The figure of C.G. Jung has come up already in this series (to say nothing of my 2025 series based on some of his ideas). That’s because, not only was he the greatest advocate of listening to the soul (’the self’ in his terminology) in modern times, but also because his personal examples of how it works are so vivid. And so today, when we look at active imagination, the practice that formed the basis of both his own introspection and his psychoanalytic practice, it seems more than fitting to return to him once again.
It was the end of 1913, and by all appearances things were going well in Europe. It was a period of optimism about the future and a belief in progress and the human spirit. Yet C.G. Jung was beset by disturbing visions of a Europe drenched in blood. As he wondered what was happening to him, Jung felt a message bubble up from deep within: “Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so.” And so he allowed himself to sink into the vision, and all of his subsequent dream images, engage with them, talk to them, follow them, and see where they took him.*
This process of staying with, but also imaginatively moving forward with images became the foundation of his life’s work. He called it active imagination. About it He’d later write: “The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important time of my life—in them everything essential was decided. It was the prima materia [primordial material] for a lifetime’s work.”
The process of active imagination is simple:
- Relax your mind and enter as much as possible into the realm of the imagination
- Choose an image (classically from a dream or vision, but something that sticks out to you from a book, song, or piece of art is also suitable)
- ‘Enter into’ the scene, expand on it, dialogue with the image, follow it
- Write down or draw what happens so it’s not lost
If this sounds too simple and unguided, it is. The soul does not tend to respond to rule books or timetables. When we enter into its world, we have to give up any demands. ‘When in Rome…’ after all!
And if this sounds weird, again, it is. I once had a profound experience of active imagination ‘talking to’ a beach. I actually tend to lean into the weird with this practice. When I do active imagination, it’s normally a detail that is unexpected or seems superfluous to the overall scene that I choose. I figure the less likely or obvious it is, the less likely it’s been put there by my conscious mind. For example, a couple weeks ago, I was doing a guided meditation with pretty lofty imagery, when I saw the image of a black lizard scuttling along the desert floor. It seemed like a strange detail, and so I later did active imagination with it, re-entering the scene and following the salamander, and was blessed by where it took me.
Active imagination is not a practice I do often, at least in full. (More on what I mean by that next week!) I normally reserve it for images that stand out as particularly interesting or vital or odd. But when I do engage with it, I find it surprising — delightful even — and a useful experience.
And so it’s definitely a valued tool in my spiritual tool box.
* Story as told in Writing to Wholeness by Susan M. Tiberghien (2018).
Matthew Root 