CONSULTING IMAGINATION

by Jon Rappoport

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

My consulting practice began about 20 years ago, while I was giving a writer a tutorial on putting his first book together.

He was stuck on a section, and I was helping him sort out his confusions. We reached a point where it became obvious that the root problem was, as he put it, “I can only see vaguely what the material looks like. Every other section in the book is clear, but not this one.”

That seemed a bit odd, because he had a whole list of items he intended to include in the “vague section.”

So I decided to do some of my imagination exercises with him, adapting them to the book. Pretty soon, he said:

“That’s it! This section is really another book.”

He went on to describe his relationship with his father, which was just one of the items he was going to touch on in the “vague section.”

He talked for the better part of half an hour about his father, and at the end of it he said, “I just outlined my next book.”

From that point on, it took him ten days to finish the first book and wrap it up.

I asked him, “Why do you think everything straightened out for you when we did the imagination exercises?”

He said, “Because my father is the only person in my life who seems to have no creativity whatsoever. And whenever I think about him, it’s like thinking about a brick wall. All of a sudden, while we were doing the exercises, I saw that he was actually creating his own life. I saw how he was doing it…and then I felt an enormous sense of relief.”

Over the next few sessions with this writer, I saw how much relief he was experiencing. His personality changed. He became much more open and energetic. His enthusiasm for his book widened and multiplied.

Imagination can transform what seems like dense reality. It can transform reality and experience. It can transform relationships, and the past.

If I needed any more proof that imagination was the fabled Philosopher’s Stone of the alchemists, this was it.

There is a deep truth here. To one degree or another, I see it operating every day with my clients. Imagination liberates frozen realities in a person’s life.

The encrusted energy and denseness in those realities and relationships escapes like stale air when a door is opened to the outside day.

Reality turns out to be like sculptor’s clay. It may look like steel, but that’s because imagination has been left out of the equation.

And sometimes “that steel” in a person very close to us appears to affect us—as if, by contagion, we become inert and solid, too. But it’s an illusion, and the proof comes when we sufficiently employ our own imagination.

The lead becomes gold, flowing in streams.

A new dawn.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

Solutions Inside The Matrix

by Jon Rappoport

August 1, 2011

NoMoreFakeNews.com

There is the short-term look and the long-term look. In the long-term, every solution to a problem inside The Matrix leads you further into more Matrix layers. It’s a matter of where you are, where you are looking, and where you are looking from.

When you are looking from, and using, and living by and through imagination, you are outside. You can then create realities in Matrix that don’t drag you further and further into the molasses.

Matrix is basically a religion.

It is dressed up by people to look very good, with shine and gloss and promise, and people give it a large dose of sentimentality, much as they do with “permissive” religions.

These days, one of the sub-categories of Matrix religion is what I call The Church of Nice. Everybody is nice to everybody else, every viewpoint is equal and every idea has merit. This attitude is considered to be “evolved.” “Advanced.” “Moral.”

It’s really a disguised surrender.

It’s a weak notion of an ultimate solution to all problems. Be Nice.

Well, where is the “being nice” taking place? Inside Matrix.

It may not seem so, but that is part of its charm and part of its deception.

Socialization, adaptation, political correctness—they are all operations dreamed up and applied inside Matrix.

They are all substitutes for living by and through imagination.

“If I can’t create anything new, at least I can be nice.”

The Matrix is designed to minimize individual creative power and maximize socialization and endless problems. It’s a kind of soap opera, in which all possible foibles and difficulties are congealed into an artificial construct called The Human Condition—which is played on keys and levers and pedals like a giant organ, on and on and on.

People develop actual pride in the fact that they have developed an amnesia about their own imagination.

At which point, you arrive at an absurd crossroad, where a person firmly ensconced in Matrix wants to make magic without changing his close affiliation with Matrix.

Such a contradiction leads to a pretended love for and devotion to systems, which are seen as a way to work around the dilemma. System after system after system is tried, to shake off the paradox, and they don’t work.

People in Matrix evolve a strong distrust of imagination, because they instinctively know it is always and forever inventing realities beyond the fiction called The Human Condition.

In this deep sense, the slave wants to remain a slave.

In order to remain thus, every meaning must be connected to Matrix.

If I say X, a citizen of Matrix interprets X relative to Matrix.

Actually, MEANING is an infinite spectrum, the vast majority of which hasn’t even been invented yet. Those who are operating inside Matrix all the time are devoted to a very narrow passageway of meaning, and whatever doesn’t travel in that thin corridor turns into: “I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”

This is the cry of the Matrix Citizen.

Well, yes, because imagination creates meaning.

We can look forward to the day when people speak languages we, at our present point, would have no clue about—not because we lack technical advances or richer vocabulary—but because the very core notion of MEANING will expand far beyond present limits and dimensions.

Humanity has stalled, temporarily, because it is engrossed with its own technical achievements. These achievements all presuppose certain aspects of Continuum are stable. From the viewpoint of imagination, such stability is about as interesting as an ant sleeping on a table.

Matrix IS the bland acceptance of limited meaning.

One of the primary symbols of Matrix is the labyrinth. When all is said and done, it represents passive consciousness looking at and receiving What Exists. Although What Exists changes for various reasons, passive consciousness is only interested in watching it, taking it in. This strategy winds up in being adrift in the maze.

There’s a local church in my neighborhood that brings in Tibetan monks once a year to do a sand painting.

For a few days, the Monks use colored sands to create a complex mandala on a large table.

At this service on Easter, the monks destroyed the mandala. They always do that. That’s their gig. They make it and then they whisk it away into dust.

An array of reasons was given to the congregation, to explain why the monks get rid of a sand painting after they’ve completed it.

One, they were “transmuting” the painting. Two, they were now using the sand to create “healing.” Three, they were giving people small envelopes of sand to “spread the healing/creation.” Four, they were illustrating the ineffable or transient nature of all things.

These are all “New Age reasons.” Superficial food for a modern audience.

In the ancient Tibetan tradition, the creation of art had a much deeper and wilder purpose: to reveal that the universe is a product ofmind. Period. The universe isn’t some intrinsically sacred entity, it’s a work of art…and if it can be vividly and deeply perceived as such, the adept (artist) can then spontaneously delete pieces of physical reality and/or insert pieces of his own invented reality into universe. Magic.

This was the core of Tibetan thought, and it was brought to the country some 1400 years ago by rebel teachers from India.

UNIVERSE IS A PRODUCT OF MIND. THEREFORE, YOU CAN SPONTANEOUSLY AND MAGICALLY ALTER REALITY.

The ancient Tibetans weren’t fooling around. They weren’t about worship or self-effacing religion. And they weren’t just claiming a person could manifest a desire in the physical world. Of course that could be done. They were going light years farther.

They were saying the universe, at the deepest level, wasn’t really an interlocking system of energies. No, it was a creation of mind. The whole thing was, in that sense, one work of art. Just one. Universe is one work of art among an infinity of possible works of art.

To really qualify as an adept, you had to able to destroy (as in DESTROY) what you created. Not disperse it or turn it into some healing force or blow magic dust on a crowd with it. No. You had to be cheerfully willing to destroy what you create. Otherwise, you would be caught in tangle of diminishing power, fueled by your precious and careful attitude about your own inventions.

Yes, these people were riverboat gamblers. They were shoving in all their chips. They were tough and determined and innovative to the nth degree.

Nothing like them had ever been seen on the face of the Earth.

Two authors are indispensable to understanding what was really going on in Tibet all those years ago. John Blofeld and Alexandra David-Neel. Read Blofeld’s The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet and any of David-Neel’s books about her travels in Tibet, including With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet.

Of great importance is Blofeld’s description of a practice he translates as “Deity Visualization.” The Tibetan student is given a very precise “personage” to create in his mind, down to the last detail of accoutrement. Presumably, this information was relayed to him through a painted mandala.

The student would then retire into isolation, and for months, perhaps years, he would work on this “interior painting,” in his imagination. If he was finally able to hold the complete image together, mentally, he would be done with phase 1.

Then, phase 2, and the imagined personage would seem to come to life. It would become the student’s friend, his ongoing guide, his advisor. The teacher would watch this joyous interaction between the student and the “personage,” and when he saw the student was starting to rely on his new best friend, he would tell the student: DESTROY IT.

This third phase, it was said, was harder than the original task of creating it.

If the student could move through all three phases, he would realize that universe IS a product of mind…and he would be able to impact universe spontaneously. Making things disappear, re-appear, inventing “new pieces” to insert into physical reality.

No praying, no worshiping, no allegiance necessary.

However, as always happens, the priests moved in.

Then the Tibetans clogged up their own fantastic technique of creative work with immense amounts of ceremonial baggage and ritual and “preparation.” The student had to approach magic from a long way off, had to endure all sorts of hardship. In Tibet, the theocracy took over and buried the core of the teaching.

Then on top of that, coming into modern times, further New Age fluff was added to the mix, resulting in a ludicrous mess.

Yes, the ancient Tibetans—before the priests obscured the most profound of all Earth-bred cosmologies—were on to something enormous.

The monk sand painters at the local church on Sunday? I have no idea what they remember about their real tradition. But they are a vague reminder of that wildness and actualwisdom.

Whether anyone knows or cares, that’s what the sand painting and destruction are about.

There is much more to say about all this, and in various venues I have and will be saying it. Based on this ancient Tibetan fire, I’ve developed a number of techniques that move toward the original Tibetan goal.

There is a great deal of nonsense and underbrush to clear away, to establish a new mystery school—where the mystery is out in the open.

Sooner or later, you will come across people who try to assert that every power is “inherent in the universe.” They will describe such power. They will keep on doing this until they realize that nothing they have discovered begins to explain consciousness or imagination. You don’t have to care about any of that. All you need to do is create with imagination for a few million years, and everything will come clear.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we’ve flattered reality enough. It doesn’t need more.

Imagination can be used to invent a better shade of nail polish or a universe. In a society devoted to nail polish, imagination is not to blame.

What feeds back to you from the product of your imagination is far less important than the fact that you imagined it. People love to ensnare themselves in what they have imagined. They try to inject meaning into it, so much meaning that they become tied up in useless interpretations. They are the “product people.” Dreams, paintings, collections of ideas and thoughts—they are obsessed with what they have invented. Just look at what you’ve created it, enjoy it, revel in it, and go on to create something else. This is the path.

Imagination isn’t a system. It might invent systems, but it is non-material. It’s a capacity. It feels no compulsion to imitate reality. It makes realities. Its scope is limited only by a person’s imagining of how far imagination can go.

The human race is obsessed by the question: what exists? It appears to be a far easier question than: what do you want to imagine? People seem to have a problem imagining something that never existed and then inserting it into the world.

All the great questions are answered, as a side effect, on the road that is: imagine and create, create and imagine.

The universe isn’t a temple. It’s an amusement park invented by perverse jokers. Stop groveling.

It’s useless to try to talk down to people about imagination. We’re not breaking a system into parts. We’re not trying to teach a person how to tie his shoes. We’re talking about the proliferation of endless new worlds, not seen through a porthole, but invented.

A hidden pattern is something that was previously created. Discovering its shape and details is satisfying for a short time. And then there is fatigue and boredom. Inventing something is a rocket that moves past all that.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.

A MYSTERY SCHOOL NOW

BASIS OF MY CONSULTING

JULY 6, 2011. Since every motivation, plan, goal, ambition, desire and belief can be imagined, why not at least consider the possibility that imagination itself ought to be understood?

Imagination, after all, gives LIFE to goals and desires.

Without imagination, goals and desires tend to fade and lose their power over time.

Therefore, in my work with private clients, I focus on doing exercises and techniques which strengthen and expand the scope of imagination.

This is what power is actually all about.

Any goal can be broken down into a plan for its achievement, but the energy BEHIND the goal—imagination—is what needs to be brought into the foreground. It’s the star of the show.

Imagination is the core of a mystery school of the 21^st century; but the mystery is right out in the open. Imagination has always been there, available. It has largely been ignored, because those who use it take it for granted, and those who don’t are in the dark about it.

After experimenting, it became clear to me that all protocols and systems and step-by-step programs that seek to target and enhance imagination are ultimately useless. They are sometimes counter-productive.

This is because imagination is not a structure to be taken apart. It is infinite and can operate in an infinite number of ways.

And the baby-step approach is deflating. It drains away energy instead of increasing it.

No, you have to “start from the top.” This means giving the imagination material to work on that is vivid and powerful and multidimensional. On this basis, starting some 20 years ago, I developed several different types of techniques—and each type naturally gives birth to a virtually unlimited number of exercises.

One of the outcomes of doing this kind of work is clarified perception about choice and freedom. I don’t mean muddled rumination about possible directions in life. When desire, imagination, and freedom meet, the ignited spark is unstoppable.

Everything else is compromise.

The world largely operates on compromise, the acceptance of which is said to be a sign of maturity. Well, lots of lies are floated to the masses. That’s one of them. Whole lives are frittered away on a staircase of successive surrenders.

The opposite end of the spectrum is profound desire, wide-ranging powerful imagination, and unambiguous freedom.

Of these three, imagination is the best avenue of approach. All the mysteries are solved there. All the energies are recovered there. All the magic is inherent there.

This is my position, and I’ve confirmed it many times in many ways. My e-book, The Secret Behind Secret Societies, reframes history to show that a tradition of imagination, like an invisible thread, runs through the past of this planet. It has diverted its course and has detoured around obstacles. But it has always remained alive, and now is its period to flower.

The baggage and the rubbish and the concealments and the diversions have been cleared away.

THE CENTURY OF IMAGINATION

The unspoken superhighway of history tells a story of the unshackling of imagination.

By the second half the 20^th century, it became clear to many people that imagination had become unhooked from ideologies, metaphysical clap-trap, religion, the pretensions of psychology, and the juvenile materialistic philosophy coming out of science.

Finally, after centuries of work, imagination stood alone for all to see.

But few were ready to look.

Instead, they dove back into a jungle of spiritual symbology. They dove into a hodge-podge of resurrected ethnicity. They grasped at “revivals” of ancient cosmologies.

Nevertheless, IMAGINATION HAD EMERGED AS THE NORTH STAR.

It was no longer necessary to pretend that imagination was inevitably bound up in its products; which is to say, it was apparent that all the metaphysical meanderings which had taken place since the dawn of time were CREATIONS OF IMAGINATION, pure and simple.

So why not admit it?

Why not stop all the nonsense?

Why not confess that imagination is there for the individual? Infinitely.

Well, people were still obsessed with wrapping the individual in various flags and pennants of “something greater.” It was the old religious impulse reborn. The individual is just one atom in the super-atom of cosmic ding dong.

This cover story never goes away, and one just has to learn to live along side it.

This “something greater” is like recreational drugs. A thing to imbibe, a lot to talk about.

But there it was, imagination, the exposed gold centerpiece of alchemy. Finally. And people said, “Let’s go back to lead.”

In the middle of the 20^th century, America was poised in the transition-moment from air flight to space flight. Technologically, imagination had won a great battle. More importantly, people with high intelligence were dreaming large dreams. A titanic future out there on the horizon—and if the journey into space were thrust into the center of human affairs, there would be jobs for virtually everyone, as a side effect of the dream.

And people KNEW that imagination was behind it all.

And then the dip into metaphysical molasses started all over again.

But…no matter. Because the mystery is out in the open.

For those who can see it and use it.

They will discover that every longing pointing to cosmos, illumination, enlightenment, transcendence is answered and fulfilled through imagination deployed. And every delusion is evaporated.

This is the true spiritual tradition of planet Earth. It has been buried, repressed, sidetracked, and misidentified—but now here it is.

In a very real sense, it was always the goal. It was always the thing to be distilled out of the dross of history—and out of the rambling life of an individual.

When I was 20, I finished studying the history of philosophy in college. All the answers I’d been seeking were still missing in action. I approached one of my professors and said, “Suppose all of this, everything the philosophers have proposed, was created? Created by them?”

Like works of art, I meant.

The professor stared at me, and then shook his head.

“No,” he said.

That was my first inkling that I should have been studying the history of imagination, rather than philosophy.

It was only when my publisher, Bonnie Lange, gave me the green light to write The Secret Behind Secret Societies, that I realized I would have a chance to explore this whole area.

The difference between the heavy baggage of traditional cosmology/metaphysics and imagination is: the former requires nothing and the latter implies action. You need to do something.

Imagination isn’t merely a sign on a road. It is the road. It is the action along the road.

And most people prefer no-action.

The first part of my work was to strip imagination of useless and distracting accoutrement. The second part of my work is to show people imagination’s scope and range and power, and what can happen when you use it intensely, without limits. Click here for more details.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

RAPPOPORT CONSULTING

JUNE 2, 2011. I’ve been working with individual clients for a number of years now, and I continue to gain insights into how that work can be done.

People inquire about becoming more successful, of course. In general terms, that’s what everyone wants. But each person is unique, so generalities don’t really cut it.

Here is something to consider. This civilization has become obsessed with perceiving and solving problems. It’s an unhealthy extension of a method that sometimes works when technology is the issue.

Think about inner cities in America. For decades, governments at all levels have been pouring billions in tax dollars into solving poverty, drugs, crime, broken families, low school-graduation rates, and illness. Those are the key problems.

How’s that going? How is the great solution working out?

By any standards you want to apply, the answer is:failure.

There are many reasons for the failure, but let’s look at the approach itself. What’s the missing key?

Government is determined to be the SOLVER.

Suppose, for a pittance, in the area of education, research was done to isolate ONE inner-city school in America that was ALREADY a roaring success?

And then, the government sits at the knee of the person who made that success happen and LEARNS. Learns how he did it.

Stop solving. Find the person who already knows the answer and has proved it.

Hire him to teach others how he did it. And then let them open schools.

It’s so simple, it’s ridiculous.

The same idea applies to an individual. Instead of striving to help him solve all his problems, the trick is to jump ahead and see what success would really look like, FOR HIM.

This requires an understanding of his true desires, because success by any other standard is going to fall short.

The map is basically a road from true and deep desire to a picture of what fulfillment of that desire would look like. Then you can fill in a description of the road.

I’ve worked with a number of artists. With enough time, some extraordinary things have happened.

But it’s all based on going beyond the immediate solving of immediate problems. It turns out that, without the map I’ve just described, there will always be more problems, because they are continuously generated in the absence of the arrow that moves from true desire to its fulfillment.

We are actually talking about manifestation here. And also creative consciousness. These are the factors that are developed if a person follows that arrow—and in the process, he will also deal with the current crop of problems that are distracting him.

A society could succeed in this fashion as well—if there was a common notion about what the main desire was all about. In America, that was once individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Yes, there are generalities in that formulation—but then, society is a generalization to begin with. However, individual freedom has been eroding in America for a long time. And with its erosion has come this obsession with perceiving problems everywhere and solving them…and it hasn’t worked. It’s become a hindrance, in fact. And so the pursuit of happiness has lost intensity, too.

Fortunately, the individual still exists. And for him/her, the future is still alive and open.

JON RAPPOPORT

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

www.nomorefakenews.com

By Jon Rappoport

MARCH 9, 2010.  Let’s say you’re nine years old.  You’re determined to cross a stream by jumping from rock to rock.  If you think about it too long, you’re going to turn back and forget the whole thing.  You see the rocks.  You see how you can jump from one to the other and reach the other side.  You want to do it.  So you do.  You do it.

People get into a muddle when they don’t understand the power of WANTING TO DO SOMETHING.  They have relatively little experience with that.  For them, desire is like a radio station that cuts in and out.  Sometimes it’s clear and strong, and sometimes it’s all static.

They can remember a time when the desire to do something was strong—but then it was buried.  It went away.

As I wrote in Part One of this series, my work with private clients often involves digging up these abandoned desires.  Rethinking them.  Seeing if they still make sense.

In people’s lives, there is a see-saw.  A person looks at one of his very strong desires, and he thinks about it.  Can I really accomplish this?  Should I try?  Do I believe it can work out?  Yes?  No?  Maybe?  And with each minute of reflection, the see-saw moves.  It moves away from the person, and it moves toward him.

It comes closer, and it goes farther away.

When it comes closer, the person is imagining the fulfillment of the desire in his life.  He’s imagining the path and work to get there, he’s imagining what it would be like to make it come true.

When the see-saw moves away, the person is thinking that his deep desire probably won’t work out, he’s thinking it’s impractical or difficult, he’s thinking about what other people will say, he’s thinking he should take a safer course.

This is the quandary, the indecision, the back and forth, the postponing.

This is the lack of determination.

In my practice, I move directly into this back and forth situation and work with the client to explore it.  What’s it really all about?

The imagining of a desire, fleshing it out, the vision of it being fulfilled—this is the kernel of a new life.  Much has been said about this kernel.  For example, there are people who will tell you it’s all about the law of attraction.  If you know what you want and if you can really see it and feel it, you will attract the fulfillment to you.

Well, I’m not going to spend time exploring the law of attraction here, except to say this: most people are missing the point.  The most important thing that happens when you imagine, with power, what you truly and deeply want is YOU ATTRACT YOURSELF.

This may sound like a mal-formed sentence, but it isn’t.

You are the one who can expend the effort and do the work and make a vision come true.  Focusing on that is a prime fact, and it shouldn’t be ignored in favor of waiting for the iron filings of the universe to line up around the magnet of your dreams.

To put all this in a slightly different way, there is a natural feedback loop between what you truly desire and YOU.  Your desire gives you power, and your power imparts life to what you desire.  But you can cut that loop, you can interrupt it, you can stop the flow of energy and inspiration.

These are important matters.  One’s future hangs in the balance.

Exploring and casting light on this situation is a fundamental part of my work with clients.  The exploring is all about changing the relationship between what a person really wants and his actions, his lack of action.  When that relationship is put back together, when the feedback loop is restored, a life is transformed.

www.nomorefakenews.com
www.insolutions.info

JON RAPPOPORT

If you’re interested in becoming a client, contact me at qjrconsulting@gmail.com

By Jon Rappoport

 In the past, I’ve made several efforts to describe the work I do with private clients.  This time, I want to reach deeper.

When you do this work well, there is a great deal of intuition and spontaneous observation involved.  It’s not mechanical.  You can’t arbitrarily apply a host of rules and regulations to a human being. 

The work is more involved, more complex than your standard self-improvement texts and slogans and cheerleading banners.

It begins with the client.  How is he seeing his life and his ambitions at the moment? 

I’m trying to hear his tune, too.  Not just his words.  On what frequency is he broadcasting, so to speak? 

Why is that important?  Because that allows you to have an instinct about his world—not just pieces of it, but the larger space of it.    

Life has everything to do with imagination and creative power.  Those are the twin engines of existence.  They are, deep down, what we all want to kick into gear.

A problem will remain a problem only as long as a person insists on remaining uncreative.

However, issuing an order like a directive from the Pentagon to “be more creative” misses the mark, because, if it were that simple, it already would have happened.

Every human being is engaged in some kind of complex process.  This process involves adjustments to reality, hidden ambitions, efforts to survive and achieve and win, dreams and fantasies, love, hope, connecting to others, and a hundred more things…

What I basically have with a person is dialogue.  We talk.  Fortunately, this dialogue has no pattern, just as creativity has no pattern.  Just as dreaming has no pattern.  But there is purpose.  The guiding star is this: lifting the person from an overall sameness and repetition into a new, freer level of living.

At this level, ambitions and strategies clarify and become electric.  More energy and power are available.  Imagination and the creative impulse are available. 

The dialogues I engage in are about transforming sameness into freedom.

Is this a simple one-two punch?  Sometimes, at certain moments.  But then there is dialogue that is more roundabout, that is like taking an excursion into the country.  Because that’s what’s necessary. 

These excursions often turn out to be about discovering or remembering what the person really wants.

Not about what he sort of wants.  I’m talking about a big desire that is half-submerged under a welter of distractions—and these distractions may have been present for a month or for 40 years.

In our society, emotional resignation and passivity have been promoted as signs of honor.  Sometimes, the dialogue is about stamping out that cozy campfire with a hard boot.

Sometimes, the client is engaged in business strategies, and an aura of confusion has settled in around these efforts—in which case, the dialogue is all about clarification of tactics and removing the inessentials.  The road has become blurry; and re-focus, concentration, and execution are needed.

The space we call freedom doesn’t eliminate work, striving, and learning, but it does make the effort exciting.  It does dispel a sense of drudgery.

Hope, a light up ahead, renewed dreams, ambition, energy, direction—these are fine things.  They shouldn’t be minimized. 

The dialogue has no set boundaries.  It doesn’t rule out possibilities.  It is ultimately based on the fact that we all can do much more than we ordinarily suppose we can.

Here’s a fairly useful analogy.  Consider an inventor.  We can see him at various stages.  At first, he may have no idea he can invent anything or that he even wants to.  He’s in the dark.  He may know he has a tag-end of an idea, but he doesn’t know what it’s about.  It’s an unformed dream.

Then, later, he realizes he wants to invent something, but he doesn’t yet know what it is.  Still later, he has a concept of the invention—and then, in later stages he has a prototype; he’s testing the prototype; he’s refining it; he’s finished it and it works the way he wants it to work; he’s ready to scout out investors; he’s looking; he finds seed money for production; he goes into production; he’s selling the invention—and so on and so forth.

Working with such a person, I might find him at any one of these stages.  I engage in dialogues with him, and he will gradually see what he needs.  He’ll wake up to that.  The vision and the direction will come into focus.  The work that lies ahead will clarify.  And then at some point, the road will have definite markers.  From that moment on, it will be about action.  About specific action and keeping distractions in the background.  And his velocity will jump.

There is always something about the dialogue that is un-mechanical.  There is spontaneous discovery.  There is rising hope.  There is the creative impulse.  There is the energy and feeling of the dream coming into existence.

And of course, there is his deepening commitment to his enterprise.

You can’t split all these factors up into neat pieces.  You can’t pretend to separate one from the other.  They operate in concert.  He gains clarity at every stage, but instinct and intuition are always present.

Well, we are all inventors of one kind or another.  We are all creators.  How any one person gets there, how he walks and runs and wanders along the road is unique biography.  Trying to substitute a boiled-down fake plot for that story is a vast reduction of the process.

I’m not saying practical advice is useless.  It can be quite valuable at the right moments.  But we live in a culture that demands answers in short form spit out of a machine, and that’s not going to carry the freight.  Human beings need something else.

In my experience over the last 20 years or so, doing this work, I’ve found that sometimes the very long story needs to have an ending, and sometimes a brief story needs a much wider plot.  There’s no hard and fast rule.  The dialogue works.  It travels.  It curves and winds.  It comes to conclusions.  And then it strikes out in a new direction.  Many things happen.

Everyone wants a better life.  Everyone glimpses what that life might look like for himself.  Everyone wants to imagine a vision and a direction, and then follow and build the road.  Everyone wants the road to widen and expand.

And that’s what my work is about.

It would be nice to say I apply technique 202-A, and then it’s strategy 506-R, and then I tilt my head and breathe through my nose and voila!  Everything is solved.  But it just doesn’t work that way.

I meet a person on common ground and we talk.  The dialogue opens the door for expansion.  Time and time again, I’ve seen this innocent looking setting produce good things.  The work is more simple and more subtle than it seems.  I stick with it.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com
www.insolutions.info

 If you’re interested in becoming a client, contact me at qjrconsulting@gmail.com

JANUARY 22, 2010.  This is the third article in a series about my coaching/consulting work with private clients. 

In that work, I find that blocks to creative power are the single most important issue.

There is nothing more important.

As a very rough analogy, consider a painter who goes into his studio, sits in front of the blank canvas, and can’t put paint on it.  He just sits there.

Or, he comes in and he sits down and he starts to paint.

It’s that black and white.  He either paints or he doesn’t. 

After 15 years of working with clients, I’ve come to the following conclusion: ultimately, the person knows what is blocking him.

He may not be able to articulate it at first, and the answer may be buried under pounds of thoughts and ideas, but the answer is there.

He can find it.

With enough dialogue, I’ve discovered the answer comes.

And it is surrounded with debris from education, family life, and other indoctrination.  That indoctrination is really a pile of distraction from CREATING WITH POWER.  It’s a diversion, like a candy counter can be a distraction to a person who is seeking to lose weight and eat healthy.

In other words, all our lives we are taught to veer away from creative power and do something else.  The “something else” becomes a habit, a reflex.  We become used to doing all sorts of things, none of which is creating with power.

It would be like this: you are taught to crawl; every time it occurs to you that you might want to stand up and walk, along comes someone with a lesson about crawling—how to crawl better, more effectively, more quickly, with more focus.  And THAT is a distraction, a diversion.

With enough diversions, you begin to believe that walking is a fantasy and it can’t really happen.  It was an aimless dream you once had, and it didn’t mean anything.

But it’s there.  Walking is there.

My work with private clients achieves several objectives.  It tilts the see-saw in the direction of the person’s true and powerful desire to be creative.  And with that desire operating, the person is able to do many things he once thought were beyond his grasp.

Two, my sessions with clients (all of which I do by telephone) teach and practice techniques that separate old mental habits from new imaginative exploration.  In other words, the person is no longer the victim of his old uncreative thought patterns.

Three, these techniques enlist the imagination to work, like a new engine, and turn out energy.  The person feels that energy and realizes he can live on a different and better level.

None of this work is dry and mechanical.  It’s all about being able to understand and sense the level at which the person is operating and bringing new imagination into that arena.  It’s a great adventure.     

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

www.insolutions.info

(To contact me about becoming a private client: jonrappoport@nomorefakenews.com

JANUARY 21, 2010.  Many readers know my work as a medical reporter.  This work, which I’ve been engaged in for the past 25 years, dissects and describes fraud at every level of the medical cartel.

However, long before I became a reporter (1982), I was painting, and writing fiction and poetry.  With the great help of Bonnie Lange, head of the Truth Seeker, that work has expanded over the last ten years, and I have written many articles and delivered many lectures on the subject of imagination.

I also work with private clients, doing telephone sessions.  I call this Imagination Work.  It involves expanding creative power and freeing the imagination to improve health, well-being, and to achieve real goals in life. 

Imagination is a subject that fails to interest lots of people, because they think it is a toy that children use to fantasize about what never will be.

Why should anyone spend time talking or writing about imagination?  We live in an age of science, where progress is made by hard-headed researchers who build meticulously on the work of their predecessors.

How could imagination be a secret key to a more abundant and enlightening life?

And if it is, how can people access it?  Where is it?  In what closet does it hide?

How could imagination be a grand solution to the problems we face every day?  Isn’t it actually an escape from reality?

These are a few of the questions I’ve fielded over the years from people who study my work.

Imagination changed my life irrevocably 50 years ago.  I had been a student of philosophy, and after obtaining my degree, I realized that all my major questions remained unsolved.  In fact, studying what great thinkers wrote over the course of nine centuries had made matters worse.

Suddenly, I saw daylight, and I ran toward it.  Everything that had happened to me in my young life appeared as a prelude to making a grand leap…into imagination and the creative life.

I’ve never looked back. 

Since then, I’ve spoken with many people who work in diverse fields—the law, engineering, the arts, healing, teaching, office work, construction—and I’ve seen that those who are successful ALWAYS use imagination as their leading guide.  The rather amazing thing?  Most of them don’t realize it.        

In every field of endeavor, imagination wears the crown.  It throws off old habits and allows the seeker to create realities and solve problems that advance life in new and better directions.

Imagination operates according to abundance, in the sense that it is not limited by “what everyone accepts.”  And imagination expands.  It sees new possibilities where tradition only sees obstructions and roadblocks.

Like everyone else, I have often refused to explore these possibilities, preferring to remain in established channels.  But time and time again, I have been forced to realize that my own problems were being caused by my ingrained acceptance of a status quo. 

And then, I forged and jumped ahead.  Through imagination, I saw answers where, previously, there appeared to be none.

This, in fact, describes the kind of world we live in.  On one level, we feel we must circle around the same old ideas and practices—but we then recognize the world is full of “empty spaces” where new solutions can be enacted.

The New is always about imagination.

Imagination trumps all other cards.  It revels in new invention, new approach, and unexplored territory.  It enlightens.  In fact, imagination shatters the very notion of a problem and a matching solution.  It moves beyond that.  It elevates actions into innovative places where both the old problems and the old solutions give way to greater life.

It’s common to praise every scientific breakthrough as a structure built on the shoulders of the previous generation of researchers.

There is certainly merit and sense to this claim; however, there is also another factor, because in every breakthrough a person takes a leap.  In other words, the past doesn’t entirely dictate the future.

Edison and Tesla and Einstein weren’t inevitable.  For some people, that may be a hard pill to swallow, but it’s actually a glorious circumstance.

Einstein, in a sense, invented the universe the way he wanted it to be, and then found the mathematics to justify that invention.

Each one of us is standing on the threshold of his own imagination, and by taking the leap, something new is made manifest, where before there was nothing.

It is insufficient to say that the paintings of Cezanne were waiting to be made before the painter was born. I understand the merit of that statement, but in a larger sense, Cezanne made a leap of imagination.

He put something on the blank canvas.  Without his daring and creative action, the canvas would have remained empty, or would have been covered with the threads of the past.

The desire for the New is a kind of trigger that calls us. 

Often, a breakthrough is preceded by a period in which the inventor is grappling with a problem that resists solution.  Around and around he goes.  For a time, it was apparently that way with Tesla, the great physicist.  He was seeking to find new sources of energy, and in doing so, he was squeezing the scientific knowledge of the past like a piece of fruit.  But the juice that came forth was not enough.

So he took his great leap.  He engaged his own imagination and saw ways in which a whole new technology could not merely solve, but go beyond what was known and what was acceptable.

Too often we keep trying to tease out and solidify what we already know, when what we really need to do is invent something we don’t know.

This last may sound like a contradiction, but in fact it is what carries us into territory we’ve always longed for.  Territory we’ve glimpsed.

Imagination opens the gates to that place.

It’s the greatest adventure.  

In my work with private clients, I use techniques, exercises, and dialogue to open up this adventure and make imagination more available, more accessible.  This is a grand undertaking.  It is all about expanding life’s frontiers to explore new dimensions.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com
www.insolutions.info

 (If you’re interested in becoming a private client, email me at jonrappoport@nomorefakenews.com and write “Jon Rappoport consulting” in the subject line.)