Mindful Imagination Fayre 6 - Our Power of Imagination and Mindfulness

Over the last few years learning how to cope with my mental health, learning and appreciating Mindfulness, and then understanding how important my imagination is towards problem solving and dealing with the emotions that I feel, I have seen the important role that the arts play in our mental wellbeing and in coming to terms with the fears and barriers that we face.

I am a writer and performer, and part of my journey is to share to the world my show, entitled Mindful Imagination Fayre, where I sing and do silly stuff all in the name of promoting the benefits of mindful meditation and how it can unlock the power of your imagination.

You see, we are all SUPERHEROES.

We all have a power inside of us yet the majority of us do not know how to use it; have forgotten, or have had it taken from us. It's like having your opinion taken away, or discounted, or ridiculed; you lose some freedom and are placed in a nice little box. There you are kept and protected and forced into a false idea of what life is. It's all a mirage; a concept to keep control. 

It's time to fall down the rabbit hole and open your eyes...

So far I have mentioned three works of art in an explanation of mental wellbeing and imagination...

Alice in Wonderland - The Matrix - Superhero comics

...and we are surrounded by a variety of art works, from poetry to painting, that contain emotion, challenge, fear, unrest, beauty, love and joy. All the emotions that we feel on a daily basis. 

Being human is not easy, so why should we feel bad when we have those 'off' days? There is a false sense of happiness that floats around our minds, most likely fuelled by Facebook, Instagram and Tik-Tok, that is almost queasy and uneasy. I do not include Twitter in that concept, as Twitter is designed to be more opinionated and informative, albeit perhaps not quite so angry. However, Twitter is a platform for unleashing emotion, rather than just expressing how wonderful your life is, which seems to be the facade created by the other three social platforms. But, like all art, you don't have to view it or like it or take it further.

Picture yourself in a gallery with some of the finest works of art hanging on the wall; you saunter past and see something you like, great; then you see something you don't like and take a closer look at what that piece of crap is...oh, it's a Botticelli. Then you feel like an idiot because Botticelli is a renowned Renaissance painter and you should know better. 

Hang on there, while some may appreciate his work it does not mean that everyone has to. Some people like Eastenders, not everyone. In the great scheme of things, they are the same. What I'm trying to say to you is we have freedom to choose what we like and what we don't without judgement. You know you, you can't like everything and most certainly not because someone has told you too. For the record, I'm no fan of Eastenders but Venus and Mars, below, by Botticelli, is not bad; if you like that sort of thing. 

The power lies inside you. Our soul and energy and life are all played out in paintings and films and poems and stories. Every story handed down to us is a parable to how we can live a fulfilling life. Think of fairy stories, fables, (and I don't mean Disney versions where the princess finds her prince, I mean the proper fables). Every picture tells a story, and every story, within your mind, creates a picture; that is your power. If you believe in that then you have the power to believe in your imagination and picture the very thing it is that you wish to achieve. 

Picture it - Set the intention - allow it it come into fruition

There are a wide variety of art works that help us to understand our environment, as well as our emotions. We often feel sadness, anger and fear; and this is just as healthy as feeling happiness, love and confidence. Rather than feeling betrayed by our bad thoughts we can learn to live with them, and subsequently reduce the power they have. Mindful meditation is a very useful tool in learning to handle those powerful negative emotions that can charge us up and send us down pathways we wouldn't ordinarily take. 

TIP:

Just by listening to a favourite piece of music, you are, in essence, meditating. My go to is the theme to Moonraker. What's yours?

     

My role is to make meditation achievable to everyone. Western society tends to see meditation as the domain of the hippies or the weak. Time after time people who meditate are depicted as fools. Yet the real fools are the ones who work themselves into a grave. Meditation is beneficial not just to your mental health, but also to your physical health; it can also unlock a part of your brain that sends you to another way of thinking. I am still learning and trying to rid myself of destructive and constricting ways of thinking adapted by a self-serving society to which I am not seeing any real benefit. 

If something doesn't work, change it.

So here I am setting out my stall. Picture a fayre in a beautiful English village with the sun shining and music playing. Each stall offers an art form, each art form offers a way to meditate, to find yourself, to love yourself and to reach inside your heart and try to let you know what it is that you really, really want to do with your life. 

My Mindful Imagination Fayre is an interactive show, currently online with Youtube videos but soon to be live. There's some music, some fun, some stories and some realisation. You can also meditate and do it so easily you would wonder why you never did it before; but then again maybe you have without even knowing it. 

You have that power in you to achieve what you want. Start with belief, and let your imagination unlock.

Zac Thraves is a writer and performer. His series of short novels, under the banner Spiked Imagination, are available exclusively via Amazon for Kindle. 

To book Zac for his show or a talk please email and he will get back to you tout suit. 

Mindfulness Imagination 5; Phenomenology & Mindfulness

Phenomenology

Maurice Merleau-Ponty built on Heidegger's philosophy about the study of things. 

Yet while Satre used it as a jumping off point for Existentialism, Merleau-Ponty ran with the idea and created a treatise that tried to understand humans existence with things, our relationship with things. Unlike Heidegger and Satre, who considered all thought to stem from an adult brain, Merleau-Ponty went along the lines that this was created from childhood, from the womb onward. In effect we are born into an existence of feeling and interaction with the world around us.

This may seem like common sense to say, but think about your own interaction with your world. 

For instance, when your hand touches a pencil do you notice that your hand is touching a pencil? Note, that it is also true that the pencil touches your hand. Yet we do not try to notice the emotion of the pencil touching you. You could ask, what does it feel like for a pencil to be touched by human skin? 

Unlike Existentialism, which makes things real in your immediate reality, phenomenology notices that everything is around us waiting to interact with us; to have an experience with us. 

This is in tune with my ideas to the teachings of mindfulness and how it boosts the imagination in all of us. Because everything is there waiting for you to experience, you just need the belief and imagination to make it so.

Imagine sitting in a cafe and putting a cup of lovely sweet coffee to your lips and then thinking how it feels to be sipping that coffee, not only from your lips point of view, but from your mouth, throat, stomach; and then from the point of view of the cup, or the liquid which you pour into you. That coffee went from a growing bean to a grain of coffee pieced together with other grains to create a blended cup of beans in liquid form. It goes from one living thing to another.

 

Mindfulness

By using mindful meditation you can interpret and understand your own unique experience with the wider world. In essence, all of our worlds are different. We may see the same object but we interpret them differently; the same with news and events, notice on news reels that two different eye witnesses will record the same event with differences. We all have our own ways of seeing and interpreting, and there is nothing wrong with that.

By meditating, and using my technique on meditation by losing yourself in music, you can hear your inner self speaking to you and telling you your truths. You can access a higher plane, dimension if you like, and see why you interpret things in certain ways and where that ideology has come from. 

We are free, if we choose to be; free of our thoughts, our actions and our restrictions. Freedom can be scary which is why things are put into place to block that freedom. Such as self imposed time restrictions. I guess in choosing those then we accept that it is a choice we have made. By understanding yourself and why you see and think the way that you do is a step towards mental freedom. 

 

 My depression and anxiety is an outcome to the restrictions and fears that I have placed on myself by my interpretation of events, conversations and interactions that I have had through my life. I still find it hard to accept that at times, and maybe it is impossible to accept it fully as it goes way back in my life; but I can try and having a mindful approach to the world is my way of trying to make MY WORLD a better place.

I have been reading the excellent book by Sarah Bakewell - At the Existential Cafe, Freedom, Being & Apricot Cocktails.