Active Imagination 3
Meditation vs. Active Imagination, Living with High Openness, and a Possible New Title
It’s day three of my experiment with C.G. Jung’s Active Imagination technique. Last night I went to bed excited to wake up and engage the unconscious! I’ve scheduled this practice in place of my regular morning meditation. For one, the house is quieter before the kids wake up, but also I’m hoping that getting good and inspired early in the morning will make more opportunities for me to act on whatever I can take from the process.
It might seem like meditation would be a great way to prepare the mind for A.I. For instance, I’ve tried sitting for one of Andy Puddicombe’s, Headspace, guided meditations before trying Jung’s technique. I figured a head free of distractions would invite in more archetypes of the unconscious, but I’ve found its best when my mind is still somewhat spacey. So if I feel a little squirrely upstairs, I just roll with it.
Today, my imaginary studio is full of clear light. A noonish sun reflects in through the open windows and enriches the half-formed room with complex details. The walls are French’s yellow again, reverted from yesterday’s Tarheel blue.
My desk has become very busy, outfitted now with red, blue, and green buttons and levers for pulling. I feel like Homer Simpson, stupefied in my swiveling chair at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. The wall behind me is now crowded with framed pictures, articles, and accolades. The mosaic stirs up my confidence and makes me feel responsible.
I check my laptop screen first, then spin around to large blank sheets of drafting paper weighted down with several rolling rulers. I’m back to storyboarding my Substack design as if it was a comic book. Each panel illustration I shift forward and backward, trying different sequences like one of those sliding tile puzzles.
This newsletter becomes a collage for all of my interests. There’s a sense of freedom in allowing it to be a synthesis of everything rather than bound to one subject only to neglect all others.
It must be curiosity that seeks expression today.
That makes my biggest challenge finding the common denominator among my varied interests. What links all of them together? What do they have in common?
According to the Five Factor Model of personality traits, I strongly identify with as someone with an extremely high Openness to Experience (and consequently, extremely low in Conscientiousness). When I was in my teens and twenties, I saw this as a huge boon towards pursuing my interests. Then as I grew older, took on more responsibility, and spent more time as a worker, I found it a curse. It seemed like I’d always run into people who found it easy to choose direction, or pick a side. How could I pick a side on any major issue when that would mean I’d have to ignore half of the truth.
It wasn’t until a therapist suggested I imagine what the world would be like without people like me, who could hold two opposing ideas simultaneously, that I began to see it as a strength. Rather than trying to choose one of two paths, maybe the best way forward for me is to carve my own path through the middle of them all.
Finding the Middle sounds like a working title for the newsletter. That must be my alteration for this session.\
Comment or message me and let me know if the title “Finding the Middle” has meaning for you, or for that matter, if there is any topic you’d like me to explore in subsequent posts.