Love and freedom, Part II: The Formation of Inward Life Through Imagination

In the first essay of the series, we established that freedom is actually love; and that real love is not untethered, but obedient.

Now I’d like to examine the relationship between freedom and imagination. This came up for me last night when I was considering the idea of what enslaves us, what prevents us from being free—what prevents us from being loving.

Imagination is the formation of an image, reflection. All consciousness forms reflections of its perception within itself. This is in the nature of consciousness: it acts as a mirror in which the image of the world is formed. 

Because consciousness is an agency, it chooses its attitude towards image. The world exists before consciousness in a quantum state; it is both a wave, a series of vibrations in relationships that move through time, and a particle, that is, a progression of individual entities existing in punctuated static expression moving through time and space. This sounds very complicated, so we can just boil it down to the idea that reality is both a wave and a particle – until it is perceived by consciousness, at which point it acquires one or the other character.

Because consciousness is a receptive medium upon which reality impresses itself, the difference between the wave and the particle are differences present in the nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness, in its reflection of reality, has the capacity to perceive what it sees as belonging to itself, with consciousness in relationship to it, or belonging to consciousness, which implies an ownership.

The difficulty with this act of perception is as follows. If consciousness sees the form that is created – the image, the imagination (the active imaging) as belonging to itself (ego) it forms a static entity, a particle, a thing which it can possess. 

If awareness sees created form as belonging to itself, it’s a wave—a movement—, which cannot be owned by awareness, but only experienced. To an extent, both forms of perception are "true"; yet in the action of Agency (perception) a discrimination must take place. One might say that we have to choose between whether we belong to the world, or the world belongs to us.

For the most part, all of us are trapped in the image we form, which we think belongs to us. Zen’s koans about reflections of the moon in water and mirrors are about this issue. There can be no freedom found in an image we believe belongs to us, because the belief itself has already relieved us from the obligation of obedience. Here we only love what we think is ours, and nothing else. This is not just a philosophically flawed premise; it's metaphysically flawed, and does not reflect reality as it is. The human consciousness and the nature of agency do provide the capacity for reflecting reality as it is, but only within the medium of loving obedience. This is the antithesis of destructive philosophers such as Ayn Rand. 

There is no reality unless an agency perceives it; yet the initial response of that agency to the perceived reality is what’s critical. Clearly, from a metaphysical and philosophical point of view, the reality that is perceived has a pre-existing quality, else it could not be perceived in the first place. This means that the agency of perception cannot possibly own the results. The results belong within consciousness, but are not of it. Consciousness, in an action of loving agency, receives and is obedient to its impressions, rather than believing it owns them. This fundamental acknowledgment of stewardship takes place in the absence of an assumption of ownership. 

I am; but I do not own. I receive instead of taking; I acknowledge instead of insisting.

From this point of view, we begin to see that the way that image forms in us—the way our imagination functions—has everything to do with the way that our inward life forms.

Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.