Sophia's Children

“We cannot think our way out of this crisis, we must imagine it.” ~ Becca Tarnas, Toward an Imaginal Ecology

That echos two of Albert Einstein’s insights. Here’s the first, and you’ll likely recognize it:

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Imagination and intuition have at times, ancient and current, been called gifts and arts of the ‘right brain’, the Feminine, and/or part of the ‘intelligence of the Heart’ that were minimized (a.k.a. “soft” skills) and cast aside as the culture leaned far into its experiment (over)emphasizing the left brain, analytical, Masculine mind.

Well, we can see where that experiment has gotten us.

Life, ever-reaching for the restoration of balance, or Ayni in the Andean tradition (and other words for the concept in other traditions), has been stirring and calling us to remember, restore, and reintegrate the imaginal, intuitive, and Heart-intelligence that’s needed as ‘medicine for our times’.

Becca Tarnas muses on this in her lovely, inspiring essay, Towards an Imaginal Ecology, which speaks of the vitalness of tapping these imaginal and heart-centered intelligences as a way of whole-seeing, restoring our eyes to see the interconnectedness, where we’d bought into a lie of isolation and disconnection that has been part of the mechanical worldview.

This small smattering of quotes doesn’t do justice to the importance of our imaginal capacity — which is one of the Sophia Gifts, or part of our Divine Inheritance (read more about our Sophia Gifts & Divine Inheritance in this Sophia’s Children post).

And we know that our imagination, like others of the Divine Inheritance Sophia-Gifts, has been pretty well co-opted or colonized (you’ll remember that theme in the recent Decolonizing the Imagination & Soul post here.)

Here are just a few excerpts from Becca’s essay, but do visit it for a full cup of inspiration.

“ (Joanna) Macy writes, “The imagination needs to be schooled in order to experience our inter-existence with all beings in the web of life.” For Macy, the imagination learns through meditative practice, through exercises that focus “on death, loving kindness, compassion, mutual power, and mutual recognition.” Such practices can expand one’s sense of self …”

and

“The deep ecology of mind (Christopher) Bache cultivates in his work allows us to envision our potentially dire future while learning to cultivate the strong spiritual center needed to stay grounded in such an unstable time.”

There’s much more inspiration and many worthy insights in Becca’s essay, so check it out.

So what did Albert Einstein say about imagination?

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

We might say that imagination and her sister-gifts access from the vast ocean of wholeness, while knowledge and what’s already in our mind is a much more limited database in comparison.

The Feminine Mojo Mystery & Wisdom School includes audio programs and workshops created to stir and strengthen just these gifts … working with the imaginal, with energy, intuition, and whole-body intuition, and other practices that “expand one’s sense of Self” simply by helping to remember one’s Self.

You’ll find more on the Feminine Mojo Mystery School — as well as Sophiastrology and Golden Thread coaching & consultation options — on the Summer Specials page here.

In the meanwhile, be (and imagine) well.

Big Love,

Jamie