Imaginate vs. Meditate

Somewhat regularly someone mentions to me:  "Can you repeat that meditation you gave in the workshop?"   I respond:  "I don't teach meditation (the Eastern form).  I teach imagination."  "Oh," is the comeback.  "I mean those imagery exercises you gave."
 
And, therein lies the rub.  An error has seeped into consumers whereby the term meditation has come to be equaled with imagination or its function of mental imagery.  The extension of that error is to glibly subvert the glory of the imagination experience under the rubric of a term that is actually the polar opposite of  imagination & mental imagery. To help distinguish between these two very different forms of inner exploration, I have coined the term “imaginate” to stand beside  the well known verb to meditate. The confusion between these two states of self-discovery has hampered people’s understanding and appreciation for the imaginal realm - a  genuine field of  inner experience that brings us to self-knowledge and understanding through instantaneous revelation.

Image is an experience of the moment or the unfolding of each instant through an inner exploration in consciousness.  This encounter with the image is true to the nature of image itself: an event of no time, that appears and disappears instantly. It has no volume or mass to support it as do physical objects, bound to time. In short, the image is of the instant.

On the other hand, meditation operates in a prolonged time-frame.  It is a passive event allowing what enters to come and go without attachment.  In the imagery event, we engage in an active process of discovery to receive revelations from the vastness of oceanic consciousness.  In meditation, we are asked to master the art of forgetting and sleep, while detaching from the content of consciousness.  In imagery we master the art of remembering our attachment to Invisible Reality and to become awake.  They are separate processes having different physiological and biological reflections as well.  (See my book Waking Dream Therapy for a full discussion). Spiritual practice asks us to be precise and discern.  Otherwise, we unwittingly mix categories, and mixing, on whatever level it occurs, can only but weaken us, making us susceptible to influence and subsequent loss of autonomy and independence.
 
In the midst of writing this piece I received a phone call from an old acquaintance seeking to make contact after a 12 year hiatus.  She recounted how much I helped her then when she was going through a "nervous breakthrough" (not breakdown) consonant with spiritual opening following an intense experience at a spiritual retreat center.  She brought me up to date and told me she was doing workshops along those lines.  In fact, she declaimed she was about to do one on "meditation on the senses."  I heard an off-key note in that assertion and inquired quizzically, "You are doing some meditation process concerning the senses?"  She said, "No, I'm giving them a series of imagery to get in touch with their senses.  You know how difficult it is for people to do an emptying meditation."  I took that occasion to go into my pedantic point about separating imagination/imagery from meditation and the importance of making that distinction not only for the participants, but also for the deliverer.  After all, we can appreciate methods and techniques of the East, but need to distinguish and value the unique spiritual traditions of our own western heritage.