I made a terrible mistake!
I came across a video that was making its rounds through the internet. Drawn by its title, my curiosity was piqued. Like most news stories, it had a sensationalistic title which I took to be nothing more than an overdone, National Enquirer type, headline meant to draw an audience. So I clicked on it expecting a typical hyped up news segment.
I was not prepared for the raw, grizzly, morbid images that assaulted, not only my eyes and ears, but my very being.
It watched an untouched scene of the gruesome execution of an innocent man for his own beliefs.
I do not wish to give you the details. I do not want to give this image any more power in my imagination beyond that which I need to express my feelings in this matter.
I, myself, am to blame for all this. I allowed myself the satisfaction of morbid curiosity. I watched that video with as much disbelief as I did fascination. This couldn’t be real, could it? No one would post such a gruesome scene unless it was something out of Hollywood horror movie! Even now, I wonder, and hope, that the whole thing was just a staged prank. I am disgusted that I allowed myself to watch such a horrid and inhumane act. Despite my horror, I watched the video, hoping that it was just an act. I was hoping it was a prank. Surely there would a disclaimer after.
But it was not to be. I witnessed a real destruction of a human life.
Not only did I “buy” into this video, I succumbed to an emotional outrage within me that I could not help bringing the horrific injustice in my mind over and over again. Outrage is a powerful negative force that can release an incredible amount of energy.
I knew that I was feeding this negativity and releasing it into the world.
Imagination is such a powerful force that whatever we entertain in our imagination with intense feeling and passion is projected into the world. This bad gets worse and worse and worse and mind after mind participates in it reinforcing its fearsome energy. This is how both good and bad events escalate. But out attention and fascination is drawn mainly to the negative events.
We watch the news and believe that the news represents the whole world when, in fact, it represents a mere fraction of a percent of what the world is like. The more numerous, dominant, positive, normal, events are ignored as not being “news-worthy” while our focus is drawn towards the infinitesimally small number of negative events that dominate the consciousness of this world. Yes, negativity sells! That’s how news services make money and how some groups attract followers. And I just helped sell that morbid negativity to the world.
But this is not the right use of our Imagination just as nuclear weapons are wrong use of nuclear energy. Our Power of Imagination is impartial and non-judgmental. It takes whatever we see in our minds and projects that to the world in proportion to the strength of the feeling we put into it. It can be a vehicle for peaceful advancement or a weapon of mass destruction that makes the atomic bomb pale in comparison.
I have worked to eliminate that terrible image of terror and murder from my mind by directing my Imagination through positive avenues. Deep inside, I felt fury as I saw man’s inhumanity to a fellow man, solely because of his or her beliefs. It did not matter that I did not know the deceased. I wanted to rebel, to take up arms against this inhumanity but, by doing so, I knew that I would merely add more power to the imagining that made this negative event possible.
I am no soldier. I am non-violent. I can’t even see the point in pretend warfare. Yet, I found myself waging a metal campaign of revenge. By doing so, I almost allowed myself the very type of mind-set that produced this atrocity. That is no way to move the world to a better place.
Instead, let me serve at a higher level. To change the world means to change the images that it sees and the thoughts it entertains. I may not change the world. One person will not be enough. But I will change mine! And, perhaps, that is a start.
I have used to blog to explain how the world is created by the images we entertain in our heads. There is a cause and effect at work in Creation. Perhaps, it is now time to actual present positive images for every negative image that comes my way. Let me tell the story of success instead of failure, or shaking hands and hugs instead of gun and sword fights. Let me speak of rockets that fly to new colonies in space rather than to carry warheads that destroy.
This is the last message I have that will carry any negative image. If imagination can offer a “non-real” but happier situation, then I would rather live in fantasy than in the so-called “real” world. I know that, as more and more share positive imaginings, the world has not choice but to change, because we create from what we imagine.
We can live a life of Magic. And that Magic lies in our Imagination.
The Art of Imagination - Engineering Reality 