Harnessing the Imagination
by Carol Rose
In the following essay, Carol Rose, a writer, poet, teacher and counselor gives a wonderful introduction to a system of healing called "imagery". Ms. Rose lives in Winnipeg, Canada.
I've often wondered about creativity, about that special state that I seemed to know about, even as a child, when I had to write a paper or prepare a project. I didn't know what to call it back then, or even how to access it. I just knew that if I went to bed and thought about what I had to do, relaxed, daydreamed, or even fell asleep for awhile, that later, I would wake with an idea waiting to be written. I didn't realize that this was a "technique."
I always felt a little embarrassed about the way I went about doing my assignments. It didn't seem to be "active" enough. It didn't feel like I was "doing" anything. It almost felt like something outside of myself was doing the work. I suppose I was what we would now call a spiritual child, or maybe all children (given the opportunity) are spiritual. In any case, whenever I had to do a creative project, I felt like some kind of spirit had joined me and that, with the hope of that spirit, I could think differently, see differently, know things in a way that was completely different from the way that I was learning at school.
I felt as if I was "receiving" information, not acquiring it through my own efforts. Today, I would probably call this "grace' or "being in the hands of the Divine," though I certainly couldn't name it then. Because this was such an unusual way of doing things, when my parents asked me how I was doing on an assignment, or if they offered to come into my room to help me, I'd quickly jump up from my bed, a little embarrassed and afraid of what they'd think if they saw me just lying in bed and dreaming. This was not anything I felt I could talk to them about; it seemed so out of the ordinary. It also felt a little like cheating, because I wasn't really "doing anything' and still the ideas came to me, fully formed.
Years later, in a creative writing course, we were asked to talk about how we prepared ourselves for writing. The instructor mentioned that she often sat with a dictionary, opening it anywhere and just focusing on the words, focusing on their meaning, or on their placement on the page. "A kind of meditation" she said, "I suppose it's a way of turning off the ordinary mind and tuning in." Suddenly, I understood my own childhood strategy, my own private way of tuning in. What a relief! Another person seemed to know about this process, too, and she could name it. She could identify it and talk about it as a legitimate way of preparing to write. Nowadays I spend most of my time writing, and although I'm not as innocent as I was back then in my childhood, I still find myself dreaming or 'quieting the mind," prior to the actual act of writing.
I now know that this is a very useful technique, a way of centering myself and focusing on the impressions that are stored inside my head and my heart. I've also discovered the usefulness and importance of "turning inward" in other facets of my life as well.
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