The individual is not the group

“Exercises and techniques for accessing and deploying imagination…these would be essential. Exercises that allow the individual to reinstate his basic creative position in his own life, his own future. Exercises that allow the individual to use his imagination in many different ways. Ramping up power.” (Preliminary notes for Exit From the Matrix, Jon Rappoport)

There are many ways I could launch from the headline of this article.

In this case, I want to point out that all life is not composed of groups trying to solve the problems created by other groups.

This may come as revelation to some.

In the long, long, long run, the struggle pitting one group against another fails, because, swallowed up in the process is the individual.

He sacrifices what he is and what he can be for the sake of a cause. It may be a just cause, a good cause, a foolish cause, a crazy cause—but the outcome is the same. In the long run.

The best version of a free Republic, whether it was actually envisioned that way by its founders, is: the organized State exists to allow the greatest possible latitude to the individual.

This, in case there is any doubt, is not a prefabricated utopia. Far from it.

What does the individual have to offer? He has everything he is capable of doing, when he liberates himself from petty ideas and limitations about what he is. That journey of liberation is his own. It isn’t anybody else’s.

It is, as I’ve pointed out many times, a journey of imagination.

Here are preliminary notes I made as I was putting together my second collection, Exit From The Matrix:

Imagination lets a person know what could exist but doesn’t now exist. Imagination lets a person know what could be invented. Imagination lets a person know that, despite claims to the contrary, the future is open and unwritten.

Imagination lets a person know that he can think thoughts that have never been thought before.

The journey of individual liberation is, therefore, much more than discovering what already exists in one’s own mind.

The world as it is, things as they are—this is eventually the sensation of depleted imagination. Of course, imagination never diminishes, it just waits. For you.

The deployment of imagination unlocks hidden energies. A power, sought after and never found in other endeavors, appears.

Psychological tests are tests of imagination. The less you have, the more normal you are. If you have none, you’re perfect. Then they put you in a field and call you a rock.

Tiny imagination is just part of this absurd culture. You don’t have to go along with it. You don’t have to think the leading frontier of imagination is about finding a spray that will make your hair look like a shellacked rabbit.

Imagination is larger than any universe. It needs no sanction from the world or from other worlds. It is not some secret form of physics. It is not religion. It is not cosmology. It is not any one picture of anything. It’s what you invent.

The group does not have imagination. It poaches on individuals with imagination.

The group is a graveyard where imagination has been downgraded and forgotten.

The group is the rationalization for people who have lost the thread of their own imaginations.

The group is the feel-good place where people can console each other about the loss of their own imaginations.

The group sometimes acts to liberate the individual, but then the group forgets what it’s been doing and moves forward for its own sake, for its collective power. And that power opposes what the individual can be.

The group is a locus for discussion that eventually leads to a zero effect. Anyone who wakes up to his own imagination would leave the group.

The group is a place where people are invited to forget they are individuals.

The group is promoted by people who are afraid of their own imaginations and the implication that they create their own futures.

The group is promoted by people who want to leave their own individuality in the dust.

The group is for people who demand: “We must all agree on something.”

The group may have temporary value, but it never disbands. It becomes a fungus. It seeks more territory.

Imagination soars. It is the individual at the edge of his own exploration.

Imagination was the source for the building of modern civilization. But then civilization became dedicated to itself and the group.

The individual never goes away, and neither does his imagination.

Imagination can light up a room, a house, a city, a nation, a planet, a galaxy, a universe.

January 8, 2016
by Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.