17: The Imaginal

a poem a day in the month of may

Dear friends,

How perfect to be writing to you with today’s prompt, the Imaginal, as I am visiting friends in Northern Ireland for a few days and working on some writing while I’m here.

The Imaginal is always around us, if we look closely enough, always floating in the air, making spaces, showing us something of ourselves if we take the time to step through the portal.

Let me give you a little snippet of what the imaginal even is, from mystic teacher Cynthia Bourgeault:

It is traditionally understood to be a boundary realm between two worlds, each structured according to its own governing conventions and unfolding according to its own causality. In traditional metaphysical language, it is the realm separating the denser corporeality of our earth plane from the progressively finer causalities which lie “above” us in the noetic and logoic realms. Put more simply, it separates the visible world from realms invisible but still perceivable through the eye of the heart. In fact, this is what the word “imagination” specifically implies to in its original Islamic context: direct perception through this inner eye, not mental reflection or fantasy.

I say “boundary,” but the imaginal world is actually more of a confluence, for the word “boundary” suggests a separation while what is really at stake in this realm is an active flowing together. “Where the two seas meet” is a beautiful Sufi metaphor to convey the essence of what actually happens here. The imaginal realm is a meeting ground, a place of active exchange between two bandwidths of reality. That is how its cosmic purpose is fulfilled and—I will attempt to demonstrate shortly—the way in which it can be most fruitfully understood.

Imaginal cells are also what caterpillars become when they’re transforming into a butterfly in a cocoon—the goo stage of things. These cells lay dormant in the body of the caterpillar until it is finally time for them to do their work, to help the caterpillar break themselves down and take on a new form, a new kind of life.

“The imaginal realm is a meeting ground” is such a beautiful way to put it. So, as we look for quiet in the chaos, what does the imaginal have to say to you?

Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash

Photo by Stephan Widua on Unsplash

Photo by Kyle Bushnell on Unsplash

I gave you a painting
of a small cottage
in the woods, not 
unlike your own,
nestled there by
the owls, the deer,
the steady-streaming
river.

You noticed right away
what’s there beyond
the painting, the way
there are swirls and
portals hidden there
behind the brightly
colored leaves and
in the sky above
the shingled roof.

Worlds within worlds,
you seemed to notice,
to name, the Imaginal,
a space between spaces,
a mystery of thin places,
the meeting ground where
we exchange life with 
one another as portals
to what we cannot name
open up all around us.