Uncontrolled Mind Activity is Imagination

Uncontrolled Mind Activity is Imagination

“Our imagination does with us whatever it pleases.”

- Michel de Montaigne

Uncontrolled mind activity or imagination, as it is called in the Fourth Way, is one of the greatest barriers to self-remembering. It is in fact, the ordinary state for all sleeping people. To say it briefly, imagination stands between me and Presence. Our typical inability to sustain our inner focus - to be in the moment - is like an uncontrolled robot running amok from one object to the next.

If you observe yourself, you will find that your mind is controlled by distractions and stimuli of many types: by objects and people around you, by events that have happened in the past, and by your plans or fears of the future. For example, as I sat here writing, I noticed in the night sky a view of the planet Venus rising in the early morning. Venus, one of the brighter celestial bodies in the sky, stands apart from the other stars in the dark sky. Does this beacon of morning light raise my awareness or is my attention gone, lost in associations and internal imaginings about Venus, the morning, the day’s events, etc.?

You could say my uncontrolled mind activity is dominated or triggered by the “brighter” objects about me, a series of cascading impressions from one to another. Regardless of my attempts to focus attention, the distracting bright objects and my random associations with them take me away unawares. Whether inside or outside of our heads, these uninvited guests or noises or bright random objects are the forces that typically control me. My purpose of writing is washed away (or could be) by the morning star and by my endless internal dialogues and commentaries.

That means that my life is controlled by these inner and external accidental influences and my imagination about them, and not by my own mind. Does that matter to you? Are you here to just bounce from one thing to the next like insects randomly flying about the yard or the ball in a pinball machine? Do you want to captain your ship or be the victim of endless streams and storms of imagination battering your rudderless vessel?

Don Quixote of the Mancha, Walter Crane (illustrator)

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