Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.17
—WALT WHITMAN, “SONG OF MYSELF”
Intentionally addressing what is unseen in us has a noble heritage: It is the vocation of poets, priests, artists, and seers. Active imagination consists of deliberately talking to yourself or, more precisely, talking to unlived aspects of yourself to alter the invisible patterns that shape your experience.
In active imagination you observe the images and voices that rise up from your unconscious and create a dialogue with them. You examine their premises and intentions. This is the most powerful way to deal with the complexes discussed in chapter 3. Once you have learned to observe your inner patterns so they do not just reflexively have their way in your life, you can set up a dialogue to modify them. You must ask yourself: “Who or what in me speaks for this?” Personify and then argue with your complexes. Unlike dreams or passive fantasies, which go nowhere when left unnoticed and untended, the ego actually takes part in the conversation—conscious participation is what makes this technique active and powerful.
Most of us need a disciplined practice, such as prayer or meditation, to keep our lives in balance. Active imagination is a modern form of connecting with the unseen forces that influence our lives. In fact, there is only one possible way of beginning our discussion of this discipline, and that is to quote Scripture: “Take the shoes from off thy feet, for the ground upon which thou is about to step is holy.” This practice is closely related to the religious life. I know of no closer communication with God than tending to unlived life through active imagination and our dreams. Numerous passages of biblical text attest to this fact, but until recently we seem to have forgotten their truth.
Active imagination is a new form of prayer—giving careful consideration to numinous powers. Recall that the word numinous refers to a spiritual state of mind or a direct experience of the sacred evoking a sense of mystery and awe. Humankind has used a type of contemplation similar to active imagination since the dawn of history as a way of learning to know our gods. As Coleman Barks informs us, in the Sufi tradition there are three ways of relating to mystery: There is prayer, and a step up from that is meditation. An even closer approach is what they call conversation. Sobbet is the Sufi word for “the exchange,” which “could also be considered a form of friendship.”18
When the Greeks of the ancient world sought divine guidance, they stepped up to a physical representation of a god. They offered a prayer into the ear so that the god would hear. Then the petitioner stared at the divine image until the figure nodded his head or opened or shut his eyes or answered in some other way. Sacrificial offerings were also left for the divine in the form of human food; to the gods above pastry, sacrificial cakes, fruits, and wine were offered, and to the nether gods cakes of honey and, as a drink, a mixture of milk, honey, and water. Incense was added as a subsidiary offering with most sacrifices, which could include a goat, a cock, or cattle. Great banquets to honor the gods were well known to the Greeks.
In active imagination we are emulating this ancient custom. The ancients were on speaking terms with their inner figures, while we modern people think we are more sophisticated and so instead suffer from complexes and neuroses. The ancient statues, oracles, holy relics, and sacred spaces served as reference points for energies that exist in the unconscious of the person seeking guidance. What are your reference points? Active imagination is a method for exploring the unknown “other,” whether we think of this other as an outside divinity or an inner psychological experience.
Today we neglect our symbolic life. We speak disparagingly of it, though it is infinitely well worth listening to. If a patient comes to my consulting room with a psychological problem, and I can convince him or her to spend half an hour a day consciously practicing inner dialogue, it is virtually guaranteed that that person will gain significant relief from the afflicting ailment.
Active imagination is the best homework you can do to reclaim your unlived life, and much of it can be accomplished by yourself. In fact, for the most part, it is a solitary occupation. It is, however, an exercise requiring discipline. If you engage in this art regularly—and it is more of an art than it is a science—there are great riches in store for you. When done correctly, this practice pulls together the different parts of you that have been fragmented or are in conflict.
Modern Heresy: “I” Is Singular
To accept such inner dialogue we must begin by considering a basic error, a great modern heresy that has been ingrained into us and is getting worse all the time: that “I” is singular. When one says I, for all intents and purposes, virtually everyone means a unified personality, this king of a little kingdom, this man or woman who owns this or that, is engaged in thus and so. For practical purposes it is useful to speak of “I” in the singular, as a unitary being. If I say I will meet you for lunch, a singular I will, hopefully, take it upon himself to show up for lunch. That is responsibility, but it is far from the facts. I, at least from a God’s-eye perspective of wholeness and unity, is inherently multiple.19
It takes so much; it takes a multitude of energies and characters to make up this I. Virtually everyone hears a voice, or more accurately, several voices, in their head much of the time in the form of continuous monologues. While most of the time we don’t do this out loud, the inner voices comment, speculate, judge, complain, and kibitz. They often compare the current situation to the past or rehearse possible future scenarios. When they are working well, our inner figures help us learn from the past and provide diverse viewpoints. Unfortunately, when limited and stuck they also can be a person’s worst enemy, attacking and punishing, worrying, draining our vigor, keeping us caught in redundant cycles. The good news is that it is possible through active imagination to talk back and thereby challenge and even redeem the stuck places in our unlived life.
To benefit from this dialogue you will need to get over the prejudice that talking to yourself is a form of mental weakness. Some parents worry when they discover that their child has imaginary playmates. They shouldn’t. Having imaginary playmates has been positively correlated with less aggression in boys and lowered anxiety and greater persistence in play for both boys and girls. Research shows that children with imaginal companions are less prone to anger, fear, and sadness.20
In our outer-oriented, materially focused society, imaginary is too often equated with unreal. In using the term imaginal, I want to undercut this real/unreal distinction and invoke a broader conception that honors the reality of the imaginal. Inner figures are very real psychically. We find imaginal dialogues across the life span: in children’s play and their conversations with dolls and imaginary playmates, in adult dreams and fantasy, in prayer, in private speech and thought, and in literature and the arts. Yet, for the most part, in psychiatric practice such dialogues are not encouraged. Imagination and reason are deemed incompatible bedfellows. When still present in adults, imaginal dialogues may even be pathologized.
The Reality of Imaginal Experience
Our culture has a tremendous collective prejudice against the imagination. This is reflected in the things people say, such as, “You’re just imagining things” or “It’s not about anything real; I’m just making it all up.” Due to the popular notion that the symbolic is fictitious, many people automatically dismiss inner experiences. They think, “I would just be talking to myself” or “I am just making this up; it’s meaningless.” In fact, no one makes up anything in the imagination. The images that arise there come from the unconscious. To be sure, inner experience is symbolic, but through these symbols we directly experience deeper and greater aspects of ourselves. Properly understood, symbolic activities transform psychic energies into images that the conscious mind can perceive. Because active imagination draws upon material outside of conscious awareness, it provides unrealized perspectives.
Experiences are always real, even when they do not accord with outer happenings. Unlike dreams or passive fantasies, the conscious ego actually takes part in the conversation; it is this conscious participation that makes it active and so powerful. The coming together of conscious ego and the unconscious on the imaginal plane gives us the opportunity to set up a genuine flow of communication among these different levels of awareness, and thus to learn more about who we are and who we might become as individuals.
This is the power of symbolic experience in the human psyche when it is entered into consciously: Its effect on us is just as great as physical experience would be. Its power to realign our attitudes, teach us, and change our behavior patterns is even greater than that of external events that we may pass through without noticing. All experience, when made meaningful, nourishes our humanity.
In active imagination you are not so much talking to yourself as participating in an inner drama. You begin to know and learn from aspects of yourself that you had never before consciously considered. When people wonder if such experience is “real,” I can only respond that it is “realer than real.” It not only has a concrete bearing on our outer existence but also connects us to forces that are suprapersonal. It touches on realities that go deeper than most local events in our daily lives. You cannot get rid of your inner figures any more than you can eliminate the need for a healthy ego, but you can facilitate relatedness rather than warfare between them.
We Talk to Ourselves Already—Just Ineffectively
Social psychologist Erving Goffman has shown in his research21 that, in the privacy of our bathrooms and our cars, we adults continue to talk to ourselves (even if we become embarrassed when we get caught). We kibitz our undertakings, relive a run-in with someone, speak judgmentally about our doings, and offer words of encouragement or blame in an editorial voice. We do this despite the social taboo against talking to yourself. In fact, people have dialogues running through their heads almost continuously, though we tend to take it for granted as a fish does water.
In other words, we all talk to ourselves all the time. The trouble is that for the most part these conversations remain passive. We replay old tapes and repeat the same old cognitive patterns over and over without actively engaging with them.
Unfortunately, imaginal dialogues represent a breach of the secular view of reality, which holds that our conversations are not to be with gods, angels, muses, or other unseen characters. Such self-talk contradicts the unitary concept of the self that relies on a stable identity and does not consider that our shifting moods and attitudes might suggest a multiplicity of self.
What if imaginal dialogues could flourish in your daily life side by side with abstract thought and socially directed communication? The real is not necessarily antithetical to the imaginal, and personifying these figures is not symptomatic of a primitive or immature mind. Personifying, which occurs naturally in dreams, poetry, and play, underlies thought and is reflective of the poetic nature of the psyche.
When the self-clinging ego personality lets go of its need for control and consistency, we are both entranced and alert at the same time. Sufis call this state gana, the annihilation of the individual selfhood so that the spirit of play can show through. Spiritual traditions are filled with procedures for achieving such states of receptiveness. Slowing the body and quieting the mind, as in meditation or repetitive activities such as chanting, dancing, and prayer, are time-honored ways of preparing oneself for creative growth. Both the world and the ego vanish until there is only the play; or rather forces that arise from the unconscious are playing us.
When I first began my explorations of unlived life, virtually every day I would find a new character, a new energy within myself, and I began to wonder: “When is this ever going to stop? How far does it go? How much am I? Where is the boundary at which it ends?” Perhaps this is why we read novels—to learn more and more about ourselves. One day it dawned on me that each human being contains every characteristic that any human in all of history has possessed, so that you are not only this small “I” but also you are all, a totality. Each of us is, on the one hand, an individual man or woman who exists in an ordinary life and is also a concentration point of the entire energy of the cosmic field. You are individual and supra individual. If you begin looking at your unlived life seriously, you will find a multitude of impulses and characters seeking expression in your life; you may never need to read another novel again—you will come to realize that you are a walking novel. And every one of those characters is a part of “I.”
What is more, every one of those potentials rising up in you is valuable, and many need to be expressed in some way. Becoming whole is a game in which you get rid of nothing; you cannot do without these diverse energies any more than you can do without one of the physical organs that make up your body. You need to draw upon everything that is available to you.
Encountering Our Dark Side
Once you make this shift of perspective, you are in an interesting dilemma, because some of the characteristics that you discover in yourself simply won’t do in polite society. For example, it costs me considerable embarrassment to admit it, but it is true: There is an undeniable greedy streak in me. What a painful recognition, but there is no way of getting around it. It is born and bred in me just as the color of my hair is and the fact that my ears take a particular shape. The only comfort is that I’m not the only one with a greedy streak, but that doesn’t remove my responsibility for dealing with my greedy streak, and this is painful to me.
A greedy streak may show up as trying to hoard or hang on to material objects, wanting to possess people, or clinging to a feeling or experience after it has passed. Eating too much (gluttony) is a form of greed. Fortunately, I am also an idealist. I am a warm, friendly person. I am deeply related to my friends. As a result, I consciously choose not to land my greedy streak on the people I care about—if I can help it. It is too painful for them and for me, so I do my best not to let it out. But where does it go?
I can’t get rid of this energy; there is no way. I can put on contact lenses to make my eyes look different, but they will still be the same color as the day I was born. Anyone who is around me long enough will see the true color of my eyes and eventually they will also see my greedy quality. It is part of who I am. It comes out when I am tired, overwhelmed, beaten down by the demands of life, or overcome by the foibles and suffering of earthly existence. After years of working on it, I am doing much better with this bit of unlived life in me, but it still escapes on occasion, and then I am acutely embarrassed.
Active imagination is a very useful way of coping with the difficult and embarrassing aspects of your personality, such as greed, cruelty, rage, envy, jealousy, lust, and avarice. The so-called seven deadly sins are in all of us, and when denied they are projected upon our neighbors or they break through in moments of lowered consciousness. You may begin with any mood and consider: What is the image that lies behind the emotion? When the psychic energy becomes infused with image, then it is available to consciousness.
It is not only our dark qualities that are discovered through honest dialogue with the underworld. As mentioned earlier, some of our very best characteristics, the gold in our personality, are the most difficult of all for most of us to cope with. It is often our noblest energies, such as our capacity for tenderness, love, generosity, and holiness, that are hidden most assiduously, and these energies turn out to be equally difficult to express in our outer life. For example, you simply cannot go up to someone you see on the street for the first time and say, “There is something about you that is enchanting, and I love you.” It doesn’t work. It is frowned upon by our society, and it would create havoc. And yet that capacity for love is one of the finest characteristics in the potentials of any human being.
Inner work provides a means to live out the gold as well as the dark—all those unlived potentials that have not found an adequate place in the practical, everyday affairs of our lives.
So we can see that active imagination involves taking aspects of your unlived life and setting up a private dialogue. In this way you can live the whole of your life without violating the cultural and social rules that hold civilized life together.
“I’m Just Making This Up”
Concerning his technique of active imagination, Jung wrote, “It has been said that both doctor and patient are indulging in mere fantasy-spinning. This objection is no counter-argument. I have no small opinion of fantasy…the creative activity of imagination frees man from his bondage to the ‘nothing but’ and raises him to the status of one who plays. As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is at play. My aim is to bring about a psychic state in which my patient begins to experiment with his own nature—a state of fluidity, change, and growth where nothing is eternally fixed and hopelessly petrified.”22
When you work with imaginal dialogues for a period of time you will begin to find that there isn’t anyplace where you are not affected by your unlived life; it’s just that normally we dismiss such encounters as “only” moods, or chance, or accidents, or other people trying to impose their will on us.
The “other” is there at all times; it is seeking interaction with you. If the other is not a surprise to you, it is not very other. Most of us have enough pursuing us that we don’t need to go chasing after our unlived life—It shows up on a daily basis. The inner characters, however, take on different forms for each person.
Getting to Know Your Inner Figures
Jung once said that everything that is now accepted as doctrine in his psychology came out of active imagination with an inner spirit guide that he called Philemon (the name of an early Christian martyr). Naming these inner energies and relating to them as you would a figure on the outside are key to the practice of active imagination.
During my early training as an analyst I learned of this and immediately set about trying to contact my own inner spirit guide. I soon grew discouraged, as nothing was progressing. I sulked for a few months, thinking I wasn’t good enough to do real inner work. Then one day it dawned on me that I had a patron saint, St. Phillip of Nary. I applied some energy and did a bit of research at the library. I learned that St. Phillip was an Italian saint from the seventeenth century. Then, in an active imagination session, in my most reverential voice and language I asked if St. Phillip would condescend to talk with someone as lowly as me. The reply came rushing out of my pen and across the page of my journal: “I’ve been waiting for you for years; what took you so long? And I have a few things to tell you.” I found from that leap of faith that there was a force of some kind in me that was concerned with my spiritual life.
For active imagination to be effective, full regard for the autonomy and idiosyncrasies of our inner figures is essential. You must be ready to let your unlived life be what it is rather than force it into your conscious notions of how it ought to be. Also, as in outer relationships, if you make promises to your inner figures, you have an ethical obligation to keep them. And just as in outer reality, if you are motivated solely to gain power over your partner(s), you are likely to end up losing the relationship.
Conversely, the unconscious must not be allowed to have its way unchecked by the values and obligations of consciousness. If the ego does not participate in this technique, the unconscious runs off on its own in the old patterns, unchecked and unredeemed. Then there is no relationship, and nothing is gained.
Part shadow/part gold, part evil/part divine, and part good/ part bad—it’s an incredible story inside each of us. The central aim of active imagination is to relieve the neurotic pressure of these unlived things and the anxiety of choice, and transfer it to the level where it really belongs, the celestial dialogue of the pairs of opposites, the song of heaven.
Getting Started: Letting Go of the Conscious Cramp
There are rules for this inner dialogue. First, it must be a true meeting of equals. You and the unlived potentials in you must relate back and forth with integrity. If it were a courtroom in the outer world, the judge would want to hear from both sides, however long it might take.
Second, it is highly useful to address the energies or qualities of the inner world as characters—to personify them. Approach them just as you would another person in your outer life. Provide them all the courtesy you can and give them half the authority in the dialogue. Notice I did not say to give them half the authority in your life, because it’s likely this would be too disruptive and create too much damage, but half the authority in this private dialogue is acceptable. In active imagination, even one’s greedy streak can have equal time.
Many like to conduct active imagination sessions at their computers. Once I got going, I learned to type very fast on a manual typewriter trying to keep up with the interior dialogue; spelling and punctuation went to the wind. Others prefer to use a notebook for their sessions. You’ll need to record the experience in some way.
The images from the unconscious need to be conjured up, and this is the hardest part for most people. Everyone has a resistance; you have to discipline yourself to get started. Often people will try a bit of it and then report back that it was nonsense because they were “just making the whole thing up.” My reply is, “Fine, go on and make up some more.”23
The initial step will require patience and concentration. In most cases your first efforts will not be encouraging. Nothing may appear for a time. The exercise must then be repeated until the cramp in the conscious mind is relaxed—in other words, until you can let things happen.
At first you may feel ridiculous. Your controlling ego is likely to observe that “nobody is there” and “even if they are there, they have nothing to say.” When you are awkward and squirming around, it often means that there are a lot of energies being stirred up. Whatever image, feeling, or body sensation pops up, focus your attention on it and do not let the “bird escape” until it has explained why it appeared to you, what message it brings from the unconscious, or what it wants from you.
You may find that you think of a dozen other things you should be doing. As Jung noted, “Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting and negating, never leaving the psychic processes to grow in peace, observing objectively how a fragment of fantasy develops. Nothing could be simpler, and yet right here the difficulties begin. Apparently one has no fantasy, or, yes, there’s one, but it is too stupid. Dozens of good reasons are brought against it. One cannot concentrate, it is too boring, what would come of it anyway, it is ‘nothing but’ this or that. The conscious mind raises innumerable objections.”24
You may start with any image. Contemplate it and carefully observe how the inner picture begins to unfold or change. Don’t try to make it into something; just do nothing but observe unprompted changes that occur. Any mental picture you contemplate in this way will sooner or later change through a spontaneous association—you must carefully avoid impatient jumping from one subject to another. Hold fast to the image you have chosen and wait until it changes by itself, and if it is a speaking figure, then verbalize what you have to say and listen to what he or she has to say.
How much identity should you give to these symbolic figures? Details help make them come alive. My greedy streak is loud, rude, and crude. I have given him a name, and I could tell you the kind of clothing he wears.
Apply the Ego’s Ethical Dimension
Contrary to some spiritual practices that encourage us to get rid of our egos, in Jungian psychology the ego is an essential aspect of who you are—so long as it realizes that it is not the whole of who you are. It is consciousness that understands the requirements of the world. If there is an energy in your unlived life that wants to do something, it doesn’t mean you literally should just run out and do it.
It is the conscious ego, guided by a sense of ethics, that needs to set limits in order to protect the symbolic process from becoming inhuman, nihilistic, or destructive, or going off into damaging extremes. Raw nature is not inherently concerned with human values such as justice, fairness, and protection of the defenseless. The hurricane that wipes out New Orleans and the cancer that invades healthy tissue are not moral or ethical. It is human consciousness that introduces these values into nature—we thereby participate in the unfolding of divine potentials within the field of time. Since the energies that arise in active imagination are often personifications of the impersonal forces of nature, it is our conscious position that must set limits. There is no development of consciousness without ethical conflict.
Jung once told the story of a young man in analysis who dreamed that his girlfriend slid into an icy lake and was drowning. In the dream the man sat there paralyzed. Jung advised him that he could not just sit there and let the cold forces of fate kill the inner feminine. He advised the man to utilize active imagination and get something to pull the woman out of the water, build a fire, get some dry clothes for her, and save her life. This is the ethical, moral, and human thing to do. It is as much the ego’s duty to bring this sense of responsibility to the energies of unlived life as it is for us to tend to these principles in the outer world.
Ethics is a principle of unity and consistency. People who behave ethically are those who make an honest effort to conform their behavior to their values. When your conduct is at odds with your essential character, it reflects a fragmentation of the personality. Shirking of ethical responsibility deprives us of wholeness.
So in dialoguing with some aspect of your unlived life you must hold to conduct that is consistent with your character. Keep your practical daily life going and keep your human relationships in good order. If we are to live within a community of any sort, then we are morally responsible for our services to the unconscious energies. Refine the demands of unlived life into something that can be dealt with symbolically and thereby integrated into an ordinary human life without destroying it.
To be able to “let things happen” is very necessary, but it becomes harmful if indulged in too long. To start, twenty to thirty minutes of this exercise is plenty. It is not useful to work on active imagination for too long—if you overdo it, you will wind up creating resistance. A little bit of concentrated inner work is enough on a given day. If you feel it is getting out of hand, it’s time to quit. Respect this and take it up again the next day.
Rituals and Ceremonies
Once you have dialogued with your unlived life, the final step is to find a way to honor the relationship. You should not feel finished until you find a place and purpose in your outer life for these unlived energies. Insight into the unconscious must be converted into an ethical obligation.
Rituals and ceremonies require a physical act that is meaningful. In modern life our tendency is to make everything abstract, to use wordy discussion as a substitute for direct feeling experience. Therefore, for change to be effective we have a need to get our feelings and our bodies involved. To make your unlived life manifest means that it should in some way enter your emotions, your muscle fibers, and the very cells of your body.
It is necessary to do something physical, to incarnate the energy of unlived life, to prevent it from sinking back again into the underworld of the unconscious. You must not act out. In psychological terms, acting out means taking inner, subjective conflicts and urges and trying to live them out externally and physically. Active imagination presents opportunities for this because it draws up so much unconscious fantasy material. For example, a man who is arguing in his active imagination with an inner feminine figure must be careful he doesn’t turn around and pick a similar fight with his wife immediately afterward.
Applying this final step generally does not mean living your fantasies in a literal way. More often integrating your unlived life requires symbolic expression. You can get into trouble and cause harm if you fail to make this distinction. Active imagination is not a license to act out your fantasies in their raw, literal form.
Active imagination is an ancient art, and writing certainly is not the only form it may take. There are people who dance it, some will paint or sculpt it, while others may dance or jog it. People who are more visually oriented may see and draw pictures, while verbal types may hear a voice.
I recently had an interior experience that went on for weeks. The giddy thought that came to my mind was, “You are no good. You have never really made it as a writer, and in truth you can’t write at all. You have no talent. Sure, you have had books published and they even have been translated into different languages, but you never got one on the New York Times bestseller list.” I thought about this for a bit and dismissed it with the thought, “So, who wants to be on the New York Times bestseller list, anyway?”
“Well, I do,” came the reply.
All right. So I took this reply to my computer and began to work on this troublesome bit of unlived life. In working on this active imagination, I found that there was a quantity of energy in me that felt terribly inferior because I had never had a blockbuster book—the kind you see on display at the grocery store checkout or at Target and Wal-Mart—as though that was a proper measure for the success of my life. This discontented character sat growling in my unlived life.
So I imagined that I got my new book on the New York Times bestseller list. I even got to be interviewed on Oprah. Success beyond belief. At first I was luxuriating in this. I was patting myself on the back (this is all symbolic, remember), the phone never stopped ringing with people wanting to congratulate me, mail came in by the bushel with offers for speaking engagements, product endorsements, and television appearances. Lots of money followed as I continued this delicious imaginative journey. Soon my friends were name-dropping all over the place, and I was feeling like a big man as people asked for autographs. After my book achieved great success, I had to hire an assistant to keep track of all the correspondence. Soon I didn’t know who was my friend and who just wanted to get close to my celebrity status. Then paparazzi were digging into my past and hounding me for photographs. My privacy was lost. I never wanted these trappings of success! This went on until I learned something new from the experience.
Active imagination produces an actual experience, a slice of reality, just as potent as if you had lived it in the outer world. Recall our discussion in chapter 4 of how complexes are created in the brain. Neural pathways are established whether you experience something externally or through a vibrant inner experience. This means we don’t have to live essential experiences only on the outside—consciousness can grow and we can deal with the call of troublesome unlived life through symbolic action. In this example I found out that my long-held fantasy concerning success had drawbacks as well as advantages. Then, since it was all in active imagination, I went back and undid it. I settled on writing a book that could find its own way in the world; if it succeeded, that was fine, but I no longer have this bit of unlived experience gnawing at me and a tiresome complex telling me I am a failure.
With that experience in back of me, I feel quite differently about this bit of unlived life now. That hunger, or investment, or arrogance, or discontent—whatever it was—has been lived out in me, and I am a safer, more contented person as a result. It took a few active imagination sessions at my computer to work it out, but I count myself fortunate that this nagging illusion has been quieted in me. It is no longer a noisy potential undermining my happiness.
If you have a recurring fantasy of some kind—and who doesn’t—it is pure gold to transfer that fantasy into active imagination. Fantasy is always a one-sided thing. We squeeze what pleasure we can out of a fantasy and never pay attention to the other side of it. So fantasies don’t change much year after year. By contrast, the active nature of symbolic life promotes change. I set about to have the most intelligent dialogue that I am capable of.
Here is another example. I might ask my greedy streak:
Me: “Why on earth did you interject yourself at that party last night? I’m totally embarrassed at how greedy I was for attention.”
And the greedy streak might say, “Well, you had been playing the saint all day long, trying to convince people you are such a nice guy and that you have never had an envious or greedy feeling, so I decided it was time for people to see who you really are.”
He has a point there. After consciously working at being in service to others, or trying to be particularly good or moral, one’s “dark” qualities arise as a counterbalance. In this instance my greedy streak had had enough.
Me: “If you carry on like that, I will lose the respect of all my friends. People don’t want to be possessed or used. Soon no one will want to have anything to do with me if they see me as greedy.”
GS: “What I said was true; you did want to be greedy. You enjoy it!”
Me: “Do you think you can go around saying the truth all the time?”
GS: “That would be honest.”
Me: “Well, you can’t. I won’t let you. For one thing, it will push people away. We would be out on the street in no time at all. Plus, I would feel very guilty afterward.”
GS: “I don’t have anyplace to be in your life, and I’m sick of it.”
Me: “That’s why we’re having this discussion. I’m trying hard to live a courteous, civilized, intelligent life, and I can’t have you popping up and trying to ruin it. I won’t let you.”
GS: “All right, if you think you are going to jettison me and be a big wimp all the time, you have another think coming.”
And so the conversation goes on until the energy is drained out of it. I find a place for my greedy streak, and the saintliness or austerity or whatever it is that I have been pushing in my outer life is balanced to a humanly sustainable level. This is symbolic dialogue.
A Diversity of Inner Characters
Note that it could just as well have been a conversation with my inner critic, my long-suffering inner victim, my rageful cynic, my frightened child, or my creative muse. Which inner voice in you wants to be heard and is causing trouble? What is the recurrent inner figure making you anxious, depressed, dissatisfied, or fearful? If you pay attention, you will begin to notice that inner commentaries are occurring all the time. Whose voices are these? What does each of them speak for, and what does each speak against? You will discover a motley crew of characters, underworld shades, energies looking for incarnation. It can be a painful experience, and at first talking back to our inner figures can feel a bit ridiculous. Some people fear that talking to themselves means they have “multiple personality” or are dangerously ill.
It’s true that active imagination can get out of hand for some people. Before you even attempt this technique it is wise to have someone who knows something about it available to call upon for help, such as a pastor, therapist, or trusted friend. If you have trouble stopping and you can’t rein in the inner figures, then this technique is not for you at this time. Active imagination is not appropriate for anyone who tends to get inundated with unconscious material, such as individuals diagnosed with a dissociative disorder.
This process has some inherent risk—it may change your life dramatically. The analyst Barbara Hannah once said that if your knees don’t shake while you’re doing active imagination, you are not really there. You might breathe hard and anxiety may increase for a time. It is a real experience.
What’s the difference between a psychotic and a genius? Strength of consciousness. You must not give your life over to the unconscious. The ill person has no choice, while a healthy ego chooses to listen to the unconscious and respond to it with values, morality, and ethical obligations. It is worth noting that in dissociative identity disorder (once called multiple personality disorder) there is typically no symbolic dialogue, only sequential monologue. The person identifies with or is taken over by various characters in a sequential fashion. The ego is most often unaware of the other voices. The multiplicity of who we are as experienced in active imagination is one in which inner figures are in dialogue. The ego remains strong and is always the arbiter of values. In highly dissociative states there is an absence of reflecting ego.
Even if you have a strong, healthy ego, if such inner work becomes compulsive, you should proceed with caution. There are some people who are already too open to the unconscious and more of it just gets them into trouble, but most individuals have just the opposite problem: They can’t let go enough to get out of their ruts.
You can go into active imagination with or without a set agenda. For example, if I embarrassed myself at last night’s party, when I get home I can sit down in a quiet place and say, “Look, I can’t live in the same body with someone who gets so greedy.” That sets the agenda.
There is a way of applying this technique to bring out the best in you and guard against the worst. Much of the dialogue consists of “I say” and “he says.” Once it gets rolling, it is almost as if someone turned a cinema on in the back of your head and a story starts to unfold. It may seem to go on and on, but when you bring these unlived aspects of yourself into private dialogue, your conscious position and your unlived life will begin to temper each other and each will take on some of the characteristics of the other. You can get a livable and workable synthesis out of what at first may seem discordant.
Unlike the circumstance of a vaguely remembered dream from last night, a daydream, or a passive fantasy, in active imagination you are an active participant. That is the active aspect of active imagination. You are not just played upon; you can and must talk back. Some of the personified energies encountered in the unconscious are divine-like, while others are not at all concerned with the social requirements of your life. It is tempting to romanticize the unconscious, but the energies found there are diverse: powerful and weak, benevolent and insidious, helpful and destructive. As analyst Marie-Louise von Franz has said, active imagination “is a form of play, but a bloody serious one.” In other words, it is important not to take every voice in the unconscious as uttering the inspired words of the Holy Spirit! The inner world is paradoxical; it has positive and negative sides. The imaginal realm is not a consistent and unerring spiritual director. Underworld images do make claims on us, but they are not to be relied upon for telling us what to do. They require a dialogue between underworld perspectives and the daylight world of ego consciousness.
As noted earlier, your inner dialogue should be recorded, written down, or typed up. This is a major protection against being overcome by a powerful force in the unconscious or turning the experience into just another passive fantasy. Writing it down also provides a record so that you can remember and digest the experience afterward.
Turning Passive Fantasy into Active Imagination
Here is one more example of how to work with active imagination in a safe, effective manner.
At one point in my life I realized that I had been entertaining myself with a South Seas Island fantasy; it was always the same and I didn’t want it to be any different because it was so delicious. It had to do with escaping with a fair maiden to an island with coconut palms, sunshine, and lots of erotic entertainment. It was like playing the same movie again and again. I got considerable pleasure out of this fantasy, milking it for all I could get. Over time, the pleasure in the fantasy seemed to lose its steam, but I continued to resent that I had never made it part of my real life.
As I became more experienced at the art of inner dialogue, I could see that I had been exploiting this fantasy for years, that it had never produced any development in my character. It had become a useless repetitive compulsion without yielding any inner growth. One day I went to the inner movie and began asking some questions. The fantasy began to evolve, to move, to lose its static quality. It took on an interior reality it never had before. I asked the girl in my South Seas paradise what she wanted, and she began to talk back! It seems she wanted to be adored, but she also wanted her freedom. She told me she was tired of sitting around the beach; she wanted a place in my real life. I was called upon to bring more beauty, feeling, and sensuality into my outer life.
Transferring fantasy, which is passive and repetitive, into active imagination, which is always active and real in an inner sense, is one of the most rewarding things you can do.
Most of us are afraid of what might rise up in us. It may open up a big energy center that can cause real trouble in outer life. So you’ll need to get into relationship with it—privately. Don’t go tell your partner that you are fantasizing about wild sex with a maiden on a South Seas island. Go talk it out with your inner character first, and then work it through.
To complete the story, when I made the South Seas fantasy active it took on new dimensions. First I discovered mosquitoes on the island, then the rainy season became apparent, and eventually the fair maiden became pregnant! The active imagination moved the old stuck pattern by bringing a bit of reality to it. And then I could let go of it. That bit of unlived life was integrated. No more envy or regret in this small corner of the psyche.
Talking It Over with Yourself: Exercises
Any human ability atrophies when it is not used. Your imaginative capacities, like your physical muscles, may require a bit of exercise to get back into optimal shape. The following exercises, derived from a therapeutic practice called psychosynthesis,25 can be practiced at any time.
Close your eyes and visualize a pen slowly writing your name on a blackboard. Now try visualizing some different shapes: a triangle, then a square, and then a circle. Now visualize the face of a loved one. Next hold in your mind’s eye the image of a favorite place you have visited in nature.
Next, imagine touching, one at a time: the rough surface of concrete, a feather, the cool water of a mountain stream, a silk scarf.
In your imagination, experience the taste, temperature, and texture of: ice cream, a raisin, a peanut, a ripe peach, and a chili pepper.
Now imagine that you smell: a rose, fresh cookies, an ocean breeze, popcorn.
Then, with your eyes closed, imagine you can hear: someone calling your name, rain on the roof, an ambulance siren, people talking in a restaurant, a tiny bell.
Once you have strengthened your imaginal skills a bit, begin engaging some of the inner figures that exist within you. Choose a controversial subject and ask yourself what you think or feel about it. Do this by yourself in the quiet of your room. Then just listen to see if some other energy system in you has another opinion. Allow it to just arise. Now create a dialogue among these different aspects of yourself. Put some energy into the argument, even exaggerating the points of view. Do this until the energy drains out of the dialogue.
Continue to practice this with some other topics. Choose an inner figure you are already familiar with, such as your editorializing critic. Engage it in a conversation. Talk back to it. Just observe the play of different points of view, allowing the dialogue to broaden your perspective.
Don’t worry that entertaining contradictory energies will unseat your personality. Allowing your unlived potentials to become conscious will actually increase your integration. Through active imagination your lived and unlived qualities can become synergistic rather than antagonistic with each other.