Imagination
Our lives are dyed the color of our imagination.
-- Marcus Aurelius
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. -- Mark Twain
Look for what you notice but no one else sees.
— Rick Rubin
​Once, Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly.
A vivid, vibrant butterfly
who didn’t know about Chou.
Suddenly he awoke, and was a startled, surprised Chou
who didn’t know:
​
Was the butterfly in Chou’s dream?
Is Chou in the butterfly’s dream?
Zhuangzi - Transl. Christopher Tricker
Oh nobly born,
oh you who are the sons and daughters
of the awakened ones,
Do not forget who you really are,
do not forget your true nature.
​
-- attributed to Buddha
What you are in love with,
What seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.
​
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read,
whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.
​
-- Pedro Arrupe
If you know what you want to do
and you do it,
that’s the work of a craftsman.
​
If you begin with a question
and use it to guide
an adventure of discovery,
that’s the work of an artist.
— Rick Rubin
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
— Rumi
Do not say "It is morning"
and dismiss it
with a name of yesterday.
​
See it for the first time
as a newborn child
that has no name.
​
-- Rabindranath Tagore
​
To affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts.
-- Henry David Thoreau
Most of us probably do not approach our work with the awareness and belief that
​
we are artists
​
involved in continuing
the work of creation.
-- macrina wiederkehr
Dawn is a healing medicine,
and morning is a healing drink.
I brew it in my heart
just as I brew my coffee.
-- macrina wiederkehr
The imagination is committed
to the justice of wholeness.
​
It will not choose one side
in an inner conflict
and repress or banish the other;
​
it will endeavor to initiate
a profound conversation
between them
​
in order that
something original
can be born.
​
-- John O'Donohue
​If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another.
This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come… We are all translators for messages the universe is broadcasting. -- Rick Rubin
You have your colors.
You have your paint brushes.
Paint paradise; then go on in.
-- Nikos Kazantzakis
At her Inquisition, Joan of Arc was told that the holy voices that she claimed came from God in fact sprang only from her "imagination", to which she responded:
“How else would God speak to me,
if not through my imagination?”
VIEW FROM THE WINDOW
Like a painting... these colors
are renewed daily with variations
of light and distance
that no painter
achieves or suggests...
All through history
the great brush has not rested,
nor the paint dried;
yet what eye...
ever saw this work
and it was not finished?
-- R.S. Thomas
When I think of this end of my moments…
and I see by the light of death
thy world with its careless treasures…
Things that I longed for in vain
and things that I got —
let them pass.
Let me but truly possess the things that
I ever spurned and overlooked.
​
-- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali #92
We cannot live the afternoon of life
according to the program of life’s morning,
for what was great in the morning
will be little at evening
and what in the morning was true,
at evening will have become a lie.
― Carl Gustav Jung
The trick is to
simultaneously
REMEMBER
and
RE-IMAGINE
yourself.
— David Whyte
The small man builds cages
for everyone he knows.
While the Sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys
all night long
for the beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.
-- Hafiz
Thou didst press the signet of eternity
upon many a fleeting moment of my life...
Thou didst not turn in contempt
from my childish play among dust,
​
and the steps that I heard in my playroom
are the same as those I now hear
echo from star to star.
​
-- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali #43
