We Are The Inventors Of Our Experiences: Imagination IS Everything!

The word imagination in past years and today carries many definitions.

Some of these definitions include: imagination is something to be achieved, something only some are good at, a fantasy or a far-fetched; whimsical idea. And for some simply childs’ play. However, imagination is more than this!

Imagination IS the use of our mind and mental creative ability. It is what we do every day, every moment and what we have done to achieve the results we have experienced.

Nothing can exist without it first appearing in the imagination!

Thought IS Imagination and we are imagining 24 hours a day, every day. Not one day passes in our lives that we don’t imagine something, and this is creating our future.

In 1945, Robert Desnos, together with hundreds of others, was in line awaiting his execution in the gas chamber of the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Czechoslovakia). Robert was a French poet who had been imprisoned for being part of the French resistance to the Nazi invasion.

Susan Griffin, an American author, relates a story about how Desnos’s imagination and hope helped him and many others survived that day. Awaiting for his execution, Desnos grabbed the hands of the woman in front of him and began reading her palm. He told her “the forecast is good, a long life, many grandchildren and abundant joy”. Another person overheard the conversation and asked Desnos to do the same for him. Desnos also read his palm and told him of a future life full of happiness and success. More and more prisoners came to Desnos and he would tell him about a wonderful future, full of joyous lives and success. People were happy and euphoric. They were about to be executed, yet they were happy!

The Nazi guards were confused about what was going on. They suspended the executions for the day fearing a strong resistance from the prisoners, and brought them back to the barracks… Desnos was never executed, not that day or ever! By the power of his imagination, and the imagination of the other prisoners, Robert Desnos saved his life, and many others.

Our capacity to imagine a better future has profound consequence. It doesn’t really matter what our current reality is, as long as we can keep our imagination alive. In the case of Desnos, he was about to be executed and he still found the opportunity to imagine a better future.

Imagination has been praised by artists and scientists, by successful people, and some less fortunate. Ultimately, imagination is one of the dualities that distinguishes us from other animals. It is our capacity to visualize a state of things that doesn’t exist, but could exist.

As Robert Desnos’s story, it is imagination what gives us a better state of things. Robert experienced what another Nazi prisoner beautifully explained in his theories. Viktor Frankl found that those who survived were the ones able to imagine by keeping their hope alive. And they did so by acknowledging that there was something in their lives that was not accomplished yet. These prisoners survived by imagining an inexistent future and that gave them strength to endure the most terrible things we could ever think of.

Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. He was absolutely correct. Regardless of the type of hardships we are experiencing, imagination is the key to open the door to a room full of opportunities and desired results.

Our Imagination interacts with our thoughts to affect our experiences in ways that are barely perceptible. Quantum physics has come to discover that the same energies that exist in the physical environment around us, on us and in us, first existed in the imagination. Imagination is fundamental for innovation, for development, for progress, science, and for our future results. I think we know the value of imagination… it is huge. But, I also think that we underestimate its deepest value when it comes to creating the future. Imagination is not only visualizing and inventing future experiences, but is the way to fill ourselves with optimism and confidence that anything is possible.

Let’s nurture and wisely use our imagination to increase our future to a better outcome.