Today, I feel urged to to reveal a little of the novel I'm currently writing. Not sure what it will accomplish, but the urge is there, and it feels good. "Make It Real" is a so-called braided tale weaving three timelines into a timeless piece of reflection:
- My 2007 past self, in the form of the novel Going Within, which I wrote back then. It's name turned out to be aptly appropriate, for it is now Going Within the new Make It Real novel.
- My 2010 now self, which comments on things as I write this novel.
- My 4444 future self, an android, who addly enough bears the name of 'Sander R.B.E. Beals', the 'author' of this book for those who don't know any better....
Comment I got from a fifteen year old as I told him the outline of the story: "This book is going to change a lot" and me, daft as I am, said "Why?, it is almost half finished" Turned out he meant that it would change many of those reading it.... And you know what they say about kids. And no, he wasn't one of my kids.......
Love your Light,
Dre'
P.S. I still come up short on my list of E-mail addresses to present to the publisher as receivers of the mailing about that book. Especially since I do not specifically wish to invite my colleagues to join. This story might be a bit too close to home to involve them. However, if they pass the barriers I will be putting up, then their knowledge of it is apparently what should happen.
4444AD, Day 223, 12:34, Home
I'm flat on my back, relaxing as I'm working. The two by two meter vidcloth on the ceiling displays various windows, from various eras. Top left is my vision feed of March 12th, 2010. I have the accompanying audio on the speakers, and “Day sixteen: Loser” plays, not interfered by anything else in the vicinity. I just love seeing myself be busy creating. The video feed gets interrupted by the screen saver kicking in: photos of an intimately familiar lady fill that top left corner. I leave it be, and switch to another, apparently me in a train. Nobody in view, just empty seats opposite me.
I remember how I felt back then, being busy with the idea of the neural network I'd envisioned seeing myself create. I know I can't actually make myself achieve anything better back then, but I can make myself feel better about it. I flip open the plans of the quadrionic mind in my mind's eye, and study them for the next few minutes. By focusing the energy of that activity on my past incarnation, I can strengthen his belief in the fact that he will, in due time, achieve his goal. Just as I eventually did in 2042....
Seda steps into the bedroom, seeing me enjoy myself. She bounces onto the bed next to me, and immediately succeeds in getting my mind off myself. Hey, some people have that effect on me, what can I say? “And, where has my most favorite girl in all the world been hanging around?” I ask her. She tells me she's been walking around town, collecting interesting things from an antiques shop she frequents on a regular basis. Roberto, the antiquarian, told her he had some really nice needlework from around the turn of the second millennium. She jumps off the bed, and steps into the corridor, only to return with four almost square frames. They depict four angels, delicately embroidered on white linen. Two are relatively colorful, a third is done in distinct autumn-like colors. The forth and final one apparently depicts wintertime. A quick reference to the vidcloth on the ceiling gives the game away: the design is indeed a quartet, and these are called the Four Seasons. My vision enhancer highlights a slightly off-colored patch in the corners of the needle works. In icy blue, nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding whiteness, some sort of code is embroidered: MS2000. I now begin to appreciate the weird familiarity of the female foursome: I have seen them before! Rather than letting the raw power of the Google vision search loose on it, I'd rather let my mind do the work involved. The vision search is a descendant of the Google image search, which searches for imagery based on text. Vision Search does quite the opposite: based on a single image, it retrieves images of the same subject, or similar ones, to enable the user to gather context data on something they've only seen once.
And then it hits me: around 2000, my dad in that life embroidered these ladies, proud to have done it in only 555 hours! I flip over the frames, and indeed: one of them has a small label on it, specifying the name of the works, the period they were made in, and the telltale 555 hours.
It is always nice to find stuff from your own past. It reminds you of the timelessness and the interconnectedness of things, which reminds me:
While Seda goes down to the kitchen to make her famous macaroni with synthetic (but no less tasty) chicken and sweet & sour, I go with her and read some more in my manuscript, so attentively sent to me by Denisa.....
'From one marvel to the next'
Thinking back, I wonder why our hosts arrived on foot when they could just as easily have flown right to where we were standing. When asked, Mayra gives a simple explanation: “Two beings on foot pose much less of a threat than a flying saucer carrying the same two people. Hence our preference for walking the extra distance”. Now there’s a train of thought I can wholeheartedly agree with. I thank her for the explanation, and go back to my own thoughts, that wander to the design of the floater that we are in. Sure, its mind-controlled interface is spectacular enough, but otherwise it’s very minimalist in design: a large metal disc-shaped object, with a depression at the center. Around it, seven seats are placed. Come to think of it, it looks suspiciously like the wild water rides that we use on the outside of the globe. Only this one floats on air instead of water, and it’s a much smoother ride. It has no apparent roof structure, so I ask Kayim about it. He explains that inside, the weather does not have its ups and downs like outside, for there are no seasons. There is occasional rain, but the people here don’t really mind that, and the same force field that floats the floater also keeps out the excess water. As we approach the city, I take a closer look at it: it consists almost entirely of spheres of various sizes, some buried halfway in the surface. Lots of green in between, making it a great place to live in, I imagine. The spheres are different shades of color, giving the impression of soap bubbles from afar.
We land on the edge of the city, next to a modest globe. I can now spot an entirely glass surface surrounding it, which can be seen to be divided into six distinct levels. The top level seems to have no real ceiling, more like a greenhouse. We enter the structure at ground level, and step onto a disc that’s in the core of the building. You can look up and see all the floors, just like an elevator that has no walls. The disc starts to rise, and I see Melanie trying to scare me to death: she holds out her arm, and steps to the side of the platform to allow the next floor to chop it off. Her plan is foiled, because of some unseen barrier that won’t allow anything to cross the edge of the platform as long as it is moving. Mayra notices also, and laughs at my youngest.
We stop on the next floor, and find it divided into four quarter-circle rooms. “These are the working areas,” Mayra explains: “They are on the lower levels because of the frequent transporting of goods in and out of them. Because of their being on the lower half of the sphere, they are usually lit by artificial means”. I see what she means, but for the life of me cannot discover any source of internal light. Still, the rooms seem better lit than any I’ve seen on the surface. We get onto the disc again, only to stop briefly at the next level, which is divided into six pie-shaped rooms.
Each one has two discs on the floor, and two discs on the ceiling directly above them. One of the rooms clearly demonstrates the purpose of the discs: another Inner Earth person is suspended in between two discs. As we approach, he effortlessly swings into an upright position, and steps forward to meet us. “I’ve been waiting for you since I finished preparing our meal. My name is Sinan.” Further talking reveals that he is the mate of Mayra, and Kayim is their son. They live together in this house, which seems somewhat large for the three of them. Mayra explains that they have been appointed hosts of the access point that we came through, so they sometimes have guests from the surface, hence the six bedrooms. The seven of us step onto the central disc again, and ascend to the next level, which also has six pie-shaped rooms. “These are for various activities,”, Mayra explains: “Kayim has his musical studio in one of these”. Laura can’t wait to hear her new friend: “Will you please play us something?”, she asks in her sweetest voice. Kayim obliges, and takes the seat behind a desk that features various colored crystals. They light up the moment he sits down, and his hands above the array of crystalline light start making subtle movements. The end result is one of the sweetest compositions I’ve ever heard. All of us stand there and listen intently, until the spontaneous concert is finished. When it does, we outsiders all applaud Kayim, with Laura cheering as well. “Who wrote that marvelous piece?”, she wants to know. Kayim smiles, taking a bow: “I just improvised a little, so you could say I 'wrote' it...”, he says.
We go up another level, and come to another set of four rooms, with large, tilted windows all around the circumference of the building. Three of the four rooms are home to various plants, growing in shallow tanks containing a greenish, luminous substance. “This is our hydroponics area. It grows all of the fruits and vegetables we consume.”, Mayra explains. She goes on to tell us that the plants that thrive best on real sunlight are closest to the windows, whereas the more rugged plants get by on artificial light. Finally, the ones that don't require light, like mushrooms, are grown in a subterranean level at the base of the sphere. The one remaining room on this level is the kitchen, which has its own dedicated access to the dining table above, which we will see shortly. Sinan gestures towards the central disc again, to introduce us to the final level of the structure: the living area.
The four of us stand in awe of the sight we behold: a large circular floor, that is topped by an equally large glass dome. Basically, this dome is the top sixth part of the sphere, leaving the entire floor permanently lit by the smoky central sun. We can see the entire city, and the landscape that surrounds it. ”That's something different from the street view you get from your average city home.”, I say to Gea. She looks at me, and just smiles quietly. Mayra calls our attention to a round table, with a big gaping hole in the middle. As we look on, a plateau displaying the most delicious dishes surfaces, inviting us to the table. Around it we find simple but adequate stools, that automatically adjust their height to the size of the person sitting on them. We all sit down, when Sinan invites us to quietly contemplate the origins of the food we are about to eat. I look over the dishes, and realize that no matter how different they are from the foods of the outer world, their origins are the same: it is all part of the All, just as we are.
Sinan wishes us a healthy meal, and puts some food on his plate. As I ask him to hand me one of the green eggs that are in his vicinity, the central plateau of the table rotates, so I can easily take one myself. “How did you do that?”, I ask. Mayra explains that it is the same mechanism that controls the floater outside. She invites me to try it myself, because it isn't that hard. I notice a delicious piece of fruit across the table, and decide to give it a go. I concentrate on choosing the fruit, and the plateau revolves to the point where I can reach in and get it. Of course the girls can't wait to perform their own experiments on it. Unfortunately, they both formulate their requests at the same time, and the end result is that the table voices its objection against this conflict by a short somewhat irritated sound. Kayim laughs, and tells Laura to let her sister go first. Melanie, seated right next to me, chooses her food with care, and then mentions to me that Laura has already learnt her first words of Solara Maru, from Kayim. I look across the table, and see the two of them exchanging meaningful looks.
I ponder the apparent design choices of the Inner Earth people: their homes seem built for maximum efficiency. Distinguishing them from the houses of neighbors appears to be totally irrelevant. Mayra explains that the spherical shape has been chosen because it leaves a minimal surface for a maximal content, thus minimizing the exchange of energy with the environment. Not that they really need it of course, because the season-less weather keeps the outdoor temperature always around twenty degrees centigrade. “We prefer the beauty of optimal solutions to the aesthetics.” Sinan says. I state that even though aesthetics is not their main concern, they haven't lost their eye for beauty. When everybody seems to have had enough, the plateau slowly sinks back to the kitchen level. Mayra points out that the remains of our copious meal will be recycled into the substance that feeds the hydroponics area.
As we stand up, Sinan again draws our attention to the table. The plateau has returned, and the large circular surface becomes the scene where a scale model of the city appears. Even my untrained eye recognizes the configuration of spheres, some large and some small. But the differences between big and small are much smaller than between houses and office buildings up top. Mayra explains that massive office buildings are not needed here, as most of the people work from their homes. In fact, most won't call it work, because basically it is just doing what they love to do. The only reason things seem so out of proportion on the outside, is because there everything is controlled instead of trusting that nature will find the right way. “Call me an anarchist, but that reasoning doesn't sound half bad”, I thought. Since consumption here is on a much lower level than outside, big stores are also not needed. Life inside isn't all about money, certainly not. The necessities of life are provided for all, and to acquire luxury items, people trade instead of spending their days doing things they don't like.
With the model, Sinan wants to show us which sights we will be visiting tomorrow. On the left, he points to a fairly large globe, half buried in the forest. This is the city's swimming pool, that has been chosen as an item on our trip because it is markedly different from the surface swimming pools: you simply cannot drown there, because the “water” is far denser, causing you to float easier. “Like the Red Sea!” Melanie interjects. “But it isn't that salty” Kayim asks her. “Help, I didn't bring my swim gear!” Laura utters with panic in her voice. “Don't worry” Mayra says: “We can pretty much make you any apparel you find suitable.” So apparently, there's nothing to stop us from having a nice swim tomorrow. Sinan points out that this will happen tomorrow afternoon. The morning will be spent with the Elders, who will give us a bit of a history lesson.
I ask Sinan if there is a possibility to access the Web on the outside. I would very much like to update my site with a story of our exploits on the inside. Sinan leads me to a round seat, which envelops me with a spherical ‘screen’ the moment I sit down. It is projected around the seat, and is pressure sensitive. On the edge of the seat is a keyboard, which can be augmented by use of the dictation unit. It doesn’t take me long to get the hang of it. Once Sinan has shown me how to get to the outer web, I quickly find my own site, and am somewhat hesitantly typing and talking away to let our readers know how exciting it is down here.
As I finish, I notify Linda and Carlo. They are on holiday themselves, so I mail them, and send SMS-es to both their cellphones. I tell them something like “no matter what you hear, we're OK”. That ought to cover any rash actions by the hotel staff, or other people. Gea is up next, and takes the seat.
An hour or two later, even though the internal Sun is still high in the sky, it is the moment of sleep. Mayra leads us to the bedrooms a little lower, and gets us something to wear while in ‘bed’. I am very curious about the force field that acts as a mattress, will it be easy to lie on? We first go into the room designated to the girls. Mayra demonstrates how you can just walk onto the lower disc, after which you will be slightly lifted up to the levitation center of the field. After that, it is easy to position your body any way you like. The kids get into their nightly attire, step onto the pads, and immediately start doing rolls, and other tricks. I wonder how long they will be doing that before falling asleep. As for the lack of night, the windows have their own mechanism to remedy that: they slowly fade from transparent to dark gray, creating a great nightly look. Mayra, Gea and me leave the kids to their tricks, and go into two other rooms, one for Gea and one for me. After I’ve dressed for the night, it is my turn to try the ‘bed’. I step onto it, and feel myself being slightly lifted. It is a weird sensation, because there seems to be no extra pressure from below, like when you’re sitting on a bed. It is more the absence of weight, without the lack of oxygen normally found in outer space. But it also does not seem to be quite like normal weightlessness, for there is a certain friction between the force field and my body, that makes it easy to move around. I experiment a little, but it doesn’t take much time to find my optimum position. I doze off quickly, forgetting all about my peculiar surroundings.
But it doesn't last long. Not seven minutes later, I wake up terrified, because I just realize that I forgot my pills! I get dressed again, and think about why oh why I don't keep the bottle in my pocket at all times. Since our trip to the pyramids was only supposed to last a few hours, I'd plain forgotten about it, since I didn't need them till bedtime anyway.
I step onto the landing, and almost bump into Mayra. She sees the worried look on my face, and asks what is wrong. I explain the predicament of missing medication to her, and she looks me into the eyes: “Fortunately, we do have a remedy, a permanent one even”, she smiles. She leads me to the lower level, speaks some words I haven't heard yet, and grabs what seems like a futuristic motorcycle helmet from a closed container. “Here, put this on”.
I do, and Mayra pushes the shiny red button that is now on my forehead. A weird sensation, a tingling starts right below the button, inside my skull. “What is it doing,” I ask. Not that I'm scared or anything, because during my manic episodes I've felt similar sensations. “Basically, it does what you would call a defragmentation of your neural net.” Mayra volunteers. She goes on to say that where I come from, the Lithium would be used by the brain to perform a similar function itself. This just is more thorough, and will last me about a year. If needed, she can even have me taken to see a doctor, who will cure it permanently.... After that, I have no problem getting back to sleep.
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Alice Time: Choosing Six Impossible Things To Believe In
I am an “Alice-o-phile”. I adore Alice in Wonderland and have forever and ever. My basement stairwell is painted as a Rabbit Hole and I have a collection of Alice art and copies of Alice because early on, I understood the message of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass at an archetypal level.
Alice is our escort into the many absurd notions, ideas, politics and policies, beliefs and attitudes that underlie society and the way we see “reality”. And oh how long and absurd this list is of beliefs we are so convinced are true, important, real, and urgent. Why just the other day, I overheard a woman at the gym say to her friend, “I’ve got to hurry. If I don’t get this report in to my colleagues, the business deal we’ve been working on will be toast.”
“That’s absurd,” I thought. “If that report were so important – if you were so important to the business deal - what on earth are you doing at the gym?” Silly, silly girl – and now, I thought, she is going to rush away from the gym in a state of “It’s all about ME-ness”. An “Alice moment”, if there ever was one – and there are plenty in my world because I see so much “through the Looking Glass”. (Seeing through the Looking Glass requires that you reverse what you’re looking at, viewing everything through its opposite. If something appears complicated, see it as simple. People always look for “something”. Note this classic line from A through the LG: “I wish I could see nothing as well as you can.” Brilliant…)
We live in a world that is completely in love with going in the wrong direction. For example, we live in a society that completely trusts the rational mind to structure and order “reality”. (For starters, just look at what the rational mind has produced: wars, weapons, bio-destructive forces, environmental disasters, politics of deceit, religious corruption, false gods and bogus religious myths, bizarre notions of what’s real and what isn’t – like the doctrine of creationism in this, the 21st century, though civilization is much older than 21 centuries.) The absurdity of what we believe to be true and yet, how we behave as a “civilized” people is incomprehensible – much less how we go about negotiating our definition of being civilized. But enough of that…you get the picture.
Let’s jump back into Lewis Carroll and his magic. He delighted in satirizing the love affair that members of Victorian society had with themselves and, in particular, their addiction to snobbery. He looked at what the upper class could not bear to examine about themselves, which was, in essence, their own lavish lifestyles, attitudes, and well maintained prejudices about the way the world was and simply had to remain in order to keep them happy. But it is precisely this addiction to one’s personal enclosed comfort zone that positions a person to become exactly what he or she believes an elite lifestyle and privilege protects a person from becoming: close-minded, irrational, unyielding, unrealistic, and completely out of touch with the world at large. To say this another way: The more a person has to lose in life, the less likely that person is to welcome change or to embrace the vast world of the imagination.
Social and political revolutions have always been initiated at the grass roots level because those at the “top” have the most to lose. They see no reason for society to change, because from where they are sitting (Wall Street), everything looks just fine. Those who can envision energy technology, for instance, and have urged the auto and other industries for decades now to invest in energy technologies, have done so for several reasons, among them these two: First, they can see the handwriting on the decline of the oil-based economic wall. That is, we have to move in the direction of alternative fuels. But secondly, these visionaries simply can imagine the impossible. These are the people who are not afraid to take a risk and go where others have not yet gone in thought, in action, and yes, in investment in financial resources.
Carl Jung adored the realm of the imagination. He may well be the master explorer of our age of this domain. For him, the imagination contained the passageways to the psyche and the inner voices of our archetypes. Active imagination was an essential tool that he introduced, establishing a form of communication between the conscious and unconscious self. Right there we have something to imagine as impossible: opening a portal of communication between your conscious and unconscious self. That may be getting ahead of yourself a bit, but such a mega-thought does qualify for imagining the impossible, if you have never, in fact, considered undertaking such an endeavor.
Imagining the impossible – what a delicious and positively enchanting notion. And yet, the realm of the imagination is a fully and completely threatening place to suggest to a person who fears the loss of the familiar. As children, the world of the imagination is an acceptable playground because children are not yet rational creatures and a child’s imagination is considered cute – to an extent. Children are supposed to have imaginations – for a while. Technically speaking, if one can say such a thing, the psychic boundaries of children are still porous; therefore, they are subject to the “hallucinations” of the imagination. These include, for example, imaginary playmates and perhaps seeing the occasional fairy or sprite. Dark spirits may even show up. But a child is likely to be told that these nonphysical visitors are not “real”, they are merely “imaginary”. Thus, early on the lines in the sand are clearly drawn: What comes from the mind is “real”; what comes from the imagination is, well, imaginary. Not real. A poof of a thing, no more than a whimsical passing thought form.
Now granted the mind has “poofs” all the time, ideas that run through it this way and that, but because such thoughts come from the mind, these are not the same type of “imaginary” thoughts because…well…because they can perhaps wear the label of “practical” or “provable” or “conventional”. A value is made apparent very quickly to baby humans: If you are going to delve into the impossible, just make sure it’s the “practical impossible” and that your ideas can solve problems or increase production or profits somewhere. Having ideas just for the fun of having ideas is well, impractical! A waste of imaginary income – not that a person imagines or visualizes income….well, perhaps people do. But do such thoughts really qualify for “imagining” or just wishing? That question leads us to this most important question: Do people really know how to fall down the Rabbit Hole? It’s an art, after all, and not an accident.
The Art of Falling Down The Rabbit Hole
I’m an expert on falling down the Rabbit Hole. I live in the world of the imagination and the impossible. I rely upon the imagination to fill me with ideas on a continual basis. If I lived in the ordinary world, I would disintegrate in short order because the ordinary world is a place filled with reasons why ideas can’t succeed and with the wounds of failure and painful memories of the past that keep reminding people that they should live fearful lives instead of inspiring ones. In fact, even while writing this, a friend called for a business-related matter but in warming up to our meeting, he asked what I was doing. I told him I was writing a piece based on Alice in Wonderland. He asked if I liked the movie. I said, “Not really, and I suspect Lewis Carroll would not have cared for it either. Alice was meant to be enchanted in Wonderland and not be disappointed by characters who were defeated by an angry Red Queen.” He asked me why I loved Alice so much and I carried on and on about my many reasons and even brought the wisdom of Alice into the nonsense of the politics of Washington – which was not all that difficult. But after all that, he said, “I have an idea,” and off we went into the realm of the imagination, into the world of what is waiting to be created, ideas just waiting for a chance to incarnate.
Falling down the Rabbit Hole requires the capacity to “let go” and allow your imagination to take flight, giving form and vision to possibilities and impossibilities – before you let your mind tell you they are absurd, ridiculous, too expensive, and then that final blow, “What will people say?” What do you care what people say? I never have – and that is the great secret of the Rabbit Hole. You simply have to get over your fear of what other people think. For what possible reasons do you care what other people think?
Now to be clear – I am speaking of creative ideas, not of running out on my responsibilities, incurring huge debts, shooting up drugs, or deciding on a life of theft. So let’s be realistic about what I am speaking about when I speak about not caring about what other people think. I still have my head on straight and my feet firmly planted on the ground – but not my imagination. That part of me is given full reign to go off to places known and unknown to me. My target is the realm of ideas, original thought, creativity, and accessing the deep resources of your soul from which springs your “charism” or your “unique creative grace.” Visionaries and creative geniuses know this inner sanctuary, as do great poets, writers, and pioneers of science and medicine. This is where Emily Dickenson dwelled as well as Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach, Einstein, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. They all fell down their unique Rabbit Holes. They imagined worlds that did not yet exist and their lives became devoted to incarnating those worlds. I have no doubt that they imagined far more than six impossible things before breakfast every morning.
It’s easy to tell who has what it takes to sojourn down their Rabbit Holes. Within seconds of conversing with people, they say something that reveals whether they are courageous or frightened, or whether they essentially travel backwards all the time. They soon reveal whether they have the stamina of spirit to explore the unknown in their life or whether most of their decisions are aimed at keeping everything the same as it always has been. Backward travelers will never be able to find their Rabbit Holes. They have to be content with reading Lewis Carroll and simply wishing their life could be different. They will find it difficult to penetrate into the realm of the imagination, as there is a profound difference between wishing and imagining.
Wishing Versus The Power of The Imagination
Wishing has little, if any, real power. It’s musing at best and a passing thought or fancy in its weakest form. A wish is a temporary enchantment that lacks the backbone and substance to attract creative life force or power.
Imagination, on the other hand, takes effort, energy, and generates a substantial amount of emotional and psychic response once you make contact with a great idea. Merging with a unique vision is the same as having an unfamiliar download of grace rush through your system. In an instant, it penetrates into your intellect, your emotions, your mind, your vocabulary; your archetypal dynamics adjust themselves to new symbolic content – shifting your understanding of the cosmos. You can feel the power of that idea – that vision – take hold of you as it runs through your blood like a new drug, making its way into your neurology. And then it’s locked into your psyche. It’s yours. The download is complete and you are on a high that is unexplainable to anyone who has never been swept away by the thrill of contact with the realm of original thought. This is a love affair unlike anything on earth because it isn’t of the earth. But it soon will be – that becomes your task as the vessel of the imagination.
Original thought implodes someone who won’t do what’s required to be a container and vessel of that which others cannot see or comprehend. You have to be someone who can handle being misunderstood or keeping your own creative company or handling a vision others cannot understand. You have to be strong enough to believe alone – and for a long time – in what others cannot imagine. Many people have been able to do that, but most people cannot stand alone in the demanding realm of the imagination. So they live in the lesser world of fantasies and musings.
What if you really could fall down the Rabbit Hole? Would you? Doesn’t it tempt you even a little – or perhaps more than a little? Wouldn’t you love to let yourself go and tumble into your own great unknown – the unknown that is your own unimagined life that you could imagine if you fell down the Rabbit Hole? You know you would.
You could tell yourself this is just a game, so let’s just say this is just a game. Okay – falling down the Rabbit Hole is just a game. (But what if it isn’t? I had to say that – I just had to.)
Falling down your Rabbit Hole requires that you dwell in the world of your imagination. But really dwell in it. Nurture it. And here’s the challenging part: You have to do what your creativity calls for, in order to bring forth the ideas you are imagining. They won’t just fall from the sky. Books, for example, don’t write themselves. Great discoveries in medicine just don’t happen. Poets actually sweat over their poems even though they’ve been completely saturated with the grace of imagination. You must understand that you form a working partnership with your imagination. Consider that one never forms a working partnership with a wish – how absurd is that? Fairy tales always lead a person to believe that a “wish” alone does all the work. Now really – a wish and a bunch of fairies – and people believe this more than they believe in mystical consciousness. And you talk about absurd????? Anyway – on to the impossible – which is utterly possible.
Believing in Six Impossible Things Per Day
This could be the most fun exercise I have ever given you, by the way. Do NOT answer these questions rapidly. Answering rapidly is an indication that you do not want to give reflective thought to these questions which – let me point out – you have never been asked before. Therefore, you can’t possibly know the correct response right off the top of your head. These questions require reflection. And they are questions in search of responses versus “answers”.
1) Define what’s impossible versus what’s possible for you. You’ve said to yourself, “That’s impossible.” What were you talking about when you said that and why was “that” – whatever that was – impossible? Too risky? Too much money? Would you risk looking foolish?
2) What’s the key difference between what you see as possible versus impossible? In particular, you are to carry this description all the way to the point of including “consequences”. That is, what would be the consequences of the things in your life that you declared were impossible – because in identifying the consequences, you are naming what you are really afraid of experiencing?
3) Everyone travels backwards because everyone has a history. The object now is to determine this: How often each day do you travel backwards in time? All day? Most of the day? Occasionally?
4) Are most of your decisions aimed at keeping your life as it is or introducing change? What is your rationale for your decisions: Safety or new experiences and adventure?
5) Do you tend to dismiss the creative ideas of others, looking for why new ideas of suggestions won’t work as opposed to why they could work?
6) Is there some part of your life that you would like to move forward that would be assisted by believing in six impossible things?
Imagining Six Impossible Things
Start anywhere. Or you can build all six impossible ideas around a strategy, all supporting the desire to break through something. Imagine something in your life that you would like to be other than the way it is. Imagine something absurd, for instance, or you doing something you have never done before. For example, imagine yourself wearing something you’ve always wanted to wear, or imagine yourself speaking to a neighbor that you really do want to meet, or imagine yourself climbing a tree.
Here’s the real point of this exercise: Holding these imaginings is symbolic of the White Queen in Alice – pure new thought. Consider the Red Queen the aggressive part of your mind that will come to do battle with pure thought, pure imaginings, pure creativity. The Red Queen will always try to destroy a creative gift as the Red Queen represents the opposition of the collective unconscious as well as your external world and your own inner saboteur, so you must meet that force on your inner battlefield. If you can grasp that, then you can understand that the object of imagining the impossible is a multileveled discipline that introduces you to the power of your imagination and creativity as well as to your inner saboteur.
But imagining is ultimately not enough. You have to do more than just imagine. You have to act on something that you imagine. You have to bring it forth and give it life. The “impossible” requires vigilance and dedicated attention and constant courageous choices as well as a willingness to allow your life to change in “impossible” directions – directions transcendent of north, south, east, and west. Imagine that.
How often should you make a list of six impossible things? That all depends on how daring you are and how bold an imagination you have. In this regard, there are no rules. You decide. My list is endless.
Just go for it. Enter the realm of impossibilities. One of the most delicious lines Emily Dickenson ever wrote was: Dwell in impossibilities. She obviously resided down the Rabbit Hole. It’s no wonder she is my favorite poetess.
Love,
Caroline
© 2009 Myss.com - Caroline Myss is a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Anatomy of the Spirit, Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Sacred Contacts, and Entering the Castle. Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason, will be published by Hay House in October 2009.
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