Imagination is seeing. It is the power to form images out of intelligent energy, but it is also the ability to feel or sense imagery. Light is imagery. Distance (depth perception) is imagery, seeing distance. "Seeing" originally meant following, (Latin: sequi, 'follow') to follow with the eyes. If imagination is seeing, then seeing with imagination means following an intelligence, primarily with our eyes.
Jung spoke of the "feeling tone" of a dream, or the mood. Places express or embody feelings, so when we dream that we are in a place that exudes a definite feeling, we are quite literally inside the landscape or architecture of the feeling; there are atmospherics in dreams that we inhabit as settings. This means that, in dreams and imagination, seeing and feeling are synonymous. The feeling of a landscape or setting fills in all the gaps or spaces so there is no question that what is there and what transpires there is "real" relative to the unfolding drama. It is "just so", all-surrounding, much more than a stage set. We might agree that every dream manifests an energy that would be fully credible and self-justifying whether the images are there or not. When we don't remember a dream it is the atmosphere of the dream or the feeling of a dream that we recall, that fills us or enthralls us. In other words the dream-reality or any imagined place or situation is all in the inevitability or meaning of something that is charged to manifest. But, no matter what the dream presents there is always a seeing component.
Since even in the dream there is an element of free choice, what manifests is not predetermined but constellates spontaneously out of the coincidence of what is charged to manifest and how the dreamer reacts or responds to the dream reality.
When we dream we are not just experiencing the dream but we are experiencing ourselves experiencing the dream. We are watching ourselves experience something. We are seeing through the eyes of our eyes. This dual seeing or nested seeing is the gift of the Self, the objective intelligence of the psyche that never sleeps although we may be asleep to the Self, the human face of the dimension we call consciousness. To the extent that we realize we are not reflecting alone, but that larger intelligence is watching us reflect, we become empowered to initiate change within the scope of what is possible which falls within the limits of what is probable.
Meditation may be understood as a form of relaxing or surrendering our own powers of reflection, allowing our self-consciousness to dissolve into the larger intelligence that supports our self-reflection.
In dreams the opposite happens. We totally identify with our self-consciousness in order to learn something that has soul-value, that will help us individuate or evolve. There is something sacred about this process that is hidden by the process itself just as everything in and about nature is sacred but we don't see it. The sun rising and setting, geese flying over calling to each other, snow falling, dreaming, falling in love. It's all sacred. Closing our eyes and seeing into what we feel. Sacred. Sacred. We are so embedded in the sacred that we don't see it. We are so blessed, we have binged on the sacred and we are drunk on it, close to blacking out. We have to sober up and go back to sipping the sacred!
When we imagine or dream, we are semi-creating our own destiny. There is some push, some pull and some improvisation! Stepping into our power is learning to master this synergy of forces, to serve the life force and express our gifts.
To be continued. . .
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