Shadow Work: Active Imagination

Tags

Active Imagination, Carl Jung, Dreamwork, Robert A. Johnson, Shadow Work

Cupid at Bonaventure

In his book, Inner Work, Robert Johnson goes into much greater detail on the technique of Active Imagination, but I will give a quick introduction to the process here. Basically, Active Imagination is a meditative dialogue between the Ego and a personified aspect from the unconscious (dream character, dream object, personified emotion or mood, etc.). The dialogue is most helpful when the dreamer writes it down or speaks it to another person or into a tape recorder. Write quickly, without censoring, while in a deep state of meditation.

NOTE: It is best NOT to do meditative dialogue with a dream figure that is an actual person you know and interact with in your waking life as the danger for projection and introjection is too great. Instead, do basic symbol association work.

Step 1) Choose a figure from a dream or personify an emotion or a mood that carries compelling energy. With your journal and pen, get comfortable in a place where you will not be interrupted for at least half an hour.

Step 2) Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and focus on your breath. Using whatever mantra works for you (for example, you can inhale cleansing energy, exhale tension, fatigue, fear, or whatever you need to let go of or focus on a single word), and sink as deeply as you can into a relaxed and tension-free place in which you are balanced and focused, open and receptive. Once you’ve reached this state, you will be open to the source of the dream.

Step 3) Into this space, invite the figure with whom you want to dialogue. Try to encounter this figure with all your senses–seeing, hearing, feeling, even smelling and tasting, if that is possible. Allow the sensations to impact your body. Now, note the places in your body that are responding. What memories or emotions are stirring? Like a camera, zoom in and experience your companion in close proximity. Feel the energy. Feel your emotions. This symbol before you holds the wisdom to help you grow and heal. Now your companion wants to speak. As you open yourself to receive your companion’s wisdom, ask questions respectfully, listen intently and continue to stay deeply relaxed. Pick up your pen and record the dialogue (or turn on the tape recorder or let the person your sharing the process with record it for you).

Questions you might want to ask:

*What is your name? Who are you and what is your purpose?

*What do you like about who you are and what you do?

*What do you dislike about who you are and what you do?

*What do you hate or fear the most? What do you desire or want the most?

*Why are you hear? What do you want of me? What do you want to teach me?

*What gifts can we give to one another?

Step 4) Allow the dialogue to continue for as long as it seems fruitful. Close by expressing gratitude to your companion. Then quickly record the experience in your dream journal. Slowly return to ordinary consciousness. Later, you can reflect on the dialogue and continue to work with the experience.

Next Week: Forming a Dream Group

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Shadow Work: Four-step Dreamwork

Tags

Carl Jung, Dreamwork, Robert A. Johnson, Sahdow Work

Robert Johnson

Jungian analyst Robert Johnson created a four-step way to work on dreams in an effort to bring our conscious and unconscious selves together.

Step One: Associations

After choosing the images from your dream (these can be persons, objects, situations, colors, sounds or speech), write down every association you have with each image. For example, starting with the first image, think to yourself, “what feeling do I have about this image? What words or ideas come to mind when I think about it?” These associations will be anything (words, ideas, mental pictures, feelings or memories) you spontaneously connect with the image. Don’t try to decide which association is the correct one, just write them ALL down.

Always make sure that your association related directly to the image. Another thing to be aware of are the colloquialisms that the image might inspire. For example, with my image of pennies last week, colloquialisms might be: “pennies from heaven,” “worth every cent,” “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and so on.

To choose the association that fits best, use Jung’s “It clicks” Method. In other words, which association arouses the most energy in you? Which one seems just clicks with you?

Another way of finding associations with dream images is to use archetypal amplification, which is a process of gathering information about any archetypes in your dream by using sources such as myths, fairy tales and religious traditions. Each archetype will express itself in your dream with its own characteristic symbolism. Dreams with archetypes have a mythical quality: things are larger or smaller than real life, there are otherworldly animals or the figures may have an aura of royalty or divinity.

If you recognize one of the figures in your dream is an archetype, the next step is to go to the source: what memory does the archetype spark? A passage in the Bible? Something from the legends of King Arthur? The Greeks gods and goddesses? And so on. Go to that source and see what it might tell you about the archetype you have seen in your dream.

Every image in your dream will also have personal associations. For example, pennies are meaningful for me because I collect those I find on the ground and save them in a special bank. They are also a sign from God for me. Write down whatever personal associations you have with the images, as well.

Step Two: Dynamics

Now, connect each dream image to a specific dynamic in your inner life. For each image ask, “What part of me is that? Where have I seen it functioning in my life lately? Where do I see the same trait in my personality? Who is it inside me that feels like that, behaves like that?” Then write down each example. Always begin by applying your dream inwardly.

Sometimes, the urge to take the dream image (when it is another person) literally is overwhelming, especially if it’s someone or something we greatly desire or something or someone we are in conflict with. Don’t! Dream images are almost without fail about our inner selves.

The most practical way to connect an image to your self is to ask yourself what traits you have in common with the image or person: What are the main characteristics? If a person, how would you describe their character or personality? Where do you find those same traits in you?

Dreams often speak in extremes in an effort to grab our attention. Because we often repress the best parts of ourselves because we think of them as negative qualities, these parts can only take part in our lives by “stealing” our time by stealing our energy through compulsions or neuroses.

Our egos divide the world into good and bad, positive and negative. Most aspects of our shadows can become valuable strengths if we can become conscious of them. You will NEVER find anything in the unconscious that will not become useful and good once made conscious. And, only you will be able to say what part of you is represented by this shadow.

By thinking of each dream figure as an actual person living inside you, you can ask questions like: Where have I seen this person at work in my life lately? Where in my life have I seen her/him doing what she/he did in the dream? What part of me is it that feels like that, thinks like that, behaves like that?

Pay attention to where you are in the dream as it may give you clues as to whose influence you’re under. If you are in your grandmother’s house, for example, you might be under the influence of the Great Mother archetype. In my dream of the pennies, I was on a bridge: a symbol with obvious connotations. Animals may represent animal instinct or consciousness, something primordial, but like all images they have both negative and positive connotations.

Step Three: Interpretations

The interpretation ties together the meanings of all the images in your dream. Now you can ask yourself questions like: “What is the central, most important message that this dream is trying to communicate to me? What is it advising me to do? What is the overall meaning of the dream for my life?”

Don’t expect your dream interpretation to come out perfect on the first try; keep working at it until it makes sense and fits with the overall pattern of events in the dream. For example, my first impulse with the pennies dream was to attribute to it a need to be more “competitive” before realizing it actually meant “assertive.”

An adequate dream interpretation should be able to sum up your dream in a nutshell. It should supply a specific application of the dream’s message to your personal life, to what you are doing, to how you are going to live. So, write out your interpretations and once again, follow the energy, the interpretation that arouses the strongest feelings in you. Your dream, itself, should provide you with some small clue as to which interpretation is correct.

There are four principles for validating interpretations: 1) Choose an interpretation that tells you something you didn’t know; 2) Avoid the interpretation that is self-congratulatory or ego-inflating; 3) Avoid interpretations that shift the responsibility away from yourself because dreams are never about changing or finding fault in others; 4) Learn to live with dreams over time–fit them into the long-term flow of your life.

Step Four: Rituals

Once you have interpreted your dream, act consciously to honor it. This step requires a physical act (symbolic or practical) to affirm the message of your dream. The ritual neither has to be big or expensive as the most powerful rituals are the small, subtle ones.

Consciously seek to transform the ritual act into an active, dynamic symbol. Johnson says that each ritual must be custom-made out of the raw material of your inner self. And if you can’t think of anything, just do something, anything: Take a walk around your blog as you think about the dream, light a candle. Use your common sense, but don’t act out.

Next Week: Active Imagination

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dream Bibliography

Tags

Dreams, Dreamwork

I offer below a bibliography of books recommended by The Haden Institute (hadeninstitute.com) to help with your dreamwork:

I. Achroyd, Eric—A Dictionary of Dream Symbols **

II. Bosnak, Robert—A Little Course in Dream

III. Brook, Stephen—The Oxford Book of Dreams

IV. Bryant, Dorothy—The Kin of Atta are Waiting for You

V. Campbell, Joseph, ed.—Myths, Dreams and Religion

VI. Cirlot, J.E.—A Dictionary of Symbols **/***

VII. Clift, Jean and Wallace—Symbols of Transformation in Dreams

VIII. Fontana, David—The Secret Language of Dreams **

IX. Freud, Sigmund—The Interpretation of Dreams

X. Gongloff, Robert—Dream Exploration

XI. Haden, Robert—Unopened Letters from God *

XII. Hall, James—Jungian Dream Interpretation

XIII. Hoss, Robert—Dream Language

XIV. Hudson, Joyce Rockwood—Natural Spirituality */***

XV. Johnson, Robert A.—Inner Work ***

XVI. Jung, Carl—Dreams ***

XVII. Jung, Carl—Memories, Dreams and Reflections */***

XVIII. Jung, Carl—Psychology and Religion

XIX. Jung, Carl—Man and His Symbols **/***

XX. Kelsey, Morton—Dreams: A Way to Listen to God

XXI. Kelsey, Morton—God, Dreams and Revelation

XXII. Kutz, Ilan—Dreamland Comparison

XXIII. Lyons, Tallulah—Dream Prayers

XXIV. Maurer, Sue—God Has Been Whispering in My Ear

XXV. Moore, Thomas—The Care of the Soul

XXVI. Moore, Thomas—Soul Mates

XXVII. Sanford, John—Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language */***

XXVIII. Sanford, John—Dreams and Healing

XXIX. Sanford, John—Healing and Wholeness

XXX. Sanford, John—Invisible Partners

XXXI. Sanford, John—The Kingdom Within ***

XXXII. Sanford, John—The Man Who Wrestled With God

XXXIII. Savary, Louise—Dreams and Spiritual Growth: A Christian Approach to Dreamwork

XXXIV. Singer, June—Boundaries of the Soul

XXXV. Stein, Murray, ed.—Jungian Analysis

XXXVI. Stevens, Anthony—Archetypes

XXXVII. Taylor, Jeremy—The Wisdom of the Dream *

XXXVIII. Taylor, Jeremy—Dream Work ***

XXXIX. Van De Castle, Robert L.—Our Dreaming Mind

XL. Von Franz, Marie-Louise—Animus and Anima

XLI. Von Franz, Marie-Louise—On Dreams and Death

XLII. Von Franz, Marie-Louise—Projection and Re-Collection

* Good Beginning Books

** Good Books to Explore Symbols

*** Books I own

Transformation: The Conclusion

Tags

Carl Jung, Inner Work, Robert A. Johnson

Rocinante

Presently the evidence of four-dimensional consciousness is not some form of perfection but rather the ability to tap in to that psychological space when needed

From the two-dimensional Don Quixote to the three-dimensional Hamlet, in which most of us reside, we can finally try to find our way to the fourth-dimension embodied by Faust.

“Almost all of us in Western society are Hamlets,” Robert A. Johnson writes. “Compulsory eduction, our social structure, the dictates of our lifestyle have obliterated the two-dimensional man from American life.”

We only experience that second dimension for a brief time in adolescence. So, how does man survive the Hamlet dilemma?

According to Johnson, the more intelligent he is, the more profound will be his suffering. But, there are two avenues of solace: We can maintain a bit of primitive behavior in our lives such as jogging, camping, or gardening. We can even, Johnson says, “have an array of adolescent equipment, including that which is most dear to every man’s heart, his car (every car should be named Rocinante).”

The second avenue of solace is much darker–vandalism, gang behavior and other types of juvenile delinquency, including drug and alcohol abuse.

“It is a bitter indictment of some of our attitudes that the only ‘juice’ left for many of our youth is in destructive behavior,” he says.

Inevitably, though, there will come a time in adulthood when you no longer find joy in things like jogging or gardening, and the full distress experienced by Hamlet begins to well up inside you. We have, Johnson says, created many terms for this–midlife crisis, identity crisis, the seven-year itch, the Big Four-Zero, and so on.

Saint John of the Cross says that this period, the “Dark Night of the Soul,” can last anywhere from seven weeks, months, years up to 21 years, depending on when you wake up to the next level of consciousness.

“When the dark night begins to lift,” Johnson writes, one morning there is an unaccountable touch of joy in the air. It is the tiniest trickle of energy, light, and hope, but enough to keep you alive.”

This, he says, is the first contact with the four-dimensional consciousness. “Something of the subtle inner world becomes your center of gravity: poetry, music, a new perceptiveness when you are jogging, a blossoming of philosophic inquiry, a new religious understanding.”

Johnson says that “Enlightenment” is never total or permanent in this lifetime.

“Presently the evidence of four-dimensional consciousness is not some form of perfection but rather the ability to tap in to that psychological space when needed,” he writes.

Humans have the ability to incorporate new things in to their being. For example, we didn’t learn to perceive the color, blue, until about 2,000 years ago; we had to learn how to read silently, also learned within the past 2,000 years; and we didn’t learn to hear the harmonic structure, as opposed to the melodic line, until around the 15th or 16th century.

“Is it consistent to say that a new faculty,” he writes, “four-dimensional consciousness, as we lamely describe it, is only now appearing for ordinary men and women in our new human evolution?”

This would make that faculty extremely rare and fragile when it does appear, and very easily lost.

Johnson closes the book writing, “Dr. Jung spent his old age writing about and contemplating this new evolution of man, the progression from incompleteness to wholeness, from three to four. It is time for all of us to do the same.”

Reclaiming the Land from the Sea

Tags

Inner Work, Robert A. Johnson, Shadow Work

Gretchen argues for Faust’s soul–Ist gerettet

 

Having played Gretchen in a college version of Faust (auf Deutsch, natürlich), this is one of my favorite acts of the play. As the drama nears its end, Faust and Mephistopheles have drawn closer, somewhat tempered each other.

Unfortunately, this causes Mephistopheles to want to regain some of his control over Faust. He is the devil, our shadow, after all. So, he asks Faust if there is anything he would like.

Not as such, Faust replies. This is the man “whom infinity would scarcely satisfy” at the beginning of the book. Mephistopheles offers him the moon, but Faust says he would be content with “a piece of coastline so that he might reclaim land from sea.”

“Water, particularly the ocean, is a universal symbol of the unconscious,” Robert Johnson writes, “and Faust is asking for eternal connection with the depths represented by the sea.”

The true work of man in the latter part of his life, he says, is the cultural process of bringing up some of the contents of the unconscious and integrating them into consciousness.”

Goethe symbolizes this by having Faust reclaim land from the sea–dredging canals, building dikes–taking land from the sea and adding it to the land mass. In this process Faust finds great contentment.

But as we know, nothing is ever that simple. When Faust complains to Mephistopheles that a cottage owned by a couple (Baucis and Philemon), who have lived on his newly acquired property all of their lives, blocks his view, tragedy ensues once again. Mephistopheles frightens the old couple to death and burns their cottage to the ground.

Faust is horrified, particularly as he realizes that he is responsible for the tragic results.  It is now that Faust realizes just what his alliance with Mephistopheles is costing him.

“He learns,” Johnson notes, “that he has power over Mephistopheles and that he is capable of misusing that power.”

As he continues to reclaim land from the sea, he does not notice the approach of the “four gray sisters–Want, Debt, Need and Care.” Johnson says these dark forces are the power of necessity. Because of his wealth, Faust can easily ignore the first three as he has everything he needs. But no man can ignore Dame Care. She is something we all need.

When he doesn’t take her seriously, Dame Care blinds Faust. “This leads me to believe,” Johnson writes, “that the blinding was more an inner exchange of sight for insight, a transformation required of every man as he grows old.”

Faust’s excavation now becomes the digging of his own grave as he can no longer see what he is doing. Johnson says that here you can recognize one of the dangers of old age–digging or hacking away at a project out of inertia and habit rather than any sense of purpose.

Just before his death, Faust steps back from his labors and sees a utopian vision of a noble band of people inhabiting his newly claimed land, and utters the fatal words–“Linger, thou art so fair!”

Mephistopheles rushes in to claim Faust’s soul, according to the terms of the contract agreed upon 24 years previously. Faust has lost and Mephistopheles has won! What is the point of inner change if only to have it snatched away by a very human error at the end? Is absolute perfection required of us at the gates of heaven?

But then something miraculous happens. Despite everything, Gretchen’s love for Faust has never waned. She appears at the head of a choir of angels and pleads for Faust’s soul. It was a vision of heaven, they say, that made Faust utter those fatal words, not anything that Mephistopheles created. A technicality, perhaps, but it works. Gretchen leads Faust into heaven where grace, not justice, prevails.

“The masculine stuff of law and order and justice are superseded by grace and love,” Johnson writes.

The Fourth Puer–The Boy Angel

“We have seen no redemption of one in a pair of opposites is possible without the same redemption of the other,” Johnson says. Both Faust and Mephistopheles must be redeemed if either is to find wholeness.

While lamenting his loss, Mephistopheles catches sight of a boy angel in the heavenly band and falls in love with him, neglecting to press his partially limited charges against Faust.

“To understand the multitude of forms in which love may touch you is to gain some sense of its great mystery,” Johnson writes. “Mephistopheles has been touched by that form of love that is specific to his need and his transformation.”

Faust is redeemed by the love of Gretchen; Mephistopheles by his first experience of love. “Ego and shadow each finds its own level of redemption and its own appropriate salvation.”

The boy angel, symbolizing love (not unlike Cupid), is the fourth manifestation of the archetype of puer aeternis. To touch the puer is to touch eternity and love and be delivered from the time-space world, Johnson says.

The play ends with the following lines:

All that is perishable
is but an image;
Here the short-reaching
becomes result.
The indescribable–
here it is done;
The Eternal Feminine
draws us on.

This is more than a hint that wholeness is not attained by means of masculine law or contract. It is a gift from the feminine aspect of God.

Next Week: Conclusion

The Second and Third Pueri

Tags

Robert A. Johnson, Self-actualization

The Second Puer–Homunculus

While Faust was away, Wagner has been busy with his alchemy through which he creates a homunculus or a man the size of a thumb. This is the second puer aeternis, and it has the ability to guide Faust back to ancient Greece where there is no real concept of evil. This means there is no real place for Mephistopheles.

He finally comes up with a concept for ugliness, which is the closest he can get to his own nature and comes along with Faust as a hideous old hag with one tooth and one eye.

Once there, the homunculus, as it is a magical creation of man, explodes when it encounters the Greek idea of beauty. None of our human ideas of beauty and nobility hold up in the face of archetypal beauty, Robert Johnson explains.

The Third Puer–Euphorion

Awakening in ancient Greece, Faust once again seeks out Helen of Troy, the ultimate expression of feminine beauty. This time he is more cautious, and he is allowed a brief marriage with Helen in which they produce a full-grown youth, Euphorion, who is the patron of art.

“His energy can produce inspiration and artistic expression,” Johnson writes. This is now the third appearance of the “eternal boy” or puer aeternis in Faust. Euphoric flies up to the heavens in order to acquire the tools of the poet for Faust. But, like Icarus, he flies to close to the sun and hurtles back to earth.

“The puer has again tried to help,” says Johnson, “but his limitations and his vulnerability to inflation and egocentricity are now clear.”

According to Johnson, it is the universal experience of one on the path to self actualization to grasp at the tools of genius when he encounters these sublime realms. He says that pain often compels us to think, “Nothing personal has worked in my life, so I will write. That will be a realm where I can express myself.”

This is essentially true, but in fact the old self, the three-dimensional man, will always go about this in an egocentric way and therefore doom his efforts. This does not mean that one should not express himself through writing or other forms of art while on the path to wholeness, but rather that one should be aware that the first attempts will be contaminated by the ego, and so will “catch fire and fall into the sea like Euphorion.”

Fortunately, Faust has been learning through his experiences, and now a sublime event occurs. As he embraces Helen of Troy, she slips from his grasp and Mephistopheles whispers to him, “Hold onto her garment, which will carry you above the commonplace.”

Helen vanishes, the great archetypal vision fades, but she has left enough of herself to active the artistic, visionary faculty in Faust. This lesser way of possessing the archetype of beauty is not too much for mortals to bear.

“When you know at what level and in what manner you can relate to the impersonal archetypal world,” Johnson writes, “you are truly safe. Then creation can begin.”

While this may seem but a sliver of your first vision, he says, it is quite enough to bring into the everyday world.

“Many an artist has failed his calling because he refused a limited, less-than-perfect expression of his original vision,” he writes. “A man cannot handle the great artistic tools of boy-god Euphorion, and he many not be able to embrace the superhuman vision of pure beauty, Helen of Troy, but a man can touch Helen’s garment, which is sufficient to bring a small part of his artistic vision into creation. To do more would burn us up in gigantic inflation.”

Next Week: Reclaiming the Land from the Sea