Many clients who want to go deeper into troublesome issues or problematic themes, even if inquisitive and open, struggle with how to get going. This is quite understandable. What I might inclusively term “inner work”, a term borrowed from the Jungian analyst Robert Johnson (who wrote an entire book on this very topic) is murky, intangible, difficult to get a handle on. Furthermore, our results-oriented Western culture, with its emphasis on doing over being, achievement over process, and productivity over presence, does not readily teach the tools that assist in the discovery and development of inner life, tools like meditation, self-inquiry, and analyzing dreams, fantasies, unprocessed emotions, disappointments, and longings. Far from simple, self-indulgent ‘navel-gazing’, the practice of inner work is essential to bringing soulfulness into our real, worldly lives to enrich them with personal meaning. Without this soul-searching, we are subject to alienation by powerful social forces that influence us to adopt conventional templates for how to ‘do life’, which lead to meaninglessness, depression, and even despair.
Deconstructing these imported and impersonal templates can be liberating and is usually also accompanied by some struggle, resistance, and emotional pain. Even when there is tension between the true self and the persona, or the socially-constructed presentation of ourselves, it’s difficult to let go of what is familiar and expected in order to chart new territory. What actually means something to me beyond what society demands of me?
Our sense of original and unique purpose is incremental and hard-won, never complete as we develop and are drawn to revise, enlargen our scope, and carry ourselves into new endeavors.
This quest for such purpose and personal fulfillment is vastly aided by an ongoing means of ‘looking inward’. But what does this mean in practice, how is this ‘operationalized’?
Psychotherapy is such an instrument, tuned to this kind of exploration that excavates buried needs, suppressed desires, and disconnected fragments of the self. It addresses the mysteries of life as they are played out in unique ways for each individual and creates more room for compassionate self-understanding, which lets us more kindly and effectively work with ourselves as we are.
But what about between sessions?
Do I journal? Or cultivate a daily spiritual practice? Or read the latest self-help literature? How do I facilitate investigation and expression and not just spin in emotional circles?
Active Imagination is a technique employed by Depth Psychology that structures a process around working with images, stories, and characters that have a direct bearing on the challenges we are being presented with in our daily life. Starting with a recurring dream image, a line from a song that seems to reverberate in the chamber of the mind and carries some unforeseen significance, a memory persisting in being remembered again and again as if something is still missing in what it meant and what it means today, the active imaginer will explore this material by carefully circling around it without too much interference, openly asking it questions in the spirit of truth and not self-confirmation, representing whatever is coming up through writing, painting, dancing, or drawing. “Its power to realign our attitudes, teach us and change us at deep levels, is much greater than that of external events that we may pass though without nothing,” says Johnson; this simplified and succinct account of Active Imagination is fully accounted for and elaborated in his slim and useful volume, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.
Deconstructing these imported and impersonal templates can be liberating and is usually also accompanied by some struggle, resistance, and emotional pain. Even when there is tension between the true self and the persona, or the socially-constructed presentation of ourselves, it’s difficult to let go of what is familiar and expected in order to chart new territory. What actually means something to me beyond what society demands of me?
Our sense of original and unique purpose is incremental and hard-won, never complete as we develop and are drawn to revise, enlargen our scope, and carry ourselves into new endeavors.
This quest for such purpose and personal fulfillment is vastly aided by an ongoing means of ‘looking inward’. But what does this mean in practice, how is this ‘operationalized’?
Psychotherapy is such an instrument, tuned to this kind of exploration that excavates buried needs, suppressed desires, and disconnected fragments of the self. It addresses the mysteries of life as they are played out in unique ways for each individual and creates more room for compassionate self-understanding, which lets us more kindly and effectively work with ourselves as we are.
But what about between sessions?
Do I journal? Or cultivate a daily spiritual practice? Or read the latest self-help literature? How do I facilitate investigation and expression and not just spin in emotional circles?
Active Imagination is a technique employed by Depth Psychology that structures a process around working with images, stories, and characters that have a direct bearing on the challenges we are being presented with in our daily life. Starting with a recurring dream image, a line from a song that seems to reverberate in the chamber of the mind and carries some unforeseen significance, a memory persisting in being remembered again and again as if something is still missing in what it meant and what it means today, the active imaginer will explore this material by carefully circling around it without too much interference, openly asking it questions in the spirit of truth and not self-confirmation, representing whatever is coming up through writing, painting, dancing, or drawing. “Its power to realign our attitudes, teach us and change us at deep levels, is much greater than that of external events that we may pass though without nothing,” says Johnson; this simplified and succinct account of Active Imagination is fully accounted for and elaborated in his slim and useful volume, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.
How to Practice Active Imagination
Keep a collection of what sparks your interest, catches your fancy, surfaces on your radar, irrepressibly draws your attention – whether it be the Hibiscus flower, the call of the ocean, the sound of a train. Attend to these charges, these constellations of energy around certain people and objects and places. Gently investigate them, coax them into revealing why they are so beautiful, touching, magnetizing. They often contain some value and some principle of guidance if we can become acquainted with them, work with them, translate them.
By way of concrete example that recently spoke to me, I encourage you to read the following account of a woman’s active imagination process and how doing her own inner work delivered her a message about the meaning of her recent choices, the pace of her lifestyle, and how she could make adjustments to contribute to her wellbeing and a more complete, satisfying life.
By way of concrete example that recently spoke to me, I encourage you to read the following account of a woman’s active imagination process and how doing her own inner work delivered her a message about the meaning of her recent choices, the pace of her lifestyle, and how she could make adjustments to contribute to her wellbeing and a more complete, satisfying life.
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