Opening Our World to the Imaginal

We were told as children that "it's just our imagination," yet we know it's not. We're told as adults that it's just a hallucination, but our soul tels us it's not. We've got an organic connection to the imaginal realm--that land of the ancestors and spirits--and it's time we treat it as a part of our reality!

Date:   10/20/2005 6:16:13 AM   ( 19 y ) ... viewed 2829 times

We’ve got hospitals to heal our bodies, and within those hospitals are sites for us to recover from our illnesses and restore our health and vitality. Society has numerous opportunities for us to regain what was lost in our illnesses and diseases, and these are very good things, indeed.

We need healing centers to help us regain our imaginal connections to nature, the spiritual world, and ourselves. Hospitals do not offer those services, and in a materially inclined world, such offerings aren’t likely to be provided. Yet, our disconnection from the imaginal world and our spiritual sources is a cancer within our Western society.

Remember those days as a child, playing in your yard with all kinds of imaginary playmates and playthings? Remember the moments when the animals “spoke” to you, and the birds passed along “secret” messages? Remember when Mom or Dad told you that you were “too old” to be playing those kinds of games anymore?

Our connection with the imaginal world was taken away from us as children. Or, we simply “forgot about it” because there was nothing outside of ourselves to help support that realm for us—especially once we began grade school. More than likely, our schoolmates who had their imaginal worlds taken away by their parents helped shut our world down as well. How could we spend time in “that” world when our friends weren’t allowed?

Despite what we’ve been made to believe, this world is still around—and needs us more than ever! It’s the land of the ancestors, the world of spirit; it’s the mythological realm that energized our “imaginary” playmates of childhood, and the energies that fill our dreamscapes of the night. The imaginal realm has never disappeared from our lives, but we have closed our eyes from it. It beckons our participation, not only for our sake, but the sake of the world around us.

African medicine man Malidoma Somé writes that “the Dagara believe that contact with the otherworld is always deeply transformational.” These energies appear to us in waking dreams, visions, work with medicinal plants; they appear through intuition, hunches, “hits,” and synchronicities. These energies are around, above, within, beyond, and between us and everything within our physical sight. I’ll bet they’re even around the White House, even if the Homeland Department guys think they can see everything.

We don’t even have the proper language to describe this imaginal realm and the reality of the imaginal. “To a Dagara man or woman, the material (realm) is just the spiritual taking on form.” We have a hard time bringing back our dreams each morning: imagine how much trouble we have connecting to the invisible realm. We are talking about things “that knowledge can’t eat” (Somé). We can’t eat the spiritual or the imaginal. But it sure does ask us to try.

Listen a little closer to the birds singing above in the trees; listen with great concentration as the wind goes ripping through your hair. Pay attention as the sun sets tomorrow night; hear the moon calling to you as She goes across the sky after that. You’ll find openings within the imaginal world in those spaces, each ready for your participation. Listen, and see. It is our heritage, and our divine obligation!

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• Yes, the primal connection   by 9thbody     19 y
• thank you, Gregg!   by Liora Leah     19 y
  • Re: thank you, Gregg!   by greggechols     19 y
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