Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Himma
Use concentrated imaginative attention of the heart (himma) to hold an inner image/intention with such steadiness and reality that it gathers spiritual force and is brought toward manifestation.
Himma in brief: Settle attention in the heart. Form one clear, specific image of what you intend. Gather all aspiration onto it, dwell within it as real and present, and feel it fully. Hold the concentration steadily, then release the outcome in trust. Return to the image until it sustains itself.
What it is
Himma (Arabic: aspiration, resolve, the concentrated power of the heart) is, in the metaphysics of Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (the Shaykh al-Akbar, “Greatest Master”), the creative energy by which a focused spiritual concentration can bring an image into being in the ʿālam al-mithāl — the imaginal world that lies between pure spirit and dense matter.
Henry Corbin translated himma as “the creative power of the heart.” For Ibn ʿArabī the heart (qalb), not the analytic head, is the organ of this active imagination: when the gnostic concentrates the heart’s energy upon a form, that form acquires a real subsistence in the imaginal realm and can, in the highest cases, persist or affect the world.
This is the Sufi root of the wider New-Thought intuition that disciplined imagination is causal — but framed theologically: the human himma participates in the divine creative act, never replaces it.
The Method
Ibn ʿArabī describes himma as both willed (deliberately concentrated) and spontaneous (it can act of itself once mature). As a transmissible discipline distilled from his teaching:
- Centre attention in the heart, not the head. Settle, breathe slowly, and bring awareness down into the chest. The work is done from the heart’s “concentration of energy,” not from intellectual planning.
- Form a single, clear image. Hold one definite imaginal form — the reality you intend, a sacred form, or the meaning you seek to realise. Make it specific and whole, not vague.
- Concentrate the heart’s force upon it. Gather all aspiration (himma) onto that one form, excluding competing images. Ibn ʿArabī’s point is intensity of focus: a scattered heart creates nothing; a wholly gathered one gives the form reality.
- Invest it with feeling and reality. Let the image be felt as present and real in the imaginal world — not a daydream watched from outside, but a form the heart dwells in. Reality is “shared between Him who shows Himself and him to whom it is shown.”
- Sustain, then release into trust. Hold the concentration steadily; then surrender the outcome to God, since for Ibn ʿArabī all creation is theophany — the human himma cooperates with the divine, it does not coerce it.
- Let it become self-acting. With maturity the concentration no longer needs forcing; the imaginal form subsists and the heart returns to it effortlessly. (Sourcing note: himma is a doctrine, not a step-by-step manual; this sequence operationalises Ibn ʿArabī’s teaching as transmitted through the Akbarian tradition and Corbin’s exposition — it is interpretation, not a quotation of the Futūḥāt.)
Source & Lineage
Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (1165 Murcia - 1240 Damascus) set out the doctrine of creative imagination and himma across his vast al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (“The Meccan Openings”) and the compact Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (“Bezels of Wisdom”).
His teaching on the imaginal world (ʿālam al-mithāl, khayāl) shaped later Sufi metaphysics (e.g., al-Qūnawī, Persian theosophy) and reached modern readers through Henry Corbin’s Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʿArabī.; cf.
Common refinements
Thinking instead of imagining. Himma is heart-concentration, not analysis. Drop from planning into felt, imaged presence.
- Scattered, shifting images. Force is lost when the form keeps changing. Hold one image to completion.
- Watching from outside. A picture observed at arm’s length has no power; dwell within the imaginal form as real.
- Grasping / coercion. Ibn ʿArabī frames himma as cooperation with the divine creative act, not magical command. Sustain, then surrender (The Inner Creates the Outer).
- Mistaking it for action. Concentration primes, it does not exempt one from the “footwork” of realisation in the dense world.