Your spiritual imagination has been a threat since 1517
Renaissance scholars discovered how to control human imagination. Big tech perfected it. But there's a way...
Reclaim the World of Dreams is a labor-of-love free publication that is supported by those who purchase my immersive and in-depth classes.
Right now enrollment is open for my latest class, Coming Home to Yourself: A 6 Week Journey to Unshakeable Intuition. Class starts March 21, 2025 and I’d love to see you there:
In 1517, as Martin Luther was nailing his theses to a church door, another revolution was quietly unfolding in the halls of power.
Renaissance scholars had uncovered something that would change the course of history: mastery over the human imagination wasn't achieved through force, but through controlling what scholar Ioan Petru Couliano called "the phantasmic process" - the way humans process and create internal images and meaning.
This was the seed of the censorship and propaganda we experience today. These scholars discovered that by controlling the symbols, images, and stories people encountered, they could shape not just what people thought, but how they thought. More crucially, they could influence what people believed was spiritually and imaginatively possible.
The implications were staggering.
Instead of burning heretics, you could simply make certain types of spiritual experiences seem impossible or absurd. Rather than forbidding revolutionary ideas, you could make them literally unimaginable by controlling the building blocks of imagination itself.
This marked a profound shift in how power operated.
The Catholic Church had already begun restricting direct spiritual experiences, insisting that all visions and revelations needed institutional interpretation. But the Renaissance scholars went further - they created what we might now call "reality architecture."
They understood that someone who can't imagine alternatives can't create them.
What makes this historical moment so crucial for understanding our present crisis is the eerie similarity of methods. Just as Renaissance power brokers learned to manipulate “phantasms” - the numinous images that shape our reality - today's corporate-driven interests have mastered the manipulation of digital “phantasms”. Every notification, every curated feed, every viral piece of content serves the same purpose: to occupy your imaginative capacity with pre-approved visions of what's possible.
This is why social media feels so much like a Renaissance court - a carefully choreographed dance of images and symbols designed not just to capture attention, but to colonize imagination itself. The methods have evolved, but the core strategy remains: control what people can imagine, and you control what they can create.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONTROL
What the Renaissance scholars could only dream of, modern technology has perfected. Today's tools of imagination capture operate with unprecedented precision. Every time you scroll through your feed, you're walking through an invisible maze designed with one purpose: to capture and redirect your spiritual-imaginative energy into streams of profitable data.
Think about what happens during an average day of social media use…
Your attention is deliberately fragmented into smaller and smaller pieces. Each notification triggers a micro-adrenaline spike and dopamine drip. Each scroll presents a new crisis, a new outrage, a new distraction. This isn't just about wasting time - it's about preventing the deep states of presence where genuine spiritual imagination flourishes.
The genius of this system lies in its subtlety.
Unlike the overt thought control of past centuries, today's architects of reality don't need to forbid spiritual experiences - they simply make it nearly impossible to sustain the internal conditions necessary for them to arise.
When was the last time you sat in uninterrupted silence long enough to hear your own inner voice? How often do you reach for your phone the moment spiritual (or any) discomfort arises? Even in the toilet? (Yeah, let’s not lie about it.)
This isn't random.
The same algorithms tracking your purchases are monitoring your patterns of attention, learning exactly when and how to interrupt moments of potential awakening. They've discovered what Renaissance scholars knew intuitively: a person constantly reacting to external stimuli cannot access their deeper spiritual knowing.
But here's what makes our current moment uniquely dangerous: these tools don't just distract us from our spiritual imagination - they actively replace it with artificially generated visions.
Social media feeds aren't just showing you content; they're training your imaginative faculty to operate within increasingly narrow parameters. Like a muscle being systematically weakened, your natural capacity for spiritual vision atrophies while your dependence on their curated reality grows stronger.
SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION AS RESISTANCE
The most powerful acts of resistance often appear small at first glance.
Take Harriet Tubman, who relied on prophetic dreams to guide hundreds to freedom along the Underground Railroad. Her deep trust in spiritual vision wasn't just faith—it was a practical tool that allowed her to perceive possibilities invisible to her pursuers. Each successful journey proved that imagination, when untamed, could outmaneuver even the most sophisticated systems of control.
When Harriet Tubman needed her most crucial guidance, she would feel a sudden, urgent need to "go to sleep." During these involuntary "sleeps," she would leave her body behind and soar like a bird over landscapes she had never seen with her physical eyes, mapping safe routes and foreseeing dangers with uncanny accuracy. Her aerial visions weren't just dreams—they were revolutionary acts of spiritual cartography that outmaneuvered entire systems of oppression.
This is why authentic spiritual imagination terrifies those in power—it operates in realms they cannot monitor or control.
When Tubman was guiding people to freedom, she didn't just rely on the North Star or coded quilts. She accessed what she called "direct intercourse with heaven," receiving such precise intelligence that she could find hidden fords in rivers or sense when slave catchers were closing in. Her visionary capacity wasn't some vague "intuition"—it was a refined spiritual technology that consistently outperformed the most sophisticated surveillance systems of her time.
The force that flowed through Tubman came from ancient sources. Like the dream trackers of West Africa who could shift into animal consciousness to scout terrain ahead, she moved between worlds with fluid grace. During rescue operations, witnesses described her appearing to be in a trance state, yet displaying an uncanny ability to navigate through wilderness in total darkness. When she sang spirituals to signal safe passage, her voice carried what one witness called "wild, plaintive minor strains and unexpected quavers" that no white person could replicate—the sound of spirits moving through human form.
This kind of sovereign spiritual imagination doesn't just perceive alternative realities—it makes them possible. When Tubman told abolitionist Henry Garrett that liberation was coming soon, declaring "My people are free! My people are free!" while slavery still held legal sway, she wasn't predicting the future—she was midwifing it into being through the force of her spiritual vision.
To repeat again… this is why genuine spiritual imagination terrifies those in power: it operates outside their algorithms. Someone deeply connected to their visionary capacity can sense truth beneath layers of manipulation. They can imagine solutions that don't profit the status quo.
Most dangerously, they can envision and therefore create worlds that make current power structures obsolete.
Think about what happens when people truly trust their spiritual knowing…
They might choose rest when the system demands productivity.
They might recognize allies where propaganda insists they see enemies.
They might create art that awakens others' dormant imagination.
Each of these acts ripples outward, creating cracks in the carefully constructed walls of what's considered "possible."
We see this pattern repeated throughout history. During times of intense suppression, people preserved their spiritual imagination through seemingly innocent practices—folk songs that contained coded wisdom, crafts that mapped paths to freedom, stories that kept alternative realities alive. (We’re going to talk more about this in the coming weeks.)
These weren't just cultural artifacts; they were technologies of resistance, ways of keeping the visionary faculty active when direct expression was dangerous.
Today's resistance requires similar creativity. Every time you choose deep presence over endless scrolling, you're engaging in spiritual rebellion. When you trust a dream enough to change your life's direction, you're proving that authentic imagination still outstrips artificial intelligence. When you gather with others to share unfiltered visions of what's possible, you're creating zones where genuine spiritual imagination can flourish.
THE TACTICS THEY USE
Let's break down their playbook with clear eyes…
Their first tactic is simple but devastating: overwhelm your nervous system with an endless barrage of crises. When you're constantly processing threats—whether real or manufactured—your system shifts into survival mode. In this state, accessing deeper spiritual knowing becomes nearly impossible.
The second layer is more insidious: they create an environment of perpetual uncertainty about what's real. Not just about world events, but about your own lived experience. When you can't trust your senses, your dreams, or your intuitive hits, you become dependent on external validation. Every spiritual insight gets filtered through: "But what if I'm just making this up?"
One of their most sophisticated tactic targets the root of spiritual sovereignty itself: your ability to maintain internal coherence. Notice how hard it's become to feel confident about your own decisions, or sometimes to even sustain a single train of thought, let alone enter the deeper states where spiritual imagination flourishes. Each notification, each breaking news alert, each "urgent" email fragments your attention further, making it nearly impossible to drop into states of genuine presence.
The fourth and perhaps most insidious tactic is the deliberate recycling of narratives that reinforce our spiritual and imaginative constraints. Consider how many of our most popular stories follow the same exhausted pattern: a singular exceptional hero, usually backed by existing power structures, saving humanity from external threats. These aren't just entertainment—they're spiritual architecture, carefully designed to keep our imagination running in circles.
Even when these stories hint at rebellion or transformation, they're carefully bounded. Superhero franchises might show characters with godlike powers, but they ultimately serve to maintain the status quo. Science fiction that could expand our sense of what's possible gets sanitized into familiar plots about chosen ones and decisive battles. Meanwhile, endless reboots and remakes keep us swimming in nostalgia, seeking comfort in the familiar rather than imagining genuine alternatives.
This isn't random market forces at work. It's a deliberate narrowing of our imaginative vocabulary. When the same stories are retold with minor variations, they become templates that shape how we think change is possible. They teach us, subtly but persistently, that transformation can only happen through exceptional individuals working within existing power structures—never through collective spiritual awakening or radical reimagining of what's possible.
As radical sci-fi and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin asserted:
We cherish the old stories for their changelessness. Arthur dreams eternally in Avalon. Bilbo can go "there and back again,"and "there" is always the beloved familiar Shire. Don Quixote sets out forever to kill a windmill... So people turn to the realms of fantasy for stability, ancient truths, immutable simplicities.
And the mills of capitalism provide them. Supply meets demand. Fantasy becomes a commodity, an industry.
Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivialises. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great storytellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable.
What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life--of a sort, for a while.
Why target spiritual imagination so specifically?
Because it's the one faculty that can perceive beyond their carefully constructed limitations. Someone connected to their spiritual knowing might sense the hollowness of consumer culture, might recognize manipulation before it takes hold, might imagine solutions that threaten profit margins.
Most dangerously, they might inspire others to trust their own knowing, too.
This is where distraction reveals its true purpose. It's not just about wasting your time—it's about keeping you in a state of constant dysregulation or distraction. When your nervous system never fully settles, when you can't find solid ground in your own experience, external authorities become increasingly appealing. Each moment of spiritual self-doubt creates an opening for artificial certainties to take root.
YOU - YES YOU! - HAVE THE POWER TO LOOK AT A WORLD ON FIRE AND IMAGINE—THEN CREATE—SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW
What's unfolding right now isn't just about attention capture or media manipulation—it's about whether humanity retains its capacity for genuine spiritual vision.
The stakes couldn't be higher:
Our fundamental human capacity to look at a world on fire and imagine—then create—something entirely new from its ashes.
In my upcoming course "Coming Home to Yourself: a Guided Journey to Unshakeable Intuition" you'll discover practical techniques for breaking free from artificial constraints on your imagination.
You'll learn how to recognize when your spiritual vision is being interfered with, and more importantly, how to restore your natural capacity for deep knowing.
We'll explore the ancient three-soul framework that allows you to access clear guidance even in times of intense manipulation.
But you don't have to wait to begin this work. Here's something you can do right now:
The next time you feel that urgent need to check your phone or scroll your feed, pause. Take three slow breaths and ask yourself: "What am I being pulled away from experiencing or imagining in this moment?"
Just this simple practice of noticing is the vital first step to begin restoring your spiritual sovereignty.
Because here's what becomes possible when enough of us reclaim our visionary capacities: We stop being passive consumers of pre-approved realities and become active creators of new possibilities.
Like Harriet Tubman mapping liberation routes through dreams, we can begin to perceive and create paths that the architects of control insist don't exist.
Watch your inbox for our next letter, where I'll share a powerful technique for distinguishing between artificial urgency and genuine spiritual guidance. Whether or not you join us for the full journey in our course, I'm committed to helping you restore your natural capacity for clear vision in these challenging times. But if you’d like to go even deeper, I hope you’ll take my invitation:
Until then, remember—your spiritual imagination isn't just a private refuge. It's a revolutionary technology for perceiving and creating what those in power insist is impossible. And no amount of digital distraction can truly sever you from this birthright.
P.S. If this message resonates, share it with others who might be feeling the weight of spiritual disconnection. The more of us who understand what's at stake, the harder it becomes for them to maintain their architecture of control.
As always your offerings & wisdom are precisely on time. This latest letter is a profound expansion upon & weaving of experiences & feelings I’ve had re: social media algorithms, attention & presence for years. Recently, I’ve been reflecting upon the capacity of my imagination and visualizing it as a body of water that has been dammed up by colonial paradigms. Slowly at first around ~2015 those dams started to crack and then in 2020 Uranus transited my natal Sun in Taurus and the dams were completely obliterated! Ever since, my dreams & visions for the future have become profoundly radical, loving, beautiful! Since my dream realm has expanded I’ve been seeking guidance to shape & direct them and making huge shifts in my life (getting sober, deleting social media apps, etc.) so I can actually make them manifest. Your course is coming at the perfect time as I’ve been feeling a longing for deeper guidance around trusting & listening for my inner knowing. I am ecstatic for your latest offering and it’s a hell yes for me! Amaya, you are a divine gift to this Earth and it is a blessing to be one of your many students.
I really love the way you articulate this truth. Well said. And vital.