IMAGINATION
Where do new ideas come from? From our imagination. But what is it that allows us to imagine? Imagination is our ability to see what is not in front of us. That means imagination is linked to faith.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1
When we imagine, we are creating a form in Mind. This form has attractive ability. The power of Divine substance is attracted to mental forms, and tends to bring them into full manifestation, if they are clear and more than momentary. Therefore our imagination leads to the mental 'substance' that is known as faith.
It's tempting to say that what we imagine isn't real. That is a common mistake. Imagining is the first step in the process of making something real. Reality is of two kinds -one kind is in the world of the invisible - the other in our physical, visible world. Of the two, the invisible is more real, because it represents cause, while the physical world is an effect.
That is backwards to what we learned as we grew up.
Humanity once dwelt in caves and forests, in the most primitive of conditions. How is it that we now design complex devices automobiles, electronics or space stations? We once carried sticks and chased small animals with them. How did we come to build civilizations, sciences and bodies of great knowledge? How did we leap that huge gap?
Come to think of it, how did we learn to chase small animals with sticks?
The answer is linked to the complexity of our intelligence, because creatures of lesser intellect do not exhibit this kind of behaviour. Rabbits today live just like rabbits of ten thousand years ago - so do deer, foxes, birds and mice. But people of today have a life so different from the people of long ago that they are scarcely recognizable.
It is more than just the ability to learn, because there is no way for us to learn of things that don't exist. How could we have learned how to build a television system? Who was there to teach that? No one, until it was invented.
New ideas cannot be taught, because no one knows to teach them. They can only burst forth from, or through, the creative thinker. These thoughts can only come from within such a thinker, since they do not yet exist in the world outside of her.
This tells us there is a Source, a wellspring of ideas and answers, accessed from within us. If this were not the case, nothing new would ever be thought; we could only learn what others already know, and anything new could be only the result of accident, or perhaps the odd fortunate misunderstanding. That would not be enough to account for our progress.
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