The new year is a chance to start over. New year, new life.

Although quantum physics proves that time is truly an illusion, and thus markers of time merely human constructs that help us shape our life and direct our desires into an orderly and manageable process, this is nevertheless a valuable opportunity to redesign and redefine what we believe is possible.

To really create something new we need imagination. All that is possible must be imagined first. Imagination is the door through which we are able to access the world of infinite and eternal possibility. English poet and mystic William Blake understood this and, more than two centuries ago, observed: “Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

This ‘vegetable’ world gives only faint hints as to what is really possible if we could forget everything we have ever been taught about human life, and imagine a life without the limitations or constraints of others’ (ie our teachers’ and educators’) perceptions.

On the weekend the ABC aired an interview of Australian wildlife cinematographer Jim Frazier. Frazier enjoys an international reputation and has won numerous awards for his contribution in his field. One of his most notable achievements is the invention of a camera lens that enables one to photograph wildlife up close whilst keeping everything else in the background in perfect focus.

Scientists told him that such a lens was not possible, and he admitted that if he had listened to them he would have given up, defeated. But because he genuinely believed such a lens was possible, because he could imagine it as a real possibility, he found the determination and the ingenuity he needed to transform his imagination into physical reality. As he said, he found a space of perfect optics within what physicists declared was a law of imperfect optics.

This is a profound description for manifesting the perfect and eternal in a world beset by limitation, lack and imperfection. It is what the most brilliant and creative inventors, designers, composers and artists do all the time, and we are all capable of it. But first, we must imagine it.

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on December 30, 2010.