How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration

by David Richo

An Active Imagination format: I. Use meditation to empty your mind of thoughts. (See the next chapter for an example of a meditation technique.) II. Affirm an attitude of listening to your unconscious, not dictating to it. “I open myself to inner messages.” “I am ready to know what I need to know.” “I acknowledge my imagination as a faculty of healing.” III. Dialogue with the image in writing, drawing, or movement without interpreting it. This dialogue develops from a felt sense of. • the image as I receive it, not as I prefer it, • what it says with no prompting from me, • my response without recourse to logic or discursive thought, • my spontaneous intuitions. IV. Create an affirmation that declares any result that has come from this process, e.g. “I forgive more and more.” V. A ritual or action that enacts the result and honors the gift received. Here is a way of working with an image that may be helpful in establishing the dialogue in Part III. 1. Draw a circle with a picture or word for the image in it and with eight lines as tangents to it. Write an association with the image on each line. Do not use synonyms, definitions, or simple descriptions. Do not base one word on the preceding word, as in free association. Return on each of the eight lines to the original image and let a word or phrase arise spontaneously. 2. Choose the most striking or surprising phrase of the eight that has been evoked. 3. Turn it into a question to you or a request of you. 4. Respond withou...