The Power of Our Imagination: Let's Use it for GOOD!

Early one morning on a recent hike, my friend, Debbie, told me a story about her daughter and a church that has been the inspiration for this post.

The story Debbie told was of her daughter visiting a local church in Milpitas, Calif., because of its fame. It's called Jubilee Christian Church, and the minister is Dick Bernal, who started the church in 1980 with his wife, Carla, and six people.

Debbie's daughter is in her early 20s and had attended Christian schools all her life, so did not expect to learn anything new that Sunday. But when she left Jubilee that day...she was blown away! Here's what happened:


Pastor Dick, as he's called, staged an "altar call." He asked everyone with extra money to go up and "leave it" on the stage. He invited people to leave whatever cash they felt led to leave...any amount was acceptable.

Being a large church with 14,000 active members, hundreds...thousands...of people kept walking up and leaving whatever cash they had.

Left on the stage was lots of cash... thousands of dollars... after everyone had given what they could "spare."

Pastor Dick paused for a few minutes to get everyone settled into the moment.

Then... he invited everyone who had a bill to pay that month...any bill that had been challenging them that month...to come up and TAKE from the mound of cash others had left for them.

People began to go up.

They were diligent in taking ONLY what they needed to pay their PG&E bill, whatever funds they were short of to pay their rent or other expenses.

I don't have to tell you how touching this scene must have been to all in attendance.

Even as I write this piece, I have tears streaming...at the thought of his deep caring...creativity...ingenuity....goodness!

What a man, Pastor Dick! People like him truly make God smile!

In a recent Facebook post, I got another jolt into Consciousness and the role this plays in the direct experience we're having in our lives:

"We stand at the edge of always, in a new season of victory, a sacred truth that just keeps directing us back to the vortex of our own power,"

wrote Rev. Cecilia Loving, SpiritMUV, New York City

At a certain time on this spiritual path, we come to the Dawn: a slow realization that our current life experience has been created by the thoughts and visions we held in our consciousness, perhaps over many years. We also learn that in order to change the experience, if we don't like it, we've got to RE-create the thoughts we hold and the visions we keep in our Consciousness about ourselves, our lives, about other people...indeed about the world!


Many years ago, I read the book, "Creative Visualization," by Shakti Gawain. It had a great impact on my life at that time, and I went forward to create many great results in my life through the Conscious choices I made each day.

As children we went through life having it handed to us. We did not realize, care... much less know... that the experience of life we were having came about because of the Consciousness our parents or caretakers held about themselves and the thought choices they made each day. All we knew was that we were rich, poor, warm, cold, hungry, angry, fearful because of the circumstances surrounding our lives!

So many of us grew up believing that life happened to us.

Yes. We had no money; we were poor.

We had money; we were rich et al.

Our parents instilled in us and passed on to us their values about money and their Consciousness about life overall and their "beingness" in the world.


Those are the values we embrace (d).

"Man, not knowing that his world is his individual consciousness outpictured, vainly strives to conform to the opinion of others rather than to conform to the one and only opinion existent, namely, his own judgment of himself."

Neville Goddard, 1905-1972.

My awareness that there was another way to experience life, i.e. I was not a victim of circumstances, started a little more than 20 years ago, yes, with spiritual teachers such as Shakti Gawain and others who cared enough to share their insights and wisdom about life and living. I gobbled up all the information I could as fast as I could and had tremendously positive results putting them into use.

But the habits and practices of the many years I'd been in the world operating unconsciously regained ground. At that time, I was not practicing what I know to do now: "Present Moment Awareness," so when things did not go exactly as I expected them to go, I lost faith.

I began to lose confidence in the path that I had been so diligently following with great success.

I stopped consciously trying to create my world. I let life HAPPEN to me.

I began to be like the grasshopper, Neville Goddard writes about:

"Today is the day, the eternal now, when conditions in the world have attained the appearance of giants. The unemployed, the armies of the enemy, business competition, etc., are the giants which make you feel yourself to be a helpless grasshopper.

"We are told we were first in our own sight helpless grasshoppers and because of this concepton of ourselves we were to the enemy helpless grasshoppers.

"We can be to others only that which we are to ourselves. Therefore, as we revalue ourselves and begin to feel ourselves to be the giant, a center of power, we atuomatically change our relationship to the giants, reducing these former monsters to their true place, making them appear to be the helpless grasshoppers."

Where I ended up both in CONSCIOUSNESS and in reality was certainly not where I'd projected my life!

I felt helpless about fixing the circumstances surrounding me, as I sunk more and more into my old habitual ways of thinking and being, and as I also continued to associate with folks in the world who had NO other Consciousness but that of living the "victim."

With enough study and enough application, I slowly re-awakened and re-emerged in the Consciousness that I was living in the fog of my Consciousness. With my thoughts and my imagination, I was creating a world and a life experience that came from my fears vs. my conscious choices.



"Consciousness precedes all manifestations and is the prop upon which all manifestation rests."

Neville

So, I've set about changing my manifestations.

Now, I'm alert and alive to my life experiences moment by moment. I know NOW I can live NO other way.

In Creative Visualization, Shaki Gawain wrote:

"The process of change does not occur on superficial levels, through mere 'positive thinking.' It involves exploring, discovering, and changing our deepest, most basic attitudes toward life."

"When you have strong intention to create something -- that is, you deeply desire it, you completely believe that you can do it, and you are totally willing to have it -- it is likely to manifest in your life in one way or another."

"Almost everything you truly need or want is here for the asking; you only need to believe that it is so, truly desire it, and be willing to accept it."

"Unless you can create a context that the world is a good place to be and can potentially work for everyone, you will experience difficulty in creating what you want in your personal life."

"In the same way that you can love a good friend while clearly seeing his or her faults and short comings, you can love yourself for all that you truly are."

"Once we begin to learn to accept the goodness of the universe, we naturally want to share it as well, realizing that as we give out of our energy, we make space for more to flow into us."

"Creative visualization can be an effective tool for healing because it goes straight to one source of the problem -- your own mental concepts and images."

Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote an entire book about how thoughts and beliefs create our experiences. "You'll See it When You Believe It" is the title of his book.


Many people are so fully separated from the "vortex of power" that Rev. Cecilia Loving talks about that as they go through life unconsciously; instead of building, they destroy! Separation from our "Center," which some see as "God," and going through life without awareness of this Consciousness, cause us to to use the Power of Imagination (visualization) to create a world we end up hating!

Let us all WAKE UP to this great power* given to us by God: The Power of Our Imagination.

Let us consciously use it for Good...as in the example set by Pastor Dick of Jubilee Christian Church!


Kudos to you, Pastor Dick: May the Christ Light Continue to Shine Brightly in Your Life and in Your Ministry!

Namaste',

Che'
*NOTE: This is one of 12 Powers given to us. Each month forward, I will feature in this blog one of the other 11 Powers.