AUGUST 21, 2008. Here is another backgrounder for my upcoming telephone seminar, MODERN ALCHEMY AND IMAGINATION, on September 9. Just click on the link above to sign up.

People ask, “If imagination is the key to getting from where I am to where I want go, how do I make the first step? What do I do?”

Well, that question has a catch in it. It’s really saying, “I want to go somewhere new, but I also want to stay right where I am. So how do I do both things?”

And the answer to THAT is obvious. YOU CAN’T.

People are very fond of playing both ends against the middle. But in this case, there is no middle.

The real problem is most people can’t catch the tail of their imagination. They are mired in thinking that has no imagination. They go around and around, like a horse dragging a carriage.

Education has not stood them in good stead. They’ve never really had an encounter with an artist who works entirely from imagination. They’ve never explored that. They’ve skated instead.

Because, obviously, if you want to know something about using imagination, you go to people who have done it. You look at what they’ve done. You connect with inspiration.

Again, though, if people are dedicated to thinking in ways that are completely practical, and if they keep chewing on that cud, they’ll miss the whole deal. Nothing will happen. They’ll reduce inspiration down to a few pieces of hay.

It happens all the time.

People become obsessed with owning things. They want to put them on tables and in drawers. They want to know they have things. They rise quickly with enthusiasm and they sink rapidly into a morass. Then they have to buy something new. Up and down, up and down. This process has very little to do with inspiration or imagination.

Go to the people, present and past, who have lived through and by imagination. Immerse yourself in that. Find out by osmosis what it means. But try not to treat it as some kind of religion in which you’re the supplicant in a shawl on your knees on a stone floor, waiting for a wafer or a sip of water.

The whole culture of the planet is arranged so that people don’t find their own imagination. They skirt around it, they downplay it, they salute other flags, they run after gold stars from the teacher, they adopt causes they don’t truly care about, they come to feel shortchanged---and they rarely look to themselves for the way out of the maze.

If they think about art at all, they view it as something that is static and still, a potted plant. Whereas, art, which is imagination in flight, is dynamic, is never the same thing twice, is never a palliative. It’s alive, and it can transmit life force. At that point, all the games fade away.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

AUGUST 28, 2008. Another backgrounder for my upcoming tele-seminar, MODERN ALCHEMY AND IMAGINATION, on Sept. 9. You can still sign up. Just click on the link above.

Continuing with a series of quotes on imagination, transformation, and fulfillment…

Imagination will sit on the couch and wait forever if you don’t use it. It needs YOU. It doesn’t invent new reality without you.


In ancient societies, people were expected to use their imaginations to confirm and flesh out the existing cosmology of the culture. Late in the 18th century, that stopped. But many people still haven’t caught on.


Do you want government or large corporations to imagine and impose their future on you? Is that fulfillment? If not, what will you imagine instead?


In alchemy, people tried to transform the past and make it the future. Imagination creates the future anew.


You can live from imagination, or you can live from mind. Which will it be? The mind at its best is a backup system for imagination.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

AUGUST 27, 2008. Another backgrounder for my upcoming tele-seminar, MODERN ALCHEMY AND IMAGINATION, September 9. To sign up, just click on the link above.

For the next few days, I’ll be sending you a collection of short quotes on imagination, transformation, and fulfillment. These are all from my notes…

Imagination does not have a limit. There is nothing to limit it. It has no shape. It is not a thing. It is not in this material universe.


Imagination is the leading edge of progress. Your progress, everybody’s progress. It seeks out what has not existed before. It transforms the past by jumping past all theories of causation.


The imagination is not caused. It does not come from somewhere.


When you are living from imagination, you know you can fulfill DESIRE. You don’t have to fumble around. You know.


Imagination is a force. It moves out into the world and remakes reality. It invents new reality. It is the secret that alchemy never found.


When you are living from imagination, you are in your element, in the same way that a fish is in water.


Imagination makes you feel alive. You have life force. You project life force.


Imagination sees you through EVERYTHING. You can climb higher and go farther than whatever situation seems to be stagnant. You can renew yourself and your life at the deepest level.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com