The attached appeared as an article in a referreed hypnosis journal. This was the raw copy.
What experiences have you had with hypnotic dreaming or active imagination?
How might hypnotic dreaming, active imagination, and the transcendent function play a role in spiritual emergence processes?
How do you relate personally to the concept of the transcendent function?
What do you see as the connections among hypnotic dreaming, dream-like experiences, active imagination, and the transcendent function?
Replies
Dear Darlene,
When I read your article, I must say that in a way my soror mystica was leading me in a kind of active imagination. In exploring her experiences in the Other World, I decided to try to follow her, as I discovered that I got pictures in my upper right visual area, that had something to do with images she saw in her minds eye. In this active imagination-like proces I just closed my eyes and told her what I saw, and then she said: 'Well, I can understand that you see it like this, but in fact it looks a little bit different to me.' She was more adept in travelling to the Other World, or Orbis Alia as she called it. I've been doing these travels myself also, meeting with all kinds of strange lights, people, and I really see it as being a part of my awakening: in the months before the first (partial) spinal sweep of kundalini, I travelled a lot through these lands, sometimes together with her, sometimes alone, even having experiences while travelling on a bus.
I must say that since the kundalini proces has become heavier, I in a way lost the posibility to look inside. But maybe it's also because trance-like states, to look inside, are compromised by the semi-physical feelings connected to the kundalini process, which are disturbing the process of imaginative travelling.
Maybe the consciousness-state in which you can enter into your inner world, is the same state you can use to travel to farther reaches, and by trying to reach these strange borders, you develop your energetic body to a degree in which - in my case - kundalini was raised, in a way like reaching out from these inner, energetic world, to the outer physical world I used to live in quite well, but which changed my life in a couple of months.
Light, Life and Love,
Pieter.
I kind of picture the energetic situation like one of those tubes with liquid and air in it. You can get all the liquid to move to one side or the other, or you can try to get it to balance side to side, and then the liquid is all below and the air all above. Not sure if it's an adept image, but it's what's coming to me now for some reason.
I wonder if when energy is drawn primarily into the physical--due to pain, for example--it is drawn away from the spiritual, and vice versa, but when energy is in a sweet spot of equal distribution that might be when the synchronicities arrive? It seems that at times one can be so drawn into the spiritual that it is difficult to attend to the physical--or at least possible not to, but that in order to notice a synchronicity there needs to be attentiveness to both. I really have no idea if this is true, so perhaps others can make their conjectures as well?
Hi everyone. Darlene, thanks so much for your wonderful work on this topic. It's so amazing to watch the content take shape. I haven't had a chance to read the article yet--though it's next on my list.
However, I wanted to respond to the invitation to share about active imagination. Several years ago after an intense session with a therapist, I found myself sitting in my car in the car in the parking lot trying to grasp some information--some image--which had eluded me in the session. The therapist had asked me a question, the answer to which I felt was on the tip of my tongue, but I just wasn't able to access it. As I sat in that hot car in August intensely trying to capture the image that eluded me, I felt a bit as if the sky opened above me and I was visited by a dynamic vision. At that time in my life, I knew little of things of the spirit and next to nothing about such topics as depth psychology, shamanism, or "visions" per se. In that experience, I suddenly saw imyself standing on the edge of a deep, deep chasm in an arctic setting. Across the huge divide, I could see my 'self' standing with some other people. I had a deep urge to go find myself, rescue myself perhaps, and bring my "self" back to the side I was on. But as I desperately searched for some way across--a bridge, a walkway--even a tree I could cut down to bridge the gap--there was nothing, I couldn't find a way to get across. Suddenly a great white goose showed up and seemed to be offering itself to me. I climbed on it's back and we flew across easily--stopping to pick "me" up and then flying back to the other side even as everything disintegrated and I ultimately came back to myself still sitting in my hot car. The whole thing probably lasted only a few seconds, but it was incredibly intense and unlike anything I had experienced before.
Not three days later, I happened to pick up a large volume in the library on mythology by Joseph Campbell--a name I hardly knew. As I leafed through the pages, my eye fell on a section of myths from the arctic--and of course--the first myth I read told of how Buryat shamans frequently flew on geese in non-ordinary reality to conduct soul-retrievals on behalf of their patients.
Needless to say, I was blown away by the synchronicity. I think a significant challenge I was battling in my life at that time began healing then--not only from the initial vision, but also from the validation of finding the information in the book. This is exactly the kind of "dreamlike experience" which links to the transcendent that I imagine when I think about your work. Another remarkable effect it had on me was my experience of how easy it was to "fall into" a vision of that visual and experiential intensity.
After that, I began learning more about shamanism and immediately engaging in my own form of shamanic journeying because I felt it was an arena I had fairly easy access to. Indeed, it became a powerful tool that served me well as I entered a significant spiritual emergency just a few months later. I also consider active imagination to be a similar vehicle. I feel gratitude now for the emergence of such powerful tools--and though I don't engage nearly as much as I ought to, it will always be something I feel is at hand...
How wonderful to have such an engaging experience! Synchronicities are some of my favorite things in the world, showing me clearly that there is more to be seen beneath the veils of appearances. I just love that liminal place where the inner and the outer meet. It is possible to get there through active imagination if all the conditions are right, and yet it seems not by will that these phenomena happen--rather more by making oneself ready by sweeping away societal demands. There is this great song/dance that we do in the Dances of Universal Peace:
Go sweep out the chambers of your heart,
make it ready,
make it ready,
to be the dwelling of the Beloved,
when you depart
love will enter,
in you,
void of yourself
God will display pure beauty.
---
How many of you here might identify with the essence of the shamanic?
Has anyone here engaged in trance dancing or any other means of accessing spiritual healing?