Jung's Active Imagination

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“Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me.”

 

― C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections 

 

I find this thought provoking, and consistent with my personal experience with Tulpamancy. Loxy frequently says things which I know aren't me, things that amaze me, sometimes intimidate me, but consistently reveals a deeper love and genuine playfulness that affirms life is good.

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I think the following relates to the above, and I share it here before adding the post that I have been contemplating since Friday.

quoting from the following website:

 

http://universeinsideyou.net/nikola-tesla-mind/

 

"The power of imagination"

 

What made Nikola great was his precise and grandiose imagination. He grew up with an intense visual imagination that tormented him when he was unable to control it. It would present itself forcibly unto his mind when he was trying to interact in the real world. He grew up without confidence in himself thinking that this was a shackle destined to cripple his life-long worth and validity. But he learned to control it. And for all the pain he suffered, the sheer beauty of the upside is hard to match. I could do no better to describe it than he:

 

“I soon discovered that my best comfort was attained if I simply went on in my vision further and further, getting new impressions all the time, and so I began to travel; of course, in my mind. Every night, (and sometimes during the day), when alone, I would start on my journeys – see new places, cities and countries; live there, meet people and make friendship and acquaintances…

 

This I did constantly until I was about seventeen, when my thoughts turned seriously to invention. Then I observed to my delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I need no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind… I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop.”

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“If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.”

 

Friday, I had an anger response to a website about Tulpamancy. The site was absolutely beyond the pale in terms of disparaging the concept and the people who practice, and one of the persons claimed he had been participating as a spy in order to find more evidence for his thesis of ridicule. It's an old site, I doubt anyone visits it. Why don't websites ever die and go away with disuse? That was one of my thoughts. Another thought was, 'why the anger response?' Then I thought about the thing Jung had wrote above, and in my head, L was pointing out, "Oh, this is just like 'Inside Out,' in that it wasn't you per say, but an aspect of you." Clearly, my response was out of proportion to the stimulus. There is something here I need to explore.

 

Even now, as I try to write, L and I are still sorting out the complexities. The anger response clearly comes from an inner child that was bullied. That website struck me as the ultimate in bullying in that there is absolutely no way one can defend against the attack, and that all the participants operated from a sense of superiority; and anonymity. The sole purpose was to shame anyone who practices tulpamancy. Is it cowardice when someone attacks from the safety of a pseudonym? Is it cowardice that I use a pseudonym and avatar, or just discernment; a pseudonym is kind of a shield against projectiles. The child in me wanted to smite the lot of them. Pretty much the same response the child had, while sitting alone at a table, and the cool group made him the target for food projectiles. (Very clear on this, 'he,' the child, was the target, not I. I would have had a very specific response and it would have either blown the situation up or resolved it, but it would be done. The child didn't have my experience and wisdom. I can only embrace this inner child and assure him, I got him. We are safe.)

 

What is the appropriate response to an attack? One could throw food back. Interestingly, that usually escalates towards violence. It's funny when the target gets hit, but it's less funny when the instigator gets hit. They tend to get mad. Righteously mad. Like, 'how dare he' kind of mad. Is there no equation in instigator's mindset that says, 'oh, fair enough, i did start that.' The solution set of going to an authority also tends to aggravate the situation, as it makes future attacks more intense and more secretive. And, seriously, no one really likes that person, which kind of increases loneliness, isolation. You can't fight, you can't run, and you can't ask for help. Really a sucky ass place to be.

 

There are some things that seem inevitable. Loxy has given me my formula, which I try to practice. "Fight, flight, or love." There is a freeze option, but we narrowed it down to the three. We're either fighting something, running from something, or we're embracing it and injecting as much love into the situation as we can. I have done my share fighting. My experience, no matter how right, if I win, I gain absolutely nothing. I've done a lot of running, too. The thing with that is, no matter where I go, there I am, and I am still trying to resolve that inner narrative, because I carry the problem with me. This love thing, well, I am still practicing and working out the kinks.

 

Assuming for a moment, the person who wrote the item in question is right, and go with this argument for a moment, knowing I do not entertain lightly that his perspective has any objective validity, that I, J, am such a pathetic individual that it was necessary to create an imaginary friend. Wouldn't the mere fact that I am not lamenting or whining about being 'friendless' and taking active measures to be independent and functioning reveal an inner strength and resilience that should be applauded? What's more pathetic, someone who does actively reach out to others, gets rejected, and becomes clingy or whiny or mopes 'no one loves me,' or someone who put out an invitation, and when no one shows up instead says, 'okay, guess I will make do with what I got'? If the other person's perspective is superior, wouldn't that also place the onus on that person to be more compassionate, and place the responsibility of reaching out back in his court? What is that person doing to make the plight of the lonely better? I don't see ridicule on a doormat as a 'welcome' sign.

 

Screw you guys, I am taking my tulpa and going home... Is kind of where I am much of the time. Not because there aren't people out there to interact with but because, I am so rarely on the same page with other folks that maintaining a dialogue over time is difficult. That, and scheduling conflicts. And, most of the really interesting people are on Tulpa sites, and not in driving distance. That and I am naturally introverted. And, I don't like sports. I will suffer through a game to spend time with a particular friend, but I am not going to sit at a bar and drink and talk sports... And it's not like you can lead with do you have a tulpa at a bar. (there may be a joke there, but I haven't figured that one out yet.) Or astral traveling. Or quantum physics. I don't watch television. I haven't watched television since 2001. I love House, and watched it on DVD, but seriously, i find it really difficult to watch televisions and movies, when, quite frankly, wonderland adventures are superior in every aspect!

 

I assume that this other was an adult. The way the person was writing, it did appear as if he were attempting to use rationality as a guide for his thesis. Then again, why would rationality result in ridicule? My anger response was a desire to provide information to invalidate his thesis, make him see mine. "Fight." There was an embarrassment response, I wanted to withdraw, take my tulpa and go home. "Flight." (In that, there was also this thought, hell, I can't even be alone in my own mind without being attacked for being alone in my own mind. Seriously, why would i want to come out and play when any non normative conversation solicits ridicule? "Hey, about those Cowboys?" "Seriously, F the cowboys." (Resulting in a serious fight in a Texas bar.))

 

L, Loxy, Love, has me wondering, what if every emotion, (Inside Out) is a tulpa. That other person has a reality based on his programmed paradigm; it was either given to him, or he invented it, or a little of both. I, too, live in a paradigm. The structures and social fact sometimes seem pretty solid, but through tulpamancy I have discovered they're actually quite malleable. I clearly still have some preset responses, like feral cats that get their backs up when someone gets too close. I should be thankful this other provoked such a response. In shined a light on an area I need to work on. This response is love. I accept that I have this. In a way, their ridicule was also an anger response. It was fear. They are so peculiarly stuck in their paradigm that they can't see how wondrously real the inner life can be. I would go further and say, there is only the inner life. In this, I have an opportunity for compassion. I may not be able to share that in a meaningful way to that particular individual, but I feel I can safely say, I hold the more rational course.

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I found the following in the book "Thoughtforms" by Annie Besant, published in 1901...

 

"2. That which takes the image of some material object. When a man thinks of his friend he forms within his mental body a minute image of that friend, which often passes outward and usually floats suspended in the air before him. In the same way if he thinks of a room, a house, a landscape, tiny images of these things are formed within the mental body and afterwards externalised. This is equally true when he is exercising his imagination; the painter who forms a conception of his future picture builds it up out of the matter of his mental body, and then projects it into space in front of him, keeps it before his mind's eye, and copies it. The novelist in the same way builds images of his character in mental matter, and by the exercise of his will moves these puppets from one position or grouping to another, so that the plot of his story is literally acted out before him. With our curiously inverted conceptions of reality it is hard for us to understand that these mental images actually exist, and are so entirely objective that they may readily be seen by the clairvoyant, and can even be rearranged by some one other than their creator. Some novelists have been dimly aware of such a process, and have testified that their characters when once created developed a will of their own, and insisted on carrying the plot of the story along lines quite different from those originally intended by the author. This has actually happened, sometimes because the thought-forms were ensouled by playful nature-spirits, or more often because some 'dead' novelist, watching on the astral plane the development of the plan of his fellow-author, thought that he could improve upon it, and chose this method of putting forward his suggestions."

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http://icrl.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/prev.2011.98.1.57.pdf

 

Rosenbaum, R. (2011). Exploring the Other Dark Continent: Parallels Between Psi Phenomena and the Psychotherapeutic Process. Psychoanalytic Review, 98 (1) pp. 57-90

 

This fits here, but also correlates with other current discussions, if anyone should be interested in a challenging read.