Imaginal Journal
Imagination is Medicine
Ancestors
When this image of my paternal grandfather recently surfaced it penetrated the depths of my being and sparked my imagination. Now I was able to place his journey constructing major streets such as Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and living near Venice Beach in the 1930s. It gave my a sense of roots and standing I could ground into for my own journey and work.
Dreams and Active Imagination
Here I share an example of a dream of mine and how I amplified the experience through mindful active imagination to find its healing message and consider amplifications of myths and archetypal figures.
Dream:
Dreams lately have been pointing to the East. Various dreams of trying to get through Asian airports, through customs, presenting identification. Recently, the appearance of an Asian teacher with a red book with a golden dragon on the cover. Because he hasn’t read it, he cannot instruct or test us on it, thus I am instructed to write the sacred text. (Temples often have dragons at their doors to represent having to face one’s demons before entering into self-reflection and pursuit of enlightenment.)
Active Imagination:
Today I created some sacred space and was following a mediation by Buddhist monk, Jack Kornfield. Into the woods I went, entering a cave with a lantern. In the first room my guide appeared to me as my niece (a person related to my inner child). She led me into a second room where I received a tool, a scimitar knife to cut through the swath of illusion. In the third room I found my treasure my future baby swaddled in a blanket, that I had been neglecting. My neice led me back into the forest with my knife of discernment and my baby.
Amplification:
My vision is symbolically heralded with Manjushri, a Bodhisattva who represents wisdom. He holds a sword in his right hand — symbolizing the ability to cut through delusion. In his left hand, by his heart, he holds the stem of a lotus flower, which bears a book — the Perfection of Wisdom teaching, Prajnaparamita.
The gist:
In order to allow something new that wants to be born or manifest, I need refine my sense of identity, discernment, cut through illusion, and trust.
Passions
“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always a danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”
Jung's Medicine
I won’t deny it, I am a pretty big fan of the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung, and his theories on psyche. As an intuitive, his perspective has deeply resonated with me. Much of his philosophy profoundly inform my life.
When I was first introduced to Jung at surface, I strongly protested against his originality. I thought his concepts to be tritely stolen from Eastern and Indigenous philosophies wrapped in Western designations. To this day, I still find myself wrestling with criticisms I have of the man, despite his legend. But as I delve deeper and deeper, I cannot deny his genius and the extraordinary body of work he amassed with the support of his devotees, many whom were women that created their own theories and paths of individuation.
During a period in my life in which I was stuck and searching for meaning, I decided to undergo Jungian analysis and experienced a mysterious unfolding of powerful dreams that connected me back to the depths of my soul and the value of relating to the symbolic nature of psyche. I came to understand the healing potential in considering the poison as the elixir.
Notions of the collective unconscious, individuation, synchronicity, archetype, anima and animus, persona, shadow, self, dreamwork, and typology came alive for me and have contained me in a very special way since.
As Freud’s once protege and later nemesis, Jung had to forge a path that led him to trust his mystical convictions about the nature of psyche and dive into the unconscious to ferret out its truths. My sensing his triteness, was perhaps after all, a man connecting to the universality of esoteric practices, myth, ritual, and symbol and giving them credence for the western world to take note.
I certainly have, and while various schools of thought and practices have informed my path of integrating the insight I gain from the Jungian perspective, I hope to share what I know now as lived experience of numinous phenomenon while remaining at home with our humanness.
Indian Goddess of Prosperity
Saraswati, Hindu Goddess of Knowledge, Music, and the Creative Arts.
A good one to invoke when starting a new venture.