There are times when the world within presses close. Not to frighten, but to call. The image arrives. A figure in a dream. A strange object in the corner of thought. A scene that repeats, though the day has already moved on.
In the old stories, the soul sends messengers. They do not speak directly. They arrive as riddle, symbol, fragment. They carry meaning in the folds of their shape, not in clear instruction. It is our task to meet them.
This is the beginning of active imagination. The image comes first. We follow. We give it time. We listen before we interpret. There is an art to entering a symbol, just as there is an art to entering a sacred space.
James Hollis teaches that the psyche speaks in symbol and story, not command. The image that appears carries its own truth. It is not decoration. It is soul revealing itself in a form that cannot be captured by logic.
To speak with an image is to step into the place where soul dwells. Not from above, but beside it. You sit with it. You ask what it sees. You notice how it changes when seen.
There is no right way to begin. Some speak to the image out loud. Others write. Some simply sit and let the image unfold without trying to guide it. What matters is presence. What matters is that you treat the image as alive.
The old traditions knew that the unseen world is full of voices. Voices that wait to be heard again. Voices that know things the conscious self has forgotten. When the soul is burdened, the dream does not disappear. It deepens.
You might see a door in a wall. A bird with human eyes. A garden covered in ash. These are not puzzles. They are paths. Each one leads into a deeper layer of the self. The image may resist. It may refuse to move. But if you stay with it, something shifts.
You may feel an emotion you did not expect. You may remember something long buried. You may feel warmth in your chest or a sudden stillness. These are signs that soul is present.
The image is not there to be solved. It asks to be honored. It opens a space where psyche can speak in its own tongue. This is where healing begins—not as repair, but as remembering.
If you try to rush the process, the image may disappear. But if you wait, if you let it come close, it may reveal something your waking self could never invent.
A man may see a staircase that leads underground. If he follows, he may find a figure waiting. Or he may find only silence. That silence is part of the conversation. In the old stories, silence is not empty. It is the presence of something greater gathering itself.
Active imagination is not fantasy. It is not drifting into daydream. It is the soul calling itself forward through the oldest language it knows. Image. Shape. Movement. Stillness.
Sometimes the image asks you a question. Sometimes it answers one you have not spoken. Sometimes it shows you a wound you have covered in gold.
The figures that appear do not always comfort. They often challenge. They carry the weight of your unlived life. To meet them is to step into a story still unfolding.
The psyche does not want us to perform. It wants us to listen. To wait. To allow. To stand in the unknown until the image shifts on its own.
This is not the work of the will. It is the labor of soul. The slow stitching together of what has been torn.
And in the quiet room, when the image turns its head or speaks a word, you may feel something old and sacred stir in your bones.
That is the place where imagination touches fate. Where image carries the seed of change. Where psyche, long silenced, sings again.
Madeline – Soulful Nuggets Team
This blog is a reflection on the course ‘Introduction to Jungian Psychology‘ taught by James Hollis .
