When I was planning my three Matrix collections, I made this note:
“Civilizations ebb and flow, rise and fall, but the individual remains. He needs, under any and all circumstances, to keep two capacities intact: 1) reasoning, logic, analysis; and 2) imagination. These are the well springs. No matter what situation he finds himself in, he will need these. He should not only preserve these two faculties, but also expand and deepen them. Nothing that could be happening around him is an excuse to desert these cores.”
What is happening around us now, in these times, certainly provides major distractions and diversions. It’s easy to go off on tangents and engineer reasons why we can’t achieve goals and embody our dreams. But that doesn’t help us. It doesn’t serve our interests.
After 30 years of working as a reporter, author, and researcher, I’ve come to understand that an imagined vision of what a person truly wants is his North Star. Working at higher and higher levels to fulfill that vision and make it into fact in the world eventually produces unexpected rewards. And also spills over into benefits for others.
The phrase “truly wants” is a key. When you reach down to that level of desire and see it, you find both peace and energy.
You find leverage. Now circumstances tend to adjust to you, rather than you adjusting to them.
It is as if the status quo has been waiting for a change, a transformation, and it moves toward you for assistance.
At the root of ancient alchemy was the notion that nature, in all its manifestations, was engaged in conflict, and a “quintessence” was needed to work a higher resolution. That quintessence is born out of imagination, the envisioning of new possibilities.
