COACHING THE COACHES
PART 9
by Jon Rappoport
Copyright © 2011 by Jon Rappoport
It would be foolish of me not to comment on the difference between imagination and IMAGINATION.
Just because a person uses his imagination, now and then, it doesn’t mean he is galvanized into achieving his most profound goals.
That’s why I’ve designed so many exercises and techniques; as with any sort of workout, a person gains strength with consistent practice.
Consistent practice gives you IMAGINATION.
And IMAGINATION carries many good things with it: huge quantities of available energy; motivation to take action; keen perception of the status quo as merely one possibility out of a sea of possibilities; innovative strategies; a bracing sense of freedom; unshakable optimism; insight into those who won’t access their own inventive capacities.
In the presence of IMAGINATION, those emotions and habits that are keeping a person firmly entrenched in a deadened life are gradually dissolved, deleted, or put on the shelf.
IMAGINATION is the lost friend or brother or sister who has come home.
You always had it. It was never really lost. It can’t be lost. It is you at your best, at your most alive.
Even love, that quality forever sought, needs imagination to keep making the case for love, to expand its space, to comprehend the depth of intimacy.
We can forever bemoan the troubles and conflicts of the human race and our world, or we can invent a different world, in which the creative power of every individual is given its due.
In the end, it is the individual who can choose the adventure of reconnecting with his own imagination, and it is your work, as a coach, that can help bring this about.
Learn while you teach. Teach while you learn.
Once you’ve climbed far enough up the ladder of your own imagination, you’ll never again feel mired in frustration as you deal with those who simultaneously seem to want Newness and Sameness, progress and entrenchment, happiness and sadness.
You’ll have found your North Star to guide you.
One of the great secrets of imagination is the ALIVE energy it imparts to the person who deploys it. This energy is what was displaced at childhood’s end, when the possibility of all possibilities was deferred, in favor of compromise.
Deeper still is the knowledge that you don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to take up a rigid position as the teacher or the authority or the great dispenser of information. Imagination is the open door, it is not a final set of principles and rules. You are helping others to open that door for themselves. If you can do that, you will have all the knowledge you need. You will have introduced them to their wider and greater lives. And you’ll have found your own.
In the mid-1980s, I interviewed Ted Clarke, a scientist who was working at Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, California. Ted played a major role in unmanned space missions.
He told me that, during the Jimmy Carter administration, he’d given a talk to construction-company executives about the possibility of building orbiting hotels.
He asked these men whether they would be interested in such a project. They nearly brought down the ceiling. The suggestion ignited them.
As Ted and I talked, I remarked that a space program of truly huge dimensions could go a long way toward solving the unemployment problem in America. He agreed. He said it could bring the country close to full employment if “our leaders were willing to put credence in their imaginations.”
The technology for building orbiting hotels wasn’t all there, but as Ted pointed out, if the will and desire were sufficient, it could be developed.
He emphasized that, if people were shuttling back and forth to these hotels on a regular basis, watching the sun rise and set among the stars through large ports, they would return to Earth with such stories that, soon enough, the whole population would be energized about “the next big step in the future of the human race.”
For Ted, it was all about stimulating imagination, so we could shake off the doldrums of conflicts and problems and wars, and instead move out into space.
Massively.
There are alternative futures waiting out there for us, palpable and real, so real we can almost touch them; we can shift to new paths, making our former historical conflicts obsolete.
This is called “inspiration in action.”
It isn’t vague, it isn’t a cliché, it isn’t a mantra, it’s the result of bringing the imagination of a person into the foreground of his life, so it becomes the very basis of his actions.
This is a non-mechanical philosophy whose time has come.
Jon Rappoport
A former candidate for a US Congressional seat in California, Jon has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He has written articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. The author of The Ownership of All Life, Jon has maintained a consulting practice for the past 15 years. He has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, and creativity to audiences around the world.