Up: [[Active Imagination]] Created: 2024-12-31 Updated: 2025-05-08 #### Visualization of Something You Want or a Procedure for Manifestation In Active Imagination you’re tapping into something you haven’t encountered before, whereas in visualizing, even if you’re imagining something in the future, it’s based on things you’re already familiar with, like a favourite beach. Visualization and manifestation actions come from the ego and are intended to achieve a specific result. Active Imagination content is from the unconscious and isn’t about specific results. #### Guided Visualization In guided visualization an external guide leads the person so they can sustain connection to the image. Guided visualization has its uses, including therapeutically, but it’s not Active Imagination. In Active Imagination, the unconscious guides the process. #### Mind Chatter or Daydreaming Both of these are examples of passive imagination and the former, at least, goes on all day long. Interestingly, Jungian analysts in training are taught to pay attention to their mind’s inner talk because there’s often a connection between it and what’s happening in the external world. An image from a daydream might be usable as a seed for Active Imagination but, in general, neither of these mental activities meet the standard of deliberateness that is needed for Active Imagination. #### Meditation In meditation you’re also [[Choosing a Seed Image]]. You might count your breath, or use a mantra, or focus on a candle flame. But when your mind wanders, you’re supposed to return to that seed. It’s the opposite in Active Imagination. Follow the seed wherever it goes and as it changes. #### Shamanic Journeying The processes of shamanic journeying and Active Imagination are very similar, but their intentions are different. When you do a shamanic journey, there are some specific objectives for what that journey will yield. It may or may not yield that, but you go in with a specific intention. With Active Imagination, there is no specific intention. You allow whatever happens to happen, and you follow it. #### Internal Family Systems Work [[Ken James]] explains that Internal Family Systems is “a selection and intensification of a particular aspect of Jungian psychology that is amplified through active imagination. You’re doing a type of Active Imagination but it is ego-directed and for a particular goal.” #### Dreaming When we are asleep, our ego doesn’t exist. In Active Imagination, our ego is active in [[Choosing a Seed Image]], and witnessing and interacting with the images that emerge from our unconscious. Active Imagination, said Jung, involves equal participation of conscious and unconscious. Dreaming when we are asleep does not. That is completely the unconscious at work. #### Fantasy A fantasy is your own invention. In Active Imagination, images have a life of their own and events happen according to their own logic. Jungian analyst James Hall says just one rule will tell you whether Active Imagination is really taking place or if you’re lost in fantasy. Something unexpected and surprising occurs in relation to your [[Ego]] in an active imagination. Rix Weaver, another Jungian, adds that fantasy takes you away from reality while Active Imagination leads to actions in reality. #### Escapism Active Imagination isn’t a defence against life events or an escape from reality. If anything, it allows us to move more strongly and deliberately into action on whatever life brings us. #### You Making It Up Ken James says this best. > [!Orbit] [[Ken James]] in Active Imagination course for Jung Platform > It is not the case that you’re making it up. We can really produce precious little by our conscious mind all the time. We depend entirely on the benevolent cooperation of our unconscious. If it doesn’t cooperate, we are completely lost. We overestimate the power of intention and the power of the will. So when we concentrate on an inner picture, and are careful not to interrupt the natural flow of events, our unconscious will produce a series of images which make a complete story.