In this article we will continue our discussion of psychology and the use of the Mind. Here we will focus on the concepts of concentration, will (will power) and imagination.
These are part of the multifaceted reality of consciousness and are important to understand once it is recognized that consciousness does indeed form physical reality and not the other way around.
The Mind: Concentration, Will & Imagination
“Acceptance of self, forgiveness of self, and the direction of the will; this is the path towards the disciplined personality.”1
“The inner light is that which is your heart of being. Its strength equals your strength of will to seek the light.”2
The Will
“The function of the will is like the attraction to the upward spiraling line of light.
Your faculty of will is that which is powerful within you as co-Creator. You cannot ascribe to this faculty too much importance. Thus it must be carefully used and directed in service to others for those upon the positively oriented path.
There is great danger in the use of the will as the personality becomes stronger, for it may be used even subconsciously in ways reducing the polarity [used for negative/selfish purposes] of the entity.”3
Become aware of the will to a greater extent. It is a vital key to the evolution of the human mind/body/spirit complex.
Concentration (Focusing of the Attention)
Concentration is the focusing of the will backed up by faith.
“There is but one technique for this growing or nurturing of will and faith, and that is the focusing of the attention.
Thus it is a matter of wishing to become able to collect one’s attention and hold it upon the desired programming [programming here refers to the goal desired].
This, when continued, strengthens the will.” 4
Exercises to Help Increase the Attention Span
“The visualization of a shape and color which is of personal inspirational quality to the meditator is the heart of what you would call the religious aspects of this sort of visualization.
The visualization of simple shapes and colors which have no innate inspirational quality to the entity form the basis for what you may call your magical traditions.
Whether you imagine the rose or the circle is not important.
However, it is suggested that one or the other path towards visualization be chosen in order to exercise this faculty.
In the less sensitized individual the choosing of personally inspirational images is appropriate whether this inspiration be the rose which is of perfect beauty, the cross which is of perfect sacrifice, the Buddha which is the All-being in One, or whatever else may inspire the individual.”5
Silence, temperature control, comfort of body, visible light screening, and a constant smell such as the use of incense for strengthening your concentration in meditation are all aids helpful to the stimulation of that which in actuality aids concentration, that being the will of the entity.
This free will may be focused at any object or goal.
“The surrounding of self in a sylvan [forested] atmosphere, apart from distractions, in a place of working used for no other purpose, in which you and your associates agree to lay aside all goals but that of the meditative seeking of the Infinite Creator is, shall we say, not gadgetry but the making use of the creation of second-density [plant/animal/nature] love, and in the love and support of other-selves.”6
An Exercise on Focusing the Will
“Very simply: You want something, you dwell upon it consciously for a while; you consciously imagine it coming to the forefront of probabilities, closer to your actuality.
Then you drop it like a pebble into Framework 2, forget about it as much as possible for a fortnight, and do this in a certain rhythm.
Do not personally give any more conscious consideration to events that you do not want to happen. Any such concentration, to whatever degree, ties you in with those probabilities, so concentrate upon what you want, and as far as public events are concerned, take it for granted that sometimes even men are wiser than they know.”7
Inspiration
“The mechanism of inspiration involves an extraordinary faculty of desire or will to know or to receive in a certain area accompanied by the ability to open to and trust in what you may call intuition.”8
Imagination
“Imagination plays an important part in your subjective life, as it gives mobility to your beliefs.
It is one of the motivating agencies that helps transform your beliefs into physical experience.
It is vital therefore that you understand the interrelationship between ideas and imagination.
In order to dislodge unsuitable beliefs and establish new ones, you must learn to use your imagination to move concepts in and out of your mind.
The proper use of imagination can then propel ideas in the directions you desire.”9
Mark Booth writes, “For idealists imagination is a faculty for grasping a higher reality…imagination is also important because imagination is the great creative force in the universe. Human creativity, whether magical or non-magical, is the result of a particular channeling of the powers of the imagination. In alchemical tracts, for example, sperm is described as created by the imagination. This is a way of saying that imagination not only informs desire, it also has the power to transform our very material natures.”
He cautions, “Desire is always open to corruption though. What we desire, we possess in our imagination.”
Trusting the Imagination
“What is imaginary is not true: You are taught this as children.
The imagination, however, brings you into connection with a different kind of truth, or a different framework in which experience can be legitimately perceived.
The larger truths of the psyche exist in that dimension.
Often you do not trust your imagination, considering that it deals with phenomena that cannot be called fact.
Therefore you artificially form a situation in which overall traces must be made.
If you are too imaginative, for example, you may not be able to adequately deal with physical life. This applies only in the cultural media in which you presently operate, however.
Originally, and in your terms of time, it was precisely the imagination that in its own way set you apart from other creatures, enabling you to form realities in your mind that you could “later” exteriorize.
Because you now distrust the imagination so, you do not understand the great clues it gives you, both in terms of problem solving and of creative expression.
A good percentage of your problems can be worked out rather easily through the use of your imagination.”10
Using the Imagination
“When using your imagination, purposefully do so in a playful manner, knowing that in so-called realistic terms there may be great discrepancies between imagination and fact. In your reality take that for granted.
Yet often your freewheeling, “silly,” seemingly unrealistic imagination will bring you quite practical solutions to your problems for if the exercise is done properly you will be automatically releasing yourself from restrictions that you have taken for granted.
Even if a direct solution does not appear, rejuvenation will of itself begin to point you in the proper direction.
If you are a woman in an unhappy marriage, for example, you may begin by imagining yourself with a fine suitor.
Now: no Sir Galahad may appear, but if the exercise is pursued properly you will automatically begin to feel loved, and therefore worthy of love and lovable, where before you felt rejected, unworthy and inferior.
This feeling of being loved will alter your reality, drawing love to you. You will act loved. Your spouse may then find you exhibiting characteristics of a most pleasant nature, and he himself may change.
On the other hand you may draw another man to you, and end the marriage that has served its purposes in all ways, finding now the impetus and the reason for change.
Because your imagination transcends time, it’s one of your greatest touchstones to your own identity.
You must, of course, be able to distinguish between the world of imagination and the physical world of fact in order to be able to manipulate effectively.
But physical reality springs from the imagination, which follows the path of your beliefs.”11
Imagination and Creativity
“Through training, many adults have been taught that the imagination itself is suspicious.
Such attitudes not only drastically impede any artistic creativity, but the imaginative creativity necessary to deal with the nature of physical events themselves.
Man’s creative alertness, his precise sensual focus in space and time, and his ability to react quickly to events, are of course, all highly important characteristics.
His imagination allowed him to develop the use of tools, and gave birth to his inventiveness.
That imagination allows him to plan in the present for what might occur in the future.
Basically speaking, imagination cannot be tied to practicalities, for when it is man has only physical feedback. If that were all, then there would be no inventions.
To encourage creativity, exert your imagination through breaking up your usual space-time focus.
As you fall to sleep, imagine that you are in the same place, exactly in the same spot, but at some point in the distant past or future. What do you see, or hear? What is there?
For another exercise, imagine that you are in another part of the world entirely, but in present time, and ask yourself the same question.
Conduct your own variations of these exercises. What they will teach you cannot be explained, for they will provide a dimension of experience, a feeling about yourself that may make sense only to you.
They will teach you to find your own sensations of yourself, as divorced from the official context of reality, in which you usually perceive your being.
Additionally, you will be better able to deal with current events, for your exercised imagination will bring information to you that will be increasingly valuable.
You will understand situations better in daily life, because you will have activated inner abilities that allow you to subjectively perceive the reality of other people in a way that children do.
The feel and practice of these exercises are their important points – the manipulation of a creative consciousness.
You exist outside of your present context, but such statements are meaningless, practically speaking, unless you give yourself some freedom to experience events outside of that rigid framework.
Consciousness always seeks the richest, most creative form, while ever maintaining its own integrity.
The imagination, playing, the arts and dreaming, allow it to enrich its activities by providing feedback other than that received in the physical environment itself.”12
Imagination, the Conscious Mind, Reasoning, & Emotions
“Because you are reasoning creatures, because you have available such varieties of experience, the human species developed reasoning abilities that are meant to evolve and grow as they are used.
Your consciousness expands as you use it. You become “more” conscious as you exercise these faculties.
As the conscious mind grew, so did the range of imagination.
The conscious mind is a vehicle for the imagination in many ways. The greater its knowledge the further the reach of imagination.
In return imagination enriches conscious reasoning and emotional experience.
You have not learned to use your consciousness properly or fully, so that it seems that imagination, emotions and reasoning are separate faculties, or sometimes set against each other.
The mature conscious mind accepts data from the exterior world and from the interior one.
It is only when you believe that consciousness must be attuned only to exterior conditions that you force it to cut itself off from inner knowledge, intuitional “voices,” and the depths from which it springs.
The imagination belongs to the language of the psyche. For this reason it often gives experiences that conflict with the basic assumptions upon which daily language is based.
Therefore the imagination if often considered suspect.
The emotions and the imagination, however, give you your closest contact with other portions of your own reality.
They also liberate your intellect so that its powers are not limited by concepts it has been taught are true.”13
Imagination & Emotions
“Your emotions and your imagination both follow your belief.
When the belief vanishes then the same emotional context is no longer entertained, and your imagination turns in other directions.
Beliefs automatically mobilize your emotional and imaginative powers.
Few beliefs are intellectual alone.
When you are examining the contents of your conscious mind, you must learn, or recognize, the emotional and imaginative connotations that are connected with a given idea.” 14
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 52.7, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=52
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 57.14, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=57
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 52.7, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 42, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=42
- ibid.
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 43.31, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=43
- Roberts, Jane, Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1986
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 38.4, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=38
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of Personal Reality, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1974
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
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