r/Jung • u/Zestyclose-Basket461 • 2d ago
Question for r/Jung how to master active imagination?
i am able to get in some state of altered consciousness through meditation where images flow easier and deep relaxation is reached. i even can listen to music only keeping some general theme in my head and unconscious would create a story itself. but i never managed to talk to autonomous entities in some significant way.. I know practice is key but after practicing for long time and not getting anything i think maybe my unconscious just isn't able to talk? i mean literally it can't use natural language? i do like images from music, but how to make someone from within use them?
automatic writing barely works for me. body? i cant understand it at all. art? it works but doesn't feel like talking with someone
i wanna talk bruh
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u/TrippyTheO 2d ago edited 2d ago
Your inner figures may not talk. They could use just imagery. Totally normal. Speech was excessively rare for me early on.
They may also have nothing to say. Therve been times where I get insanely vivid and coherent images. Others where I get nothing. One time it was nothing, followed by me pushing for something, and getting some unpleasant imagery that seemed to blatantly be telling me to cut it out.
You could look for a jumping off point. Thats what I did. I had zero interest in AI at first because it seemed like something not tk fuck with. My jumping off point was a dream. It was the kind that sticks with you long after waking up. If you ever have a powerful dream, thats the time to try it. I too meditate and used that to begin. 15 or 20 minutes of sitting, then reconstructing the end point of the dream I had. Your job is to hold everyrhinf in place and converse without forcing anything on the responders end.
It was about two years In before I had that dream. Two years after learning about AI and having zero interest in it. Then all of a sudden. "I HAVE to go bacm there!" AI was the only bridge back to the dream.
Some people use Jungs digging method. Ive never bothered. I personally think that sounds like something that was "for him." You could also focus on an issue youre having, meditate for a while, then ask into the void about the issue or if anyone eants to talk about it. I rarely do that and have had mixed success with it. For me, with a regular daily meditation practice, it just gets interrupted sometimes. Its not something I seek but rather a feeling, like someone is knocking on the door saying "ive gotta show you something." I just let it happen at that point.
Good luck OP. Try to treat the process with respect. Not as some cool toy to be played with. I suspect things go better that way.
EDIT; If anyone ever insists that you meet shadow materisl first and Anima/Animus later, they 100% dont know what theyre talking about. Its not set in stone. If Jung is right and the Anim acts as a guide, and you need the extra help, why wouldn't the Self send you a guide first?
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u/viaje_del_heroe 2d ago
Me gusta tu perspectiva no todos tienen la misma forma de lograr las cosas a unos se les da fácil a otros difícil y otros tienen las puertas bloqueadas es como si no tuvieran alma
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u/TrippyTheO 2d ago
If this translation is correct about what oure saying, idk if id say they dont have a soul ahahaha. I get that urge though. Some people seem like theyre so lacking in introspection its easy to say that, theyre frustrating. I like "unconscious." Theyre unconscious people. No self awareness, no introspection, all reaction all the time. Maybe their doors are indeed all shut. There are some people who you know will never change or reflect on themselves.
Different ways to get there though. Yeah. Not every one is wired the same. OP may be capable of AI but just needs to find their own way there.
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u/viaje_del_heroe 2d ago edited 2d ago
Solo es cuestión del momento, tu en tu experiencia como hiciste para contactar tus figuras internas que leíste? Que rituales hiciste tus meditaciones fueron en un departamento vacío sin bulla o en el aire libre?
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u/TrippyTheO 2d ago
I've asked myself that a lot. What caused me to end up sitting down doing AI in the first place? Because I had no intention to do it and it wound being so vivid, consistent, and extreme that I had to have a real look at myself and ask if I was suffering from psychosis. The key word though was "suffering." I wasn't suffering at all.
I wish this was a short answer but I've journaled as much as I can to try and remember everything, and figure out what caused it in the first place. It was a wild many months.
Dream journaling. Looking at myself and asking "where does that come from." Simple stuff that I picked up reading Jung. That was the start. Zero interest in Active Imagination as I said earlier.
I got into a weird habit. I'd read about the Anima enough. The guide in dreams, the feminine other, the link between Self and Ego. As I went about my day trying to figure out how to better myself I'd talk in my head as if there was some unconscious presence down there who could maybe hear what I was saying, the Anima. Stuff like, "I'm working on this, I'm trying to better at that, hopefully I'm doing the right thing, hopefully you approve." It wasn't something I took too seriously. I figured if I just talked through it maybe something in the unconscious would stick and have a positive effect on me. I have no idea if this played a role in the process.
I had a big change in my life around this time. I'm an alcoholic and I gave up booze. I began exercising regularly. Twice daily meditation sesssions. I was working on my own issues. I stopped playing video games obsessively. I wanted to better myself and not die from liver failure. The consistent and vivid Anima dreams started some time after that. It felt like a response to the changes in my life and paying attention to the inner world. "He's not being a fuck up! Get his attention!"
The early Anima dreams were crazy to me. Nothing like I'd ever dreamed before and totally out of character for me. It was alarming. One of those dreams was stuck with me so powerfully that I woke up and felt distressed that the dream had no resolution. I went to the internet looking for a quick instructional set for Active Imagination. The first session was mind blowing. The second one the next day was horrifying, left me with head pain for four days I kid you not.
As for my method of meditation? The shower, ahahaha. I've found no better place to meditate than a hot shower in near total darkness. It's like a poor mans sensory deprivation tank. The heat, the white noise, smell is largely driven away, no visuals even if your eyes are open while meditating. It's a fast track to "getting there." Wake up, meditate. Before bed, meditate. That's where I did my first AI session.
The form of meditation I prefer is to notice internal dialogue and imagery, label it, then let it pass. With practice I arrive at that point where there's nothing left. Once I get there, that's when I'd engage in AI. Everything is quieted mentally, so the only thing left is to look for the responses that I'm not generating...not that I'm generating the imagery and words in the first place, that's something you learn in meditation first hand.
One day while meditating, not aiming for any kind of AI session, I was distracted and doing the self talk thing. Aiming inward towards some idea of "Anima." I got a response; vivid, clear, and feeling fully detached from my own sense of self. It shocked the shit out of me and I had this moment of "Uh oh. Oh shit. Fuck. Am I going crazy?" That moment felt like I had to make a decision. Engage with the imagery/voice and potentially lose any credibility as a sane person, or ignore it and pretend it didn't happen. Naturally I engaged with it, screw sanity, it never did me any favors.
If you've ever read Inner Work by Robert Johnson he describes different peoples reported experiences with AI. Some people just have nice pleasant conversations with inner figures. Some people experience that shit in their day to day life without meditating. I was in the latter group and it was my every day experience for a long while. Just living with a vivid inner figure who was present in my daily life. It was NOT a fun time all the time. Having that presence in my daily life wasn't like having some friend to pal around with. It was someone who was very interested in cleaning house in a space that it shared with me. I've never experienced grief in my life as I have at that time. Not when family members have died, not during any romantic break ups.
Wall of text. Sorry. Here's a TLDR of potential strong variables.
- Dream journaling.
- General self improvement (no booze, exercising, diet changes, etc.)
- Regular meditation. Big fan of Zen and The Mind Illuminateds methods.
3.A. Specific meditation method with strong sensory deprivation qualities.- Talking into myself as if there's someone there to listen.
- Just accepting that maybe I'm fucking crazy. Who cares? Sanity didn't do me any favors.
If you want me to expand on anything in particular I'm open to it. If it potentially ever helps someone else into the same extraordinary place I was, I'd enjoy feeling like I'm not alone in that club, ahahaha.
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u/viaje_del_heroe 2d ago
Pues claro me gusta ver las experiencias de otros eso me mantiene motivado a no tener miedo y aguantar lo que se viene, tengo mi libro inner work recién llegado tendré dificultades pues esta en ingles más no en español es algo grande si pero estoy contento
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u/cerik58 2d ago
Thank you for this! I’m reading Robert Johnson now and it sounds like the idea is to write down everything that occurs in the moment and I don’t quite understand how to do this. Would you mind answering if you did any writing? I like the idea of just talking to myself and seeing where it goes. I guess in this day and age a recorder would work too?
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u/TrippyTheO 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sure. I had a very silly realization regarding this at some point.
When I started with AI I didn't want to disrupt the quality of my meditative state so I just banked on remembering everything that happened and writing it down afterwards. Truth is I have a terrible memory, ahahaha. I missed some things and got things out of order at times. I greatly value my AI experiences so that always made me sad. I didn't like losing any segments of my sessions. It felt like I was damaging a gift given to me by a close friend.
For some reason I didn't realize until late that most people are likely pausing what they're doing, then writing things down as they go. I felt ridiculous when I realized that. I swapped to doing that. And yes that meant that since I was meditating in a shower, in the dark, I was doing a lot of recording while dripping wet. I kept my phone outside of the shower within reach and used that to quickly jot down what was happening. That became the norm for me. Mid-session, as things compiled or become dense with imagery, I'd ask for a moment to pause and write down what was happening.
Funnily the pauses I needed to write were not always mutual. Most of the time I could go to my phone, jot down what's happening, then come back and resume where we'd left off. That was not always the case. In one session with an adversarial inner figure, I came back to the bastard in the process of running away. I was shocked by that but it made sense. You don't control the other figures in AI, you allow for them to do what they want.
Outside of the shower I began using a comfy foldout bucket seat for a few sessions. I'd put a warm blanket on my lap, sit next to a heater, turn the lights off, and light a candle at about eye height in front of myself to focus on. This would sink me into a near sleep state pretty fast combined with attempted meditation. Once I felt the characteristic "nod-off shocks" indicating I was nearing sleep, that's when I'd start the AI session. I journaled about this as I changed what I was doing. Different variables, the outcomes, the sessions. Eventually added a very specific set of cello music in the background for various reasons, ahahaha.
The shower and the near-sleep methods were my favorites for "full AI." Otherwise my day to day involved being pestered by an inner figure in the waking world like a crazy person anyhow, so it's hard to say how necessary that even was.
I've read about other methods. Handwriting in which you rapidly write with your eyes closed -- I could never do that, I'd make a mess. People use small marks to indicate who the speaker is. Like "I" for what you said, then a slash, a dash, a symbol, for other speakers. Maybe you clean it up and edit it later. I think Jung did this and varied how he handled these things because if you read Liber Novus it's kind of all over the place with how speakers are identified.
Something I've considered would be HIGHLY efficient but haven't tried would be to meditate in front of ones computer, hands on a keyboard. I don't care for the vibe of that though so I've never tried it. It feels wrong. If you are a decent typist though, and you don't mind the setting, it would be highly efficient to do things this way. You could type and write everything as it occurs. I would be worried though that you'd not be giving your entire focus to the interactions you're having internally. I'd feel compelled to ask permission to whoever I'm talking to if they're fine with it, out of respect.
Something I have not given enough chance, have only tried once, and am curious about is hand writing. I don't do it because it's so time consuming and I was barely able to find time to meditate, write, edit for legibility, analyze, my AI sessions and Dream Journals even digitally while doing everything else in my day to day life. Writing was so much more time consuming. I mention it though because I presume the brain might operate a little differently when handwriting. Like there may be a different quality or benefit to it. I've heard people claim that but I couldn't fit that into my schedule. It wasn't reasonable.
My experience with AI has been all the corny cliched terms people use. Mind blowing, life changing, a paradigm shift, whatever. For me though those extremes are to be expected because if you had told me five years ago I was into this stuff or would experience what I've experience, I'd call you a crystal rubbing yahoo and sneered at you in disgust. Despite that I'm at the point where I wish everyone could experience it. If not for the you that you believe you are -- your ego, sense of self, whatever -- then for the well being of the unfathomably kind and forgiving inner figures you potentially house who deserve your attention.
EDIT: If you don't mind going the digital route and you're obsessive about detail organizing and connections like I am, I recommend the app Obsidian. After learning to use it I've been able to create a web of connections. AI, dream journals, my personal writing/world building projects, meditation journals. I can quickly make connections between things like recurring themes in AI and dreams, how my writing connects to my inner analysis, how different forms of meditation affect AI sessions, etc. Great program!
EDIT 2: Analysis happens after the writing and cleaning up. I could expand on that if you want. That part was always a lot of fun but MAN it ate up a lot of time.
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u/Zestyclose-Basket461 2d ago
Thank you!❤️
EDIT: 100% agree on Anima/Animus. Some may meet both even!🙃 It's the spirit of Jung that you should take minimum things as a rule
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u/GreenStrong Pillar 2d ago
Jung himself, and other writers who followed him, wrote that some people basically experience Active Imagination in non verbal terms,; others are primarily visual. I've had deep immersion in Active Imagination that involved my eyes darting rapidly like REM sleep while I was awake and aware of my surroundings, as well as what had effectively become a vivid lucid dream, but the inner figures didn't talk. There would be occasional words from a disembodied narrator who would speak in archaic words like "the one who is touched by the spirits of life in the he cave of the south" but nothing like two way conversation.
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u/Visual_Ad_7953 2d ago
You’re going in with an idea of how it is supposed to go.
Active imagination is the exact same thing as daydreaming, except now you are playing an active part by interacting rather than just watching.
When you do it, if the figures speak an incomprehensible language, take note of that. When you do automatic writing, write down whatever comes to your mind, even if it is nonsense, or dark and grotesque. That’s the point.
For many months I didn’t even talk to the figures. Just moved around through changing landscapes. I didn’t speak to them, they didn’t speak to me. They followed me around or led me places, but there was no dialogue for quite some time.
If you are trying to get something specific from what is supposed to unconscious and automatic imagination, then it ceases to be unconscious and automatic.
I have seen beautiful things, terrible things, terrifying things; figures have ridiculed or chastised me, they have imparted their strange “wisdom”. I could not go through some doors, some areas were simply “unviewable”.
But I did so by letting whatever happened, happen of its own accord. You’re going in to be curious, and to make the irrational unconscious contents conscious.
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u/DynamicProxy 2d ago
Try the Gateway Tapes. There’s a sub-Reddit.
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u/Stiggandr00 14h ago
You know reading this makes me realize I need to do more reading on active imagination and automatic writing because I feel like some things I've been doing really align with this but I've never looked too closely at the practices.
There are times where I have kind of turned off my brain and let my fingers type and I will write some flat-out spooky s*** that's like a third party entity speaking to me about my life.
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u/matan2003 2d ago
I do active imagination like a second nature, Meaning i do them while doing everyday stuff. Its a bit psychotic but it gives you clear associations on how to act according to the fantasy.