imagining

Who looks outside, dreams.
Who looks inside, awakes.
CG. Jung

Training your imagination is important. It helps you to see behind things, to become aware of the potential and opportunities. Factual looking involves the observing of the facts and dangers, imagining is a next step to create awareness of the -hidden- opportunities (cf. crisis). It means filling your 'living space' in a different manner, not by actively moving but by actively observing, while remaining still.


Some suggestions:
Find a peaceful place and sit down quietly. Sit still and do not try to move.
Then ask yourself some questions e.g.
What is my problem?
Why is it a problem?
When did it become a problem?
Who is involved in this situation?
Where are the ones involved?
Suppose it wasn't a problem but exactly what I wanted, what would I do?


Gulliver travelled to Laputa (which by the way is Spanish for the whore), you may try to imagine why this name? Perhaps Swift satirized the way science started to become a goal in itself, whereby sight was lost of man. For all of us it is a good to wonder how far we control the machine and where does the machine control our lives. This may be exemplified by the following story.

As Tzu-gung was travelling through the region north of the river Han, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He had dug an irrigation ditch. The man would descend into the well, fetch up a vessel of water in his arms, and pour it out into the ditch. While his efforts were tremendous, the results appeared to be meager.
Tzu-gung said, "There is a way whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like to hear of it?" Then the gardener stood up, looked at him, and said, "And what would that be?"
Tzu-gung replied, "You take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well."
Then anger rose up in the old man's face, and he said, "I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul.
"Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them."

Chuang-Tze (4th century BC)

You could imagine the cloud of Laputa. Perhaps you sometimes wondered about all this scientific work, well for Swift it often meant that many had lost all contact with reality. His idea was that all inventions only have quality if they contribute to the general good (i.e. with the heart of a human).

“We are only healthy insofar as our ideas are humane.”
KURT VONNEGUT in “BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS”

Perhaps you now could drift away on a cloud and just be impractical. It can be fun to visualize the impractical, like a teapot with two handles, or a cup with the handle inside.
You could also imagine yourself to live forever like some people on Luggnagg, what would you not do if you you were certain to live forever?
On Glubbdubdrib you visit a sorcerer who makes it possible to speak with any great person you would like to speak to! Just imagine what you could ask there.
Do not forget to come down from your cloud and return to your own country.