IMAGINATION

This is something we all possess. Because our brain works holographically and allows images from the past, and everything stored in the subconscious, to flow seamlessly into one another like in a film, we are able to imagine things, situations, places, and people—we can picture them in our minds.

What you need to understand is that, for the brain, what happens in your mind is truly real. When something is real for the brain—even if the moment itself is not—neural networks produce hormones, chemicals, and neuropeptides to adapt the body to that situation. And if we have on average about 60,000 thoughts per day, regardless of how the subconscious responds, you can imagine how much activity can be directed from the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland. These are two remarkable organs that never stop working.

The nervous system has two systems. One regulates the signals that come from outside; the other regulates what happens inside the body. When one becomes active, it switches the other off. Our perceptions are therefore not only what we see in our external reality, but also what we perceive in our thoughts—because in the end, they are the same images.

If, through fearful thoughts, you imagine that there is danger—whatever that danger may be—your brain will start producing the hormones needed to “survive” those thoughts. This may involve the imagined loss of a partner, death, losing a job, betrayal by a friend or family member, arguments with children, failure in society, jealousy, and so on. Your body will respond to this. At the cellular level, genes begin producing different proteins (the building blocks of biology) to cope with the situation.

It needs little explanation that this can eventually lead to illness, energy depletion, and emotions that push you even further in that direction—because you yourself are creating those emotions through such thoughts. When you stay in this pattern for a long time, it becomes a habit. And the longer these habits continue, the more you start to see them as your identity, as your reality.

At that point, you are simply no longer “yourself.”

Now let’s turn it around. If we are already using imagination to create emotions, to develop habits, and to shape our identity and reality, then why not use it to move toward a happier and healthier one? What is stopping us? Our self-image? Our judgments about situations, or our judgments about others? The tendency to dramatize facts in a dualistic way, as if everything must exist in opposition?

Probably not.

What often holds us back is not reality itself, but the stories we tell about it in our minds. The subconscious mind does not distinguish between an event that truly happens and one that we repeatedly replay in our thoughts. It simply responds to the signals it receives.

So when we keep repeating the same fearful or negative images, we train our nervous system to function in a state of stress. The body becomes accustomed to that chemistry, those hormones, that feeling. At some point it may even start to feel normal, even though it truly isn’t.

But that is also where the key lies.

If imagination has the power to place our body in a state of fear, lack, or tension, then that same imagination also has the power to bring our body into a state of calm, trust, and recovery. The brain responds to images, emotions, and meaning.

When we consciously begin to create different images—images of possibilities, solutions, connection, and health—we start sending different signals to that same system. Gradually, not only our emotional responses change, but also our habits, our choices, and ultimately our identity.

It requires only one thing: awareness.

Awareness of our thoughts. Awareness of the stories we tell ourselves. And above all, the realization that we are not obligated to believe every thought that arises.

Perhaps change does not begin with solving every problem in the outside world, but with changing the image we carry inside ourselves about who we are and about the world around us.

And that image…we create it anew every single day.