Imagination

I, like a lot of multiples have been told, it is all in my head, that I have an active, or more precisely overactive imagination. Now usually I find this very offensive, for basically I am being told that I am either delusional or a liar. People seem intent on making me realise that what I believe, the things I talk about or write here aren't real. They think by telling me it is all in my head that then I will see the light and suddenly reject our imaginative delusions.

But what is real? We live in a society devoted to the religion of science, where things can only become real if they are recorded, measured and studied. Anything else is a delusion, a fantastical, laughable notion that only the stupid or ignorant would believe in. We cling to science for our understanding and each discovery made by science becomes an absolute truth, until the next discovery proves it wrong and the new one takes its place as an absolute. Philosophy, spirituality and other imaginative pursuits have become the anti-theism to science. And like Christianity believed other faiths to be fantastical and false, now those that have views unmeasurable by science are declared delusional. The insult of heathen is now replaced by the insult of imaginative.

It is acceptable to create imaginative works, because we all know them to be make-believe stories created to amuse. Tales of other worlds are popular, the fantasy and science fiction genre is a booming business. But this is because they are called fiction. It is ok to be imaginative as long as you acknowledge the imagination isn't real. Imaginary friends and the world that exists under your bed are aspects of childhood that must be denied once you become an adult. To believe that Middle Earth really exists is said to be delusional, to believe in your own personal other world is simply crazy.

In our urge to gain scientific knowledge and material goods we have lost our belief in magic, in the things beyond that which we can see and touch. We talk of coincidence and delusion. We have lost the ability to imagine, to see things beyond our understanding and contemplate their meaning. And in doing so you have robbed yourself the ability to see the beauty of this world and the worlds beyond it. We become rooted in the tangible, in that we can record and prove. We think that to be life, simply our physical bodies, the work they perform, the things they create. Reality is now only the physical form, life is simply an intellectual exercise.

But is that all life is? What of the emotional journey, the spiritual discoveries? Does not life exist in the glow of the moon, in the joy of dancing in the rain, in the grief of a beloved one's passing? We have lost half of what life is in our need to understand everything. When we are unable to define and measure such things instead of accepting there is more to life than that, we call those things inconsequential, irrelevant or simply delusional. When we only measure life in achievements, in the material gain or societal standing we lose what to me is the essence of life. To create, to think, to be imaginative. This is where the mind and spirit soar, where emotions and thoughts are born and where they dance.

So is the Shire simply in my head? Maybe so, but isn't that true of us all. Do we all not simply exist in our own minds? We are not merely our physical bodies, they do not define who we are, nor do our jobs, our status or our wealth. Who we are comes from beyond that, it comes from the realm no one has yet to explain, call it your mind, your soul or your being. It is the essence of who we all are, that thing that can not be managed. A child is born because first its parents imagine its existence and then create it. Imagination is the root of creation, with first the imagination nothing could exist. The material, measurable things that were first imagined and then created are no less real because of that imagination, so why is it when you can not measure something, when you can not prove it with scientific means does that imagination make it false.

So what if, the Shire is simply the workings of our collective imagination. What if somewhere along this journey a mind decided to imagine a world of people, a history deep and rich, a multitude of experiences? To a lot this seems to go against our assertions that we are indeed real. But what is reality, if it can only be what can been seen and recorded then a lot, not just our multiplicity would become unreal. I can not see others worlds, when I speak to a multiple I do not see the body change, there is no proof that person is multiple. But does that mean they are not, or does it simply mean that our methods of judging reality are sorely limited. Imagination is the root of all creation, nothing can exist that hasn't first been imagined by someone. So therefore, if the Shire is our imagination it does not rid the fact that we are still real and our existence still holds meaning and truth.

Who imagined us into being? I do not know the answer to that, and it really doesn't matter. I do not know who imagined the internet into being, but that doesn't mean I still can't use it as something real and tangible in my life. But maybe the child that existed in this body for the first 3 years imagined it, maybe the Gods were having a slow day and imagined another world of people and placed it in this body, or maybe we, the collective Shire, imagined ourselves into existence. It really matters not, for whoever is responsible, the imagination has taken fruition

Echo