Recently, an acquaintance of mine had the following dream:

Dreamt I was in America, somewhere on the east coast. I was in a spiritualist shop, it seemed a bit new age-y. The woman who owned the shop was sweet, she made beautiful jewelry. I decided to buy a necklace and tie it to my wrists, it was made out of beautiful purple stones. I put it on and felt strange, and then she started asking me intrusive questions. Then she got angry, but not at me but at something she saw in me. She tested me by asking something in Latin which I immediately understood and responded “habeo fielidade semper”. I tried to say, “I always have loyalty” in Latin for some reason. Since I don’t speak Latin and it did not feel like I said it, this confirmed her suspicion that a demon was dwelling within me so she started an exorcism. The demon was cast out, and she told me to wear the necklace around my neck for protection. I was grateful and fascinated. The necklace was made of many very vibrant purple beads on a string. I put it on and felt calmness come over me, clarity and protection. I took the necklace off for a second but felt dread over an evil presence so I put it back on. I was wearing a crucifix necklace during the possession and I asked her why it didn’t work, she knew why but didn’t want to give me a straight answer. Then I dreamt I woke up, I woke up with the necklace and saw the beads had become black and a crucifix was added.

Ah and the woman taught me a spell to teleport to her shop should I need more help. I should get salt, and use it to make a circle around me, then in the circle I should pour more salt to draw a triangle. Sit in the triangle. Then wait for a full moon, and at exactly midnight I need to open a water pipe and drink flowing water. A ghost will appear and help me travel there. I should arrive at her fireplace, since I drank flowing water and the opposite of flowing water is a stationary fire.

This is a fairly long and complex dream which I shall simplify into two parts: the first part is establishing the beneficial role of the dream character and the second is her teaching the dreamer how to “teleport to her shop”. While the first part is important for the context, it is the second part that shines because the dream provides guidelines on how to practice active imagination.

The first part of the dream revolves around an exorcism. It can be summarized as follows: the shop owner suspects that the dreamer is under the influence of a demon. After the confirmation of its presence, she casts the demon off and provides the dreamer with a protective necklace. To make sense of this part, we have to make a long detour through the psychological understanding of demons.

One of the main discoveries of depth psychology is that the ego is far from alone in the psyche. In fact, the psyche is a crowded place with pluralistic subpersonalities, each with different aims, drives, and goals. This multiplicity of the psyche is natural and explains why we experience so much ambivalence in our day-to-day. For instance, we can experience a superposition of emotions about a given thing, like feeling love and hate towards the same person. This means that we feel two emotions at once, i.e., love from one of our subpersonalities and hate from another.

This heterogeneity of the psyche also explains why willpower is so inefficient. When we are driven by willpower, it means that the ego (or another complex passing for the ego) asks the whole psyche to unite under a singular aim. This usually will create a response from one or many other parts of the psyche who are opposed to that aim. This disunity will lead to various forms of (self-)sabotage, like depression, procrastination, getting into repeated accidents, etc. Properly understood, these failures of willpower should lead to a deep introspection on the polarized conflict happening inside us.

In any case, the subpersonalities comprising consciousness are called ‘complexes’ in depth psychology, ‘parts’ in Internal Family Systems, and ‘alters’ in other models. The most singular feature of a complex is that it can act in an autonomous manner from the ego. This implies that our ego-consciousness can easily be overtaken by a subpersonality whose values and reactions are different from the ego. Jung writes,

“Ladies and Gentlemen, that leads me to something very important—the fact that a complex with its given tension or energy has the tendency to form a little personality of itself. It has a sort of body, a certain amount of its own physiology. It can upset the stomach. It upsets the breathing, it disturbs the heart—in short, it behaves like a partial personality. For instance, when you want to say or do something and unfortunately a complex interferes with this intention, then you say or do something different from what you intended. You are simply interrupted, and your best intention gets upset by the complex, exactly as if you had been interfered with by a human being or by circumstances from outside. Under those conditions we really are forced to speak of the tendencies of complexes to act as if they were characterized by a certain amount of will-power. When you speak of will-power you naturally ask about the ego. Where then is the ego that belongs to the will-power of the complexes? We know our own ego-complex, which is supposed to be in full possession of the body. It is not, but let us assume that it is a centre in full possession of the body, that there is a focus which we call the ego, and that the ego has a will and can do something with its components. The ego also is an agglomeration of highly toned contents, so that in principle there is no difference between the ego-complex and any other complex. 

Because complexes have a certain will-power, a sort of ego, we find that in a schizophrenic condition they emancipate themselves from conscious control to such an extent that they become visible and audible. They appear as visions, they speak in voices which are like the voices of definite people. This personification of complexes is not in itself necessarily a pathological condition. In dreams, for instance, our complexes often appear in a personified form. And one can train oneself to such an extent that they become visible or audible also in a waking condition. It is part of a certain yoga training to split up consciousness into its components, each of which appears as a specific personality. In the psychology of our unconscious there are typical figures that have a definite life of their own.

All this is explained by the fact that the so-called unity of consciousness is an illusion. It is really a wish-dream. We like to think that we are one; but we are not, most decidedly not. We are not really masters in our house. We like to believe in our will-power and in our energy and in what we can do; but when it comes to a real show-down we find that we can do it only to a certain extent, because we are hampered by those little devils the complexes. Complexes are autonomous groups of associations that have a tendency to move by themselves, to live their own life apart from our intentions. I hold that our personal unconscious, as well as the collective unconscious, consists of an indefinite, because unknown, number of complexes or fragmentary personalities.” (Carl Jung, The Tavistock Lectures, CW 18, par 149-151)

Halfway into our explanation, let’s now turn to Robert Moore’s material. In his seminar on Angels, Demons and Spirit Possession, Moore points out that we must make an essential differentiation between two kinds of complexes. We must differentiate a soul-complex from a spirit-complex.

Soul-complexes are complexes that belong to the personal unconscious. They are fragments of the soul and it is the responsibility of the ego to work with them towards integration when the conditions are appropriate.

On the other hand, spirit-complexes are complexes that do not belong to the soul because they are part of the collective unconscious. These complexes must not, should not, and cannot be integrated by the ego. They are alien to it. Any attempt at integration of a spirit-complex is dangerous and can be terminal to the personality.

Having said that, this does not mean that all spirit-complexes must be removed at once. In fact, some of them are in a beneficial relationship to the ego. In Christianity, angels are typical depictions of positive spirit-complexes. I would also argue that some forms of mercurial creativity belong in this category: if the muse visits you, pay respect to the inspiration, honor it but do not identify with it. It is deadly inflation to identify the ego with something that isn’t yours.

If there are positive spirit-complexes, there are also negative, obstinate, toxic spirit-complexes. These must be handled firmly and asked to leave by themselves. In some extreme cases where all negotiations have failed, one must use force to remove the foreign spirit. This practice is known under many names such as removal, cleansing, banishment, exorcism, etc.

We now have all the elements that we need to understand the exorcism of the demon. The woman, a benevolent aspect of the unconscious, saw and confirmed that the dreamer’s ego was associated with a spirit-complex, i.e., a content of the collective unconscious and not the personal unconscious. She proceeded to remove it and provided further protection to the dreamer. In essence, the dream helped to restore the integrity of the ego by removing a complex that did not belong to the dreamer.

Note: the refusal of the woman to answer over the failure of the crucifix and the transformation of the beaded necklace would deserve a separate and careful study that is not possible in the context of this article.

Before we go to the next part of the dream, I would like to emphasize one further problem. Namely, how does one know if an activated complex is a soul-complex or a spirit-complex? Thankfully, we can find an answer in the Collected Works.

“The personal unconscious, then, contains complexes that belong to the individual and form an intrinsic part of his psychic life. When any complex which ought to be associated with the ego becomes unconscious, either by being repressed or by sinking below the threshold, the individual experiences a sense of loss. Conversely, when a lost complex is made conscious again, for instance through psychotherapeutic treatment, he experiences an increase of power. Many neuroses are cured in this way. But when, on the other hand, a complex of the collective unconscious becomes associated with the ego, i.e., becomes conscious, it is felt as strange, uncanny, and at the same time fascinating. At all events the conscious mind falls under its spell, either feeling it as something pathological, or else being alienated by it from normal life. The association of a collective content with the ego always produces a state of alienation, because something is added to the individual’s consciousness which ought really to remain unconscious, that is, separated from the ego. If the content can be removed from consciousness again, the patient will feel relieved and more normal. The irruption of these alien contents is a characteristic symptom marking the onset of many mental illnesses. The patients are seized by weird and monstrous thoughts, the whole world seems changed, people have horrible, distorted faces, and so on.

While the contents of the personal unconscious are felt as belonging to one’s own psyche, the contents of the collective unconscious seem alien, as if they came from outside. The reintegration of a personal complex has the effect of release and often of healing, whereas the invasion of a complex from the collective unconscious is a very disagreeable and even dangerous phenomenon. The parallel with the primitive belief in souls and spirits is obvious: souls correspond to the autonomous complexes of the personal unconscious, and spirits to those of the collective unconscious. We, from the scientific standpoint, prosaically call the awful beings that dwell in the shadows of the primeval forests “psychic complexes.” Yet if we consider the extraordinary role played by the belief in souls and spirits in the history of mankind, we cannot be content with merely establishing the existence of such complexes, but must go rather more deeply into their nature.” (Carl Jung, The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits, CW 8, par 590-591)

In summary, activated soul-complexes feel familiar to the ego and provide a sense of strength when engaged with. In my experience, it feels like talking to a family member because there is a foundational trust that binds the soul-complex and the ego. Working through the integration of a soul-complex is restorative. One does feel changed afterwards but mostly relieved and rejuvenated.

In the case of activated spirit-complexes, engaging with them can be very tricky because there are no necessary shared values between the ego and a given spirit-complex. When asked to leave, some of them will rejoice at that idea, whereas others will refuse to engage in any discussion because they do not want to change their ways. In the case of an attempt of merging the personality with a foreign spirit-complex, one will feel a painful alienation during and after the process.

It should be clear now to the reader that consciousness is pluralistic, even when we postulate the ego-complex as a center. This multiplicity is not pathological by default, nor are all complexes good or bad. Only working on a case-by-case basis, usually with the help of dreams, will reveal if one should work on integration, separation or simply leave alone a given complex.

It is essential to maintain one’s discernment and a high level of maturity when engaging with the inner workings of the psyche. For instance, some aggressive soul-complexes are so wounded that they can be very hard to deal with. In more dramatic cases, very deceptive spirit-complexes who are up to no good will disguise themselves as benevolent to get closer to the ego. Only the integrity of the feeling function and cautious judgment can guide through such challenges.

In the absence of any indication, I would recommend approaching every complex with a respectful yet open attitude and going slowly but surely.

Friendly forest spirits from My Neighbor Totoro, a representation of the human ego surrounded by benevolent spirit-complexes from the collective unconscious.

For convenience, here is the second part of the dream again.

Ah and the woman taught me a spell to teleport to her shop should I need more help. I should get salt, and use it to make a circle around me, then in the circle I should pour more salt to draw a triangle. Sit in the triangle. Then wait for a full moon, and at exactly midnight I need to open a water pipe and drink flowing water. A ghost will appear and help me travel there. I should arrive at her fireplace, since I drank flowing water and the opposite of flowing water is a stationary fire.

When I read this part for the first time, I got really enthusiastic: the dream lays out clear guidelines on how to “teleport back to her shop”. In psychological terms, this means that the unconscious is telling us how to practice active imagination on its own terms! This is the first dream I am aware of that allows us to discuss and ground the practice of active imagination empirically.

Let’s discuss each step separately:

1. Stand inside a circle, made with salt.
2. Within the circle, sit in a triangle also made with salt.
3. Wait for a full moon.
4. Open a water pipe at midnight.
5. Drink the water.

The first symbol is salt. Salt is both a preserving and purifying element, able to ward off bad spirits. It is still traditionally used at the beginning of sumo fights.

The other essential association of salt is wisdom. In essence, wisdom is the opposite of force such as we find in a dialogue from Jung’s Black Books.

[I]. You must learn wisdom, since what is a king with power only and no wisdom? Isn’t his power badly directed, if it lacks wisdom?

He. You have divined well. What do you call wisdom?

[I]. I call wisdom right action coming from right thought.

He. That is well said. Yet what is right?

[I]. What is right is what is in accord with the whole, and the whole leads to greater life.

He. That is also well spoken. I have promised you, overcomer, that I will learn. My power needs wisdom. But why does a God born without wisdom still have power? Interpret this to me!

[I]. I told you, God is the overpowering being. Wisdom is the opposite, it is mild, it is never violent, it does not shatter, nobody feels fear and grovels before it in the dust. Because a God is a great power, he mostly lacks wisdom. So it is.

He. This is well spoken, but I don’t like what you said. Should wisdom destroy power? Answer!

[I]. Wisdom destroys unjust power and gives right form to right power.

He. You have put this well, overcomer!

Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol 7, p. 229

With this salt, we have to draw not one but two geometric structures: a circle and a triangle. If the circle is a sign of wholeness, of totality, the triangle has a directionality that symbolizes the tendency to converge towards a point of unity. Embedding the triangle within the circle means that both “the whole” and “the focus” must be protected against any influence.

This formal structure can be seen as a sealed container that is secured, “blessed” so that the numinous process is not contaminated or swayed by any influence. If the boundaries of this vessel are poorly established, the process will quickly derail and lead nowhere.

In summary, these first two steps are the preconditions to do active imagination: one must be preserved from outer and inner influence. The ego must be without external or ulterior motives or the process will fail.

Once in the proper mindset, we have to wait for a full moon. The full moon stands for the distinct form of luminosity, of consciousness that can be found in the unconscious. As Marie Louise von Franz writes, “On closer investigation, the contents of the unconscious do not seem to be plunged in complete darkness . . . . The unconscious state of a psychic content must therefore be conceived as a relative one, and, we should not imagine that the light of ego-consciousness is set against the total darkness of the unconscious. ⁷⁵ Even the light of consciousness has, as Jung points out, ⁷⁶ many degrees of luminosity, and the ego-complex many gradations of emphasis. . . . For this reason the psychic background of our consciousness is often symbolized, in dreams and visions, by a starry sky, a sea of lights, innumerable eyes shining out of darkness, and suchlike motifs.” (Marie-Louise von Franz, Aurora Consurgens, pp. 171-172)

Waiting for a full moon then is to wait for an autonomous response from the unconscious. Like a wild animal, the unconscious has the right to respond or not, even if the invitation was laid out properly. Trying to approach the unconscious forcefully or with impatience will lead nowhere, as I have experienced many times over.

After the full moon, one has to open a water pipe and drink the water which is a symbol for establishing a conscious contact with the unconscious. Indeed, drinking the water is a symbol of assimilating and taking in what the unconscious is sharing, by being receptive to its ways. This is the reason why it happens at midnight, i.e. when the level of ego-consciousness is at its lowest (this is sometimes called “abaissement du niveau mental“).

Finally, the dream says that a ghost will lead the ego to her shop. This is another symbol for the unconscious taking the lead in the exchange.

It concludes by saying that “flowing water” stands in opposition to “stationary fire”. Thus the flowing contents of the unconscious are different from the will, the ego-driven libido.

Let’s recap. According to the dream, to do active imagination, one should: 1) be protected from outside influence, 2) detach from ulterior motives, 3) wait for an autonomous sign from the unconscious, 4) engage with the faint response, 5) be receptive to the spontaneous nature of the exchange.

In summary, the dream invites us to bring an uncontaminated and morally responsible ego-consciousness to engage with the unconscious on its own terms.

The above guidelines might still be too abstract for the reader who does not have any experience with contacting the unconscious. For people in this situation, I would recommend learning the therapeutic model Internal Family Systems (IFS) before trying active imagination. Because I have already talked about IFS in another article, I will focus on how the model compares to the symbolic guidelines discussed above.

In a typical IFS session, the role of the therapist will consist first and foremost of assisting the client to achieve a specific state of presence before proceeding. This presence is called ‘Self’ and is described as being qualitatively different from being influenced by other parts, other subpersonalities. Listen to what Richard Schwartz has to say on Self.

This state of “being in Self” is described by 8 attributes starting with the letter C: Calmness, Curiosity, Clarity, Compassion, Confidence, Courage, Creativity, and Connectedness.

Therefore, the focus of the therapist is to make sure that the client (and him/herself as well!) are in a state that is sufficiently close to Self before starting the therapeutic process. For instance, if the client feels worried or anxious, the attention of the therapist will be to deal with the subpersonalities that hold worry or anxiety before even starting the process.

When we compare this with the dream above, we can see the similarity between standing inside the geometric structure made of salt and being in Self. Being inside a sealed, uncontaminated, undamaged structure is a symbolic equivalent to the 8 C’s described above. These are two descriptions of the required attitude before trying to contact the unconscious. Everything depends on that. Every time our attitude moves away from that state, the resulting active imagination will go poorly unless we find a way to course-correct. To be in Self is the precondition for a healing dialog to take place.

Trying active imagination to gain something will not work. Subtle or hidden motivations (like being impatient, being critical, being driven by a power motive, trying to forcefully heal a pattern, refusing to feel emotions, etc.) will hinder the process up to making it unworkable. Active imagination must only be attempted with a humble, open, curious, connected, receptive and responsible attitude. This is why one must check one’s attitude multiple times when we engage with the unconscious. If one fails to respect this precondition, while some things might happen, they are likely to lead nowhere or cause serious damage in your inner world.

Let’s resume our description of the IFS process. Once the state of Self is achieved (i.e., one feels calm, curious, compassionate, connected, etc.), the therapist will help the client to focus on a recent overbearing emotion he felt or is still feeling. This will lead the client to approach a part of his psyche that carries said emotion. Once the ego is facing the personified emotion, then a respectful exchange based on gratitude and recognition can take place. When successful, this process can eventually lead to revisiting safely a past trauma and healing it. For more on IFS, I recommend Jay Earley’s Self-Therapy.

As we can see, this description is comparable to waiting for the full moon, opening a water pipe, and drinking from it. The main difference is that the IFS process is usually more focused and guided whereas active imagination opens oneself to the complete unknown. As Jung writes,

The initial question to be directed to the Invisible would be: “Who or what has come alive . . .? Who or what has entered my psychic life and created disturbances and wants to be heard?” To this you should add: “let it speak!” Then switch off your noisy consciousness and listen quietly inwards and look at the images that appear before your inner eye, or hearken to the words which the muscles of your speech apparatus are trying to form. Write down what then comes without criticism. Images should be drawn or painted assiduously no matter whether you can do it or not.

Once you have got at least fragments of these contents, then you may meditate on them afterwards. Don’t criticize anything away! If any questions arise, put them to the unconscious again the next day. Don’t be content with your own explanations no matter how intelligent they are. . . .

Treat any drawings the same way. Meditate on them afterwards and every day go on developing what is unsatisfactory about them. The important thing is to let the unconscious take the lead. . . . In this case, the unconscious really does know better.

Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, pp. 82-83

The practice of “feeding your demons” illustrated by Yumi Sakugawa (book). Another modality for dealing with the multiplicity of the psyche.

See this video by Tsultrim Allione.

The ultimate goal of analytical psychology is to teach someone to be in direct contact with the unconscious. While dream interpretation is a necessary lifelong apprenticeship, active imagination is the keystone where the ego can meet the unconscious halfway. If this point is reached, human mediation is theoretically no longer necessary.

Having said that, active imagination is a very tricky practice where a lot can go wrong: imagine having the responsibility to interact with autonomous dream symbols while having to maintain a responsible, open, humble, and moral attitude. This requires a great deal of maturity because no tricks will work. Only genuine relationship will do the job. Done incautiously, active imagination can quickly end up like being stuck in a nightmare that one cannot wake up from.

In hindsight, I can say that I have ‘learned’ active imagination by trying to emulate the behavior displayed by Jung in his Red Book while at the same time being assisted by an IFS therapist. From this position, I would caution the reader to always have a way to reach out to qualified people in case things take a wrong turn. This is a bare minimum.

Outside of the ability to learn from someone else, there are various reasons why this is a necessity. The main one is that, when one is alone, we tend to act in a way that magnifies our blind spots. Therefore we can end up at a dead end without even knowing what we did wrong. In a case like this, only a third person will be able to detect what went wrong. Such was the case with me: I was working with a part that looked like a crying baby and no matter what I did, it would still be crying. After a week of failures, I went to my IFS therapist demoralized because I exhausted everything I knew. In a single session, she figured out that the reason why the baby was crying was because I was being overprotective! There was nothing wrong with the baby but I was unconsciously acting out a dysfunctional maternal trait that made him distressed.

Outside of external supervision, another reason to have someone available is that, when two people are in Self, the amount of healing presence is increased. Thus large traumas are easier to approach because one feels more supported by an invisible but benevolent air of trust.

While I am not making the case that therapy is always necessary, it is not a good idea to work without a net. If there is really no one around you (not even a trustworthy friend), then pick up a journal and write everything down. You can write in a stream-of-consciousness way or imagine writing letters to someone that truly cares about you, whatever works best to help you write authentically about what is happening to you.

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