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To understand the value of dream work and active imagination in therapy it is essential to have a clear idea of what the unconscious is and its function. When you reflect on the functioning of your brain, body and action it is understood completely that much of those processes like blood circulation, heart action, blood pressure, release of hormones, digestion, immunity, ph level, nutrient levels and cell repair (just to name a few) are all done unconsciously. They are processes that are monitored and carried out without your conscious will-power to do it. They are unconscious processes. These processes are executed beyond conscious control. That is fact. The question that comes from that is, ‘well, what is the unconscious?’ Richards & Richards (2022) state that the function of the unconscious is to regulate the processes of the individual to function optimally. But that regulation of processes is not just for physiological processes alone, it also for mental and emotional processes. Most of the actions we think we care consciously in control of are actually not. When you drive a car you are not consciously driving because repetitive tasks become grooved into the neural pathways of the brain and can be carried out without thinking too much about them. When you have been driving for a few months you no longer think about checking the mirror, you just do it. You don’t consciously think about putting the car into gear, you just do it. Likewise when you wash the dishes, take a shower, put the rubbish out, you don’t actually think about the minor tasks in doing so: lifting the leg to walk, placing the hand on the gearstick, or placing the dish on the rack. They are done quite unconsciously while you think about something else. These unconscious processes are just the tip of the iceberg. When someone makes a comment about your negative attitude, one response is to defend yourself quite automatically, become angry and maybe confrontational. That reaction process is quite unconscious and you might reflect later and think, maybe they had a point and maybe I did react inappropriately. The reaction is unconscious. Things can get more tricky when other reactions are triggered within us without us really wanting them to. Hitting someone in anger, touching someone inappropriately out of lust, bursting into tears when left alone for long periods, shaking with fear when confronted with an overwhelming task or even retreating from a situation or task that might actually have a good outcome. All these responses are quite unconscious. We become gripped in their power. The unconscious has us in its grasp. One way we can become more conscious of these processes is through understanding the function of the unconscious. It is there to help regulate our lived experience and help us become more happy and purposefully oriented to life. That is its purpose but we do not know that. The unconscious is actually a deeper sense organ in its own right. It has intelligence and wisdom. Freud created it into a shadow, containing unhealthy impulses and motivations. It has generally been regarded as a dark container of cruelty and wickedness. Yet other therapists of great wisdom realised there was something much more positive in the unconscious and unfortunately unacknowledged and ignored. Jung called it the place of the buried treasure where we discover our gifts, strengths and positive qualities. There was something deeply wise and life-giving in the vessel of the unconscious; a place that holds an enormity of data and information. When the conscious and unconscious are not harmoniously cooperating with one another a neurosis can pop up like depression, anxiety, anger or fear. It can also be revealed to us though our reactions to people and situations, our avoidance behaviours or other disturbances. The unconscious is the source of all our thinking, reasoning, awareness, feeling , intuition and sensation, introversion and extroversion, perceiving and judging. It is from the unconscious that our conscious mind arises. Then unconscious is the source of mind; it is original mind. The more aware and calm we are the more we connect to this level of mind in order to grow and develop in ourselves and in the world. But there are multiple levels of the unconscious: subconscious and superconscious and each of those have levels within them but we are just going to focus on those two levels for now.   The Subconscious All those functions mentioned previously about our patterns of behaviour, reactions to people and situations, passions, fears, desires, wants are held in the subconscious in terms of patterns of behaviours and thinking. Habits and routines are stored here: good and not so good. Attachments and addictions are held in this level of mind. They are patterns of behaviours and thinking that are completely entrenched in the mind and happen without conscious control. Disorders like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, eating disorders, negative self-perceptions are all held at this level below conscious control and awareness. When someone goes to therapy such as counselling, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy or CBT the therapist is trained to help them make those unconscious/subconscious behaviours and perceptions conscious so as to reframe and cognitively and behaviourally restructure them. A depth psychologist or Jungian therapist may help them to identify the archetypal pattern, or manifestation of unmet needs/instincts to transform their neurosis into a healthier way of perceiving themselves and their situation and therefore realise new goals and aspirations to meet their needs in a healthy and productive way. The past creates the now and the now creates the future. The unconscious wants us to realise our current patterns that are unhealthy and suffocating in order to find new ways of being and be more happy and healthy. In the unconscious is contained the blueprint of our optimal self. It is sometimes referred to as the Higher Self, the True Self, the Soul, the Genome. The unconscious communicates to us in many ways: our emotions, the process of projection and transference, syncronicity, life events, dreams, symbols and images, meditation, prayer, daydreaming, contemplation experiences and active imagination. The manner in which it communicates to us depends on how well we can listen to it. For those who are oblivious to the existence of the unconscious and who are not living to their potential the unconscious will get our attention in a gentle way to begin with. Later on if we choose not to hear or see the signs the message will become stronger. What might be a gentle dream for example in the initial stages may become an accident or illness, a depression or intense anxiety. The most intense messaging comes to us at specific transitions of life. These are explored in other articles, but are generally linked to transitions like:

• coming of age – child to adolescent, adolescent to adult, adult to mature adult, older adult to elder
• marriage
• parenthood
• retirement
• death

Adolescence, adulthood, parenthood, mid-life crisis/transition, retirement, death are some of the most emotionally and mentally tumultuous periods of human life. The transitions can be smooth but they can also bring deep pain and suffering as we face our fears and responsibilities. The risks of these transitions can be a splitting, dividing, separating of the conscious and unconscious and there can be splits, divisions and separations within those levels as well. The more distanced we are from our unconscious the greater the split. We become exiled from something deep and important in ourselves and come to gravitate towards external objects like money, sex, relationships, power and status. The more we try to pursue more money, more sex, more relationships, more power and more status in the world the more separated we become from our true selves. We self-harm and gradually become more and more divided within. Our personality splits into what I like about myself and what I do not life about myself. My motivational goals become conflicted and cannot manifest. I become stuck and then hopeless and then depressed. I lose faith in my life and stop valuing myself as a human being. Then I turn against others and my country, the world and I become alienated from the world. What began as an alienation from my unconscious became projected outside. I am an island, alone and bereft of meaning and purpose. But there is hope because even in the darkest time of life there is always a glimmer of light in the darkness like in Pandora’s Box. The splitting within leads to the release of the evils into the consciousness of the individual and then into the world. And in that moment hope is the last to leave to remind us there is something within that can be united with; it is the treasure within, the unconscious. There is a marriage between the conscious and unconscious once more and the anxiety, depression, anger, separation, loneliness, disconnection and fear gradually collapse and one’s life become more meaningful and purposeful again and one attains the golden fleece of wisdom and peace, contentment and union. Jung called this process of union, individuation. In the east it is called Self-Realisation or Enlightenment. In counselling or hypnotherapy it might be called healing. Dream Work and Active Imagination are two of those methods of making the union once more between the conscious and unconscious. In this article I have been inspired by the work of Carl Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, Robert Johnson and Steve and Pauline Richards.   Dream Work Jung (1977) said, “Dreams are part of nature…they have no intention to deceive our eyes, but we may deceive ourselves because our eyes are short-sighted”. The analysis of a dream is not a quick fix into our questions about life. The analysis takes practice, training and a commitment to deep reflection on what the dream presents to us. The first challenge with dream work is not so much in the analysis of the dream but catching one. They can be illusive because the conscious mind is not active when we dream. In order to bring unconscious material like a dream into consciousness we have to be able to remember it and most people will find that they can’t remember their dreams. One way around this is affirmation in the mind before falling asleep: “Help me remember my dream on awakening from sleep” and affirm this many times before drifting off to sleep. Have a notebook next to the bed. It takes perseverance and determination to entrench this affirmation into the subconscious to remember your dreams. It can take several weeks, usually less, to be able to capture a dream. See yourself as a dreamcatcher preparing the mind for a night of fishing. Also dream catching is not something you have to do all the time. In life there are periods of calm and at other times turmoil and change. These are the times to go fishing for the extra guidance from the unconscious especially around decision-making periods of life. There are times when life undergoes significant emotional difficulty with depression and anxiety. These are also periods when dream analysis can help guide decision making. Much of the work I have found that is useful for the dream analysis process is from the work of Robert Johnson in his book Inner Work. I have also gleaned a great deal from Marie Louise von Franz. Her documentary films are amazing. There are some caveats in dream analysis that require pointing out before we look at Johnson’s process of analysis:

1. There is a tendency to interpret people in dreams as external influences. They are not. They represent a quality or personality aspect within the dreamer. If the dreamer  dreams of their mother scolding them they are actually dreaming of a mother-like instinct within their own personality that may be being too harsh. If a dreamer dreams of their husband hitting them they are not dreaming a prophetic message. The masculine quality in them, symbolised by the husband, is too strong and aggressive. If a dreamer dreams of their child crying, the unconscious is communicating that child-like attitudes within them need to be listened to, understood, nurtured and matured. However, the context these dream figures find themselves in like childhood homes, castles, forests, cities, towns, schools or hospitals within the dream will also indicate how and why specific qualities, attitudes and problems may be addressed, what forces may be repressing them, overamplifying them or ignoring them. Very rarely will a dream present a prophetic insight into a person or situation in someone’s life though the interpretation of a dream may warn the dreamer about something they need to do to keep things as calm as possible, maybe to be assertive and take control of a situation.
2. All symbols and images such as objects, places, people and situations can only be understood in the personal life experience of the dreamer. Dream books and allowing other people to tell you what particular things mean are not helpful. The unconscious mind will present material to you that only you would understand. If someone dreams of a sword in the dream, their understanding of it may be different from someone else. A sword may symbolise aggression, revenge and anger to someone and the cutting justice of truth and wisdom to another. You have to read symbols very carefully and in the light of your own experience and understanding.
3. Read all dreams from the unconscious in terms of the goal – the needs and instincts of life – to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be able to control aspects of your life path, to be oriented purposefully in life, to create, nurture positive attachment relationships in your life with your self and others, to inspire and help others in service, to have a good level of self-esteem, to enhance that esteem and protect that esteem for your self and others and finally to increase joy and happiness and avoid distress and pain.
4. Dreams are ethical and highly moral in content. Dreams may present disturbing images but the unconscious may need to do that in order to grab our attention over a significant issue. Some dreams may cause anxiety and fear. Behind those emotions are positive lessons of life fulfilment. Human beings experience the most devastating and traumatising situations and in that process one has to move through those difficult tests in order to find the human service, purpose, truth and justice behind them. A long battle may be required for justice and order again. Out of chaos and confusion can come peace and understanding. Out of cruelty and aggression can come right thinking and right conduct. The unconscious is helping you see things as they are in your life. The unconscious is deeply sophisticated and intelligent.

Dream work is a four-part process as Johnson presents:

• making symbol associations
• contextualising the meanings of the symbols into the personal situations of your life
• Interpreting the whole narrative bringing the symbols, meanings and life situations together
• Establishing the dream lesson in your real external situations and relationships

  1. Making Symbol Associations Identify all the images in the dream and then write down next to them what they mean to you. This has to be done instinctively and quickly. Don’t double-think. Don’t go into chain association. It has to be the first meaning that comes to you. If there are multiple meanings then make notes of them but set them aside from the original one and use reflectively.   2. Contextualising the meanings of the symbols into the personal situations of your life Sometimes the first part has already drifted into the application of life experience but here you can apply that more deliberately. Apply the symbols to your personality traits, qualities, attitudes, behaviours, situations in your relationships, work, childhood, goals and aspirations, conflicts, experiences, friendships, partner, children, parents, something you are trying to push or achieve, challenges, obstacles, beliefs, values, feelings and thoughts, opinions, practicalities, spheres of influence, spheres of powerlessness, groups you belong to or want to belong to, resentments, fears, hopes. Find out what specific locations and places symbolise – fields of expertise, areas for growth, endings, beginnings. Animals symbolise human and animal qualities, loyalty, independence, protection, territory, sex, food, rest, the fight-flight instinct. How are these qualities applied to your life situation? What needs and goals need to be met or are not being met currently?   3. Interpreting the whole narrative bringing the symbols, meanings and life situations together This section ties together the dream images, meanings and current life situation you find yourself in together. What was happening the day before the dream? Does the content of the dream fit with that? What is the meaning of the dream as a whole? Is it advising you do something, say something, hold back? Place the dream in narrative story, describing what is presented and what it means and how it applies to your life. This may take some time to do. At the beginning of the process it helps to write it down. Later on the analysis can be done more quickly as you become more experienced. Some dreams can take a day or two to understand and sometimes weeks, months or even years. Be mindful of your own emotional reactions to the dream, at the time you had the dream and while you are analysing the dream. The feelings can give you clues as to how to analyse such as Panksepp’s seven basic emotional systems:

• fear may symbolise fear of death, loss of life or loss of sense of self and meaning and need for safety, meaning and purpose in life in this world and the next.
• panic-grief symbolises abandonment, being alone, being outcast/exiled.
• lust symbolises pleasure in sexual relationship, union between masculine and feminine qualities internally in terms of the thinking and feeling, mental and emotional, justice and nurturing qualities.
• rage symbolises desires and needs not met. Find what those needs and desires are and set course for that gold.
• caring and loving feelings symbolise the need for relationship internally towards the self and externally towards others – positive attachment.
• play and fun can symbolise the need to feel good in the hierarchy of status and rank in society, having a purpose in family, community, national and international life and identity. It is about purposeful and meaningful group relationships and identity.
• seeking and feelings of fulfilment and purpose are essential for feeling good in oneself and one’s life meaning. We all seek joy, pleasure, fulfilment and meaning in life. We strive, we look for and we search until we find that elixir of life.

Where there are paradoxes, confusion, contradiction in meaning then look at the dream from a different angle or perspective, from someone else’s perspective or applying the dram in a different context or situation in your life: work, family, community, relationship situation, political ideology. Instead of looking at the situation personally, look at it on a larger scale, group identity, nationality. Current affairs and group politics may be influencing the dream but it will always have an individual meaning for you that you can implement in your life, mentally, personally, family, relationally, politically. In this part of the process Johnson suggests you validate your interpretation, if which there are four principles: (a) Your interpretation needs to show you something you didn’t know before or it may be telling you something again because you didn’t get the hint the first time. (b) Avoid any interpretation that inflates your ego or is self-congratulatory. The dream is trying to finish some unfinished business. (c) Avoid interpretations that shift responsibility from yourself. Dreams don’t point out other people’s faults. It is about you. (d) Learn to interpret your dreams over a long period of time – you will get deeper and broader insights in doing so.   4. Establishing the dream lesson in your real external situations and relationships The dream interpretation has to have a practical purpose and application in your life. It is making you more aware of your life purpose, meaning, relationships, work, service, values, principles, opinions, taking control and grabbing life by the horns and riding it with gusto. You may need to show greater care and love for yourself or other people, take better care of the body, relax more, work harder, travel. The process is done in the silence of your self and is not shown off or shared with others profusely. I have found it useful to journal, sketch and paint my dreams. You might write, use a diary, sketch, draw, act, dance, sculpt, write music or anything expressive. It needs to help your goals, needs and instincts find expression in the world. You have to do something about the dream and get out there and change or do something different. People are good at talking about change but not actually doing it. It has to awaken us to life, ourselves, people, purpose and meaning in our physiological, mental, emotional and spiritual lives. Dreams call us to be grounded, practical and life loving, expanding, people-oriented, self-oriented, value and ethic-oriented. Sometimes we can carry out a kind of ritual after a dream – writing a letter to the universe, ourselves or someone else in order to resolve some conflict. We might burn or bury it. We might plant something in the garden or some significant place to mark a change in our life. We may create a bucket-list and start working through it. We may write a letter, paint or create something for the unconscious to offer gratitude and love. We may conduct a meditation or prayer to offer thanks and further insights and deeper relationship with the unconscious. To gain deeper relationship with the unconscious meditation is the key. Simply being still in relationship with the deeper aspect of self-wisdom is healing and allows and invites the unconscious to speak to use more deliberately and consciously as active imagination will soon show you.   Active Imagination Johnson clearly explains a difference between active imagination and passive fantasy in his book Inner Work. Active imagination was developed by Carl Jung and is a dialogue between you (the conscious) and the inner stream of guiding wisdom from the unconscious. It gives you the opportunity to explore viewpoints, goals, motivations, needs, instincts, options, the source of problems and difficulties in life and how to resolve them. Much of what you already do when you weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of something in the internal space of your internal dialogue is just that dialogue. When you practice active imagination the process is more structured and purposeful. Just like the unconscious uses dream to communicate in active imagination it uses the tool you provide of a purposeful conversation/dialogue within. In your dreams certain figures may present themselves and and situations arise. Sometimes those dreams can leave questions or unfinished business. In active imagination you can go back to those settings and continue the dialogue and resolve the situation imaginatively. Active imagination provides a process of ethical or moral reflection and resolution. The ‘I’ that is you is active and conscious. However, in passive fantasy, the process is based on passive daydreaming, watching fantasy in the back of one’s mind. There is no conscious participation or dialogue. There is no purpose or meaning to it other than indulgence of fantasy stories maybe related to people you know or not. There is no conscious ‘I’ taking action or conversing for a purpose of resolution or ethical or moral reflection. When you are in that inner dialogue you bypass the neuroses like anxiety or depression, fear or anger. There is no inner obstacle to clear thinking and reflection. There are no beliefs, habits, attachments, false perceptions or limitations although there might be to start with. As you become more experienced the self-defeating behaviours (rumination, worrying, catastrophisation), inferiority complexes and defence mechanisms like denial, resistance, projection and avoidance will fall away but you need to aware that those habits blind spots or prejudices may encroach sometimes. In active imagination you will ask a lot of questions based on your life situations, experiences and relationships, goals and motivations. Active imagination will open up self-knowledge about your life. In dialogue the unconscious will offer guidance in terms of your goals and needs. It helps you by looking out for your life purpose and meaning, developing healthy relationships with your self and others, offering advice around difficult situations and experiences in life. The role of the unconscious is to regulate and help, adjust, modify and change direction to help you achieve your goals. It is the source of your superconscious level of mind. Where issues like anxiety, depression, low mood, relationship troubles, grief, PTSD, eating and self-care issues, addictions and obsessive compulsive patterns arise then the unconscious can help bring balance and direction to your life by helping you tend to your goals and needs that are currently not being met. Where changes occur in your thinking and attitudes to outer circumstances and relationships then these problems can be alleviated and even turned around. Johnson presents four steps to active imagination:

• inviting the unconscious initially
• the dialogue and experience
• ethics and values
• making it concrete in the world

  1. inviting the unconscious initially You can sit at the computer or laptop or journal to write the Active Imagination dialogue or you can just sit in a contemplative relaxed state of consciousness to work through the process. You may have a recording device to record the dialogue. Approach your unconscious in a respectful way. It is a reciprocal process of sharing. Some practitioners may use prayer, meditation, affirmation or visualisation to get into the conscious space. Some people may like to return to a dreamscape from a dream in the past to explore some unfinished or unresolved quest or find answers to questions about the dream. Alternatively there may be a situation or experience in your life you would like to further some insight in. It may be a health problem, a relationship issue, a conflict, dilemma or decision that needs to be made. You may have a suspicion that there is something you are holding back on or there is something in your approach that needs reflecting upon in order to try to resolve the situation or question. You may be feeling anxious or down about something. There may be something worrying you that you want to get to the bottom of. Hold that thought in mind. Avoid going into this situation with an open or empty motive. You must have a question or reason for approaching the unconscious. At this point you will be waiting for the right time to move forward and there may be an initial approach from the unconscious in the form a thought deep within. Otherwise you might just ask your question and invite the unconscious to respond and interact. The process is very strange at first but experience and practice proves fruitful in developing your approach and style. Either way you have to relinquish control in this process and allow the internal dialogue to open up. There may be a tendency to question, doubt and confuse the issue with conscious/ego thinking. You need to discern between letting go to the process and giving up leading and controlling the dialogue. Continue to hold that question or issue you want to explore with the unconscious. The process will initiate…   2. the dialogue and experience When you know there is a contact within you might ask a question to ask who they are, where they are from. You may share your thoughts or feelings about why you want to contact the depth of your superconscious being and what is happening for you at the moment. You may also express your gratitude for their role in your life and the insights, protection and guidance as well as managing all the practical physiological duties of operating this body of yours. Always stick with the issue you have come to address. Avoid drifting into other areas that are not related to the question you want to explore. Sometimes the dialogue may happen visually rather than linguistically through dialogue. Remember when the unconscious is communicating to you it will find it more difficult if you are projecting your human/physical experiences and concepts into it. The inner domain is not physical. It is unconscious and communicates on its own terms so be open to what it needs to communicate to you. The guidance may not be what you expected so don’t let your own concepts and assumptions interfere. You need to be very detached. The reason you are doing this is to place the unconscious at the centre of this process so to glean the wisdom and knowledge from within. Let go of your insecurities, cynicism, fears and anxieties. Let go of the world outside. Give this process your complete undivided attention. The unconscious does not have exactly the same concerns you do from the perspective of the outside world which is temporary and material. The unconscious sees a much greater picture of your existence and life. It has access to a greater body of knowledge and experience. It is not limited by time and space but is limitless. It can access domains of knowledge that are infinite.  Your goals and motivations may not be shared by the unconscious. It realises your life goals are limited to your own capacity of the conscious mind. Allow the unconscious to provide you insights of its own nature. The superconscious level is trying to communicate to you as clearly as possible. But you have to remain connected and concentrate and be very focused. If you have conflicts on your own between personal and social interests the unconscious will help you see this and clarify your agenda as to what is important for you to achieve at this moment of time in your life. The unconscious will be helping you on a material, physical, physiological, mental, emotional, psychological, metaphysical, relational, social, energy and spiritual level. It will not inflate your sense of self or ego. It will humble you and energise you with life and purpose, meaning and high aspirations. If you are being self-destructive, obstructive, naive in your dealings it will bring some insight and light towards this. Any unconscious developments in this process will focus on your comradeship and connection with each other as a whole developing intellect and wisdom. The quality of the dialogue will be a sharing of information and insight to you. You can ask questions and gain deeper insights based on what the unconscious brings to you. It is like a normal conversation and when you are in the moment with the process it will feel natural and insightful like two friends sharing and deepening their awareness and understanding of one another. You need to be very reflective and honest, transparent and humble in what you say, share and respond. There need be no defensiveness or shame but complete honesty in past actions and blind spots and the willingness to be open and learn from mistakes and make good on the internal and external relationships in your life, situations and willingness to contribute to the betterment of humanity, including relationships, work, healing, service and commitment to those ends.   3. ethics and values At the heart of the communication between the the conscious (you) and the superconscious (unconscious) is ethics: justice, growth, development, fairness, protection, service to self and others and the practical life. The unconscious may provide guidance around your goals, instincts, needs, attitudes, qualities in ourselves and the world. We must show ethics, be humane and wise. Personal development, as Johnson explores, is always accompanied with ethical conflict and we are tested in terms of what we say and do in the world and how we respond and grown from this process of active imagination. If we are gaining insights into a beliefs, opinions, politics, social justice, relationships, family situations then we need to consider actually doing something once we have come out of the active imagination. Inside the dialogue we may explore certain actions and how we want to address certain situations and people in the external world. We may be called on to protect ourselves and others with action. We are not just passive observers of the world outside but we use this dialogue within to develop an approach and course of action. The process is highly ethical, carries a responsibility to ethical justice individually and collectively. In this process we do not become inflated, one-sided, narcissistic, controlling, defensive, selfish, resentful, isolated or vengeful. Quite the opposite, we aim to become calm, peace-making, assertive, wise and objective. Johnson goes on to present three aspects of ethical active imagination: (a) You add the ethical element of holding out for the attitudes and conduct that are consistent with your character and your deepest values. (b) Ethical balance requires we do not let one interest take over at the expense of the other interests. If we were to do that then we would sacrifice essential values in order to pursue one other narrow urge or goal. This is also explored in the conflict of motivational schemas in another article. (c) We must nurture and preserve human values that save human life that keeps practical daily life going and our relationships alive.   Therefore, we must not be swept away with primitive energies or tribalism, fanaticism, extremism. Beware of this in the inner work. Within we are having to contend with inferiority complexes, narcissism, worry and fear, panic, trauma response, over-protection and over-identification, projection, denial, shame and guilt, the alter ego, shadow and the negative animus and anima. In active imagination you have to be actively aware, actively conscious and consciously active. Inner work is about knowing your primitive urges and instincts that can exclude other just as important or more important instincts. We must therefore understand these primitive urges and instincts or we risk splitting away from them creating a schism of weakness, fear, rage, lust, narcissism, delusion and hate. We have to reconcile ourselves to our darker nature as well as the light and reconcile our diverse natures. It is a path of realisation of right and wrong, allying ourselves completely with faith, truth, justice, love, peace, wisdom, protection, compassion and guilelessness. There may be a conflict between walking away from life to avoid suffering and pain, and the duty and responsibility to stay and confront the suffering and pain in order to establish justice, love and healing. Both of these forces within are real and are archetypal (they will have symbols or persons that represent specific needs/instincts like the wise sage or the eternal youth). We need to be aware of the two within and decide where our beliefs, behaviours, instincts and goals are allied to. The unconscious has two roles to play in active imagination: to communicate the superconscious drives to the conscious and to regulate the suppression/repression of those instincts by the conscious. It has a challenging role and sometimes it has to resort to extreme actions to get our attention when we are sabotaging our own happiness. Our guilt and shame, conflicted interests in the world as to what is right, what is socially demanded of us, our own primitive urges, narcissism, destructiveness and resentments. We have to confront the forces from above, below, left and right, within and without, and decide on what is right or wrong. Sometimes we are the victim, sometimes the perpetrator and sometimes the rescuer. Sometimes we have to transcend all three of them.   4. making it concrete in the world You have to make active imagination and the fruit of the dialogue physical material, practical, lived. It has many links with stage four of the dream analysis process. Through the dialogue of the active imagination we need to avoid acting out our fantasies in the world. We may also be able to use the ideo-motor technique of Chevreul’s Pendulum, presented in a Jung To Live By video here. As Marie-Louise von Franz points out in her book Alchemical Active Imagination you may be fighting out a conflict within of your own agendas and goals. For example, your goal of wanting to be a teacher may be in direct conflict of what your parents want for you to enter the family business. This conflict can be highly emotionalised along the instincts – to serve your own path of happiness and that to make your parents happy. Active imagination can help identify the reason for your loss of purpose and meaning in life because you may actually have repressed the conflict in order to avoid confronting the situation and living your truth. An internal dialogue can help this process of resolution within. If we do not address the issue of the depression and drifting direction in life then we weaken the conscious self biologically as well as psychologically, spiritually and socially. Our relationships weaken, desire to be sociable and spiritually true to ourselves. Our internal conflicts affect our external interactions in the world. Instead of the subconscious levels of denial, resistance, resentment, trauma being projected onto the world, by resolving our conflicts, we allow the superconscious to project its wisdom, love, compassion, knowledge and positive attachment relationships into our world of relationships, work and service. Active imagination dialogue helps us identify how a dream, external situation, feeling or emotion, is pointing us towards in terms of purpose, growth, learning experience, interpersonal communication, assertiveness and resolution of any conflict of goals. Essentially making it all real means implementing the fruits of the active imagination in our relationships, work, service and ethical actions in the world. This makes active imagination and dream work purposeful and healing for self, others and ultimately the world.   Bibliography Johnson, R. (1986) Inner Work Jung, C. (1977) Memories, Dreams, Reflections Richards, S. & Richards, P. (2022) Jung To Live By, Youtube Channel von Franz, M. (1977) Alchemical Active Imagination   © Martin Handy 2022