Imagination

Imagination, according to Noah Webster, is defined as "the power or faculty of the mind by which it conceives and forms ideas of things communicated to it by the organs of sense. Imagination, in its proper sense, signifies a lively conception of objects of sight. It is distinguished from conception, as a part from a whole. The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have also a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones so as to form new wholes of our own creation. I shall employ the word imagination to express this power. I apprehend this to be the proper sense of the word, if imagination be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet and the painter. Imagination is the will working on the materials of memory; not satisfied with following the order prescribed by nature, or suggested by accident, it selects the parts of different conceptions, or objects of memory, to form a whole more pleasing, more terrible, or more awful, than has ever been presented in the ordinary course of nature. The two latter definitions give the true sense of the word, as now understood:

"1. Conception; image in the mind; idea. 2. Contrivance; scheme formed in the mind; device. 3. Conceit; an unsolid or fanciful opinion. We are apt to think that space, in itself, is actually boundless; to which imagination the idea of space of itself leads us. 4. The first motion or purpose of the mind."


“Imagination is the first motion or purpose of the mind.”


The modern and much more worldly definition of imagination is "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality; creative ability; the ability to confront and deal with a problem; the thinking or active mind; a creation of the mind, especially an idealized or poetic creation; a fanciful or empty assumption."

Imagination is soul-seeing, the source of the faculty of visualization, of making mental pictures or images in the mind's eye. Imagination is the builder of ideal forms, but produces mere illusions when controlled by self.









Edna Lister on Imagination

Imagination is the builder of forms: Imagination has been called the kingly faculty, but you must direct and control it. – Edna Lister, Mind, Broadcasting and Tuning In, January 26, 1933.


Imagination works as forming the principle of Mind. The finished work of imagination is judgment, which is the retarding principle of man's life. – Edna Lister, Faith, October 3, 1934.


Imagination is a river of illusion to some, just full of mistaken ideas and images. Yet imagination follows a blueprint that you shaped in mind, according to the dictates of self or soul. If you believe what you imagine, so it is. Imagination produces all illusions when self controls it and creates from the world's ideas. You can find the seed of imagination in all your accomplishments and experiences. The pattern you permit to be set in imagination either nurtures and sustains or perverts and prevents growth. Imagination follows the course laid out by your desire. Your task is to train imagination to follow the plumb line of moral uprightness. – Edna Lister, October 10, 1934.


Imagination will make form for you from the void. – Edna Lister, September 6, 1938.


Take heed lest you create some new Satan in imagination. – Edna Lister, January 13, 1939.


You are a creator, and must direct your imagination "picture molds" be pure, simple, yet high, very abundantly great and very noble. – Edna Lister, November 10, 1939.


There is One God, One Mind, One Heart of Love, One Substance, One Power, and none else besides. Only in your imagination can you ever be separated, either from the highest or the lowest. – Edna Lister, October 29, 1941.


Self-discipline is the practice of properly using imagination as vision, calling it back to duty each time it wanders far afield. – Edna Lister, A Design for Ascension, 1942.


You build your life of right habits and wrong habits, which you may be perfectly aware of having. Thinking, emotions, and imagination are the tools you use to fashion habits. Thinking makes the plan, imagination etches the blueprint, and emotional desire releases the substance that embodies the habit-plan with life and expression.

If you fill the two sides of a scale with each day's thinking, imagination and emotions, you might get shocking answers to many of your questions. The side that sags tells the story. If you want the habits on the heavy side of the scale perched in your living room, sitting at your table, or waiting in your bedroom, then you are using these tools of a creator perfectly.

You create your life. The way you use imagination, thinking, and desire determines what kind of life you have, what kind of habits you form. Thinking, imagination and emotional desire work against you if you misuse them with wrong habits. It takes old-fashioned perseverance to form new, constructive habits. You can do it. Just let go of indifference and lukewarmness. Use your imagination, thinking, and desire tools and determine to create only those habits that you truly desire to express in your life. – Edna Lister, "The Burden of Habit," Life in a Nutshell, 1942.


Without enough imagination, your wisdom never grows. When doing hazardous work, imagination builds pictures of what could happen, you become afraid and from this use the necessary caution to protect life. A constructive fear of getting caught makes you avoid unwise actions until the habit of obedience invites wisdom. To be tough and not care what happens is a lack of imagination, not wisdom. A constructive fear, imagination and common sense leads to wisdom. – Edna Lister, "The Road to Wisdom," Life in a Nutshell, 1942.


You each have a garden of love, built with your every effort, in which the seed of life blooms. Every thought, desire and picture of imagination is a seed. – Edna Lister, Open Doors, March 15, 1942.


Imagination is the builder of mental blueprints and molds. – Edna Lister, The Joyful Conqueror, June 7, 1942.


Love is limitless in its power to do and to be, and only your own imagination defines its boundaries in your life. – Edna Lister, August 28, 1944.


Imagination is soul seeing, the faculty of visualization, of making mental pictures or images in the mind's eye. To create is to be creative, to build, to give form to what is imagined. – Edna Lister, Creative Imagination, May 1, 1949.


You imagine pictures, good or bad, to form molds from the third dimension atomic substance. You may not use a brush, but imagination paints the form in atomic substance just as definitely as if you applied paint to canvas. – Edna Lister, July 11, 1949.


You need imagination, not false imagery. – Edna Lister, November 18, 1949.


Imagination turned upward becomes the faculty of comprehension. – Edna Lister, The Seven Churches, December 13, 1949.


When you cannot imagine it working, watch to see how God will do it. – Edna Lister, To Seek the Light, June 10, 1951.


You can turn the imagination faculty down or up. You waste 90% of your energy when you use the imagination for silly stuff. – Edna Lister, December 4, 1952.


"What an imagination!" These words acknowledge the mightiest power since the world began. – Edna Lister, November 16, 1953.


You feel crucified when you focus your imagination downward into the world. – Edna Lister, Your Life's Plan, May 16, 1954.


You prevent true interpretation when you fail to turn your imagination up in vision. – Edna Lister, Your Life's Plan, May 16, 1954.


As you ascend, your vision grows according to your clarity of imagination. – Edna Lister, Your Life's Goal, May 30, 1954.


You can only use imagination in one way at a time. – Edna Lister, The Golden Silence, June 18, 1954.


Imagination builds pictures all the time. Keep only those pictures that are worthwhile, then build a bonfire to consume the rest. – Edna Lister, I Arise, June 20, 1954.


If you turn your imagination up to the Source, your will moves as Light. You fall into bondage to self on the Wheel of Fate when your desire, will, and imagination are turned downward. – Edna Lister, July 19, 1954.


Imagination is how you use the joy principle to form pictures in the mind's eye. You use mind to formulate your plan for life, imagination pictures your goal, and desire decides who will pursue it, the I AM consciousness of soul or "little me" of self. The use of the faculty of imagination is the difference between those who see spiritually and those who don't. The magic secret lies in whether you use imagination turned down to see pictures, light or dark, or turned up as the all-seeing eye of soul vision. Without vision, nations perish, and the soul crystallizes. These are the tools God uses to act as you. – Edna Lister, Jesus, the Ascended God, June 26, 1955.


The lover of self arrogantly imagines people are talking about him when he enters a room. – Edna Lister, July 23, 1955.


Do you want to go home to God or to negative imaginings? – Edna Lister, The Bread of Life, August 7, 1955.


Mind uses thinking and imagination, the twins of the soul. You think using the Wisdom principle. Imagination uses the Holy Spirit as Universal Christ Substance on the Love principle. Your use of these creative tools must be perfect, so you must conquer self's attempts to use imagination and thinking, never letting it dictate to you.

To condition your life, you must conquer your emotions' use of your creative tools psychologically. Soul acts as a brake on the self's misuse of the Power moving through. You can do this by making your conscious purpose clear to the subconscious, forming your plans and creative molds through Wisdom, filling your creations with Love. The subconscious mind runs like clockwork on a twenty-four-hour shift.

You achieve purity by accepting purity as a need to cleanse heart, mind and body, emotions, thinking and imagination. Perception becomes apperception. To perceive is a mental act. Apperception is an act of the soul. Perception is mental seeing, the mind's thinking ability. Apperception is a knowing, the mind's mystic eye of the soul. – Edna Lister, The Beatitude Are Be-Attitudes, February 12, 1956.


You invest three phases of subconscious mind in three phases of substance: the (cellular) physical substance, the (molecular) emotional life of desires, and in the (atomic) mental life of imagination. – Edna Lister, Inspiration, June 24, 1956.


Ascension of consciousness requires the refinement of desires, thinking and imagination. – Edna Lister, Prove Thy Works, September 16, 1956.


Be vivid in imagination to see as God sees. Imagination is where you lose your balance and come to grief. You see what you want, not what God sees. – Edna Lister, The Glory, Your Ascension, November 11, 1956.


Spirit is like vapor, which a novice cannot see, only those who turn imagination upward. – Edna Lister, April 4, 1957.


The Christed consciousness is personal desire mated as I AM, ruled by imagination turned upward as vision. – Edna Lister, June 4, 1957.


Imagination has itchy feet and can run away with you. – Edna Lister, June 6, 1957.


You can have no miracle until you bless the seed of it, and use imagination to envision the size of the miracle you want. – Edna Lister, The Miracle of Increase, April 27, 1958.


Everyone's results in life depend on what they have done with their imagination, which neither slumbers nor sleeps. Your results depend completely upon how you have used your kingly faculty of imagination, which sets the keynote of your emotional life.

How you use imagination is a matter of choice. Imagination running wild and uncontrolled can be devastating as a source of secret fear, dread and doubt. Imagination controlled, directed and turned upward as vision, draws everything else with it. That is the law.

If you can let imagination run wild and uncontrolled, and picture all manners of ugly, negative darkness, then you can use it for the highest creative good, and let the Power do the work. This is the secret of a perfect life here and now, to use imagination perfectly. You may not use Power, but you are free to use as much imagination as you desire. – Edna Lister, As I See God, June 1, 1958.


Imagination is the one creative faculty you are meant to use. Uncontrolled imagination can build ugly pictures, but you can control imagination to build beautiful dreams. – Edna Lister, As I See God, June 1, 1958.


Imagination concocts all your stumbling blocks, so stop dragging them with you. – Edna Lister, As I See God, June 1, 1958.


Imagination and idealization are twins. Imagination moves from the concrete to the abstract. Ideals become concrete when you use imagination to fill your molds. – Edna Lister, Idealization, May 10, 1959.


Imagination turned down to the world becomes subjective, and builds just as many disasters and fears as you can picture. The world is full of this. Some read the paper, watch the news and imagine all manners of evil or destructive situations, which is a waste of time, Mind, Substance and Power. Don't build obstacles in your imagination. Deprecate every so-called obstacle and reduce them. Study and efficiently deal with difficulties to eliminate them, but see them for what they are, not inflated by fear thoughts. – Edna Lister, Visualization, May 17, 1959.


Building pictures of what you do not want is easier than imagining good things and miracles. – Edna Lister, Visualization, May 17, 1959.


Imagination, the kingly faculty and most miraculous power, is essential to create, yet it can change with every wind that blows. Never let imagination run away with you. Turn it up in inspiration to the Light, and imagination becomes vision, which directs the other faculties. – Edna Lister, Visualization, May 17, 1959.


No matter what your head says, if your gut makes you feel something different, then your imagination will follow your feelings. You have lived by your emotions, your feelings in the past and they have caused all kinds of limitations in your life. Your feelings are your emotional life. You may find yourself in an emotional upheaval and not know why. You can hear something upsetting and think of divine perfection, yet if your feelings are hurt and emotions disturbed, you go down the pole while imagination builds dark pictures. – Edna Lister, Heaven as a State of Consciousness and as a Place, June 16, 1959.


Expansion and contraction are the principles that condition imagination and emotion. On expansion's negative side are exaggeration and wild, unruly imagination. – Edna Lister, Heaven as a State of Consciousness and as a Place, June 16, 1959.


You have one instant, between focusing on negativity and turning imagination up as vision, in which to conquer. – Edna Lister, Imagination Is Your Crown, June 21, 1959.


Imagination is a camera turned downward; it photographs just what the little self wants. – Edna Lister, Imagination Is Your Crown, June 21, 1959.


Use your imagination as your creator Power. – Edna Lister, April 7, 1960.


Imagination is the most unruly faculty. – Edna Lister, How Can I Help Myself? May 31, 1960.


Imagination is the mental faculty you use to form images of external objects or concepts of conditions not present to the senses. It is the highest creative faculty of the mind. – Edna Lister, Is it Right to Ask for Myself? June 14, 1960.


At least 10,000 visual images accompany every auditory record of what you hear. You bring a photographic memory into play through imagination to review it. When you combine the two, hearing and seeing, you gain perfect balance. – Edna Lister, Steadfastness Through Vigilance, June 19, 1960.


Empathy is a combination of imagination and the love of God that gives you complete understanding of what others are feeling. – Edna Lister, October 20, 1960.


Imagination turned down becomes illusion, but turned up becomes vision. – Edna Lister, Make Earth Your Heaven Now, December 13, 1960.


Nearly 400 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of flight. The Wright brothers caught the vision and put the dream into action in 1903. In just sixty years we progressed from bi-wing airplanes to jets, to rockets and satellites. All these works and more have been done by men and women who had a vision great enough to carry them past the obstacles and through the opposition of scoffers.

A man with a donkey sees himself owning a pack train. A man building a barn sees himself heading a construction project. All these ideas are one process: Imagination, looking upward, grasps a concept in divine Mind, then through pondering and thinking, you bring the "vision" into the realm of ideas.

Every creation translates from an invisible vibration into a final concrete fact. Vision is a concrete picture in that grade of substance, and becomes an idea only when you bring the faculties to bear upon it. An abstract theory requires an experiment to make it visible. Every abstract theory begets a picture as the thinker ponders it. The vision becomes concrete when he lowers the substance in vibration and fills that vast prayer mold. – Edna Lister, Know That God Takes Charge, June 11, 1961.


You unconsciously radiate pictures, emotions and thoughts from desire, thinking and imagination. People "get" you, and you "get" them back without a word spoken. – Edna Lister, Your Key to Right Action, October 1, 1961.


Do not permit wayward imagination to taint your faculty of thinking, which causes it to descend into self-centeredness and emotionalism. – Edna Lister, Heaven, a Place to Fill, April 10, 1962.


Imagination is a faculty in the mental realm. Turn it up and it becomes soul vision, which is use of the mystic eye. – Edna Lister, The Beginning of All Life, May 1, 1962.


Never remain under your skull. Ascend above your head, where imagination, lifted as vision, enables you to use what you have. You can extend your soul vision all over earth to lift. – Edna Lister, June 7, 1962.


Use your imagination to see yourself doing what you would prefer to do. See yourself as doing and being in the Light. Don't imagine how hard it is to finish the laundry and cleaning. Most people want to rest in self-pity when they could use the same energy to picture themselves doing everything they've dreamed. – Edna Lister, True Thought Forms Your Identity and Security, September 9, 1962.


Conquered imagination becomes soul vision. When you turn imagination up as soul vision, the molds you build are stronger than steel. – Edna Lister, March 18, 1963.


Imagination, used as soul vision, becomes the guardian of life. – Edna Lister, Five Keys of the Kingdom, 1964.


Imagination will picture the relative appearance of things, but only pure soul vision will enable you to see the Source. As you study and ascend in consciousness, you go back and forth to the Source, developing the faculties of mind and soul. Imagination ascends to become soul vision. – Edna Lister, Omnipresence, the Father's Primacy, November 24, 1964.


You can do anything you can imagine yourself as doing. – Edna Lister, November 27, 1964.


Your first step in communication is pictorial; you see an image in the mind's eye. Difficulty arises because people picture the same thing differently. Say "dog" and everyone sees a different breed of dog. A beggar can't picture wealth, but can see a bed, meals, clothes and a roof over his head. So your imagination has grades or degrees, and each interprets according to the prompting either of soul or self. Imagination may color your spiritual hearing and seeing, and you induct that coloring from the world mind, the mental aggregate that surrounds you constantly. If you permit imagination to color your intuition and illumination soul faculties, they cannot function as the Computer Mind of God within you, but as weak, limping broken legs of imagination. – Edna Lister, Your Live Wire of Omnipotence, September 7, 1965.


When you see a need, use your imagination as a timing device while declaring, "Let there be Light," which provides enough time for Light to fill the need. – Edna Lister, April 25, 1966.


"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." – John 14:12. To do the "greater works" that Jesus did takes a vivid imagination and flaming desire. You can only do by letting. – Edna Lister, The Eight Great Powers of Being, October 18, 1966.


You can't create anything you can't see or imagine in the mind's eye. You create from the invisible substance on whatever the level of your thinking, according to the quality and kind of your thought. – Edna Lister, October 27, 1966.


Vision is of the soul. Imagination is a faculty upon which Mind acts. Desire, thinking, and imagination create a center or sphere of Light above your head as your personal "sun center." Say, "Let there be Light," and step into this sun center you create through thinking and imagination. Its warmth enfolds you and your imagination brings the form of your desire to pass. – Edna Lister, The Heavenly Mysteries Unveiled, October 20, 1968.


Your creative faculties use Mind, Substance and Power, and faithfully follow what your desire, thinking and imagination contemplate. When you center your burning desire, your steadfast thinking and planning and vivid imagination on creating from pure Light (which is divine and perfect) before you speak the Word to set it into motion, your creations shall follow the original Divine Pattern. – Edna Lister, Let There Be Light, March 16, 1969.


Mind uses desire, thinking and imagination to create. Mind is the power of, the ruler of desire, thinking and imagination. – Edna Lister, My Atomic Age Body, February 2, 1970.


Just as Gideon did, you need proof that prophecy is not imagination, and God always gives you time to prove whether He is speaking. – Edna Lister, The Flaming Sword, June 28, 1970.


When we descended for experience, we turned the kingly faculty of imagination downward on its axis, using it for clairvoyance and clairaudience as mediums. In this inverted position, imagination perverts Power into selfish channels for greed and gain. Imagination cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven above until it reverses itself, and once more turns its face toward the Light. Imagination cannot contact the Christ mind without giving up self and fully surrendering the soul to be possessed by the Love of God with no thought of personal gain.

As you turn imagination upward once more and use it as soul vision, instead of "thought pictures," it functions as both attributes of the mediator: Intuition and illumination, which form themselves into comprehension, the combined Wisdom and Love of God in action. This final stage of soul ascension includes ascension of the body, heart and mind, and you achieve it only when founded on the highest inner conviction of truth. This steadfast conviction enables you to settle into your Garden of Eden, and ends your "forty years" of wandering about in the Promised Land, waiting and hoping for something to happen.

No "lip service" will ever ascend you to this high place or give you balanced vision. You can make up for all the delay only by declaring all your creations and lessons (past, present and those to come) good and very good. Then you find miracle after miracle, miracle upon miracle following in fulfillment, as you climb steadily upward through degree after degree of Ascension. – Edna Lister, Five Keys of the Kingdom, 1964.

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How Imagination Works (From Eternal Youth)

All ancient philosophers have named imagination the kingly faculty of man. We could also call it the most important of all the faculties, if any single faculty can be more important than another. If it were not for Imagination, there would be no fantasies, fairy tales, fables or allegories — and surely no lies or fabrications in our lives or in the world. Even the earliest "thinking" of a creature moving up from unconscious instinctive intelligence into conscious intelligence is but a series of mental images mistakenly called thinking. Impressions, imposed upon the unborn soul during gestation through to mature adulthood, form the submerged portion of man called the subconscious.

Subconscious mind has a screen so fine that nothing passes through without being recorded upon the memory cells. It has taken millions of pictures, lasting negatives of all experiences, and can produce a full-blown composite of any of them at a second's notice. For example, consider the effect of a physical blow to the little finger. The blow's impulse runs at light speed along the nerves from the hand to the brain. The message triggers the memory cells that hold the photographic negatives of all past blows. The subconscious sorts them all, makes a composite picture and registers it on the brain cells used by the conscious mind. Simultaneously, it sends to the little finger a return impulse of the recorded answer, either pleasure or pain. This occurs in seconds if the person's reactions are unimpeded. During this short period, imagination scans every picture in memory, mind analyzes, makes deductions and produces an answer. This is why, in all healing through Mind, we know that there is only one small "window of opportunity."

You have only seconds in which to set aside all past ideas or pain patterns, make new declarations and impose new pictures of perfection upon the memory cells. Declare that "Spirit," which is Light, cannot be cut, bruised or burned, but forever remains the same under all conditions. It works. This declaration bypasses all old patterns and installs a new pattern for the subconscious to follow in the future. It works as a miracle when you hold a conscious conviction of its truth to back up the declaration. It cannot set bones or perform operations, but it can set up a vibration for healing. Doctors call this "nature" doing the work. What does the name matter if the work of healing is being done?

As you continue to declare perfection, you finally erase every old picture pattern from the subconscious mind and memory cells. With the cleansing goes all fear about this one thing. Fear always set up a conflict with right thinking. The declaration, "This is good," replaces old fear habits of the subconscious mind, and instant healing is the result.

Everyone has heard of or read about a person who reviewed his whole life in the striking of a clock, when his life was endangered or he was under great stress. If no picture negatives were in the memory cells or records in the subconscious, there could be no review under any conditions. These old negatives form all the blocks from the past, which psychiatrists find when analyzing an individual. They also form all limitations, which hold you in thrall and keep you from becoming as great as your potential and vision.

You tangle with past pictures whenever you seek to conquer habits, from the lowest of the outer physical habits to the highest and most spiritual expressions. Every time you indulge a habit, you superimpose another picture upon the hundreds already there. Old habits are hard to break because of the "multiple exposures" piled on through the years. The same old emotion, indulged in literally thousands of times, causes imagination to build pictures. You build them, one on top of another, until you so deeply engrave the composite that the outer result is illness, mental, emotional or physical.

Mental blocks can be likened to a darkroom where they store photographic negatives. All emotional upsets written on the pages of your life, from infancy, have their corresponding negatives stored in your darkroom. Seeing how they can pile up, until you need an expert to handle them for you, is easy. Unlike a real darkroom, you cannot reach in and destroy the old negatives or patterns. You cannot erase records from the brain cells as you can with a recorder by erasing the old as you record the new. People often think they have an old habit record erased completely only to have it break out, burst into expression when they least expect it, when it will hinder them most. This is why it takes so long to conquer.

Unless you are persistent and steadfast in holding to your new patterns for life, you delay your healing and success. It is so much easier to slip into old patterns, excusing yourself with the sophistry, "It won't matter, just this once," but it does. The world is seemingly full of good reasons why you should "take it easy," start it "tomorrow" or "put it off." The subconscious mind loves to hear these words, which are a plausible, "put it off" companion. You must select the right setting for your dial of life if you are ever to live fully in eternal youth. Set your dial for the stars!

If you have allowed imagination to build pictures of living on a "less and less plan," if you believe in old age and decline as inevitable, then it takes longer to erase the old habit patterns from your darkroom. To move from a "less and less plan" is to move from the old fate line onto the Path of Destiny, which is always the "more and more plan." The problem is not moving up, but staying up after the move. If the physical body has begun to show the strain of past wrong thinking about life, the struggle is bound to take longer and require more strength and determination. You will find no easy way to conquer old habits. The "less and less plan" takes from life. You waste time seeking more life on the outside. The "more and more plan" is giving of yourself instead of feeling that you can't give as much because you are growing old.

First, give up the idea of wanting someone to love you. Then go on, giving lavishly of your inner love and compassion to the whole world, giving thoughts of love and joy just to see if they work. You will find that it opens the door to new friends and companions while it starts the vibration of return, "Give and you shall receive." There is no law of "get and ye shall be given." The return for all "getting first" is to find yourself kicked or pushed out! Even if the physical body has reached the stage of "decline," you can bring it back. Of course, you must pay a price: You must desire change with all our mind and heart. You pay that price by breathing Light from the Source. Light first becomes physical energy. Then under thinking and desire, Light further condenses into "mass" or the physical cells of the body. This energy also melts, dissolves and absorbs any crystallization in the outer cells, it replaces the old with newly created cells. Imagination sets the actual patterns for subconscious processes of the physical body. Subconscious mind can carry out anything you give it as a pattern. Changing patterns begins when you open your old darkroom to make it into a room of Light. You can return the body to youth. It can be done.

If law is to work for you, you must follow breathing from the Source with imagination, building right pictures in full constancy and consciousness. Power from above enters, and strength begins to operate through you. Why? Because you have established a new habit of depending upon breathing, which allows universal Mind to work as the coordinator in your life.

Without imagination to build the blueprint of your desire, you cannot create a mold for Light to be condensed into outer form. First you must decide to create something you value in your life, especially in your physical well-being and affairs. Then imagination takes over, makes the blueprint, and gives invisible form to what you want. Holding fast to this original blueprint keeps the mold steady and unwavering while your breathing furnishes substance condensed to fill the mold. Wavering in your faithfulness causes lopsided molds, which means that when your miracle appears it may not be as complete as you really wanted.

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Laws on Imagination, Desire, and Thinking

The laws of the soul include this primary set, designed to clarify the right use of imagination, thinking and desires. God gives each soul enough substance of Light, stored in his Oversoul star, to fill all his molds of desire full and to bring to pass all his needs as the Father promised him. Each soul must release his soul substance by transforming it from invisible Light to a lower form of substance which can be seen, from storage in his star to earth mold. Your obedience to the fullness of God's great love is your true safeguard, success and dream fulfillment. Love is the only true fulfillment of law. Each soul is given the power of right love. Use it.

To you is given power of right thinking. Use it. You have the power of right seeing. Use it. You have the full power of right hearing. Use it. You have the power of right discrimination. Use it. You have the full power of all discretion. So use. You have the power of right reason. Use it. You have the power of right use of Light. So use. You have all power over darkness. Use it. You have the power of right faith. Use it. The right use of Power is letting. To "let" means to become unconquerable, fully invincible law. – Edna Lister, July 1945.

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You must consciously imagine what pattern you desire, then cut your thinking to conform to your chosen life pattern. Make sure your emotional life does not give power to what you don't want in your life. Keep imagination's eye on your chosen goal, not letting it run wild, daydreaming or idling away your valuable time. Your real "I" takes charge, dictating to imagination what you desire to create as your new successful life. – Edna Lister, "The Real 'I'," Life in a Nutshell, 1942.


To extend your vision above, stretch your mental focus up to a mental viewing with the all-seeing eye, the imaginative faculty. When you extend your imaginative faculty for good, you can accomplish anything. You harness imagination and build a picture of what you plan. You must do this to see beyond the veil. For true vision, turn your camera up. – Edna Lister, December 4, 1952.


To conquer a wayward imagination, you must "rejoice in the Lord always" (Philippians 4:4), and be care-full for nothing. Anxiety is useless. What can go wrong if you're always rejoicing in God? – Edna Lister, What Is Your Gift? June 12, 1955.


Make your imagination pay a dividend. What you see is what you get in life. Your imagined fears do come upon you. You must clearly focus what you visualize all the time, with no double exposures. Create a clean, clearly focused picture, see your wallet full, a new home, new everything. Use everything you already have and prepare for more beauty everywhere. – Edna Lister, I Am the Light of the World, January 1, 1956.

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New Testament on Imagination

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.

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Old Testament on Imagination

God sent the flood in response to humanity's imagination run wild: God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. – Genesis 6:5.


The Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. – Genesis 8:21-22.


The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. – 1 Chronicles 28:9.


How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? – Psalm 62:3.


Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied. – Proverbs 27:20.

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Imagination in Other Sacred Writings

A fearful heart in the imagination of a fool cannot stand against any fear. – Wisdom of Ben Sirach 22:18.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 – 1971
The original Christian Pioneering Mystic,
Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.


Edna Lister


Etymology of imagination: Latin imaginari, from imago, "a likeness, image."


Imagination is a soul faculty.


Quotes

Imagination is an almost divine faculty which, without recourse to any philosophical method, immediately perceives everything: the secret and intimate connections between things, correspondences and analogies. – Charles Baudelaire, New Notes on E. Poe, Part III

All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul. – Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

That which men suppose the imagination to be, and to do, is often frivolous enough and mischievous enough; but that which God meant it to be in the mental economy is not merely noble, but supereminent. It is the distinguishing element in all refinement. It is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. – Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts

As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young. – Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts

The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow. – Leonardo da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. – Albert Einstein, Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire. – George Eliot, Middlemarch

The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye – not creation, but insight. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Table-Talk


References

Baudelaire, Charles. "New Notes on E. Poe," Baudelaire as a Literary Critic: Selected Essays, Part III. Lois Boe Hyslop and Francis E. Hyslop Jr., translators. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964. This work is in the public domain.

Beecher, Henry Ward. "The Human Mind," Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887, p. 33. This work is in the public domain.

Beecher, Henry Ward. Life Thoughts. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1858, p. 66. This work is in the public domain.

Burke, Edmund, "The imagination, in Burke, was the ascendant and kingly faculty," as described in The Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Eclectic, Volume XXXI. Edwards A. Park and John E. Day, editors. Andover: Warren F. Draper; New Haven: Judd and White; London: Trubner and Co., 1874, p. 517. This work is in the public domain.

The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary: 2 volumes. E.S.C. Weiner, editor. Oxford University Press, 1971.

Einstein, Albert. Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms. New York: Covici-Friede, 1931, p. 97. This work is in the public domain.

Eliot, George. "Middlemarch," The Complete Works of George Eliot, Volume 2. New York: Harper Brothers, 1910, 90. This work is in the public domain.

Leonardo da Vinci. Thoughts on Art and Life . Maurice Baring, translator. Boston: Merrymount Press, 1906, 65-66. This work is in the public domain.

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Table Talk," The Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, volume 3 of 3 volumes. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1886, 409. This work is in the public domain.

Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, "Imagination." Merriam-Webster. Accessed March 4, 2021.

The Nag Hammadi Library. James M. Robinson, editor. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981.

Webster, Noah. "Imagination," Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language. Two volumes. New York: S. Converse, 1828. This work is in the public domain.


Related Topics

See Desire

See Eye of God

See Spiritual Seeing and Hearing

See Thinking