by Sandra Ingerman: Ever since I was a child I was fascinated with creation and manifestation — how we could manifest a planet filled with joy.

I read many esoteric texts that taught principles of creation. The teachings became a focus of the work I teach and what I wrote about in my books, “Medicine for the Earth: How to Transform Personal and Environmental Toxins” and “How to Thrive in Changing Times: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace, and Joy for Yourself and the Earth.”

There is so much change occurring politically and economically, and in the environment it is important that we hold a good and positive vision for the planet. To do this you must be able to imagine the world you wish to live in. You can do this by engaging all your senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting. For you must be able to fully imagine yourself living in a world that embraces love, light, harmony, beauty, peace, abundance and equality for all.

Imagine what it would be like if people around the world focused together to use their imaginations in a way that created a return to a harmonious way of life:

• What would the world look like? Imagine the scenes you would see. See yourself living in a world filled with love, peace and abundance for all.
• Listen to all the sounds of life around you coming from such a joyful bright state. Listen to the sounds of children laughing, birds singing, etc.
• Feel the joy flowing through you as you live in a world filled with love, peace and harmony. How would it feel to walk on the earth and touch all that is alive?
• Smell the fragrances of the clean, fresh air and taste foods cooked with love.
• Experience this state as if you are living filled with radiance, love, joy and peace right now.

To project a new vision for the planet we must be able to engage the depth of our senses fueling our imagination and creative abilities. As people feel worn down by life, we move into a place where our senses become deadened. The media provides images for us instead of allowing new beautiful and vivid images to arise from inside of us. We listen to music on mp3 players and iPods and we do not allow our inner music to play through us.

The key to using our imagination to create is to be able to engage our strong inner senses with our own vivid images, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings. We need to be able to create our own powerful movies with each of us living in the movie, instead of simply watching the movie. And we need to fuel our senses with intense enthusiasm. We need to stop allowing the outside world to write our script, and our new script must be born from our inner world. And we must use the depth of our senses to make our creations real.

I think that people operate as flat-screen TVs. Where is the depth of our own senses? We are fed so much from the outer world. We need to allow our senses to bubble up through us.

If we cannot get in touch with the true power of our own vivid images, our own internal songs of creation, the beauty of the fragrances we wish to smell, the taste of healthy food grown and cooked with love and the feeling of touching the beauty of life, then there is no power in our creation. If our creation is not fueled by passion and enthusiasm, there is no power in what we project into the world. And the world molds superficiality back to us, as our creative work is superficial and lacks depth and power.

I feel so strongly that this is a vital missing piece. The creative work of so many of us simply lacks passion and depth. But at the same time, we must have compassion for ourselves and find patience with this process. As many of us live disconnected from nature and surround ourselves with so much input from TVs, computers, DVDs, CDs, etc., our own ability to get in touch with the depth of our senses is hidden.

Think about how many years we have been deadening our senses. We need to have the patience to awaken the depth of the wealth of our inner senses. We need to revive our passion and remember times in our life when we felt passion for something where enthusiasm fueled our lives.

Find times in the day when you can go within yourself to bring up your own vivid images and your own songs. Really try to focus on fragrances that you love and tastes that you enjoy. Imagine yourself walking around and touching with your hands different things that you love. Make your inner senses tangible. Do this a few minutes before you go to sleep or when you wake up. The intensity with which you can experience the senses in your inner world will directly affect your ability to create what you want in the world you live in.

It is important to keep up our spiritual work to hold a good vision no matter what we see happening in the world. We are living in a time where the fabric of reality is unraveling, for it is time for us to create big changes as we continue to look at what is not working in our lives and the world. Our dreams create the new healthy fabric of reality.

We use our imaginations throughout the day, but oftentimes we imagine the worst of outcomes. Instead, let us use our imagination to embrace a positive vision.

The spiritual work we engage in is where we all have power to create positive changes in the world we live in. Let us join together as a global community to envision a healthy planet for all of life.