But it's actually about a deep engagement with processes of transformation:

Between the world you're in…and the world you want to be in, there's this liminal zone where you can play.

You're playing in order to see how and whether you should go through the change…to get a perspectival and participatory taste of what it would be like (in this new world) all the time.

And play correlates tightly with intelligence (not only across human beings, but across mammal species) because:

• it’s adaptive and deeply functional
• it allows you to get better at anticipating the world.

For example…

When a child ties a blanket around their neck and runs through the yard pretending to be Superman, they are imagining that they are Superman.

They're not visualizing Superman.
They are modeling the world the way Superman does…and making a model isn't making a picture.

They're putting in constraints that sensitize their detection of patterns so that they can do things like Superman would do them. See the world the way Superman would see it. Cultivate the abilities and the skills that Superman has.

This is a different sense of imagination.
This is not unreal visualization…this is pretend play.

If you're doing serious play (pretending) you sensitize yourself to patterns that you were previously not sensitive to.

The imagination in those contexts is like the glasses I'm wearing:
I'm not looking at it. It's a lens I've put on that enables me to see things I couldn't otherwise see.

So play sensitizes the child to patterns within the world and within itself that it's normally not detecting and completing.

The child is vividly pretending to be Superman.
And this vividness can help you to connect you to your future self…

Let me explain:

Hal E. Hershfield and colleagues reviewed all the standard propositional inferential techniques we use in order to help people make financial decisions (such as saving for retirement) and they are only moderately successful…sometimes they completely fail.

In one experiment, academics were presented with compelling evidence that they should start saving for retirement. They get absolutely convinced.

But when you check in with them after six months, none of them are saving for their retirement.

So what is the missing factor?

They propose that one can use vividness in order to enhance connectedness to the future self.

Now, the problem with the term vivid is that there’s a possible ambiguity.

One can mean the vividness in a picture (the brightness, contrast, clarity).

But vividness can also mean how engrossing something is:
How well you're seeing through and seeing into a situation…like when you say, “I’m vividly aware of this.”

So serious play can be vivid in terms of how engrossing it is, how much it interests you, and how much it discloses otherwise unnoticed patterns and affords reorientation.

Thus you can properly say that the child is vividly pretending to be Superman.

In real life, we're probably doing both.
But the pictorial vividness isn't deeply important or relevant.
The imaginal (the enacted, engrossing) sense of vividness is central and indispensable.

Hal E. Hershfield and colleagues suggest vividly thinking (notice they don’t suggest “vividly picturing”) about the subjective experience of the future self you are trying to be…and see as your future self; like the child trying to be Superman and see the world as Superman does.

It emphasizes your perspectival orientation towards your future self.

Are you in first person or third person relationship to your future self?

That's perspectival knowing.
That's an imaginal move.

Hal E. Hershfield et al. also talk about your willingness to make sacrifices.

This is based on how close you are to your future self:
In one version, people look at literal pictures (avatars) of their future selves.

They’re not disconnecting from reality by gazing at some internal, unreal image.
Instead, they look through the picture, reaching out to their real future self through whatever image they’re presented with.

And the instructions explicitly ask participants to treat the computer avatar picture as a mirror.

When you're looking at a mirror, who are you looking at?
Are you looking at the image over there, the unreal image?
Or are you reflecting back through it onto yourself?

You see the difference?
When you're looking at a mirror, you're trying to get real information about yourself.

So what’s their point?

This vividness that's affording enhanced knowing of yourself and enhanced connectedness (closeness) to your future self…is all the imaginal.

…if you want to participate (and seriously play) in a training ground for deep personal change, join John for the upcoming cohort "TIAMAT-X" [Enrollment closes January 25th]: https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/courses/tiamat-x