Granted that grown sized people do not refer to the friend as imaginary,
or even in the second person, as he should be  --  no, no, no;
that is not what normal, sane human beings call their imaginary friend,
indeed were they to call him by his proper name, they would be deemed insane.
 

So whether you want to face the facts or not makes no difference  --
you not only have an imaginary friend, but he is without doubt
your closest and most trusted friend (heartbreaking, but true).
 

The imaginary friend that everyone has and harbors will be with you to the grave;
unlike flesh & bone friends, nothing you might ever say to him will cause him to
desert you  --  indeed, you cannot make him leave you even should you try;
no matter what happens in your life, he will stick to you like hubris on a dietician.
 

If you are to ever see what is going on you must have a new imaginary friend;
he does not actually replace your old one, and it is best you understand,
and accept that post haste: your old life-long, imaginary friend is not going anywhere,
but what the few (born, this to do) can accomplish is:
the off-the-books development of a non-standard-issue, imaginary friend
who takes up unauthorized residency along side your old one,
and gradually overwhelms him (by force of his scintillating personality, and sex appeal....
....[okay: and his formidable intellectual prowess]).
 

Even after you (if you are the one in a hundred million) discover for yourself
how to nurture this latent, new imaginary friend in you,
he and your old one will live side by side;
those who undertake this activity are never prepared for this;
their minds unthinking assume that ultimate success in the endeavor naturally entails the destruction or banishment of their old friend  --  boy! are they mistaken,
yet note, none of the popular histories written by those claiming to have achieved
full success therein ever mention this --  nay, nay --  assuredly, nay:
they helpless help perpetuate the myth that there is some magical line you can cross whereby what you were previous is forever past,
but should a certain beaver develop in himself, parallel weasel sensibilities,
when conditions are just right (which conditions are always “just right” for everybody,
regardless of what kind of creature you are),
the beaver's beaverness will show itself;
the only way to rid a beaver of its beaverness is to skin it,
(and need it be noted what a, [shall we say], “negative impact” such an act has on a creature).
 

No, the imaginary friend you grew up with is not going anywhere (unless you do get skint,
at which time you will go along with him), and once you are aware of this,
and of the absolute necessity of cultivating an entirely new one to ever find your way to the far wall  --   why would you then do anything whatsoever that encourages the continued appearance of your old, and for this purpose --  useless friend?!
(Does a determined-to-reform alcoholic continue to drink?)
 

Every time you seriously, to yourself, entertain a thought you have had before,
you are taking a drink and making the old, irrelevant friend right at home;
every time you passively allow your mind to take anything that anyone else and their imaginary friend says, seriously  --  you are doing the same thing;
all in all: whenever you mentally even get into the big pool with the rest of normal humanity --  you are drowning the possibility of the new, needed imaginary friend.

Your old, and routine, imaginary friend is naturally attracted to the ordinary imaginary friends of other human beings  --   this is as normal as breathing & sex,
but normal is not what you want if you really want to wake up to
what is actually going on  --  not normal in the secrecy of your own head.
 

Your old imaginary friend is always there;
always prepared to support you in whatever you think, or say you feel
(it is either that, or:  you are always prepared to support him thusly…….it’s hard to keep straight, huh?!),
but if you have any real business reading these daily reports
then you have another latent, imaginary friend in you (in your brain's wiring, to be exact)
who can and must be nurtured by your own efforts,
or you will never experience anything more than merely reading about
what doing so can accomplish.
 

If you start out, part of such a minute number, and with the odds against succeeding already enough to stagger a squat-eyed Vegas bookie  --   why cave in?!  --
why sit there passively like everyone else amidst the never ending cascade of meaningless words, thoughts and concerns that fill up the inner life of ordinary men when, with the right individual effort you can raise up this new potential friend
in your brain who can readily see through the smoke and din that normally
clouds men’s sight of their world and their self;
what you do is not listen to anyone else:
do not, even to yourself, argue with what they say;
just appear pleasant and pleasantly non committal,
and be always engaged in a fierce but joyful secret investigation,
always  --  in all circumstances  --  be non verbally asking yourself:
“What is really going on here that no one else sees?” --
and there always is something: always, always, always and forever,
and no one, no one, no one  --  not even them over there, are aware of it;
no one can be aware of it for you  --   only you can for yourself, and to do so --

And yet again, a son engaged a father in conversation (a great imaginary friendship if ever there ever was one!):
“Do you really like me?”
    “As much as you do me.”
”But I expected better than that from you  --   for I often do not like you very much.”
    “All right then: I like you more than you do me, but you being you and me being me --
     you will never be able to realize that  --  which is why I did not say that in the first place.”