What makes an actor or actress great instead of just good? They don’t play the part, they become the part. There is no concept of "Wow I am doing a great job on this stage!" There is no self-observation of their own acting because they are no longer there to do the observing. They have become one with the character they are playing. For the time that they are on stage, the play is no longer a play but instead is the only real life they’ve ever known.

In human life, imagination is the stage. To use imagination as it was intended, to manifest our desires into reality, we’ve got to remove ourselves as the observer and become one with the play. In other words, we’ve got to get out of the audience and get up on the stage! True imagination means being in the experience, not observing it. You cannot fully experience something you desire vicariously. You must live it out like the actor lives out a scene.

An "I am sitting on a beautiful beach…" visualization (scene) means you feel the sand beneath your bum and in between your toes; you see the waves rolling towards you; you hear the seagulls crying above you; you feel the wind in your hair; and you taste the salt on your lips. You don’t stand off to the side and watch yourself sitting on the beach, you are on the beach. When you do that, you become one with the experience emotionally.

This is how all worldly reality is created. It is created in the imagination. Even if you aren’t consciously aware of it you are imagining things all the time. Every thought you have is processed as an image in your mind, no matter how fleeting. Anytime you have a thought that is similar to any other thought you’ve had previously, they add to that image. Eventually all those thoughts create an image that is so powerful it becomes a belief. And what you believe becomes your reality.

To use imagination consciously and deliberately is to manifest your reality consciously and deliberately. In other words, you get out of the audience and stop watching your own life play before you as if you had nothing to do with it. In this way, imagination literally has the power to change your beliefs, and your beliefs have the power to change your life.

Why is being an observer not enough? If you want to have anything you must first be it. If you don’t put yourself in the play, when the play manifests as real life through the Law of Attraction, you might not be in it! The Law of Attraction is a law of energy, of vibration. To manifest anything we must vibrate at the exact same frequency of our desire so there is an energetic match up. We do that by becoming one with the experience of our desire in our imagination. We become the part.

Think about it. When you observe someone else being, doing, or having something, do you then find yourself automatically receiving that experience as well? Of course not. Because by Law of Attraction, you only manifest what you believe is true for you. The only way to believe it is to imagine it. You can know a thing mentally by observing it. You can know all about it. But you cannot know a thing emotionally until you experience it. Imagination allows you that emotional knowledge, which is needed if you are to use the Law of Attraction to deliberately draw it into your physical reality.

Whenever an actress is on stage, everything is happening now. The future and the past are wiped out and there is only this moment, this experience. "Now I am feeling this, now I am saying this, now I am doing this…" She is emotionally and psychologically ‘caught up’ in the experience and that is how she makes it real. When you use your imagination deliberately, you too must think from within that experience, not about that experience. To manifest it you must first be it! Imagination means acting, not observing. So get out of your seat, get up on the life stage, and become the part. Don’t be a good actor or actress, be a great one!

Excerpted from the book Delighting the Soul: Lessons on Life Purpose, Authenticity & the Law of Attraction.