Meditation or Imagination

Today, one of our training instructors said a phrase that I'm not sure it meant as much to her as it did to me, but all the same, it has reminded me of something very important. Today, I spent almost 4 hours learning about what it means to have Quite Time and at first glance, I was tempted to be prideful. I was tempted to look up into the sky and shout, "what am I doing here?!?!" But, then, the Lord reached into the memoirs of my mind and showed me some places that I still need to be taught about quiet time; specifically as it relates to meditation and imagination.
She said, Meditation is not Imagination. That simple statement spoke! Certainly we can use our imagination to meditate on our Creator, for who could find a being that could create so much without using our imagination. Surely we use our imagination to see the Lord as our shepherd, leading us beside still waters, making us to lie down in green pastures, restoring our souls. Surely in our imagination, we see goodness and mercy following us all the days of our lives.
But there is another part of my meditation, in the quietness of my heart, in my Quite Times where I feel a conviction. What happens when Imagination becomes my Meditation? What happens when my meditation on the Lord becomes unfocused and misguided; no longer guided by His Words and His presence, but instead guided by what I think I might want. I imagine myself with a great following. I imagine myself no longer plagued by my soft-spokenness, no longer full of so many ideas. I imagine myself like someone else. I imagine myself looking like my grandfather with all of the patience in the world and calm acceptance of what comes in life. Then, I remember my own personality. I see my drivenness and my anxiousness and am dissatisfied with who I am. Or I imagine, calling it meditation, all of the ways my other grandfather commands attention. How he is a man of few words, but when they are spoken everyone listens. How his ideas are few and far between, but always worth listening to and working out. Then, I see my head full of far-fetched, optimistic and incredible ideas that often don't pan out. I hear my many words that might be encouraging to people some of the time, but so many often are unheard and imagine that I was differently made. Meditation certainly invokes imagination, but imagination is not meditation in and of itself.
When it becomes really counter-productive is when we begin to imagine God rather than meditate on him and our anthropomorphism really take shape. I imagine how god will give me every desire of my mind...no, I mean heart. I imagine how God will develop in me a totally new person immune to struggling and all of a sudden imagination has taken over my meditation and God has become way too much like me. God made me the way He intended me to be. The problem parts I've come up with on my own. As for today, my job is to meditate on him rather than to imagine the God of Creation The way I see fit.