{"id":47969,"date":"2022-09-28T09:32:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T09:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47969"},"modified":"2022-09-28T09:32:59","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T09:32:59","slug":"living-in-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/09\/28\/living-in-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in imagination."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This morning I thought about dying.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was sitting on the couch in my living room, petting the cats (we start the day like that, a comforting tribal event), and there it was, the question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘What if I\u2019d die today?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a split second, I felt the thick pain of leaving this world with still so many unfulfilled dreams floating around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought about the people I\u2019d leave behind, and how it would affect their lives, at least temporarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life. Gone. BOOM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A heavy sadness, a deep, crushing dread, washed over me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an instant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cats didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t notice the lump in my throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They just wanted their cuddles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we, we can do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the herd of pink elephants in the room of human existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can experience worlds of feeling, everything included, because of ONE single thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can get lost in storylines and overwhelmed by mental scenes and suggestions and images, and we will be, and we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagination rules our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now you probably know that I talk and write about this a lot, and exploring the process has softened up the usual tightness of the system tremendously, but I\u2019m obviously still part of the system, and still affected by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I get lost too, for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because what makes it so incredibly difficult and challenging AND fascinating and amazing, is that thoughts mostly don\u2019t feel like thoughts, but like the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts feel like life itself, not merely a small part of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And even if we know this somewhat or more than somewhat, we\u2019re still in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess most of us don\u2019t appreciate this enough, don\u2019t recognize it enough, and don\u2019t include this enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Me too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a beautiful, horrifying, mesmerizing phenomenon, and we hardly take that into account, BECAUSE of its beautiful, horrifying, mesmerizing qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t see it because the feelings are just too real, and they include all of our senses in a perfect and totally compelling symphony of human emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t think about it, most of the time, because the mind is already heavily occupied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we absolutely need it to experience pasts and futures and expectations and disappointments, but we hardly ever realize that it\u2019s not who we ARE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing who we are, at the core, opens up the playground that life can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts still feel real and important and, well, like life, but a sense of deep awareness will survive them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will be BIGGER than our changing experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning I was dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bad news was bluntly delivered by my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, the diagnosis was completely off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like it is most of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you just needed to hear this again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @elalfie, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I thought about dying. I was sitting on the couch in my living room, petting the cats (we start the day like that, a comforting tribal event), and there it was, the question: ‘What if I\u2019d die today?\u2019 In a split second, I felt the thick pain of leaving this world with still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[99,102,97,117,100,115,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47971,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47969\/revisions\/47971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}