Imagination and Identification

Imagination and Identification

Before we can understand the seriousness of Work against these two energy leaks in the lower centers, we need to redefine and explain the terms imagination and identification as they are used in the Fourth Way. For most of us, both words evoke neutral to positive associations when we verbalize them in conversations.

IMAGINATION

I found the following synonyms in the Merriam-Webster dictionary for the word Imagination: creativity, inventiveness, inspiration, visualization, and mind's eye, among others. None of these synonyms convey the meaning of this word and/or state as it is used in the Fourth Way.

Further down the list, Merriam-Webster suggests a few more synonyms that are closer to the meaning as used in the Fourth Way: daydream, illusion, and delusion. These synonyms are more similar to how the Fourth Way defines imagination and how I will be referring to it in this post.

Simply put, imagination is uncontrolled mind activity and is the opposite of being present. Ibn Arabi goes as far as to say that “Sleep is the presence of the imagination,” and it deprives us of presence.

Imagination is unconscious discipline; presence is conscious discipline. ─ The Teacher

IDENTIFICATION

The following synonyms were listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary for the word Identification: verification, evidence, proof, confirmation, substantiation, and many more terms which are common understandings of this word, but far from the way it is used in the Fourth Way.

To quote our Facebook Glossary: “Identification is the state in which one’s attention is focused on something to the exclusion of everything else; the opposite of Separation. (2) The tendency, especially of False Personality, to place one’s sense of identity in things that are external. All identification is contrary … to the functioning of Higher Centers.”

I think of this all-consuming state as a kind of tunnel vision, a myopic assertion or, as Lewis Carroll might say, “Going down the rabbit hole.” It is an uncontrolled emotional energy going toward an identity that disallows evidence to the contrary: think of phrases like “sticking my head in the sand” and “holding my ground” about something.

Imagination and identification not only displace self-remembering, but without effort to Work against them, we live almost continually in one or both of these states of sleep. When we allow our imagination to wander, it is like unconsciously wandering around in a bad neighborhood in our head with identification waiting to latch onto something that makes false personality feel real. When they join together, they often produce the volatile energy of expressing negative emotions.

If your enemy attacks you from behind, his forces will be perverse imaginations to crush you and defeat you, replacing reality with dreams. ─ Ibn Arabi

Through this triple energy leak – imagination, leading to identification and the expression of negative emotions – I have seen myself lose precious amounts of psychic energy that could have been used to ignite the fire of higher states. The scenario of stimulus response might be something like this: I imagine someone criticizing me and talking behind my back; vanity in me begins to feel offended and I zero in on that person’s opinion and start assembling negative irritations about their behaviour; until finally I explode into expressing negativity towards them.

Passion [negative emotions] is the state resulting from coupling with the thought [imagination] provoked by the enemy; it means letting the imagination brood on the thought continually [identification]. ─ John of Damaskos, The Philokalia

If you do not have an aim to remember your Self and a desire to wake up, to be present to your life, then imagination and identification are not consequential to you. Many – if not most – people live their lives in “quiet desperation” as Henry David Thoreau described the unfulfilled lives of many people. It is only when we wish to participate in our conscious evolution that these obstacles are harmful and contrary to our aims. Being in imagination, becoming identified and expressing negativity are not compulsory; they are choices that affect our lives and our possibilities of conscious evolution.

Imagination is a waste of potential conscious life. ─ The Teacher

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Gulliver's Battle with the Wasps, Arthur Rackham, 1909 Illustration