imagination (noun)
1: the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality
2 a: creative ability
b: ability to confront and deal with a problem : RESOURCEFULNESS
use your imagination and get us out of here
c: the thinking or active mind : INTEREST
stories that fired the imagination
3a: a creation of the mind especially : an idealized or poetic creation
b: fanciful or empty assumption
A couple of months ago, I wrote about Losing Your Ability To Think Deeply. I still believe this a fact. There is just too many distractions. Further, people are strongly encouraged to take advantage of the internet and now AI.
Why tax yourself to ponder something when it’s so easy to find someone or something that had completed this “exhaustive” process for you? Just get a few other opinions together and use them to cobble up your own. Be sure to see what’s popular, while you’re at it. For many, this is a daily routine.
I don’t like that, but it pales in comparison to losing your imagination, entirely. Few probably think this is possible and while you’re thinking that, the sacrifice has already occurred. I’ll try to make my point.
The human brain is marvelous and it responds to being tasked. For example, you can easily read this:
“For emaxlpe, it deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod aepapr, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm.”
But what happens if your brain is coddled? And what does coddling look like?
If you sub out your thinking processes, you’re going to lose function – period. If you decide to kick it into higher gear at a later date, it’s going to be a job. The “use it or lose it” concept is real!
But this is about imagination, which is how your brain expands and attempts to fill in missing information. If everything is thought through a “good enough” complete version of something is supplied, a person will accept it and learn nothing.
You may be getting pissed off, reading this but it’s no different that having someone supply you with cooked meals, day in and day out. Will you learn to plan or shop of cook? No.
Further, figuring out what you’re going to cook, takes imagination!
I think this is enough to start the conversation. What do you think?
I don’t know about everyone else but I am flooded with imagination at this time. What I’m more worried about is that people are losing contact with their body, aka intuition. The mind and what it churns all day, including imagination, overrides all visceral signals and if not, people complain instead of listening.
Sorry for the long post but I can’t possibly say it better:
Three Mystical Powers
— Fred LaMotte
I have attained three supreme mystical powers. I am going to teach them to you.
Of course, you received these initiations when you were a baby in the crib, goo-gooing, burbing and farting, muttering “Ga!” “Hu!” “Mama!” “Bha!” and other bija mantras of supreme wisdom. But you exchanged your radiance for an education. Now you must be re-initiated.
1. First, whenever you are sad or angry or confused, take it as a sign to abandon your mind. Sink down into your body. Feel your heart-beat. Just stop whining, fall down, and enter your heart-beat.
2. Don’t take your next breath, receive it.
3. When you’ve fallen into your heart-beat and realized that every breath is a gift to be received, not taken, then offer the gift back to the Giver, slowly breathe out, and listen. Listen to what? Between breathing out and breathing in, listen to the quietest most distant sound. Just for a moment. This moment is an eternal door. This door is in the center of your chest, between going and coming, between beats, where there is no journey, no thought, no “I.”
Listen to what? Listen to the space beyond the faintest sound. Listen to the vibrating aliveness of listening itself. Listen to the symphony of your flesh, the chorus of electrons, the song of distant stars falling into the neurons of your solar plexus. Drown in the hum of silence.
Now you must pay me. Here is your initiation fee. Because if you don’t pay me, the power of these techniques will not be activated. OK? So please send me tidal waves of compassion. Forgive me for ever having imagined there was anything to learn but listening, pulsation, and friendship with your own heart. (Fred LaMotte)
👍🏽
Now that’s some very good advice, Fred! I do 4-7-8 breathing when stressed or unable to get to sleep. I also try to breathe into pain. (I’m old. There’s always something! Ha!). I will do it my way and then try a few your way. THANKS!
Good stuff! My method is to think about the people I love and how much I love them, pretty much all through my heart chakra..Then I focus on how much I want them to be protected from harm, being a Reiki master…It re-orients me away from sadness or distractions…
Maybe I’m taking this post on a somewhat petty ( small?) point of view. I’ve been pondering food and cooking all day. And I’m mad as heck. I cook. I love to cook. It’s how I gather my family. It’s how I show my love, and I mean, unconditional love! I even do my own dishes. But, now it seems everyone’s too busy to show up and sit for dinner, so I cook, it goes in the fridge, to be scooped out later and thrown in the microwave, ingested in front of late night t.v. There’s little appreciation for these seemingly small offerings of time. The love is not accepted. And I’m mad. I’m mad as heck.
Sounds like honesty to me.
I gave up on cooking for holidays several years back. I love it too, but people just aren’t into it.
This year was zero stress, which was nice, I told my son, who is out of town, we were having a four dog Christmas. I didn’t feel this way initially, but I’m here now and settled.
If I had four dogs, I’m pretty sure, they would love my cooking, love it more than my humans. Maybe it’s time to get me some puppies.
I am sorry you are wronged like that. It’s important to not lose the love for cooking so try to enjoy it for yourself at least or if you have some other people near you… I have elderly neighbors around and so when I bake something I take them stuff too. The praises from my jupiter virgo neighbor makes me feel very good since she used to make delicious things- and has some standards lol, still does but it’s a bit harder for her as time passes. Cooking/baking is a love language. Time you choose to do something for a person is a love language. Christmas is gone but I wish you that the people near you grow to appreciate the things you cook and do for them more.
I responded here:
https://elsaelsa.com/astrology/rolling-with-the-punches-as-you-age/
I’ve overheard several conversations recently of people complaining about how it seems like the quality of just about everything has gone down in recent years. I think there could be a lot of factors to this but what strikes me especially is art, because it really comes from the spirit, so the large-scale quality of art will reflect the spirit of the people. Where does creativity and imagination thrive? Boredom. But with smartphones that you can whip out anywhere you go we have practically killed it. It can even be terrifying to watch, people will go on their phones whenever they have to wait or sit still for anything like a reflex. A few months ago my school went to visit a college and what struck me is we left a room to go into a hallway, and just 5 seconds later about half of the kids immediately pulled their phones out. We weren’t going to wait that long for anything. We were just transitioning from one room to the next. But it’s scary to see people that you know are intelligent flip a switch and act like automatons. What’s a long car ride if you aren’t taking some time to look out the window and reflect?
I am very scared for the next generation, Gen Alpha and how some of their minds will be when they grow up and I know I’m not alone in this. A lot of them have screens shoved in their faces all the time as infants. They aren’t actively creating their own play, they are being completely passive in this way. And like you mentioned, there is AI now to think for you. If things keep going the way they are a few generations down the line I think people will use computers to do all their thinking for them and their brains will turn to total mush. The human brain destroyed by its own greatness – isn’t that ironic?
Ugh!! You know what lack imagination? AI, that’s what. I’ve noticed over the last few weeks whenever I try to search for something, the results are cr*p! I mean just so far from what I’m looking for and absolutely no help at all. Now I know part of that is me, my watery mercury is hard to parce on a good day (even for my own watery sun, from time to time). But this is just too much and so far from helpful. It strikes me that we could soon be looking back saying “remember when you could google something?”
At this rate, I’d rather figure it out or ponder it myself, thank you very much.
So I went down to the local used bookstore and invest in a good used copy of the dictionary (several just for variety), a thesarus and two different encyclopedia’s (again for variety). I’ll come my own conclusions and if they don’t match google, whatever! My reality is real to me, the internet is not.
The breathe of life is a gift. Breath sent to the lower belly extends out and then expands your ribs up to your chin. This is a full body fulfilled breath.Body responds positively and pain subsides. I did it all day yesterday at work then cooking at home. The repetitive household tasks of cooking is opportunity for exploration. The inspiration always comes. I remind myself “I am the bubbling fountain”Excellent post Fred.
The mental manifestation of true rooted inspiration is the last step in a flowering sequence that begins with an unconscious emotion – a gnawing feeling of hunger or lack of some sort.
In place of the willingness to suffer that gnawing unconscious hunger – we substitute endless and excessive external stimulation and lose ourselves.
Bingo,I do this with my grandson,I work early 6-9, break till 1-6,so I grab breakfast sandwich for him ,make him lunch before I head out has he learned to provide food for himself, 1 major reason we work, am I inching him towards employment? He has only been partly involved in some small work projects, I am not helping it just creates a
False understanding of what’s important 😩Covid put some bad habits into that “safe zone”
Absolutely correct Elsa, you’ve pinpointed the exact problem with most social media commentary, and modern mass-media-addicted humans.
Thinking for oneself has gotten worse instead of better. I was preaching about this 7 years ago.
QUESTION: Do you REALLY want AI to eventually be in control of every bit of your LIFE (see below article)
The best thing I recommend is to get dumb phones and start to extricate and cleanse our ourselves from the vast internet mind-control machine.
BKA Google and Meta. It will take awhile, but like any infestation, persistence and thoroughness pays off. See the below links for relevant info:
https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/quitting-google
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-google-plan-generative-inescapable-165910674.html
(Thats a message from my Capricorn Moon, Virgo MC, Sag AC, and Pisces Merc)
As a high school teacher of 26 years, I say you are right on with this observation, Elsa. Because of constant reliance upon and addiction to social media/ internet/devices, today’s teenagers are no longer able to, nor do they want to, expend any effort on thinking or creating. It is very discouraging to me and makes my job much harder since it is difficult to engage students and hold their interest. They only want to be entertained, yet don’t have the creativity or initiative to entertain themselves, and they also have no sense of humor which makes it difficult to establish any sort of rapport with them.
I feel for you. Stuck all day, having to try.