THE IMAGINE SELF VISION & MISSION

The Mission of Imagine Self

To provide each individual with the inspiration and education for becoming fully self-aware, self-compassionate, and self-expressed in the 21^st Century in order to create a future of global well-being.

The 21st Century brings the deep need for an inspired imagination of individuality based on an archetypal understanding of humanity. Imagine Self provides a uniquely creative and sound education for fulfilling this deep spiritual, moral and practical need.

The Imagine Self Vision

By developing a new academy for self-awareness, self-compassion and self-expression, Imagine Self supports the next stage in evolving human consciousness. Spiritual, but not dogmatic or religious; moral, but not tribal; practical, but not confining or demanding, Imagine Self is a schooling in the wisdom of our times focused the freedom of the individual, the love of humanity and the devotion to a meaningful future for everyone.

The Great Question

Who Am I? Is not just a question to answer, it is a understanding to be awakened and a task to be undertaken by each soul. Imagine Self offers an elegant solution to this unavoidable soul challenge of self-knowledge. Elegant means a pleasingly ingenious and simple solution. All the courses, podcasts, and blogs you will find here at Imagine Self are truly elegant but you, the you you must imagine and know, are not elegant. You are a complicated jumble of many parts.

The most illuminating way to know yourself is to first separate the parts and then work to know one part at a time. Imagine Self has done the ingenious and simple work of naming and describing the universal parts of being human. Imagine Self then provides elegant guides to knowing each part and supports you fine-tuning each part as it lives in you. Through this work of self-imagining you become an elegant expression of being human.

We tell and retell our stories, shape and reshape our identities, and hold our defenses closer and closer and then the moment comes when the I within shines forth and we become, oh so briefly, the radiant Image that lives behind and beyond the stories, identities, and defenses

Your I is always present but it only comes to the foreground of your consciousness intermittently, a surprise awakening to “I” like the sudden appearance of a rainbow against the dark clouds of our stories, our identities, and our defenses.

Your I is neither the ultimate story, the perfect identity, nor the impenetrable defense.

Your I is absolute. It is the God/Self… no limitations or definitions, no conditions or qualifications, no attachments or needs, not relative nor comparative, no birth and no death, no diminishment and no possibility, no polarities and no paradoxes. WOW…

But earthly existence is all of that – the opposite of absolute. And living gets tough and finding meaning, significance and purpose can feel hopeless. The stories are never-ending and get filled with distortions and fantasies, the identities become old and burdensome, and the defenses exhausting and isolating. YUK!

So why does the I choose to incarnate and surrender its absoluteness for a lifetime as a particular self? Why are you/I here? Why did the Absolute, the Godhead, create all this? Isn’t that what humankind keeps asking? I certainly keep asking.

In your heart, you are not a story, not an identity, and not defended. You are a living image of I Am.

The courses of the Imagine Self Academy are designed to develop the capacity in you to seek out, sort out, wiggle out the image of I behind your stories, your identities, and your defenses. To become both innocent and wise in knowing the way this image of I appears.

But what I have realized and what I share in the Imagine Self courses, is that the stories, the identities, the defenses point to the image of I. The work is to embrace, study, explore all that you are in your earthly humanness to find the image of I.

What unfolds through the Imagine Self work is the fourfold wisdom of being human:

• the wisdom to know the archetype of being human,
• the wisdom to know yourself as being and becoming
• the wisdom to know and understand others and
• the wisdom to know the world and imagine the future.

Does this sound “heavy,” abstract, lacking the entertainment or dramatic thrill of our stories, etc?  All gravity and no levity?

Actually, one of the great joys of this work is the experience of Cosmic Humor and self-delight. And the wonderful experience of Cosmic Celebration.  Every time one of us gets even the slightest glimpse of the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness of the personal Image of I…the whole Cosmos applauds and laughs like it is the best birthday ever.

Imagine Self courses make the links between the original archetypes of being human and personal dramas, turning stories, identities, and defenses into revelations… and bingo the Image of I appears! Happy Birthday to your I Image!

Secure in your imagination of self, filled with self-knowledge and self-love, free of defenses and biases, the individual can then experience love for all humanity, individual by individual, and the world. The challenges appearing in all matters of existence are met with equanimity, compassion and creativity.

Make finding, knowing and becoming yourself a daily ritual of reverent observation. Tithe your attention to the sacred and evolving self. Imagining self is the act of the higher, freer self. This is the self that lives in the moment free of past and future. No rigid perceptions. No shroud of story.  How many coffins have you buried your freedoms in?

 Do you have the courage to self-imagine? To birth your soul? To leave behind your old identities and become something self-surprising and self-fulfilling. This work is not a day at the beach. It is a commitment to  a life  of constant challenge of self-exploration, the constant creativity of self-designing, the constant courage of self-becoming. 

Every individual human being is built on universal patterns. Once we understand the human being in terms of the patterns of existence we have a way of understanding the individual in space, in time, in relativity and in the absolute. Imagine these as elements like earth, water, air and fire.

The Four Core Elements of a Human Being

The Physical Soul – Earth

The physical soul/self is structured and changes only through accidents, illness and aging. It consists of appearances and possessions. It loves measures and comparisons. It is lonely and alone and seeks belonging and attachment at any cost. The physical self alone is the corpse…and will disintegrate into dust over time. We share this visible and measured existence in space with the mineral kingdom.

The Etheric Soul – Water

The etheric soul/self is organized around systems of expectations, beliefs and faithfulness to the familiar and a linear flow of narrative consisting of memories, traumas, and fantasies. It loves rules and regulations and predictability. It seeks tribes and agreements and received ideas. It is threatened by doubts, differences and creative possibilities. It only changes in order to survive, not to evolve. The etheric self functions through our unique biology and biography. This life body growing and decaying in time, we share with the plant kingdom.

The Astral Soul – Air

The astral soul/self is improvised and spontaneous and living in ever-changing perspectives. Responding to the  moment with what is possible and imagined. It is not contained nor dominated by rules or dogmas but by instincts, impulses and desires.  It contradicts itself. It is reckless and faithless and playful but can reach truth, beauty and goodness beyond the selfishly desired. It loves differences and innovations. It self-generates ideas. It questions/challenges all perceptions, understanding and knowledge. It thrives on discussion, dialogue and colloquy with others and the vast numbers of inner selves including the physical self and the etheric self. The lower aspects of the astral body that bases its desires on survival and well-being is the human being as the higher species of the animal kingdom.

The Spirit Soul – Fire

There is a fourth realm of existence that we share with the gods, the absolute realm of spirit. The I that lives beyond survival, that is ever-lasting, that creates art and technology, that lives in the realm of the absolute, we do not share with animals, we share this realm with the gods.

The Imagine Self Academy is an education in all four core elements of being human.