A Symbolic Encounter using Active Imagination

Active imagination and dream interpretation has been an integral part of my journey. Rarely was it a case of intentionally invoking or attempting to willfully employ these techniques; it was more a case of them happening autonomously in my psyche, usually as harbingers of important and impending movements of the psyche/spirit. The imaginal scene’s significance usually did not become apparent to me until after the fact. I used these hypnogogic visions more as tell-tale indicators of the path I was on, and markers for the path that I was intended to follow. For example, here is one of the most important scenes that played out in an active imagination encounter a few years ago. It illustrates how the psyche can take archetypal symbols, animate them, and make their contents personal and accessible. This scene unfolded in the reverie between wakefulness and sleep.

I was flying with an aerial view of the countryside below, drab shades, and a desiccated river bed below. I was flying with a younger male person next to me – either a child or a younger brother. The child was suddenly on the ground, and I next to him, when a stern disembodied voice came out of the sky issuing harsh edicts and lambasting/haranguing the younger male. We decided jointly we were going to track down and speak to the speaker to find out what was behind the attitude (much like the Wizard of Oz), the youngster with more trepidation about that than I. The scene shifted – we tracked down the speaker who was wielding such an abusive, strong-willed, intimidating and authoritarian tone and who was holding a stranglehold over the countryside. It turned out to be a misshapen lump of flesh with a couple of angry, suspicious, and guarded eyes and a curled and tight-lipped mouth – no arms, legs, hair, face, or any other traits we would recognize as human. The lump of flesh was about a foot or two in height and width. It was revolting to look at – like an autonomous tumor (miniature Jabba the Hut?). This was the ruler of all the land that was making life miserable for all inhabitants, including my younger companion. At this point, depth opened up in the dream/vision, and I asked the Interior Depths what to do to break the hold of this tyranny. The lump seemed ill-disposed to negotiate or engage in any introspection. Violence would not work – it would encourage more of the same tyranny. Appeasement, I knew from long experience, would not work either. Condemnation and judgment of the creature’s actions in its presence held little promise. It seemed to be a dilemma with no solution. We sat down near the lump in a circle in the dust and waited. I listened interiorly. Eventually, I heard from the depths, “Call the name” with a wordless understanding arising that I was to hold the name as a bridge of connection and understanding. What name? I asked the lump what its name was. It answered “Saturn.”

I was flummoxed and taken aback. My first impression was that I was being lied to, and intentionally, to my face. Saturn, the astrological ruler and enforcer of limits, restraint, density, and associated with bones, structure, and rigidity, could not possibly be this blubbery lump’s real name. I pondered what to do. Eventually, the realization came that the lump thought of itself as Saturn, regardless of what its objectively apparent characteristics were. (Recognized later, after waking, regardless of its physical characteristics, the attributes of its tyranny were certainly Saturnian.) And the understanding arose that I would need to engage with it on its terms to communicate. Something alerted me subliminally to the deep significance of what was to transpire.

I called internally to the soul and invoked a prayer to the God of Mercy on High, for uplifting and redemption of the situation. The depths remained open, and influxes of substance, compassion, and larger understanding were flowing into the substratum of the dream, informing and instructing me. The knowledge arose that it was the continuing engagement and openness to this creature, the presence in the circle that held the potential of transmuting the situation. I felt an unfamiliar influx, originating in the Interior, striking me gently in center of my chest from behind and igniting in a glowing warmth, with a shift in the mode of communication from the head and intellect to the Center of the Being. Compassion was arising. We continued to sit silently on the ground, my younger companion drawing circles with his finger in the dust with his head down. “Saturn,” I eventually said, the communication issuing from my heart, “why are you oppressing all? What do you want?” No verbal answer that made sense came from the lump of flesh, but I distinctly and clearly felt fields of fear, anger, defensiveness, and an overpowering need for control emanating from the creature. The bridge of openness and understanding had to be maintained. I continued to hold the name foremost and the bridge open in my intention, which seemed not to originate from the mind, but from the wholeness of Being. This “holding space,” this issuing of a gnostic telepathic inquiry, was continuously offered in openness and growing compassion to the creature, not from weakness, appeasement and subjection to it, nor from a position of superiority and pity, but on a basis as equals. By holding the state, my intention was not to release the engagement until there was a shift in the configuration. I waited in silence and open offering. After another period of silence, words came again from the Depths: “Let my people go.”

At some point, the truth of the situation and the compassionate engagement became too much for the creature, and it began shrieking in high-pitched cries of pain. Compassionate engagement was actually painful to this creature. It did not like feeling openness to the vision or consequences of its actions as felt from other perspectives. It did not like the pain that was being stirred up in it, its own pain that had been previously suppressed. And suddenly, in a lightning shift of identity, I was the creature, and I began sputtering out my appeals, my pain, my buried anguish. They were the same appeals I had prayed many times over for, prayers for release, for deliverance, for lifting of gloom and joylessness, prayers that I felt had always gone unanswered before. Appeals and emotional break-downs were crashing out of me pell-mell, almost frantically. I had always felt no One was listening before. But Someone – a third-party representative from beyond – was listening now.

The center of identity shifted again, back to my previous role. More instruction came from the Depths. I was to call down Grace for this creature, for its pain, and let Grace begin to work in it. I did so. Instruction was received that I had no prior experience with – an understanding that breathing upon this creature while in the compassionate state with the intent to share and impart to it would transmit healing power to it. I did so, feeling overflowing joy as I did. I was also instructed to seal the portal to this engagement open so that it could be revisited in the future if necessary. I did that as well on a spiritual level, not really understanding what I was doing or how it was accomplished. I also invoked the protection of Archangel Michael over the engagement and its future effects, if any, so that holy progress would continue unmolested and undisturbed. And with that, my younger companion and I began to fly again. When we reached altitude, the landscape below began to burst with conventional but welcome verdant life initially – greenery everywhere, with rivers flowing again, but then it progressed beyond that, into brilliant fiery fluorescent colors, bright red for the landscape, orange, and solar yellow and bright lime green for the skies and waters, and I understood that a period of fiery transformation for the entire landscape had been initiated.

There is much fertile ground here for cultivation, in the mode of exploration that is best aligned with your views and practices.