my teenage years and most of my 20s were dominated by thoughts of worry anxiety and fear just in general and I found this difficult because I usually didn't know what I was actually worried about it was just a vague sense of worry and Dread and I really wish I could go back in time and tell 18-year-old Billy about the technique of active imagination because it would have made life so much easier I want to make this video as practical as possible so I'm going to explain what active imagination is first of all and then go over a very basic idea of how to use it on a weekly if not daily basis or at the very least how I use it so I'm going to start by quoting on page 138 by innerwork by Robert Johnson because he introduces this idea in a very very simple way so to go straight to page 138 just to quote from here essentially active imagination is a dialogue that you enter into with the different parts of yourself that live in the unconscious in some ways it is similar to Dreaming except that you are fully awake and conscious of the experience and here's the key part in your imagination you begin to talk to your images and interact with them they answer back and that's what all of this is about it's about actively P participating with a fantasy that you find yourself having we all d dream we all drift off from time to time so this is a technique to make best use of those moments and it turns out that these moments are at sort of gold mines if you know what you're actually looking out for so one more quick note from this book and then I'll talk you through just a really basic process and Robert Johnson actually uses the example of worry which is perfect because that's exactly what I've used it for as well um in most of my life so on page 141 just to quote from this little section here a good example of this phenomenon is is worry worry is one form of passive fantasy so long as we sit passively and let the worry fantasies possess us there is never a resolution but in active imagination it is possible to go to the worry actively confront it and and enter into dialogue with it find out who or what is in Conflict within us and do something about it so what makes active imagination active instead of just passive daydreaming is that we are participating with the thoughts and the emotions in the images that turn up there isn't the idea isn't just to make something up but instead to notice when you're gripped by a specific thought or emotion or mood or Obsession or difficulty or whatever it might be and actually engage with it so you want to fully experience it not just partially experience it in a passive way and if we take the example of worry it might help to illustrate this idea in four different steps so I'm personifying myself first of all as this head and I'm going to be looking at this tattooed character over here to symbolize my worry and hopefully this will make things nice and clear and hopefully that's in Focus as well cuz I can't quite see it so step one is to ask where is this worry coming from what is it inside me that is trying to get my attention through this worry who is it that is inside of me that is trying to tell me something about this emotion and this is especially useful if you know already about Parts work or subpersonalities but I'll save those terms for another video I appreciate also this might sound like a really strange question but what you are doing is that you are speaking to yourself it's a conversation between your conscious and your unconscious mind the worry in this example is operating just under the surface of our conscious awareness so we're trying to make it more real by personifying in it that way we can engage with it as though it's another person with thoughts with emotions fears desires stories to tell and everything else and a very important point point to note here by the way is that you're not forcing your ideas onto this image you're not saying what it should or shouldn't do but instead you're noticing how it is actually feeling in the same way that you can't force another person in real life to be happy or sad you can't force this personified feeling to be what you want it to be either but anyway step two now that you've identified where this voice is coming from invite it to talk further and elaborate again if we stick with the example of worry you could ask what do you want me to know what do you have to say and it might take some time for it to reply or it might be immediate it might take the form of words or images or more subtle intuition just in One Direction Over another but pay attention to where it is that you are being pulled it might start to tell you a story or direct your attention towards a story where that worry first became noticeable but again encourage it to continue the story in whatever feels right it doesn't really matter whether it's factually true or not or whether it's exaggerated it's the tone of the message which is more important so just to repeat that because it's so important it doesn't matter if it's factually true or not it's the tone of the message which is more important so to take that further which parts of the story are acceptable or unacceptable does a specific person keep recurring in this story what is it about a person that has caused you the worry maybe it's a situation or an environment instead but again it's the same question what is it about this that is causing you that worry so encourage as many details as possible in that story and step three in this process is to fully engage with the experience by bringing in your emotions and your Sensations if you feel physically uncomfortable while you're reeming this then there's a good chance is worth exploring and again which part of that story is making you feel uncomfortable pay particular attention to that answer it's going to keep reoccurring if you don't do anything about it so it's worth consciously engaging with it so that you can deal with it and so that you can process it this is all about listening to the unconscious mind instead of just repressing or suppressing in difficult thoughts from your conscious mind into the unconscious unfortunately out of sight and out of mind doesn't apply in this situation of out of sight just means that you've lost track of what that thought is doing so it could easily be just popping around like this you've given it free reign to grow into some kind of monster or potential monster at least just hiding away you could be giving it the ability to latch on to other thoughts and none of these are particularly good options what we need to do is if it's out of sight then please bring it back into mind get it back into frame I've not really been able to watch the uh video as I'm doing this hopefully this little tattooed guy has been popping in and out of frame as I've been doing this but if it's out of sight please bring it into mind and by that I mean the conscious mind the final step here by the way will be then to thank the personified character for whatever it has decided to to share with you you're building this healthy bridge between the conscious and the unconscious mind and you're learning to realize that there isn't actually anything to be scared of there might be some short-term discomfort but that's nothing in comparison to the long-term devastating effects of unchecked worry and fear so thank that part of you for having the courage to show up and to tell its story it's in a work by Robert Johnson that goes into far more detail on this process and it breaks it down into four steps which are from my best memory invitation dialogue values and rituals so they're the four steps there I realized I was counting that off off screen and invitation dialogue values and rituals so if you want to take active imagination to the next level I definitely recommend giving this a read and it also shows you how you can use a similar process to engage more deeply with your dreams as well if that's something that you'd be more interested in and I know the title of this video might seem really extreme but I do genuinely mean that this technique has saved me countless hours and times from just confusion and anxiety and worry and fear and just any other difficulty it's a process that I can rely on over and over again to engage with the situation and the process and like learn how to actually process what has happened or what I think could happen sometimes the situations were I don't get closure from another person and a situation has already passed but it's not fully resolved in my mind it's by using this that I can then resolve it myself rather than having to rely on that other person in real life if I notice what it is that I'm fantasizing or daydreaming about whether it's positive or negative healthy or unhealthy it doesn't matter it means that I can take control of that fantasy and see what is specifically going on see what it is that I'm actually fantasizing about I'm engaging with the story first so that I can strip it away and see what the core issue is underneath and the one that's having this big magnetic pull on me I'm going to feel that pull anyway so I might as well be aware of it of what it is that's actually pulling me in so that I can at least have some Choice over the matter and again just in case you're wondering I do normally become aware of these Daydreams whilst I'm walking or running I personally find it quite difficult to just sit there with a journal and consciously choose just to start this process write it all out I have had some success with that at times but for me it's mainly walking and running just try it out as often as you can over the course of a month and see just what insights come to you but overall just to make this really clear active imagination can help you to Glimpse and engage with the shadow material that underlies the story itself which means that you get to notice the shallow and The Superficial lay of that story first and then use that as a prompt to dive into the deeper and the more transformational layers I have absolutely enormously oversimplified the idea for this for the sake of this video and I will do a more thorough step-by-step version in the future I just wanted to make sure that you're aware of the term active imagination and also to give a really great and easy but recommendation for anyone that might be struggling right now at this moment with a particular thought or fantasy or Obsession or coping mechanism or story that they're telling themselves or so on but if you want to learn more about what shadow work is when I was referring to that before then just follow the video after this that'll be popping up it'll be popping up on the screen any time around now um and yeah that's about it for this lesson so I will see you again in a future one see you soon