Quote from Deleted user on July 2020, 12:49 pm

I can use my imagination to uplift me or to provoke me into depression. I can use it to worry or to dream. I DO use it for all these things and now I see I have let it run amok and almost felt that I was at its whim all this time. Until now,  having listened twice to this month's call.

I was accused of having a "wild imagination" as a child, and it clearly wasn't praiseworthy! I have not seen, until now that I had power over that. I could probably put a winning case for needing that wild imagination to escape the trauma of my childhood, but perhaps I got lost in it. I think I allowed that habit to take me either to worry and fear or more regularly (once that was shamed out of me) into fanciful imaginings of who and how I could be. I remember when getting on a plane from England to Canada, aged 16, taking my seat and thinking "I can be anyone I choose to be", as the person sat down next to me. Only now do I realise the biggest freedom would have been to have taken off all the pretending and to have chosen to be me!

I have used my imagination to escape the here and now, the present moment, the reality of my day to day. To escape pain. I have used it to dream about a future elsewhere. A vast amount of my time has been spent resenting 'here' and dreaming of 'there'. I can use it to worry, to rehearse conversations, heck to even have conversations that are long over! Sometimes I have used it usefully to rehearse and plan, but mostly not particularly constructively. Mostly just to perseverate on an issue.

Now I view imagination as a powerful and useful ability that I can consciously choose to harness, but not get carried away by. If I choose to stay present in mind and body, not let imagination the free rein as some addictive escape, I can then also use it as the creative force that it is.

When I have written well, it has felt like "forces unseen" at work. I have labelled them as outside of me. I have been scared of them. I have even shied away, feeling out of control. Now I see this differently. I see that ability as a force of nature within me. I am a natural being and the spark that keeps me alive also is where creativity lies. My own tiny thread of divinity perhaps. Connecting me to all and everything. (At the risk of getting esoteric here, but it feels real to me in this moment). When I sit down and "write poetry", I see now my imagination is at work. It feels like it comes through me, I hear people talk of channelling good work, but what if it is my imagination - imaging my Self. And I control with my mind, with my conscious choice, as to how I utilise my imagination. It is not in control of me.

I can put it to good use. Harness its power. But not get "carried away" by it, losing myself and my reality. 

Last week I wrote this poem. It came freely and clearly, I subsequently edited some and might some more. But it speaks to this fresh new understanding that I now have of my imagination.

Why poetry, you ask? Why breathe, I respond.

To capture inner changes I barely perceive.

To explore the flavour of spaces between my words.

To jump off bridges into adjective and adverb —

gladly, potently.

To open my heart —

then write myself forward onto open page.

To elaborate when doldrummed —

investigate where doll was drummed into me,

exquisite wonder fashioned out of me,

As I declare I am lost.

Here I am found with pen tip caresses —

the swirl and curl of my unfurling mind.

I flow onto flat paper cupped in its splayed hands.