Active Imagination #1

To jump start my creative practice I spent thirty days trying Jung's Active Imagination technique. This is the first journal entry of the series.

Active Imagination # 1

Eyes closed, focused on the air passing in and out at the ends of my nostrils, I heard the narrator say, “Imagine you are entering a workspace.”

Suddenly I could sense bright yellow walls and open windows. I recognized the room as my band’s old practice space. There was the mandala I painted on one wall. Sunlight shone through the tree leaves that rustled and made shadows through the blinds.

I scanned the workspace from a seat behind my old oak desk. My fingertips traced the grain of the wooden desktop. A laptop sat open beneath me. I tried to see what was on the screen but it was too bright and pained my eyes. I was surrounded by books balanced haphazardly in towers around the floor.

As my breath slowed, my body stilled and I could see the finer details of materials. Letter sized sheets of card stock, colored markers, black liners. My eyes adjusted to the dim room and I saw blank web frames layered above a mustard yellow background. Inside one frame a drawing of a cat made entirely from geometric shapes. The cat wore a bow tie. The web page under construction seemed filtered with tissue paper that gave it a faded texture. Other panels were pictures made of stained glass. One pan contained a woman and man in passionate embrace. They were dressed in period costumes from what might have been the middle ages.

I swivel around in my imaginary computer chair, switching tasks by rapid intuition.

A sense of dread descends on me. Suddenly, I realize I am retouching some of the images, which I’ve inferred are drawings I’ve rendered and am now retouching, optimizing them for web viewing. “This takes a patience that I don’t have.” I think.

I’m a picture book author working on my digital prototype. It’s the first in a series of issues created to comfort and identify the kids of addicted parents.

The images of stained glass depict colors that correspond to heavy emotional states. “Even kids need to learn how to let go.” I think.

The session ends, I open my notebook to save the experience for later.