Imagine That!

The mind is an image-maker and an image-collector. It con­cen­trates infor­ma­tion and expe­ri­ences into some of the sim­plest images. Mem­ory is a series of scenes that con­nect to other scenes. A few feel­ings are tossed in for good mea­sure. What we remem­ber most is not words but expe­ri­ences. Those lit­tle sto­ries float around in our imag­i­na­tion and affect all that we do — whether we want them to or not.

It is amaz­ing how much we can remem­ber. I have found that if you let the mind find infor­ma­tion, it will come back to you like a faith­ful hunt­ing dog with the infor­ma­tion that you thought you had tossed long ago. You can remem­ber the most obscure names and occur­rences, if you just let the mind do its work while you do some­thing else.

Each day I go about my life, know­ing I have one pri­mary tool: my imag­i­na­tion. It can make me mis­er­able (worry) or happy (humor). All I have to do is imag­ine. I call forth images and they bring all of the trea­sures of the soul. Worry is how we scare our­selves. Humor is how we tran­scend life itself. Spirit is behind either choice.

If you can imag­ine that you are rich, then you are. How­ever, you will have to put some detailed effort into it. You will have to have the imag­i­na­tion that con­nects to forms of wealth that are actu­ally yours. For some it is fam­ily, for oth­ers it is cash, for oth­ers it is mem­o­ries and imag­i­na­tion itself. I fall into the last cat­e­gory and smile just think­ing about it all.

One of the bedrock ideas that guide my soul comes from John Mil­ton. Old and blind, he dic­tated to his niece some of the most pro­found books (Par­adise Lost). He knew the for­mula and stated it this way: “The mind is its own place, and can make a hell of heaven — a heaven of hell.”

So today, no mat­ter what hap­pens, for me it will be heaven. I have devel­oped the imag­i­na­tion for it.