Active imagination is a technique developed by the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. He considered it the most powerful tool to access the unconscious and for achieving wholeness of personality.    

Jung discovered this method between the years of 1913 and 1916, a period of disorientation and intense inner turmoil which he called his confrontation with the unconscious. He searched for a method to heal himself from within, through the power of the imagination.   

Active imagination is a dialogue with different parts of yourself that live in the unconscious. In some way it is similar to dreaming, except that you are fully awake and conscious during the experience.   

If we honestly want to find our own wholeness, to live our individual fate as fully as possible; if we truly want to abolish illusion on principle and find the truth of our own being, however little we like to be the way we are, then there is nothing that can help us so much in our endeavour as active imagination.

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📚 Recommended Reading

▶ Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth

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▶ Jung on Active Imagination

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▶ Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination as Developed by C.G. Jung

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⌛ Timestamps

0:00 Introduction

2:02 Confrontation with the Unconscious & The Red Book

4:46 Alchemy and Jung

5:39 Approaching Active Imagination

6:56 Precaution Before Starting Active Imagination

7:46 Inner Work: Active Imagination

9:21 Distinguishing Active Imagination from Passive Fantasy

9:51 Active Imagination Example: Talking with the Inner Artist

11:51 When You Think You’re Making Up Something

13:01 Active Imagination as Mythic Journey

14:10 The Four-Step Approach to Active Imagination

16:25 Step 1. Active Imagination: The Invitation

20:50 Step 2. Active Imagination: The Dialogue

25:00 Step 3. Active Imagination: The Values

27:25 Step 4. Active Imagination: The Rituals