What’s the latest book you’ve read?  

Who catches your eye?  

What do you ponder while falling asleep?

Inquiry is a quintessential human trait; but what makes each of us unique is our particular brand of curiosity and imagination.  This signature combo, which defines our essence, is the optimal place from which to source our power, our beauty and our highest sense of self.

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cu·ri·os·i·ty [kyoor-ee-os-i-tee]
–noun

•    the desire to learn, know, explore anything
•    a novel or extraordinary object that arouses interest
•    a strange, odd or interesting quality

 

im·ag·i·na·tion [i-maj-uh-ney-shuhn]
–noun

•    the ability to form new ideas, images, be creative or resourceful
•    the aspect of mind which conceives ideas based on information from sense organs
•    an act of creating a semblance of reality

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The forces of curiosity and imagination pull us towards pleasure and integration with the rest of the world.  Together they form a character profile in each of us.  If you follow their lead -boldly and triumphantly- they will take you everywhere you want to go.

Creativity is not always obvious.  It lingers, it lurks, it jumps out when you least expect.  As lofty as a sonnet or as mundane as a post-it note, art is pervasive.  Ancient Balinese had no special word for ‘artist’.  Painting, dancing, sculpting, making music were just things they did between chores.

Every sound you hear, sight you see or thought you think is an original act of creation.  You collaborate with sensory input to generate a new, unique experience, occurring for the first time in the history of the world.  Each day you invent at least one sentence that has never been uttered before -and do so effortlessly.  Creativity is our birthright, it eludes no one.

Imagination, a realm of infinite possibility, gives rise to all we can ever conceive, comprehend or concoct.  It is the mother of all novelty and the source of creativity.  Seemingly poised between inner and outer worlds, it mediates between the mind and body by bridging sensation to thought.  Imagination makes sensory experience meaningful, enabling us to interpret and contextualize it.  This shaping of awareness by our inner storyteller lays the foundation of all knowledge.

Just as imagination informs knowledge, what we know or don’t know affects our imagination.  When Watson & Crick dreamed up the double helix for DNA it was on the back of much study into the molecular structure of genes.  Newton’s mastery of math & physics afforded his creative insights in optics.  Joan Miró’s exposure to Freud and surrealist thought informed all of his art.  The more you know, the more fodder for imagination.

Knowledge and imagination seem to have a sort of symbiotic relationship; each is essential for the other.  Yet, according to Einstein, “imagination is more important than knowledge.”  I am called to agree, not as a rejection of knowledge, more because imagination is a current act of creation –emerging, organic and alive.  Knowledge is based on historic facts.  The past, inert and fixed, is already obsolete.

Imagination generates hitherto unseen mental imagery, making it possible to probe beyond the confines of our perceptual reality.  It helps us weigh alternatives, solve problems, rehearse scenarios, combine facts and stretch knowledge in novel ways to devise new possibilities for action.

Imagination allows us to think about what is, what’s been and what will be.

Take our present moment, humans do not record sensory data unbiased as a camera does.  Perceptions are always assimilated by an inventive, agenda driven mind.  We actively generate our subjective experiences.  A study at Northwestern University monitored subjects’ brains with fMRI to track real and imagined memories.  They concluded that parts of the brain used to perceive an object overlap with those used to imagine it.  Your brain often cannot distinguish between imagining and actually experiencing.

Our past is also informed by imagination, both in how we lay down memories and conjure them up.  We all know memory fades with age.  Recent neuro-imaging studies conducted by Harvard psychologists show that brain mechanisms used to imagine are also used to remember.  Older subjects with a lack of imagination were more prone to suffer a declining memory.  Similar studies of severe amnesiacs with impaired imagining also affirm the link between these two processes.

All thoughts of a future are inherently creative acts -ideals, goals, predictions and fears, even the idea of our own death.  Imagination blurs the boundaries between actuality and fantasy.  Our beliefs, contexts and mental constructions form our framework for reality, which governs what we view as possible.  This in turn generates dreams -our call towards actualization.

It seems we cannot escape imagination’s pervasive contributions to our past, present and future.  But would we want to?  As imagination forges our reality it funds our ability to create stories, identify with others, assess minds, model motivations and develop moral awareness.  The ability to recognize our self in the reflection of others is central to the human experience.

Perhaps the ‘I’ is an elaborate narrative, a useful fiction we develop primarily in a social context, starting with our first ‘other’ = M(other).  It is, I believe, the most primordial story we have, maybe the most powerful.  In a way, we actually imagine our selves into existence.

Now why might we do that?  If imagination is the repository for all that’s possible in human experience, then perhaps we’re part of a universe which itself is a giant experiment in design space, evolution its minion and each phenomenon a hypothesis for testing.  Could we be the answer to a series of questions posed by a curious cosmos?  Imagine that.

Curiosity moves from inchoate yearning-to-understand to concrete requests-for-information, either in the form of actions or questions.  The actions often involve observance of sensory data -like a parent checking a diaper; the questions take the form of how, who, what, where, when, why in some combination -like a first year philosophy class.

A relentless, mysterious drive, curiosity is an ancient channel for life force.  Children stare, dogs sniff, bats listen.  Even the amoeba has a yen to inquire -with pseudo pods and cytoplasmic assessments.

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Imagine this:  On a park bench you spy a red envelope and wonder what’s inside.  Looking around there’s no one in sight.  Moving closer you notice it contains a letter.  As you lift the envelope questions cascade through your mind:  What kind of letter is this?  Who wrote it?  Why?  What does it say?  Should I read it?  Should I not?  As quick as the questions appear, answers follow:  Perhaps it’s a love letter or a poignant farewell note.  It could be a break-up or an epic confession.  Maybe it’s erotica or an elaborate to-do list.  Mystery beckons.  Even before unfolding the page you’ve conjured an array of stories –all vying to be true.  As curiosity and imagination mingle in creative abandon, you are revealed in the process.

Unfolded, the missive displays a strange spiral of foreign symbols spinning out from the center.  It doesn’t look like English and none of it makes sense.  Our curiosity is unsatisfied and so fires off further inquiry and imagining, as we seek to dissolve confusion.

Uncertainty is threatening  –a knife at the throat.  If there are questions left unanswered or a gap in information, the mind desperately seeks to fill it…even if it has to lie.  Curiosity, in its endless urge to make sense of the world, calls imagination into action.   Always demanding observation, it’s why we attend to the new, the strange and the unexpected.  For each question we pose, we tacitly assume there’s an answer.

Ever notice how children are insatiably curious?  Their minds have a gravitational pull towards understanding, almost at any cost (a great adaptation for memetic transference).  But what kids choose to ask about is a useful indicator of their character; it allows you to read their minds.  In some ways, who one is is a series of questions.  Curiosity –our unique, individual curiosity– is a major factor in the fingerprint of our identity.

Pure curiosity is a primal drive, like hunger.  Yet much of the world seems to be starving.  All kids start out asking questions, but as they mature, less and less ask the questions they actually want answered.  So why do they stop?  Do they run out?  Does curiosity dry up with age?  Have you ever wanted to know something but were afraid to inquire?  Why?

During childhood, grown-ups start responding differently to our queries -reinforcing some, discouraging others.  We’re trained to ask only those questions that are appropriate or easy.  Over time our wide-eyed sense of wonder wanes, leaving fear & doubt in its wake.  This reduced daring depletes the urge to step beyond the bounds of social protocol, cultural paradigms and conventional thought.  Curiosity persists, but bravado may not.  The questions still occur, we just don’t ask them.  We stop heeding this compass built in by Nature to guide us though the vast confusions of reality.

Fear is the main limiter of freedom.  Yet curiosity itself can offer the courage to negotiate around it.  When intrigue supersedes trepidation, we act despite our concerns, we ask despite our fear.  The desire to know that which we don’t already know may be the most powerful tool for transcending fear.

When you stop asking questions to the world, you stop asking questions to yourself.  Once that happens, the allure of life evaporates. What we give up is our rawest self…the part that’s most engaged, most alive.  To betray our curiosity is to betray our inner truth.  I view every unasked question as a kind of lie.  

Curiosity keeps the mind alive, it is our access to openness and transformation.  Without it we become closed, stagnant and dated.  To be a human being is to be in an inquiry.  I ask, therefore I am. 

It’s not clear that we’re born with imagination; curiosity on the other hand is there from the start.  Nothing characterizes wonder more than a baby.  Eyes wide and dazzled, they drink in their surroundings.  Every room is a festival of color and motion, a sensational parade.  It’s been said their consciousness resembles the giddy synaesthesia of psychedelic space.  How wild to start life as an acid trip.

Curiosity generates knowledge, knowledge expands imagination and imagination manufactures meaning.  As humans, we are meaning-making machines.  Our response to the existential query “What does this mean?” -is to make up a story by invoking our  imagination.  When something happens, we observe it, then we make up a story.  But we forget we do this and then believe our stories are true.  These stories are signature patterns that create context.  They are the semantic framework that governs your mood, outlook and quality of life.  Since your imagination is what conjures your reality, it characterizes your particular pattern of being, making it the perfect place to stand when you wonder who you are.

Wonder is where curiosity collides with imagination.  It means to be struck with mystery and awe.  Gazing up from the desert to a starry  sky, watching the birth of a calf, tasting your first mango –all these conjure fascination.  A state of wowed disbelief, wonder is the womb from which every question is born.

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won·der [wuhn-der]
–verb
•    to think or speculate curiously
•    to be filled with admiration, amazement, marvel (at)
–noun
•    something strange, surprising causing awe & reverence
•    the emotion excited by what is amazing & astonishing

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Finding ways to embody wonder and be moved by the world is crucial to staying open.  It keeps the psyche strong and heart supple. Pulled forward by the callings of curiosity, propelled further by imagination, your story is an epic, never-before-told tale.  Your unique sense of wonder is what makes you a wonder and is the ideal place to source your beauty and your brilliance.

Posted by: Annie Lalla

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