HOW TO DREAM BEYOND THE REAL:
How Imagination Leads to Transformation
Loyola Institute for Spirituality
January 25, 2015
Most Reverend Gordon D. Bennett, S. J.
Bishop Emeritus of Mandeville
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Good afternoon and Happy New Year!
My aim today is not to tell you anything you don’t already know. I know I may not look like it, but let me tell you all the same that I’m too smart to try to add something to your already overwhelming knowledge. May aim today is to reinforce, synthesize, emphasize, bring forward to consciousness ideas and intimations that are already in the storehouse of your lived experience; and, in doing that, I hope to articulate how we view the prospect of change in the mind and soul, and what we can do to make that change happen.
Let me, then, begin by acknowledging once again that this is a new year. In beginning 2015, many of us have likely made resolutions to improve our living. And now, only a month in, you, like me, may be facing the ugly truth that our resolutions are not working, that this January is just like other late Januarys.
Our experience tells us that there are several reasons our resolutions haven’t worked: we were too vague about what it is we really wanted to do, or there was never a “why” associated with the resolution, so we never took a first concrete step.
Perhaps we were impatient with what we might call the “awkward phase”, i.e., we wanted to see success immediately. Or we might not have put in place a definite protocol for tracking our progress or a reminder system to spur on our steady progress. We might have expected perfection, and so have descended into guilt, shame and regret because we fell short of our expectations. We might have tried to “go it alone” or we gave in to self-limiting “rut” stories. We might have allowed “slip-ups” to turn into “give-ups.”
Obviously, these experiences of our inability to follow through on our best aspirations can be chalked up to failures of the will; but it seems to me that these failures are also the result of limits we have put on our imagination, not allowing ourselves to dream big enough to see ourselves and our lives differently. We give up because we start to believe that a “different me” is too good to be true. We give up because, like the plot of Groundhog Day, we feel we are always going to live yesterday all over again rather than doing what we can do to live a new day today.
My work as a spiritual director and retreat director and simple common sense reflection on the issues that surround all relationships, from the interpersonal to the international, has taught me that the biggest obstacle to our growth is the hidden, yet abiding, conviction that change is impossible.
It is the presumption of inevitability, and the consequent imposition of impossibility on our dreams, that paralyzes us by short-circuiting our imagination and, thereby, making resolutions sterile and impotent. It’s saying, if not in words then in deeds, that the story, our story, will always end the same way.
Let me now, for the purposes of this talk, define what I mean by imagination: a process which is essential for human well-being in which the mind creates objects or scenarios, which are not present, but which allow one to experience as present and to which one attaches appropriate sensory responses.
It is important that we distinguish right away between imagination, as I’ve just defined it, and fantasy, imagination’s sibling.
Imagination and fantasy are related in the sense that they are both born in the mind, and both are expressions of normal and healthy human activity; but imagination and fantasy are radically different in terms of their power to affect human motivation and in their effect on human behavior.
Because distinguishing between them defies scientific precision and to give you some concrete idea of what I’m talking about, I’m now going to say the same thing eight different ways and hope you will see if a difference between fantasy and imagination from your own experience.
- Imagination concerns the possible, fantasy concocts the impossible.
- Fantasy is more personal entertainment; imagination leads to mission and purpose.
- Fantasy lives in its own world; imagination copes with this
- When projects are built on fantasy, we can expect failure. When projects are born out of imagination, we can expect adventure.
- When we hit a wall in life, fantasy will try to fly over it on wings that don’t exist; imagination will start to dig under it with the hands we already possess.
- When our life comes to an impasse, imagination always suggests a realistic exit, fantasy is always locked into true escapism.
- Fantasy always attracts us toward being the best in the world; imagination inspires us to be the best for the world.
- When we are in despair because we see ourselves as anxious, distrustful and greedy, blame fantasy. When we become aware of that touch of grace, that feeling of fullness, because we have done something that exhibits compassion or service or integrity, credit imagination.
In his autobiography, St. Ignatius of Loyola describes his conversion; and I interpret that experience as a movement from living compelled by fantasy to living inspired by imagination.
You know the story: at the battle of Pamplona against the hated French, after a cannonball had shattered his leg and after two surgeries, one without any anesthesia, Ignatius had returned to his castle in northern Spain to recuperate.
He picks up the narrative here (and remember that Ignatius wrote his autobiography in the third person):
“He was healthy in every respect except that he could not readily stand on the leg, and he was forced to remain in bed. Since he was an avid reader of books of worldly fiction, commonly called chivalrous romances, and since he was feeling quite well, he asked for some such books to pass the time. In that house, however, they found none of the type he was used to reading, and so they brought him The Life of Christ and a book on the lives of the saints in Spanish.
By frequent reading of these books he grew somewhat fond of what found written therein. Setting his reading aside, he sometimes paused to think about the things he had read, and at other times he thought of the worldly things that had formerly occupied his mind. Of the many idle things that came to him, one took such a hold on his heart that, without realizing it, it engrossed him for two or three hours at a time. He dreamed what he could achieve in the service of a certain lady and thought of the means he would take to go to the land where she lived, the clever sayings and words he would speak to her, and the knightly deeds he would perform for her (that’s knightly with a ‘k’ I looked it up). He was so enraptured with these thoughts that he never considered how impossible it was for him to accomplish them, for the lady was not one of the lesser nobility; neither was she a countess or a duchess, but her station was much higher than any of these.
Our Lord, nevertheless, came to his aid, bringing it about that these thoughts were followed by others rising from his reading. While reading the life of our Lord and those of the saints, he used to pause and meditate, reasoning with himself: “What if I were to do what St. Francis did. Or to do what St. Dominic did?” Thus in his thoughts he dwelt on many good deeds, always suggesting to himself great and difficult ones, but as soon as he considered doing them, they all appeared easy of performance. Throughout these thoughts he used to say to himself: “St. Dominic did this so I have to do it too. St. Francis did this so I have to do it too.” These thoughts lasted a long time, but after other thoughts had taken their place, the above-mentioned worldly ones returned to him, and he dwelt on them for quite some length. The succession of diverse thoughts – of worldly exploits that he desired to accomplish, or those of God that came to his imagination – stayed with him for a long time as he turned them over in his mind, and when he grew weary of them he set them aside to think of other matters.
There was this difference, however. When he thought of worldly matters, he found much delight; but after growing weary and dismissing them, he found that he was dry and unhappy. But when he thought of going barefoot to Jerusalem and eating nothing but herbs, and of imitating the saints in all the austerities they practiced, he not only found consolation in these thoughts, but even after they had left him he remained happy and joyful. He did not consider nor did he stop to examine this difference until one day his eyes were partially opened and he began to wonder at this difference and to reflect upon it. From experience he knew that some thoughts left him sad while others made him happy. And little by little he came to perceive the different spirits that were moving him: one coming from the devil, the other coming from God.
In his own words, St. Ignatius describes and explains his own conversion experience as a movement from being kidnapped by fantasy to being intrigued by, enthralled by, imagination.
Aided by nothing more than following his daydreams and noting their effect on his affections, he began to discern the difference between those which centered around himself, around his desires to woo women and receive their approval, around his fame, in contrast to those daydreams which centered around his ultimate meaning in the world, around his purpose on earth.
He began to be fascinated by the question: “What if I turned my ambition outward toward God, toward faith, toward community, toward the gospel? And he began to notice that the former daydreams left him feeling restless, bored, anxious, frustrated and confused, while the effect of his latter dreams could be summed up in two words: love and joy.
Very importantly, St. Ignatius considered this progression from vain fantasy to liberating imagination, from inevitability to possibility, to have been inspired by the grace of God. He believed that he had, at long last, perceived and accepted a prior and unconditional love which had always been inviting him to return that love fully and faithfully. Ignatius came to believe that his transformation was more than a willful attempt on his part to control his destiny; it was a mysterious yet palpable love that had first loved him, and was now inviting him into a relationship of intimacy and self-surrender that transcended his passions, his past, and all his weaknesses.
Because of that grace, Ignatius was able to ask imagination’s most crucial question: “What if?” And, again because of grace, he was able to do the very thing you and I find so difficult: he took the first step. Perceiving and accepting grace into his life put Ignatius on the road to what has subsequently been described as the content of his mysticism: not just finding God in all things, but simply finding God.
For me, the greatest part of what happened during Ignatius’ convalescence was not just that he experienced what he did and was able to articulate it, but that he also had the patience and the skill to set the imagination of others on fire so that they set about to be the best they could be. Not for themselves only, but for the Lord and for the world. His Spiritual Exercises remain, five centuries after his death, a remarkably and universally effective guide to spiritual freedom and to love for God.
I think of the fact that the apartment in Montmartre that Ignatius shared with St. Francis Xavier and St. Peter Faber at the University of Paris was transformed into a place in which the grace of imagination united three men whose personalities and histories were so different in vision and affection. Here was Ignatius, the purified soldier who ended his life as the superior of a new and dynamic religious order; here was Xavier the affable, passionate aristocrat, who ended his life as the church’s unequaled missionary in India and the far East; and here was the meek, gentle, introverted Faber, whom Ignatius considered the best at directing the Spiritual Exercises, and who died of a fever, in Ignatius’ arms, in Rome.
Don’t let anyone tell you imagination doesn’t have power.
Obviously, the effect of Ignatius’ conversion continues today and continues to have a great effect on both the world’s consciousness and its conscience in the person of Pope Francis. There are many reasons the Holy Father continues to make the church and world sit up and take notice; but I would say that the most important reason is that he has been steeped in the liberating power of imagination because he has allowed himself to be entirely taken up into God, and, thus, has every reason for joy and no reason to fear.
Although many people might be surprised by this statement, especially since it comes from the mouth of a Jesuit, but, nonetheless, really needs to be said. St. Ignatius did not invent this path to freedom and possibility. St. Ignatius received this grace from his contemplation of Jesus Christ’s own proclamation of the Kingdom of God, in the gospel. The Kingdom of God is not a place; it is an attitude of mind, a worldview, a stance toward reality. It is the ever deepening disposition that “Nothing is impossible for God” (Luke 1:37). And, more to the point, Jesus Himself says: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21). And in the gospel reading for today, Jesus says: “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” it is coming into being right now, as we are sitting here.
For me, our entrance into the Kingdom of God passes through our imagination; because imagination alone, among our human faculties, allows us to see beyond appearances and so move from the mundane to the miraculous. Imagination is what helps us appreciate what Albert Einstein observed about human living: “We can live life as if nothing is a miracle or we can live life as if everything is a miracle.”
In the gospel of Mark, Jesus continually berates the disciples for their “hardness of heart,” for their kind of dull, uncreative, humdrum perception of reality, that clinging to inevitability that blinded them into missing the meaning of his presence in the world. Jesus came to announce a world in which miracles are not the exception, but the norm. I see Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand in Mark as the foundational miracle of the Kingdom, a stunning display of compassion and generosity akin to the first miracle of creation when God brings something out of nothing. With only five loaves at hand on that hillside, all ate and were satisfied. Just a chapter later, after Jesus has calmed a storm which threatens the safety of the disciples and they are freaking out, Jesus chastises them by saying that “they had not understood about the bread.”
If your imagination doesn’t help you to understand about the bread, chances are you’ll never understand the resurrection.
The entire gospel of John, I think, is an invitation into that world of possibility, into dreaming beyond the real. Jesus’ first miracle in the gospel, turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, is so subtle that nobody even sees it happen. Its purpose seems to be that, now that Jesus is present in the world, there is no longer any such thing as business as usual. In fact, now that Jesus is in the world, this observation of C. S. Lewis’ is the new coin of the realm: “Every idea we have of God, God must, in His mercy, shatter.” Because the miracle itself is so hidden, the point of it is to emphasize that, because God’s reign has arrived in the person of Jesus, there is now space for new possibilities, possibilities that will make a world of difference in how we perceive the world.
In the gospel’s most dramatic scene in John 11, as Jesus is standing with Martha outside Lazarus’ tomb, the encounter between them, once again, revolves around seeing possibility. Jesus orders the people: “Roll back the stone.” Martha objects because she cannot let go of her expectations and her experience. And then Jesus asks her the crucial question: “Did I not tell you that, if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” And, after a prayer to the Father, in which Jesus emphasizes that this miracle is being done so that the onlookers will believe, Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb.
In John’s gospel, Jesus invites us into challenging, and then changing, the paradigm by which we see reality and live in it. He challenges us to move from a paradigm of “I’ll believe it when I see it” toward a paradigm of “I’ll see it when I believe it.”
This shift of paradigm is extraordinarily difficult. No wonder Jesus tells Nicodemus in chapter 3: “Unless one is born again, born from above, one cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” Changing the paradigm means starting all over again, completely rearranging one’s reality; and this is a process which is impossible without an imagination aided by divine grace.
The change in paradigm is once again emphasized in Jesus’ last words in chapter 20, the gospel’s first ending. This statement is the only beatitude in the gospel of John: “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
In the mindset of imagination that characterizes the Kingdom of God, if you don’t believe it, you’ll never see it.
Obviously that beatitude was meant for all of us who will never, like the first disciples, experience the mysteries of God up close, for all of us who must rely on grace and on faith and on hope to live our lives with an openness to miracles.
We ask ourselves this question: is there anything we can do to allow ourselves to live in the space Jesus, God’s human face, opened for us? Are there any skills we can practice that will allow us to liberate our imagination so that we can be set free to dream beyond the real?
Of course, the grace to do so is always available and there is nothing more that God wants than that we take advantage of that grace.
Since this is one of those “how to” presentations, I wanted to conclude my remarks today by suggesting ways in which we might place ourselves in the space that allows our imagination, always working with grace, to become liberated from inevitability and open to possibility.
The first suggestion is that we allow more silence into our daily lives. If our lives are always dominated by both exterior and interior noise, by our occupations and our pre-occupations, trying to unleash imagination is like rain falling on rock. When our attention is consistently kidnapped, as it is when life is noisy, the soul’s wings are too heavy and it cannot soar. As an example, a fast from technology, letting the devices and contraptions go for a while every day, cannot help but allow inspiration to arise from inside and let authentic desire find its voice.
Secondly, we might occasionally, and especially when we become conscious of how stuck we have become in the never-changing movie of our lives, simply propose the question: What if? Not only does that question keep despair at bay, it also moves us to start to imagine ourselves creating different scenes in that movie, scenes which just might stir up a renewed desire for change and a keener awareness of the tools we already have within in order to actually initiate change.
Next, we might actually try what is called “acting as if,” and by that I mean actually trying on the attitudes and behaviors which we think would characterize the person we want to become. For example, if I want to improve my physical health, I will try to think and act like and choose what I believe a physically healthy person would think like, value and choose. This is an extraordinarily helpful discipline because one can actually see oneself becoming that which one dreams of becoming.
Acting-as-if might lead to our adopting some of habits which are the actual spiritual disciplines: daily prayer, journaling, serving the poor, making the desire for a certain depth in life more practical and concrete. Most people want the fruit of deeper spirituality without committing themselves to the kind of discipline which makes spiritual growth possible. This is especially true of those many we hear today who will describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. They will say: “I believe in God, I just can’t stand denominations and institutions.” OK, fair enough. And yet I can’t help but notice that these sentiments are not usually accompanied by the discipline and the sacrificial commitment that accompany authentic conversion.
Becoming adept at dreaming beyond the real will also, I think, involve becoming more skilled at hearing the voice of God, distinguishing between the voice of God and the voice of the Evil One, a skill that is the fruit of spiritual direction and practicing discernment in ordinary life, learning and practicing the Examen of Consciousness of St. Ignatius, and participating in retreats from time to time, all of which I recommend heartily.
As Gerald May suggests in his book Addiction and Grace, dreaming beyond the real will entail an intentional commitment to the pursuit of five virtues which hold the key to keeping our hearts nimble and available for God to reign in our lives: honesty, which he defines as living in the truth of who we are, assuming that God is good and that there is nothing we have to fear from God. Second, claiming our dignity, assuming that, whoever we are, God created us in His image and there is nothing outside of us that can equal or surpass or even add to this dignity. The third virtue is that of community, that is, a willingness to be accountable both to and for others under that the assumption that God works not only in us and around us, but, also, God works among us. May encourages us to pursue the virtue of responsibility with the assumption that, as humans, we will sometimes make mistakes in our discernments. When we do, we need to own up to them and not fall prey to the “tyranny of perfection” in which we avoid choosing anything until we are absolutely sure we are right, or we blame someone else for what has clearly been our choice.
And lastly, dreaming beyond the real requires the virtue of patience, recalling these words of David Schlafer: “Grace is amazing all right – but it is not necessarily sudden.”
I want to repeat that none of these practices will automatically, ipso facto, presto change-o, by themselves, produce a new and improved you. Imagination is never the result of pure willfulness. It is always a mysterious and surprising confluence between God’s grace and the spaciousness we have provided for ourselves. Or, as in the case of St. Ignatius, the spaciousness which we find has been thrust upon us by adversity
One final word on what God does and on what we can do. A dear friend of mine, whose name in Hunter, is an avid soccer fan who played the sport from his earliest days up through university. Hunter shared with me that one of the favorite habitual exhortations he and his team received from one their coaches was this: “Take the space.” What that means is that, as the object of soccer is to continually move the ball upfield, it is important to move the ball where there are no opponents or other obstacles, to take the ball into the space in order to advance it.
I think that is what you and I are able to do with respect to liberating imagination and dreaming beyond the real: we take the space, we run where there are no opponents or obstacles, hoping that, with our imagination, we can move our lives forward and advance our lives upfield.
And, if we don’t believe we are capable of that, we’ll never see it.
Thank you very much for listening.