The Way of Dreaming
The future enters into us
In order to transform itself within us
Long before it happens.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
In Visionmaking, there are two powers of the intellect which require equal development and respect, cognition and imagination.
Cognition, called The Way of Knowing, is primarily concerned with gathering knowledge and understanding of the outer world. Awareness, attention, reasoning and analysis are some of the aptitudes that form The Way of Knowing.
Imagination, or The Way of Dreaming, is concerned with the inner world-ideas, thoughts, dreams, symbols and intuitive knowledge. These are seen as the directions of the heart that are entering consciousness that must be probed and studied to be understood.
Working together, these two powers provide the Visionmaker with the intellectual faculties to pursue a path of heart and meaning. They are intertwined and constantly collaborating in an extraordinary conversation about the possibilities for a heart-directed journey to meaning, and how to convert those possibilities to outcomes.
The Way of Dreaming is our initial exploration in starting the New Year well. We begin with the imagination because it is the chief agency for exploring possibilities for the future, a future which takes up its residency in the Four-Chambered Heart "long before it happens."
"Imagination is a very high sort of seeing," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American poet. Imagination is centrally important to Visionmaking because it allows the Visionmaker to transcend the narrow confines of current circumstances, the status quo and personal history, to explore the vast realm of possibility. Possibility is the terra firma of the artist, explorer, scientist and inventor.
The voyage into a field of possibility is made aboard the craft of the imagination. It is an expedition to the frontier of our dreams, that new territory of options and possibilities that would further our heart's desire -in work and creativity, relationship, health and wellbeing and personal growth and development.
Many of us feel constrained to dream. Perhaps, we have been convinced that the gravity field of the status quo is too powerful to escape! Perhaps we have let our disappointments, resignation and cynicism overcome our natural curiosity and excitement about the adventure of life?
A Visionmaker rejects the illusion that the status quo - and life itself - is static and preordained. He or she carries a heart-felt conviction that possibility, intent, and enterprise are much more powerful than the fabric of the status quo.
To imagine a preferred future, a future filled with possibilities for learning, growth and positive change is an initiation point for that future to manifest. In the next entry, we will explore the requirements to enter possibility through the Way of Dreaming.
© Patrick O’Neill 2009. All rights reserved.