Imaginal Journal
Imagination is Medicine
Happy Stumbling
PBS series This Emotional Life
“This 3-part series represents what television does best. It opens a window into real lives, exploring ways to improve our social relationships, cope with emotional issues, and become more positive, resilient individuals. Hosted by Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist and best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness.”
A great one on honing that inner resilience, seeing that subjective reality from a birds eye view and working to modify behaviors for a more authentically happy state of being.
This photo makes me happy.
This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
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.”