Working With Imagination

Working With Imagination

Imagination, the constant turning of ‘monkey mind’, presses upon us with considerable force. Left unchecked, it moves from one thought to another every three seconds or so. It does this all by itself; it ‘happens’ to us unless we make an effort to rescue our wandering attention.

In our school, simplicity is a cornerstone of our practice. Our teacher has always emphasized the relationship between simplicity and presence and continues to find ways to simplify our practical work.

Shortly after joining the school, I was introduced to the idea of working with my own ‘favourite’ subjects of imagination rather than attempting to deal with every ‘I’ on an individual basis. I was instructed to take note of ‘what’ specifically I happened to be thinking about whenever I discovered myself in imagination. The idea, which we all can verify, is that our imagination is very repetitive and is limited to a small handful of general topics. We are never in imagination about things that do not interest us and all of us are habitually drawn to imagination about things which seem ‘important’ to us. Health, finance, family, job, politics are examples of ‘subjects’ of imagination and, if one observes over time, one will find that most of the 19200 ‘I’s we have each day (one every three seconds, 16 hours per day) fall into just six or seven general subjects.

Suddenly, all our work on this monkey-mind side of imagination becomes much simpler. An aim to not ‘think’ about one’s job is much more practical and much more within one’s power than trying to deal with the scores of different ‘I’s one may have about one’s job; a difficult assignment, an unpleasant co-worker, a looming deadline, an unhappy customer, an advertising bill, a parts order, and on and on and on.

‘Job’ is a practical alarm clock, a very simple alert to the fact that we are in imagination. ‘Job’ (or ‘money’ or ‘finance’) is much easier to recognize as imagination and, consequently, much easier to separate from.

At least that is my experience.

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