Neverending Story and the cycles...

 I recommended Neverending story(if possible, not in English) in the other blog with book reviews. In my humble view, in there we have the path of creating something laid out much more clearly then in any other place I know.

Why would that be there, one may wonder. And I think he just made a perfect presentation of how Imagination works and how we interact with it, with the focus(in the second part) of how one writes a book. It just happens that it was so good, that it perfectly fits into how one creates anything, much beyond just a book.

 

Lets look then at the story of the lion and the sword. I won't use names, as I don't want to post them from the English version and I don't know them in the German one.  So just the outlines of the story.

As soon as the main character start to create their own story, after giving it a name, they end up in a desert. And meet a lion. The lion can go very far, but the desert moves with him and all turns to dust.

In my humble view, this points to the first moments when after a long pause one again interacts with the Imagination in a more aware way. Or they start to write something. The main hero personality/ego is still very strong and the subtle movements of the subconscious turn to dust when the story shine the light of awareness at them, as it comes with control at this point, then only the Lion is left. From here on now we don't mean "I am" as pure awareness, instead its used in the sense of someones strong personality, so what often comes with it.

 Like the the Sun, in here the fire is so strong that, so close to it, there isn't place for anything else. 

Now, here, however is the tricky part. As soon as the lion falls asleep a beautiful forest comes out of the dust, always different and endlessly unexpected. So the author is projecting their "I am" in the story,as the hero and there isn't much space for anything more. Yet when the story isn't being written the subconsciousness merge stuff, recreate and bring to the surface slowly, but surely what the author may want his presence in the story to experience.

 And all ends up concluding with a sword that can never be pulled by ones own will. That is the gift that is being given when one realizes the duality of the world there, its endlessly different when the I am is not so strongly present that there isn't room for more, but its very restricted and turns to sand when it is.

 The hero understood that, took the sword and the adventure continue, now allowing the Imagination to paint its own stories and not overwriting that with the personality of the hero.

Much more happens during all this and at some point there is a great battle where the hero wants something so bad, that he hurts his best friend to get it. With that pulling the sword by his own will and with that destroying the desert and the forest back where his journey started.

 This I think, maybe shows the moment someone has lost the ability to allow the Imagination to show him his creation and tries to impose his will so strongly that it brakes the actual story they are in, even though they know how it all works, . 

No cycles anymore, awareness won't turn to imagination, there is pure personality now that doesn't function very well at all and the story falling apart around it(unless one can skillfully compensate for that). And in the next few steps that will lead the hero to the world of the forgotten kings, the place where everyone that imposed on their imagination their own desire, eventually ends up at.

Then working with the imagination , the key to it, is the sword the lion gives the hero. The awareness that you can use strength only when your own personality doesn't invoke it. It comes on its own. Anything else and the cycle of forest to desert, of awareness to subconsciousness and from Imagination to Knowing stops its endless cycles and one may have problem functioning, either by having the main hero of a story becoming very shallow and not interesting, or in real life, losing access to parts of their intuition. As that part, is very connected to Imagination, the buildling blocks of what is needed to build understanding.

So I guess that was the idea here, seems nice to mention Neverending story from time to time, so much have been done and understood there, that no point searching it in other places, sometimes. If one writes a story or wants to access something from the oceans of awareness below our personality and ego, they can do that following the cycles. Can't do it with imposing strength based on what they want, easily, have to give the push then pull away and wait. And it comes.