me. It’s never easy, but it does get less painful with time. Even where I am now, how I feel today, I never thought that I’d reach this position when I first stood in the dry riverbed with only my tears for company. I know I still have a long way to go, but I feel I am moving in the right direction. A positive healthy destination for me.

When my life has swung towards the ebbing times I have reached back into my memory for an occasion when I felt presence not absence. A time when I was conscious of happiness in the ordinary things of everyday life. I reach into my immense sea of happy memories and reflect the blissful moments that I have experienced …and there are so many.

I have a tendency to forget this fact or not want to remember it when I am clouded with sadness. But it is usual that by the time I have revisited and enjoyed these events, the experience that seemed like a dry riverbed will have passed away.

And I will again be present in the bountiful flow of my life.

I will be the river that reshapes my own landscape.

© Marjorie H Morgan