Revisiting The Forest
An Active Imagination Session seeking the Self
A little over a year ago, I walked into a forest in my imagination and left it in ruins — scorched, every living thing burned to ash. While the destruction wasn’t by my own hand, I hadn’t gone back there yet, and that bothered me more than I'd like to admit. Below is what happened when I finally returned — to see what had become of it, and to look for the Self.
(New here? Active imagination is Jung's practice of intentionally stepping into a daydream and letting it respond. It isn’t lucid dreaming, nor is it escapist make-believe; think of it as exploring your psyche and engaging with your unconscious. As a quick note, some material may be disturbing to readers.)
I am walking along the familiar path in the old-growth forest. I come to the point in the forest where the Queen of the Damned scorched the trees and everything living; there is nothing but charred stumps and ash on the ground. All that is left of the wooden signpost is a charred stump that is no more than six inches tall.
I start digging, and the ground almost immediately opens to the dark, deep cavern from my first Active Imagination session. I look around, holding a rope in my hand, wondering what I could tie it to so that I can lower myself down. Without warning, I find myself jumping into the abyss, falling at least forty feet before I land on the ground. My right knee is injured, and I cannot stand. I break a glow-stick and begin crawling along the cavern’s floor. A massive, angry badger comes into view, hisses at me, and continues on its way. I decide to start digging by hand using a trowel. After a few minutes, I wonder how long it will take me to make any significant progress and whether I should give up altogether.
When you get into a disagreeable situation where you see no opening, no direct path, you assume that you are quite alone with yourself… Then you recognize that you are not alone, because such an absolute impasse is an archetypal situation, and an archetypal figure becomes constellated… The psychopompos is this second figure; you can call it the daimon, or the shadow, or a god, or an ancestor spirit; it does not matter what name you give it, it is simply a figure.
— C.G. Jung, Visions Seminars
To my right, an animated skeleton appears with a shovel. I feel uneasy, but do not panic. Behind me, I hear a voice, “Need a hand?” I look behind me and see Eliot from The Magicians. He helps me to my feet, and we watch the animated skeleton dig the hole for us. “He’s handy for when you don’t want to break a sweat,” he tells me. I struggle to stand, and Eliot says, “Oh, right. Let me fix that for you.” I wonder how good his healing magic is, but I figure if he can animate a skeleton, then healing a damaged knee shouldn’t be difficult. He moves his hands in the typical ‘Magicians’ manner, and I find myself screaming in pain as the bones repair themselves. Once repaired, the pain is gone, and Eliot suggests that we continue walking.
“What about the hole?” I ask him.
“What about it? I have something better,” he replies.
He waves his left hand, and a flame appears in his palm. He holds it in front of him to light the way. We come to a wall in the cavern, and Eliot runs his right hand against the wall, feeling for something. He whispers an incantation, and the wall opens. “Speak, friend, and enter,” I think to myself.
We step through the opening and find ourselves in a sterile white room with bookshelves and books as far as the eye can see.
“All the knowledge of humanity,” Eliot declares.
I look around, taking it all in, when Eliot asks, “Do you know what knowledge is?”
“Power,” I reply.
“Power. Yes. But what type of power?”
I pause. It occurs to me that I haven’t ever given much thought to this before. Isn’t power just power?
He continues, “Inside all these books is knowledge that has been built upon the knowledge of others. It is creative work. It is imaginative work. Without creation and imagination, there is no true power. What good is all the knowledge of humanity if you cannot imagine what you’d do with it?”
He hands me an old leather book, and as I open it, he transfigures into a bat and flies away. “Odd,” I think, as I open the book. I look at the pages, and they appear to be old, yet well preserved. There is a faint glow coming from the center of the book, and I find myself being pulled inside of it.
…there is no way of finding primordial reality in some library. It has to be discovered inside oneself; can only be uncovered on the harrowing journey down into the world of the dead.
— Peter Kingsley, Catafalque
I am falling, like Alice falling into Wonderland, but words and letters surround me as I fall. I reach the ground and am surrounded by a yellow-ish mist, like the color of aged paper.
I look around and yell, “Hello?” and the mist parts. “Hello!” I yell again, and the mist parts more, as if creating a pathway. “I am looking for the Self!” I cry out. The path is cut through the mist for a significant distance, and I step forward. As I do, the letters and the words from above fall around me, clanging as they hit the ground as if made of metal. I run along the path, words and letters crashing around me, while I continually shout, “I am looking for the Self!” A letter falls immediately in front of me, and I trip on it, falling face-first onto the ground. I sink into the ground and fall up into a black room.
“Original sin,” I hear a voice say.
“I am looking for the Self,” I reply.
The room zooms at an immense speed, and I am sitting on the edge of a mechanical device that has various cogs and a rotating crest of rings, almost like the Basileus’s Machine in the movie 13 Ghosts. At the center of the device is a glass dome that appears to contain something resembling a cosmos. The rings spin, oscillate, and flip, and I with them. Looking toward the center, I say, “I am looking for the Self!”
Again, I hear a voice say, “Original sin.”
The Self, as a symbol of wholeness, is a coincidentia oppositorum [coming together of the opposites], and therefore contains light and dark simultaneously.
— C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation
I don’t understand. Before I can ask for clarification, the ring I am standing on flips, propelling me through space. I am traveling faster than the speed of sound because I see sound barriers breaking around me. I see that I am fast approaching the Earth. Flames surround me as I enter the atmosphere, and I worry that I won’t slow down and will crash into the ground. I see the old-growth forest below me, and my body slams into the scorched wooden signpost, leaving a bloodied corpse impaled, while the speed of my travel sends my spirit through the ground and into an underground ocean. I look up at my corpse and determine that I need to continue searching for the Self.
We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live and to die, to begin and to end… If I accept death, then my tree greens, since dying increases life.
— C.G. Jung, The Red Book
I swim deeper and deeper into the ocean until I come to an underwater cliff. I swim over the edge, and two giant eyes appear in the depths. I swim back toward the surface, looking back over my shoulder, I see a massive sea serpent swimming after me. I begin swimming at a supersonic rate, but then remember the importance of facing unconscious material head-on, and turn back around. I swim toward the serpent and begin to fight with it. I land a punch between its eyes, and it changes, shrinking, shrinking, until a small sea creature forms and floats in my hands. It is a small seahorse, happy and playful. It leads me over the cliff and deep into the crevice. We swim deeper and deeper, and the seahorse grows to a size that allows me to climb on his back and ride him into the depths.
We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid — it reflects the face we turn towards it.
— C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy
We arrive at an underwater enchanted forest, and I thank my seahorse for delivering me to the destination. I step into the forest, whose trees are a silvery coral, and continue toward the heart of the forest. The coral’s branches grab me, and rather than resist, I submit. I am passed from one branch to another until I arrive at the opening: the center of the forest.
“I am looking for the Self!” I proclaim.
The ground erupts, and Cthulhu appears.
“You will not find the Self here!” He says.
“I am not afraid of you. You have prevented me from reaching the Self before, but you will not again.”
I see him, and remember the Queen of the Damned’s wings, and how they reminded me of Cthulhu’s.
“The Queen of the Damned is your consort, isn’t she? She escaped her prison because of me. She destroyed my forest. I suspect you are hoping that I will set you free. What destruction will you unleash if you reach the surface?”
Cthulhu remains silent, staring at me.
“My mission is not to stop you, nor is it to help you. I seek the Self. Do what you will.”
Cthulhu laughs and surges upward, frantically breaking through what appears to be stone above us, and continues making his way to the surface.
Again, like at the end of my previous vision with the old-growth forest ablaze, I find myself wondering what destruction is about to be unleashed upon the world.
Be clever, and drop the heroics, since nothing is more dangerous than to play the hero. The depths want to keep you. They have not returned very many up to now, and therefore men fled from the depths and attacked them."
— C.G. Jung, The Red Book
I sit on the ground and draw a heart in the sand. I close my eyes and think, “I seek the Self.”
The sand swallows me, and I am moved through a tunnel filled with eyes. It reminds me of Alex Grey’s Collective Vision.
As I move through the tunnel, I repeatedly say, “I am seeking the Self.”
The voices of many, in unison, reply, “No man can behold, and afterward remain in the flesh.”
“I have died,” I say, pointing to my impaled corpse way off in the distance.
“You have died once,” comes the voice of the many, “to understand death is required.”
Despite this, I continue pressing through the tunnel, hoping to arrive at the Self.
The tunnel of eyes begins to close off, and the voice of the many cries out, “You have not an eye single to the glory! Go back! Go back!”
I am then pulled out of the tunnel by an unseen force and land on the ground of the old-growth forest, reunited with my body, no longer dead, bloodied, and impaled.
Asmenos ek thanatoio are the words from Homer's Odyssey that expressed Jung's infinite relief at being allowed to return, alive and in one piece, from the underworld.
They mean 'Glad to have escaped from death'.
— Peter Kingsley, Catafalque
Through this active imagination session, I came back up with insights, but also questions that I can’t seem to let go of. I went looking for the Self, and three different guardians told me, three different ways, that "looking" might be the wrong verb. Maybe that's the teaching. Maybe the Self isn't waiting, buried in a burned forest, in the vastness of space, or at the bottom of an ocean; I don't know yet (ask me in another year).
Where are you still digging for answers in a cavern when the part of you that already knows is standing right behind you, asking if you need a hand?