The secret is already in your skull
Imagination is your birthright. Here's how to live into it.
Maybe you’ve seen this meme that’s been doing the rounds recently:
Can you picture an apple?, the meme asks. Meaning: if you imagine an apple, do you literally see an apple in your mind’s eye: the tiny pockets of juice that fleck its skin, the waxy shine, the woody stalk that holds the leaf? Or do you—like an estimated 1 to 3 percent of people—conjure no visual but rather the concept of an apple?
The meme shocks people because of course we can’t ever know what it is to be inside someone else’s head. We say “apple” and assume everyone has the same experience as us. For those with aphantasia—the people who fall at number five; who call up concepts rather than visuals—it can be a shock and even a source of grief to learn that others actually see images in their minds.
I don’t have aphantasia, and I’m not an expert in it. But I am currently taking a master’s degree called Poetics of Imagination—meaning, I’m engaged in deep study of the nature and dimensions of the human imagination. And I think this meme is upsetting people by asking a fundamentally flawed question. A question that derives from a perniciously hyperliterate, hypervisual, post-Enlightenment culture with a very limited understanding of the imagination.
Why do humans even have imaginations? What’s the point? Some of it is about creative problem-solving, sure—but what problem does it solve to be able to hold a perfectly formed apple in the infinite, elastic space inside our skulls; to hear the crunch and taste the sweetness of something that doesn’t in fact exist?
My deeply held belief is that imagination is a tool for transcendence. It’s a portal to a sacred mystery, capable of connecting us to otherworlds—infinitely rich realms that unfold far before and beyond the material world we inhabit. And make no mistake: the ability to access those otherworlds is the most critical, fundamental part of our humanity. It’s at the root of what makes us human. Without those otherworlds and some respect for what they hold, or at least a belief that they exist, we are absolutely fucked, to use the technical term.
Before you decide this is a bunch of woo-woo horse shit and click away, know that this isn’t just my personal position, reached via a lifetime of particularly weird choices. (Though yes, I have made a lifetime of particularly weird choices, thank you for asking.)
Since 2002, when David Lewis-Williams published his discourse-shaping book The Mind in the Cave, anthropological study has taken very seriously the idea that altered states of consciousness have played a critical part in shaping humanity. That by going into caves and drumming repetitively until they fell into a trance, or taking mind-altering ceremonial medicines, or using any number of other techniques, our earliest ancestors accessed expanded consciousness, and with it, rich fields of being and knowing that helped them develop cultures and cosmologies—the core factors that distinguished us from Neanderthals. The core factors, that is, in our humanity.
You can only enter this infinitely fertile trance state through imagination. But not the shitty, impoverished vision of imagination that makes people feel they’ve failed if they can’t conjure a fucking Braeburn at will, because Twitter has told them to. No: imagination meaning a whole otherworld of subtle senses. Tastes and smells, textures and sounds, weights and speeds and emotional states, which don’t pertain to the material world around you, but which are yours to access, at any time. Whether you can picture a sodding apple or not.
This capacity to approach otherworlds via each and every one of your senses, and through them, to gather deeper, richer information than you’ll ever find in the material world—it’s not a specialist skill. It’s not elite or the province of artists. It’s part of humanity. It’s your fucking birthright. And even if you feel you’ve lost access to it, you can work your way back. It can be learned and trained.
When I tell people I work as a book coach, they typically have one of two responses. Either they start telling me about the book they’re working on, or they tell me they wish they could write a book, but they’re just not creative. And this answer, it breaks my heart. There’s not a human being on earth who isn’t creative, who doesn’t have an imagination. If you think you’re not creative, that’s because you live in a culture that simply does not understand what imagination is, or what it’s for, or that it must be nurtured on every level from the individual to the societal, as a matter of life and death.
If you’re considering resolutions as the new year approaches, I’d like to suggest resolving to spend more time with your imagination, i.e. your inherited superpower. Be careful, though. This isn’t a tick-list item. The harried, task-oriented approach will kill it. Imagination is already there. It lives in your body. You simply have to relax into it. I’m going to share below some of my favourite resources for beginning to explore the full extent of your imagination. But I’m also feeling an online course brewing in me, on the why and how of living into imagination. Feel free to drop me a line and let me know if you’d be interested in that.
Resources
David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave, and David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, Inside the Neolithic Mind. Together, these books rigorously demonstrate that imagination and expanded forms of consciousness aren’t optional extras in the human experience. They are what makes us human.
Sandra Ingerman, Shamanic Journeying. A more practical route to imagination, via the hypnagogic state. Whether you believe in shamanic practice or not, the technique Ingerman lays out in this book is a great primer on beginning to step into the fullness of your subtle senses, as an access point to expanded consciousness.
Yoga nidra. This isn’t yoga in the posh-leggings-and-juice sense so many of us are now familiar with, but rather in the original sense of yoking yourself to the infinite. Yoga nidra is essentially deep meditation that helps you access a hypnagogic state, which is a critical part of imaginal exploration.
Finally, and most simply, slow the fuck down and experience your senses, moment to moment. I’m swearing at myself here. This is a daily struggle for me: to slow down enough to process the full, sensory weight of each moment. It’s so hard, but it gets you into the body and those subtle senses—and that’s the key to everything.
Until next week. Love,
xx Ellie