Decolonize the Imagination:

An Invitation for Edgewalkers

As divine avatar and participant in the current era, you can trust that your work in decolonization is both an inside job and a potent outward offering. You can also trust that any stories, internalized or externalized, that include such concepts as “self” & “other” or even “subject” & “object” are themselves informed by the empire that is showing ever-more-clear signs of toppling, day by day, breath by breath [1]. You can hear it fairly easily when listening to the assumptions inherent in the english language; stories that assign personhood to only some aspects of reality while revoking it from others, stories that assign “verb” to a certain subset of actions and “noun” to what is assumed to be inanimate, stories that etymologically introduce an artificial severance between one set of living processes which are inextricably interdependent & in relationship with all others: these are tell-tale signs of colonization. Moreover, they highlight the ways that colonization has been deeply embedded into linguistic structures, so mainlined into communication these days as to be normalized as baseline.

Badnews, colonizers: quite a bit of what has been long normalized has recently been set on fire [2]. Goodnews, edgewalkers: whatever “fire” is and whatever “we” are have been in harmonious, beneficial, co-evolutionary relationship for many aeons. So here is a choice point. One has, in this moment of collective page-turning, an opportunity to practice untelling old stories and revivifying new stories. One has an opportunity to practice, on the daily, decolonizing the Imagination.

You are invited to try on this practice directly, in relationship with one of your fellow Edgewalkers in this COOAdventure. If you’re willing to walk along in this reflection, let us continue:

The Imagination is a passageway between the subconscious & the conscious experience. As such, it has the freedom to invent & make possible things which the conscious mind has no recollection of having existed before. When Imagination is related to only within the bounds of colonized conditioning, it reflects the limitations of the conscious mind, thereby sending only a certain set of messengers with certain agendas into the subconscious looking for help with creation in the world extant. This is not only a self-defeating, reductionist way to access the infinite Unknown to which the Imagination has access, but it also specifically reflects & reinforces the conditions created by colonization. This is unhelpful to consciousness and it’s not what Imagination is for.

So here we are: opportunity to pattern-interrupt. Consider this assignment a meta-4^th-wall-break for your inner thoroughfares & causeways. You are invited to come to the edge of one of your more difficult stories, something that is occurring as a trigger or entrenched place of deep challenge. There, looking with a bird’s eye view upon the scene of the story, identify the character parts and see which one you’ve made monster. (Likely this is an Other, but then again sometimes colonization expresses itself through the timeworn [3] habit of relating to the Self as monster.) Once character parts have been well identified, you are invited to exercise the following Choice: tell a story about that character that evokes as much Compassion as possible for all involved.

This does not, in any way, mean that there are moral decisions or conclusions about “right” and “wrong” to be made. This also does not require that you, your character in the story, is resolved with any particularly fuzzy warm feeling toward that which has been identified as monster. It does ask you to take on the role of Narrator for a moment, to step beyond the 4^th wall of the scenario, and to make choices about what is so in a way that produces, in you as storyteller, the greatest degree of Compassion available in the moment. In a visceral, clear, liberating sense [4]. It is recommended that you stay well-grounded in the embodied experience while engaging in this practice, as the body has shown to be the steadiest sail-anchor available in the process of decolonization. Additionally, feel free to give yourself generous dance breaks & walkabouts, thorough bird-listens & sun-salutes as needed; the parts of the Imagination that have been trained as fleas in a jar are also due their share of Compassion. It may take a few passes before the storyfreeing function shifts fully into place.

That, dear heart, is why I ask you to share this with a friend. It’s nice to have a friend in the practice. It’s nice to have a friend period. This assignment is a Compassion tool, so we’ll lean into the growing grounds of Compassion: relationship.

Great change is in the works, many edges in play.

Empower what you’re made for with what you’re made of.

May you play your part with your whole heart, wild & well & free.

~LSC~

1. “Toppling” is used in the present progressive vi form here, as in “has already begun the process of toppling and is continuing to be toppled.” It is neither in the category of “yet to be toppled” nor “already done toppling.” To be clear. Let the physics of momentum be.

2. Or toppled, set on fire, and thrown into a lake.

3. Shabby. Threadbare. Ramshackle. Some synonyms. Just some options walking the bridge from the vast Imagination.

4. One helpful sign that there is a high degree of Compassion present: when there is a sense of increased ease, courage, access to humor, no matter how dire the situation. A common tell: an embodied experience of emotion in the distinct Venn diagram of laugh-cry-shout. Some call this dancing. Some breathing. Some orgasm. Some singing. Me, flying. To each their own. Quack.