Step #5: Imagination, “The Workshop of the Mind:

“The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man. The impulse, the desire, is given shape, form, and action through the air of the imaginative faculty of the mind” — Think and Grow Rich

##

I apologize for taking so much time to get this out — Summer has been unexpectedly as busy as the school year!

The central thesis is that there are two kinds of imagination:

1. Synthetic imagination. The re-combining of pre-existing elements. This turns life experience and education into new forms. Most storytelling is clearly this, for instance. According to some scholars, Shakespeare only wrote one “original” play — the Tempest, I believe (correct me if I’m wrong, please). And it is perfectly possible that we simply haven’t come across the ur-Tempest, the folk tale, play, song or whatever that inspired him.
2. Creative Imagination. Napoleon Hill treats this as if it is a download from “Cosmic Consciousness.” And…who knows? There may be a higher level of reality we can contact. Goodness knows every culture has its stories to that effect. Or…if could simply be a deeper and subtler working of #1: we simply aren’t aware of the influences that snowballed into an idea.

I think most of us have experienced both. In “Synthetic” we have a need, see a problem, and perhaps research or meditate upon it, trying out different combinations of this and that until we figure out something that…