Inner Work Using Dreams & Active Imagination For Personal Growth - Robert A. Johnson by Robert A. Johnson

Author:Robert A. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Jung, C.G. Jung, Carl Gustav Jung, Active Imagination, Robert Johnson, Robert A, Johnson
Published: 1986-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

There are four. This tells me that, paradox ically, although they are hoodlums and rnu& gers, they represent wholeness for me. That means I have to bring them into my conscious life in order to complete the self and be a total individual.

I associate the robbery with a basic psychological principle: If you repress a part of yourself and keep it out of your conscious life, it turns into a robber and starts "stealing" your time and energy by creating a neurosis. This is its way of trying to force its way into your life. It sabotages you and prevents you from functioning as you want to. The "robbery" can take the form of physical symptoms, illness, neurosis, anxiety, or even "bad luck" that seems to "gang up on you" just as the four hoodlums do in this dream.

1 associate the overpowering of my ego in the dream with the fact that the archetypes of the unconscious generally have more power than the ego. If my ego refuses to make a synthesis with the unconscious contents, the unconscious has the power to bring my ego-life to a standstill. 1 am brought to a halt in the dream, and if the situation were not mended in a positive way, later I would experience that "halt" in my practical life.

Physical contact in dreams means communication between parts of psyche. Communication between polarities: conscious-unconscious, ego-' 4 hoodlums," ego-shadow. Synthesis in psyche starts as conflict, ends in friendship. Search for resources. Finding money not as important as finding where I put it.

Friends,

becoming friends

Ending conflict, joining forces, joining pairs of opposite*: respectable ego with primitive

STEP FOUR: RITUALS / 121

hoodlums. Synthesis with other part of self. Synthesis with shadow. Go over to shadow's point of view. Communication begins in conflict, stealing. Ends in synthesis or partnership. Learn from hoodlum. Make room for lawlessness in life. Friendship possible if money invested at right level.

All the interactions we see between the persons in our dreams are forms of communication among the various parts of our total self. There may be fighting, wars, love, hate, friendship, enmity—all this is a kind of rubbing together of the polarities, a "getting acquainted 0 among the different energy systems that coexist within us.

So this searching for the money, in a curious way, is the one form of communication my ego has with the "hoodlum," shadow, part of myself. Most communication in the psyche begins in conflict. The unconscious parts of our personalities have to fight for -equal time," for some recognition, against the dominant attitudes and power systems of the conscious mind. But fighting, robbing, some kind of confrontation, is better than no contact at all. If, from the conflict, the ego can learn to open itself to the viewpoints and values of the shadow side, then the conflict Ilowly evolves into friendship and synthesis.

STEP TWO: APPLYING JHE^^^^ MY SPECIFIC PARTS OF MYSELF AND DYNAMi INNER LIFE , f

122 / DREAM WORK

childhood state in which one feels no division of the world. One feels completely unified with parents, family, the world around.

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