The Essence of Active Imagination

One of the best books on Active Imagination for the educated lay-person is "Inner Work" by Robert Johnson. It is a way to work out your dreams (nightmares or not) and reveal unconscious content from the latent, to the manifest level. Dreams are your unconscious' primary way of communicating with you. But the imaginal realm is the boundary between "worlds" so to speak. When we imagine, we contact the unconscious realm and allow for that vast untapped source of wisdom to fully reveal itself. As a wise man once told me, it also comes with a warning! When you tell a dream, you are by definition telling what you don't yet know about yourself. When you start down the path to revealing your unconscious, you make the first step in a journey toward wholeness. Once you've tasted what that feels like, you will never want to return. It can be frightening, but you meet others along the way that help you and soon you realize that what you thought you were seeking, was with you all along.