What is Real Anyway?
Forget-Me-Not (AWARENESS) reminds us that life is far more than what we can perceive with our physical senses alone.
She helps us to expand our present moment awareness and connect us with our imagination which, I am slowly realizing, is quite possibly the “sense” that we humans use the most! Except that we are not AWARE of it!
Let me try to explain.
According to kindergarten science, our senses are how we engage with and understand the world…how we make sense of it. And our emotions are energetic responses to what we are sensing. Right?
Maybe if we were robots, we would only respond and interact with what we can actually physically hear, taste, touch, smell and see, but, in my own lived experience it is our imagination, our minds, that actually brings all that we sense together to create the rich, multi-faceted world we each experience.
Our imagination brings our world to life!
In fact, our imagination is so powerful, it can and most often does, dominate our physical senses such that we are never truly present and aware of what is actually happening in every moment.
Our senses are not informing our imagination, so much as our imagination is informing our senses!
Children are far more present and aware than we are as adults. And yet beyond Kindergarten our imaginations' importance is dismissed as childhood nonsense, or the realm of fantasy, while our adult world simultaneously creates (imagines) more and more distractions under the heading of “real world”.
Our imagination has us creating fear, separation from each other, competition, inequality, pain and endless suffering while we simultaneously physically inhabit the Garden of Eden we get to live and play in.
Now think about entertainment and how it impacts and informs our imagination and our physical senses. Think about how our “news” is currently more entertainment, no longer the simple reporting of facts. And what emotions is the news triggering within us? Do we feel good or emotionally drained after consuming this entertainment? If we feel emotionally drained, why do we continue to watch it? No judgment here…just honest curiosity.
In my experience, our emotions feed our imagination which is reflected in our personal and collective realities.
I can’t tell you how long I lived the Cinderella story (and many other narratives) that were actually my own personal creations grown from a tiny seed of physical truth. Our imagination gives us the capacity to create and then live within our own movies.
If we believe the world is an awful place, AI algorithms using the vast amounts of data collected on all our viewing and consumption habits, will confirm our belief and feed us more and more “entertainment” to support it.
It’s not that the suffering of the world is not real—it is very real—bombs dropping would be a very visceral, physical experience.
What is possibly not “real” is the million different narratives that we each create to make sense of what is happening. I’m sure there are as many truths as there are individuals experiencing them.
I believe that everything we have created in our world, everything that is “real”, was first imagined. And, with our collective overwhelm and conditioned reliance on external sources of information to tell us what’s happening, we continue to create a reality that we don’t actually want. A reality that doesn’t align with the heart of humanity that I know exists—that I have actually seen, and experienced physically through my senses. Instead we are co creating a nightmare and we are not even aware of it! Or at least, we are not fully aware of how we each contribute to this drama we call reality.
Furthermore, while our outer world keeps us super busy and distracted, it is very hard to create space for mindfulness of what we are actually experiencing in the present moment. If we can’t find space for presence then we can’t possibly expand our awareness within or without. And unfortunately, without emotional and physical awareness, we can’t possibly navigate our way to inner or outer peace. We can’t find and connect with our loving, compassionate hearts.
As a humanity it feels like we are in collective denial of the power of our imagination as a creative force.
The “seeing is believing” rational narrative feels like denial of a great deal of our world that is beyond our human physical senses but very real in our imaginations and actual lived experiences.
Forget-Me-Not liberates our imagination from the realm of foolish, childhood fantasy and elevates it to the powerful, real world creative tool that it is. A tool which we all already use and that which connects us into the web of life of which we are all a part.
Does that make any sense? 🤪
Daydreaming and imagining the world that exists in our hearts is serious business!
If what you are consuming doesn’t taste good or feel good to your physical being you probably shouldn’t consume it. The same should go for everything we consume and that we are in relationship with…which is pretty much everything!
And, if something doesn’t feel right, the question for us all is why do we continue to align with it and feed it with our creative energy through our attention and our imagination?
Forget-Me-Not says, “Be aware of what is actually happening around you.”
What are your physical senses telling you and what is your imagination telling you?
Which is real and which is an illusion?
Start there.
Through cultivation of conscious awareness, that is awareness of what is presently happening, we slowly begin to shed layers of cultural values and stories that we have played in that distort the truth of who we are and what we are experiencing.
In that way, we begin to move towards and create what actually feels good!
This is the power of our minds and of our creative imagination and it’s time we harness it for the healing of the world rather than continue to perpetuate the suffering we are currently creating on the micro and macro.
I can imagine a loving and peaceful world that comes from my heart, from the child that I AM. And I know you can too.
Tune out whatever is triggering negative emotions and reconnect with the reality happening immediately around you. This is the place of our power. This is how we can close the book on the old story and start imagining a new one.
Thank you for coming on this rambling, spiraling journey with me.🌸
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Also in Plant Spirit Deep Dives
Wintering: Coming Back to Life
Over the years, the Soulflowers have lovingly helped me to understand change to be the natural order of things. They have helped me to trust completely in the inherent intelligence of Nature and the necessity of all the seasons to support life, sustainably.
We are cyclical beings. Life (life force energy) is never lost—it is only constantly changed, transformed.
Finding Grace
“All suffering comes from resistance to the truth of who you are. All suffering comes from resistance to What Is.” Milk Thistle adds.
Let that truth bomb sink in.
