Introducing the Imaginal — Cynthia Bourgeault

Once we lose sight of the imaginal nature of certain realities, the true import of a great body of mythic and religious teachings slips from our grasp. The Imaginal World is the realm where invisible realities become visible and where corporeal things are spiritualized. It is more “subtle” and less dense than the physical world. It is more dense th... See more

In dreamwork, we are stepping into the imaginal borderlands to consciously participate with those images that shape us instead of allowing them to replicate autonomously. As we engage with our metaphors, we change the way we see the world. Like doubling the number of colours we can paint with, we develop a subtler and more complex palette for viewi

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So, the imaginal world is a kind of interface between unseeable spiritual reality and the dense, immutable corporeal world. Reality is multi-layered, and the Imaginal Realm is one of the important, generative layers. The West had such a place for imagination through the medieval period, but in the development of empiricism we lost it completely. No... See more