Use Your Imagination

Use Your Imagination

Imagine that it is close to sunset, and that you are walking softly through a beautiful green meadow. There is a light breeze gently ruffling your hair. The birds in the trees are chirping happily in the background, and there is a distant hum of a tractor. These sounds evoke within you a feeling of peace and tranquility. Suddenly what appears to be a tree, turns into a tall green giant. His web-like feet move towards you and you are startled for a moment… but there is a gentle smile on this giant’s face, it feels kind and inviting. He reaches the palm of his hand out towards you, and you climb onto it… he promises to show you another world; and you take up the invitation!

Listen to the Audio (Music by Deepak Ram – Reflective Self)

Within moments you are in the air. You are transported to another world, even more beautiful than the one you came from… the sun is setting here also, but the whole sky is a hue of golden, orange and red, it seems so beautiful. The temperature is perfect, neither too warm nor too cool. From your vantage point you see beautifully manicured gardens, and parks with lions and peacocks walking through them fearlessly, and majestically. Diamonds and jewels are scattered on the ground, as plentiful as though they were stones and pebbles. Looking around you see golden palaces visible here and there. Small, flying vehicles in the shape of swans are dotted in the sky, even small children seem to have their own.

The giant puts you down, and as you step off, the grass parts to make way as though it is welcoming you! This is a world of beauty, you enjoy every moment of it, every flower, every sound, every fragrance.

Finally, it’s time to come back to the here and now.

Transporting ourselves on a journey of the imagination like this can be very comforting, relaxing and healing. And yet we don’t do enough of it. We need now and then to transport ourselves away from the humdrum of daily life and envision another reality. Whatever that means to you.

Yet, so often we go off into another kind of imagination. The one in which we come crashing down, not flying off somewhere beautiful! The sort of imagination in which we think negatively and conjure up the worst scenarios, creating sorrow and worry in our lives.

How many relationships have been damaged or destroyed, and how many wars have been started or empires fallen due to false imagination. We imagine “This one is doing this or that, for this and that reason…”. “They are planning or plotting against me”. “This person hasn’t called/contacted/arrived yet… something terrible must have happened.”

Dadi Janki once told a small group of us that if we did not know something, then we should just say so, instead of assuming that we did and fabricating something. For example we may be judging a person to be lazy. So when something didn’t get done, we just assumed it was because of their laziness. In fact we don’t know the reality!

Even worse, we hear a story from others and add our own spices, so that we can tell a more interesting story and keep our audiences listening longer! As we imagine more than is needed, and as we embroider the plot, we create negative karma for the storyteller, those listening and those who pass it on.

For those who are pessimists, now comes the question of reality vs. imagination. The pessimist might think that by using their imagination they are fooling themselves – avoiding ‘reality’. To begin with, we all see ‘reality’ differently according to our perspective – positive, negative or anything in between.

Secondly, just as the mind can be used for negative or positive purposes, so imagination is the same. Use your imagination to think and to visualize what you do want to experience in your life, to, not to make your worse fears come true.

As I continue to imagine things in my mind, I give energy to them and whatever we give energy to is more likely to become a reality. So whether I give my attention to that ever-looming car accident, or to my abundance and prosperity is totally up to me. Whatever it is, let me be aware of the power of my thoughts!

It’s time… to be positive rather than negative. To float away into your inner world of dreams and feelings, lightness and joy and to visualize the reality you want to experience.

© ‘It’s Time…’ by Aruna Ladva, BK Publications London, UK