Myśl globalnie, działaj lokalnie

Z wywiadu z prof. de Barbaro

" A przecież tu chodzi o to, by, jak mawiał Marek Aureliusz, „znaleźć dla siebie jakąś dobrą cząstkę działania".  "

W świecie wielkiej złożoności działania globalne wymagają konsensusu stron. Jego brak musi prowadzić do ekalacji konfliktu przy właściwie dowolnych działaniach.

Nauka z wnętrza

Za Robert A. Johnson

"Inner work using dreams and active imagination for personal growth"

This is perhaps the essence of the meaning of these

visionary experiences, as it is really the heart of Active

Imagination itself: It is a way of learning from your own

experience those profound truths of life that can’t be

transferred from one person to another with words but can only be

genuinely ​known through one’s own connection to the

collective unconscious. In this sense, we can only learn what we

already know at the unconscious level.

Kierkegaard expressed this principle when he said

that no one can give faith to another. He meant that no amount of

teaching, no words, no matter how sweet the aphorisms or how

rational the arguments, can communicate the experience that gives

birth to faith. There is a kind of knowledge and a kind of faith

that only comes from experience. We have to look deeply within

ourselves to find them, because they can’t be experienced

secondhand from other people. Each person must go directly to the

source.

Poziomy

Za Robert A. Johnson

"Inner work using dreams and active imagination for personal growth"

I find that the varieties of Active Imagination fall into three basic levels, depending on the use that is made of it:

1. Horse-trading

2. Embracing the unconscious 

3. Experiencing the spiritual dimension

Horse-trading, as I call it, is the most practical, personal level. It is the use of imagination when you need to

negotiate with your inner personalities, to make those compromises

and trade-offs that are sometimes required to keep practical life

functioning. If “horse-trading” seems a rather undignified name for

this use of Active Imagination, it is because it is a somewhat

undignified activity: It is a blatant process of bargaining with

the inner parts of oneself so that some agreements can be reached

and life can proceed.

Embracing the unconscious is the level at which we actively try to bring up the undiscovered parts of ourselves from

the unconscious so that we can integrate them into our conscious

functioning. It is the level at which we are trying to become

acquainted with the unknown, inner parts of ourselves. Most of the

examples we have given so far are from this level. It is the

primary function of Active Imagination, and the purpose most people

have in mind when they begin.

Experiencing the spiritual dimension is the level at which one is seized by a deep experience of the great

archetypes. The Active Imagination is perceived as a vision and

gives rise to religious insight. This is a rather uncommon form of

Active Imagination, but it is experienced by many ​individuals, and

therefore it is good to be aware of it.

Unikanie rzutowania na UR

Za Robert A. Johnson

"Inner work using dreams and active imagination for personal growth"

... I emphasize that we should not use

the images of external, physical people in Active Imagination. You

should not call to mind the image of your spouse, your friend, or

your coworker at your job and start talking with that person in

your imagination. If you do that, it puts you under extreme

unconscious pressure to take up the Active Imagination

physically when you are around that person again. You

involuntarily confuse the level of imagination and the level of

external, physical relationship. You start doing things or saying

things that make no sense to other people: After all, they haven’t

read the script.

Th thing to do when the image of someone you know

comes up in your imagination is to stop and change the appearance

of the image. You can even do this as part of your dialogue. You

can say: “Look, I don’t know why, but you look exactly like the guy

at the office that I’m mad at. Since I know that you are an energy

system inside me, please change your appearance. I don’t want to

confuse what is inside me with a person who is outside of me.” If

you do this, the inner figure will almost always cooperate and

alter his or her appearance. Then you can enter into your dialogue

with a clear sense that you are talking with a part of yourself,

not an external human being.

Nauka słuchania

Za Robert A. Johnson

"Inner work using dreams and active imagination for personal growth"

LEARNING TO LISTEN

Active Imagination is, more than anything, a process of listening. Not all dialogue or interaction with your

inner persons will be through words. There are sessions of Active

Imagination in which the entire experience takes place through

actions, through seeing and doing. It is still a dialogue, but a

dialogue without words. More often than not, however, there will be

spoken dialogue. In either case, we have to learn to listen.

Often we have only experienced these parts of

ourselves who now come up as images in our imagination as

enemies—as carriers of slothful resistance, neuros That is how they look to the ego. But now, if we

are going to set up an exchange in place of the ​habitual, lifelong war

we have fought, we have to begin to listen.

After so many years of ignoring these parts of

ourselves, seeing them as the inferior characteristics in our

personalities, we find that they have some very unpleasant things

to tell us when we finally listen. It is no surprise that some

inner person tells me what a tyrant I have been over the years, how

I have shoved my ego’s attitudes down the throat of the

unconscious.

One must be willing to say: “Who are you? What do

you have to say? I will listen to you. You may have the floor for

this entire hour if you want; you may use any language you want. I

am here to listen.”

This requires a formidable realignment of attitude

for most of us. If there is something in yourself that you see as a

weakness, a defect, a terrible obstruction to a productive life,

you nevertheless have to stop approaching that part of yourself as

“the badguy.” For once, during Active Imagination, you must try to

listen to that “inferior” being as though he or she were the voice

of wisdom. If our depressions or weaknesses come to us in

personified form, we need to honor those characteristics as part of

the total self.

It is awesome and frightening to take your sense of

inferiority, guilt, or remorse, put that part of you in the witness

box, and say: “You have every privilege. You are the one who bears

witness to that which I neither know nor understand. You may say

whatever you wish, at whatever length. You will be respected and

honored. And what you say will be recorded.” But it is from this

that the true power of Active Imagination rises: We learn to listen

to the ones whom we have kept mute. We learn to honor those whom we

have dishonored.

The Four-StepApproach to Active Imagination

Za Robert A. Johnson

"Inner work using dreams and active imagination for personal growth"

In the next few chapters I will present a four-step approach to Active Imagination that you can use to get yourself started. In this chapter we will talk about the approach overall and also about the things you need to do to set the stage for Active Imagination. For example, you need to know where you will work; you need to establish some privacy; and you need to decide how you are going to record your Active Imagination.

Here are the four steps:

1. Invite the unconscious

2. Dialogue and experience

3. Add the ethical element of values. 

4. Make it concrete with physical ritual

Dr. Maria Louise Von Franz has shown that Active Imagination naturally falls into four basic stages.* Different people will experience these stages in slightly different ways. I have tried, with these four practical steps, to formulate an orderly approach that will enable most people to find their way through the stages of Active Imagination without getting paralyzed or intimidated.

Just as with dream work, it helps greatly to have a set procedure, a series of steps you can follow in an orderly way, that will get you past the obstacles, confusion, and indecision that sometimes prevent people from getting started or following through.

Four-Step Approach

Za Robert A. Johnson

"Inner work using dreams and active imagination for personal growth"

The Four-Step Approach Before we begin step one it may help to have a brief preview of the four basic steps we will be covering in the pages ahead. 

 The steps are these: 

1. Making associations 

2. Connecting dream images to inner dynamics 

3. Interpreting 

4. Doing rituals to make the dream concrete In the first step we form the foundation for interpreting the dream by finding the associations that spring out of our unconscious in response to the dream images. 

 Every dream is made up of a series of images, so our work begins with discovering the meanings that those images have. In the second step, we look for and find the parts of our inner selves that the dream images represent. We find the dynamics at work inside us that are symbolized by the dream situation. Then, in the third step, the interpretation, we put together the information we have gleaned in the first two steps and arrive at a view of the dream’s meaning when taken as a whole. At the fourth step we learn to do rituals that will make the dream more conscious, imprint its meaning more clearly on our minds, and give it the concreteness of immediate physical experience. When we arrive at the fourth step, we will discuss the uses that ceremony and ritual can have for us in reconnecting with the unconscious. With this brief road map before us, we will start now with the first step.