How Your Imagination Can Change the World

Every single creation of humanity began in the imagination.

It all starts with a story.

I have tasked myself with the creative imagining of a world in which humanity thrives in balance with the planet. I am self-identified storyteller of the New Story.

My work lies in the field of imagination. My heart and soul tell me that humanity can and will change, and that there is hope for us. These days, it seems to me to require a certain kind of courage to have hope. But first, all that’s needed is imagination.

These are the early beginnings of my imaginative exploration of this world, and I invite you to share in its storytelling. I ask you, rather than looking for inconsistencies or impossibilities in my story – and I am sure there are many – that you look instead for possibilities and for opportunities to imagine.

Can you imagine this world with me?

You are walking in the city. Every car, bus and truck that passes is quiet and emits no pollution into the air at all. As a result you can breathe the fresh air of the trees, flowers and vegetables grown in urban farms you pass.

There is barely any garbage in the street at all, because there are barely any things that can turn into garbage: everything that we make is contained within a cycle of re-use of all materials. There are no extraneous materials that cannot be reincorporated into something else, because everything we make and use has been designed that way. To be completely recyclable.

Factories – where things are made – emit no pollution into the atmosphere. Their by-products are recycled and used by other industries. Everywhere you look there are alternative forms of energy in use: windmills, solar panels, sources of power we haven’t ever imagined before.

Our rivers are coming back, the fish are growing healthy again because we are not overfishing. Everyone is mostly vegetarian, because when there are many of us on the planet we know that we must each tread lightly, and being vegetarian is much lighter a footprint than eating meat.

There are methods of transportation over vast distances that do not have the carbon footprint of airplanes. We were able to discover and implement them because governments in the world realized that these inventions were crucial to our survival, and had to be funded, supported, and encouraged to thrive. And so they did.

We are no longer spending all our money on wars over resources. Humanity has learned the difficult lesson that survival requires co-operation, not competition. When everything is kept within a cycle of reusing, there is no scarcity of resources. Your garbage is your goldmine. Just as the excrement of the animal nourishes the plants which emit oxygen which the animals breathe, so have humans learned to behave.

There is universal health care and education. Most countries in the world are now peaceful and prosperous. And prosperity is defined by the good standard of living of all inhabitants and their health and happiness, and the peace in which they live. A prosperous nation is no longer one that grows in wealth at the expense of its own citizens, or of those in foreign countries.

This is a world where, in order to survive, you must care about the ramifications of everything you do. This practice has habituated us to act in the long-term interest of all beings. We have become used to making sure there were no negative impacts from our materials use, and that has taught us to behave in ways that do no harm to anyone or anything. Peace has followed. Peace between neighbours, peace between countries, peace in our hearts, because before, underneath, we always knew we could do better in our actions.

We are that powerful

This blog is subtitled “Art, Life and World Transformation” and yet I haven’t talked about world transformation here, until now. So far my articles have been about the transformation of my personal and artistic life. The imagining process I speak of in this article is no different than the methods I have used to imagine my life into the beautiful form it is now.

We are that powerful. We can choose to imagine a world where humanity thrives.

This is an early story – or perhaps the germ of an idea of a story – of what it will look like when we succeed. Let it live in your imagination for a while. Allow it to gestate and reform. Permit a vision of a happy, thriving future for humanity and the planet to percolate in your being.  Allow yourself – even just a part of yourself – to imagine that it might be true, that the imagination itself might be so powerful. Because it can.

And then imagine what it will look like through your eyes. And begin to tell the story your way.

As we each begin to tell and share this New Story of ours, it can fire the imagination of others, as so may it become a living story, shared between us.

Every single creation of humanity began in the imagination.

It all starts with a story.

Unleashing your deepest, strongest power

This is a time when the feminine is increasingly being called and welcomed back into the world.

Women are occupying ever greater positions of power. Little girls in our society generally have no conception that there is something they can’t do. Men are opening up to previous taboos like: childrearing, doing housework, showing emotion, eschewing violence. The earth – the ultimate feminine energy – is crying so loudly for our attention that Her voice is in the news daily – and all around the world people are calling out that we must pay attention to her. We must pay attention to the feminine.

The rise of feminine power has everything to do with old women

Today I got my hair cut and thought again about my decision to go grey two years ago. “If I dye it brown again, I will look much younger, “ I thought. It feels weird to look in the mirror and see a “grey-haired lady”.

The story we are told is: get older, lose power. We’re silently told: “Fear getting older, girls! Fear becoming invisible, unimportant, cast off, a bag lady! The worst thing that can happen to you is to lose your looks, remember that every time you look in the mirror after 35!”

But what actually happened when I let my hair go grey? People whom I didn’t know started treating me with respect, as though I had something valuable to say and as if I was powerful. Men started giving me appreciative glances (which had been pretty rare before, let me tell you!). People I did know started saying how fabulous I look. I had a sense of myself as a powerful, capable woman.

In essence, I gained status by going grey. The paradigm is changing.

The change is happening very quickly

My Lebanese grandmother was forced into an arranged marriage to a man she hated who was twenty years her senior.

My mother, unlike her mother, was free to marry whom she chose. Her boss however told her that she was never going to rise at work because she was female. 

(That's my mom on the right)

I, on the other hand, was raised with the knowledge that I could be anything I want to be and can marry whomever I choose.

Women have feared getting older because it has meant losing that little power we had – our sexual power. But things are changing. Women are more powerful in the western world than ever before. Maybe we don’t need to fear getting older as women. Maybe we can look forward to it!

For the first time in thousands of years, some of the leaders in our society are also grandmothers. Leaders who have borne babies in their wombs, and watched those babies bear babies. Leaders who will be very concerned, not just for the current generations, but for the ones to come.

When I think of it, grandmothers are the perfect leaders: they have lived a long time, they have left their hormonal motivations largely behind, they know the value of life because they have nurtured it with their breasts and with their hands.

All of which leads me to these questions:

What if the inner struggle with our bodies -  that all woman share in different ways - is in fact a symptom of the suppression of the divine feminine? And what if it is more specifically the suppression of the divine elder feminine? The feminine energy that has nothing to do with our sexual appeal, and everything to do with our wisdom and loving kindness?

What if I lived in a culture that honoured elder women? What would it feel like to know I was now entering into their esteemed company?

What if I unleashed that crone power in me? A power that has been chained up, devalued and mocked for centuries?

Can I fearlessly claim my fullest, deepest power? Can I be that powerful, and loving and kind?

An unleashing the inner goddess ceremony

 

You need: a long ribbon and some scissors.

Bind the ribbon around your hands

As you tie the knot in the ribbon, say:

            This ribbon and this knot

            are the chains upon my divine feminine spirit

            as all men and women have had this spirit bound

            Today I cut these bonds

            and allow my feminine divinity free

            may she be powerful

            may she be strong

            may she be kind

            may she be abundant

            may she always act for the benefit of seven generations to come

            may she be free

Now cut the ribbon and say:

            As the divine feminine rises up in me

            May I see her divinity

            honour her

            bow to her

            allow her her freedom

            I allow her her freedom

Warning: your inner female divinity may be a little cranky for having been bound so long. Be patient. J

mandala by Erin Dragonsong (psst she has a cool make-your-own mandala e-book.)