Day 13 - Imagination Is Manifestation

In my freshman year of college I played football. Early in the year as a sort of hazing the new members of the football team were taken out and highly encouraged to drink a liqueur, Ouzo. It is a strong alcoholic drink that tastes very much like black licorice.  I woke on the bathroom floor at 7:50 the next morning. It was the morning of my very first college test; economics. I got up, ran to the nearby building where the test was offered, and took the test cold, with no study at all.

I was nervous about the results, and surprised to see that I had gotten the very highest score in the class. The professor wrote a very nice note saying that I had a natural gift for economics. I thought, I have this figured out. I will follow the same strategy next week! However I immediately doubted my decision. The result was not good. I tumbled from the top grade in the class all the way to the worst. There almost seemed to be tear stains on the page as the professor expressed his disappointment. Clearly genius was not impressed. 

It actually was not a surprise. I had really been spending all week imagining being shown to be a poseur. I feared that I would be revealed, not as a good student but a very bad one.  I had spent many years feeling the  humiliation of being the last in class, and spent the time in fear rather than in practice. Instead of putting in the work that would be an invitation to my best, I manifested quite vividly what I feared would happen, and my fear became a reality. 

Imagination is manifestation. Fantasy becomes reality when focused on long enough with intensity. As we focus on fear we will do the things that promote the situation we do not want. We must have the courage to imagine a world that we want to see, not by wishing ill, but in imagining  positive and benevolent greatness. By clearly imagining good, and then looking for good with the same commitment we prime the pump, and with a commitment that is not bound by results we work. If we imagine with passion and look for people doing good in the world we will find them. And we will find ourselves working for good alongside. Genius has a genius for using those that imagine positive outcomes .