The Moving Center and Imagination

The Moving Center and Imagination

The moving center is the part that stores and operates movements. All moving external activities, including walking, talking, typing, etc., are examples of learned movements that are a function of the Moving Center.

A surprising characteristic of the moving center is that it is also the home of imagination. There is imagination in all four lower centers, but in this context, when I use the term imagination, I am referring to one of the chief weaknesses of the human machine. I am referring to the imagination emerging from the moving center, like day-dreaming, internal talking, worrying, etc.

Take talking on the phone. Do you walk around when you're talking on the cell phone, like you are expressing the movement of walking as you speak? Look deeply. That is likely a stream of imagination. When I call someone while driving a car with a speaker phone on, I have also noticed that it satisfies the desire of the machine for movement while being locked into a rigid driving position. When I am at the receiving end of such a call, it is more evident because it is as if there was nobody on the other end of the line. Such examples show a moving element to talking on the telephone, illustrating this peculiar dimension of imagination being connected with movement or motion.

Similarly, when I am simply living my daily events, going about my normal affairs, my machine is running a tape in my head as if I were on the phone speaking with someone else. Our machine is trapped in this sea of internal motion of words, thoughts, and ideas. I cannot see this constant internal motion because I also identify constantly with whatever part of that stream of thoughts that attracts or repulses me. Some might say, “stream of consciousness,” to describe this phenomenon, but the expression is only half right. Yes, it is a moving stream, but it is not consciousness. My use of the word, thoughts, should also not be confused with thinking. Real thinking is directed and intentional.

How then, do we break this imagination stemming from our moving center? The answer is to be present to what is before you. This is an ancient message of awakening, present in every esoteric or religious tradition. Why is this message universally present and expressed in this way, if it were not for the fact that man is in a state of sleep and imagination? This is not the imagination of creativity; it is an imagination of dullness and randomness and lack of attention. It is autopilot. It is not awareness.

The starting point for recognizing that the source of imagination is the moving center is by observing it and being honest with what is observed. I do not control what comes into my mind. I do, however, have control over what I give my attention to intentionally. That moment is the beginning of waking up.

According to the teachings in my School, “waking up” is also a misnomer. To wake up implies that something must be extinguished first. Sleep must be defeated. I need to conquer my imagination. But a far better construct is to consider my imagination (my internal motion) as merely a veil, merely a misapplication of identity, and that the Higher Centers, the part in us that is already awake, is immediately available if we want to live there. We do not need to break the machine; I just need to shift my emphasis to what is higher in me.

Naturally, it is hard to sustain this reorientation. I need almost constant reminders that there is this other reality immediately available if I choose to go there. But my mind is not trained for this, and I am accustomed to the stream of random thoughts and random impressions to fill my life. Waking up, therefore, is not so much a choice as a realization that there are dimensions available to me that I have overlooked.

How will you lead your day today, or will you just run through the day? Will you just follow this stream of endless random thoughts and streams of ideas and words? Or will you choose to be in your shoes, to feel the seat beneath you, to smell the air around you, to hear the sounds about you, to truly penetrate the invisible, limitless world within you? The inflection point is not so much a choice as a realization, a personal epiphany that these options are available at any time.

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Sleeping Beauty, Edward Frederick Brewtnail