Margo Adair: Alice's Looking Glass

Alice's Looking Glass
by Margo Adair

     I never cease to be amazed at the profound nature of consciousness. For me It has been a journey into Alice’s’ wonderland—profound yet ordinary. Ask a question and you already know the answer, make up a story and you find that you have described reality. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I have come to see the imagination as the aspect of consciousness best suited to reveal the truth of the matter.
     My journey began thirty years ago when I went through the exercises of Silva Mind Control. This involved six days of being lead through dozens of guided meditations; the last of which was called doing “a case.” I was given only the name, age and address of someone who was struggling with a physical problem and was expected to discover just what was happening with the person. When I heard the name of the woman I was to tune in on, I waited and nothing happened—no inner voices told me what to say, no images popped into my mind. Meanwhile everyone in the room was waiting for me to say something. Left to my own devices, I used my imagination. I proceeded to make up a story, and talked for the next half hour. When I was finished I was told that everything I had said was accurate, down to the lay out of her kitchen, her dog’s name, the chalky substance on her spine and the print on her dress.
     Having been raised in an academic family that viewed psychic phenomena as a hoax and spirituality as what people did who couldn’t face reality, I was entirely ill equipped to understand this experience, which revealed that in some mysterious way we are all connected. The Silva method taught that if you wanted something all you needed to do was imagine it, from the profound to the mundane, whether it was healing or a parking place. Having experienced the case reading, I was quite excited to see what else my imagination was capable of. I started imaging desired outcomes. Up until that time I had never paid much attention to my imagination unless I was doing an art project. When I started focusing my imagination my life lit up like magic—synchronous events became commonplace.
     I strive to make sense of my experience–to understand why visioning or what others may call prayer, works one moment and not another. My striving is humbling and utterly clumsy in the face of the sacred, but I have learned some important truths in the past thirty years. My work has led me in the development of Applied Meditation and the writing of my books Meditations on Everything Under the Sun and Working Inside Out: Tools for Change. Here is some of what I have learned along the way. I have discovered that the imagination itself is the medium of psychic awareness and is mysteriously entwined with the stuff probabilities are made of. Both the world and our bodies are loyal to our imaginings.
     We are all psychic. I have taken over a thousand people through case readings and all of them are able to reveal intimate details of total strangers, as I was. Yet people many times discount the most accurate pieces of information first. Our rational selves are truly tenacious about dismissing the legitimacy of our inner perceptions! Consider the results of numerous ESP experiments in which subjects were asked in advance whether or not they believed psychic perception was possible.1 Those who said yes scored significantly better than chance in their tests. Those who said no scored below chance. This has profound implications, if we dismiss what we are aware of the moment; we are most attuned; we cut off access to our deepest sources of power.
     In my work with individuals — sessions very similar to Interactive Guided Imagery—I continue to be awed by both the profound opening that happens and how elegant the imagination is at providing a metaphoric depiction of exactly the state of reality. We can think or wish for anything we want; the trick is being able to imagine what it would actually be like and to expect it. When working with the images/sensations, both subjective and objective realities dance and influence one another. A shift on one side causes a shift on the other.
     I have come to appreciate that paying acute attention to what we cannot imagine is profoundly important; it is where the work lies. I have developed. Our Inner Witness—which can be likened to mindfulness in eastern meditation practice, watches how the imagination depicts the concern, which in turn reveals what is true at the moment. It notices expectations, desires, where energy is leaning and where it seems to settle reveals current reality. If one has a vision to strive for, then working with what the Active Imagination by projecting a desired outcome for the purpose of aligning with goals and increasing their probability. On the other hand, if when one is stuck and has no plausible vision towards which to strive, one works with what I call the Receptive Imagination. This is the work that is parallel to Interactive Imagery. Here we employ the great story making capacities of the imagination. In the process exactly what is needed to either shift the energy or come to terms with it becomes apparent. The act of story-making provides a context in which the operative energies reveal themselves. The insights received illuminate the attitudes and/or actions that can bring about change or to come to peace with what is.
     Questions angle the light of awareness. When a person does not question their problems, the answer cannot come into view. The childlike imagining of the Receptive Imagination is the bearer of the wisdom asked for in Reinhold Neibuhr’s Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The gift of the imagination is that it reveals what is currently possible and what is not. This is truly sacred ground. Nothing that imagination offers is insignificant. Wherever one has ease in imagining and wherever one has difficulty, provides a mirror of what is true.
     The powers of consciousness are truly awesome and it is my life’s work to share this knowledge, though we live in a culture that relegates the imagination to all that is not real. By asking the questions and providing a stage upon which the imagination can play we can reclaim wholeness in our lives.