I believe rather enthusiastically that imagination is one of the more creative human intelligences. I also agree completely with Brenda Ueland who suggests that "the imagination needs moodling -- long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering". The following personal anecdote is written with the intention of illustrating one example of the genius of personal reveries.
Starting with a sensory awareness of chronic inflammation in my physical body, I wandered around aimlessly through dozens of personal reveries. Somewhat spontaneously, this wandering helped me understand (or maybe to remember?) that the inflammation was an expression of personal "resistance". Becoming curious about what exactly I might be resisting, my subsequent inefficient, happy, idle dawdling and puttering allowed me to discover how a viscerally felt sense of unconditional love dissolved the energy of resistance (manifesting as inflammation). But, seriously. The painful stagnant energy was released and moved out of my physical body via the antidotal influence of unconditional love. It felt - and still feels - quite miraculous to my own sensibilities!
Here's the fun part: the twists and turns in this happy, idle dawdling were all so seemingly disconnected when they first rose up in my own reveries. It amuses me to know that the myth of Saturn, images from a Tim Burton movie, the psychological concept of Need Theory, and the principles of Einsteinian physics played a significant role in this happy, idle wandering towards the eventual cessation of physical discomfort in my body. I'm not quite sure how to describe this process, but it felt like I was first learning the imaginal, energetic language of my own dis-ease, and then similarly the imaginal, energetic language of what might offer me relief. When I then applied what I was learning to my immediate experience, something shifted in my physical body almost spontaneously.
It's so wildly non-linear and non-rational that it's almost incredible. But it's true! And it worked! And I am so relieved! Yet, here's the catch: I needed to find the time to idle and dawdle and wander aimlessly. This particular process had several small interruptions, but by and large it took an entire day. I wouldn't have given myself that kind of time if I did not first believe in the potential wisdom in the aimless wandering reveries of my own imagination.
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