Imagined images, words and sounds hardly exist at all.
And they have an important function. They give the world meaning. They create an imagined overlay of the world, giving the world meaning through imagined boundaries, insides and outsides, labels, names, interpretations, stories, and much more. They – quite literally – create our world, they create the world as it appears to us.
For hardly existing at all, this imagined overlay can seem very real when not examined. It’s stories and interpretations can seem solid and real, and have very real consequences in how we perceive the world, and how we live in the world.
When it is examined, through a free or more structured inquiry, it’s revealed as an imagined overlay right on the border of not even existing. It is still used for practical reasons, for navigating and functioning in the world. And – to the extent it’s recognized as an imagined overlay – it’s held very lightly.
Note: On the “my world as completely real” and “my world as completely imagined” spectrum, this view includes both ends of the polarity. My world is real to me, when it’s taken as real. My world is imagined, in the sense that the “meaning” overlay is quite literally imagined. And the question of a “real world out there” is left open. (Any ideas I may have of a “real world out there” is imagined, that’s all I know.)
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– imagined images, words, sounds etc. – hardly exist at all
– is what gives the world meaning, it’s what creates the world as it appears to us
– and yet appear very real, when/if not examined