In a long and fascinating interview with astrologer and author Rob Brezsny in The Believer, I was intrigued to read that he has an inner community of “consultants” with whom he regularly communicates, including anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman and nineteenth-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Through his comments, I realized that the practice of cultivating dead figures in one’s imagination as teachers or guides has a long and brilliant history.
In The Apology, Socrates related that since childhood he had a daimon, a spiritual guardian whose trusted voice others could not hear, who warned him when he was about to make a bad decision or walk down a dangerous path. Dante’s spirit guides while writing his masterwork The Divine Comedy were the ancient Roman poets Virgil and Ovid. Robert Louis Stevenson claimed to have a whole crew of mischievous inner “Brownies” who not only came up with plots for him while he slept but also guided his daytime writing and worked overtime for him when he desperately needed money.
Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president in the 1872 US election, had an inner advisory committee of five spirits, chaired by the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes. In turn, shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt trusted her guides to advise him on his investments. Other examples of noted figures who trusted inner helpers include inventor Nikola Tesla, authors William Blake and Arthur Conan Doyle, political wife Imelda Marcos, Hillary Clinton when she was US First Lady, and Nobel Prize winner Wolfgang Pauli. Napoleon Bonaparte claimed to be guided by a Star of Destiny up in the sky, and because no one else could see it, I would put it in the same category.
You needn’t conduct a candles-and-joined-hands séance or believe in the supernatural in order to find and utilize an inner helper. According to Jungian psychologists, a process called “active imagination” allows you to tap into unconscious knowledge and wisdom that your conscious mind may not have access to. The process can be as simple as closing your eyes, relaxing and allowing a being to form in your mind that you can ask questions of. By giving that mental entity a name, you may find it easier to consult that sage again when you need guidance.
It’s crucial not to try to control or stage-manage the inner helper, but rather to watch and listen, says Robert A. Johnson, author of Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth. This distinguishes the technique from guided visualizations that also conjure up an inner entity but provide a script for the session designed to boost confidence or produce some other positive result. Active imagination produces discoveries and insights because it proceeds unscripted.
Johnson addresses the feeling some people have that in an active imagination session, they’re simply making something up:
“It is nearly impossible to produce anything in the imagination that is not an authentic representation of something in the unconscious. The whole function of the imagination is to draw up the material from the unconscious, clothe it in images, and transmit it to the conscious mind. Whatever comes up in the imagination must have been living somewhere in the fabric of the unconscious before it was given an image-form by the imagination.”
Johnson helpfully describes a number of starting points if active imagination is new to you. First, if you already have an active fantasy life, simply start a dialogue with one of its images, in your head or on paper. Second, you could use your imagination to visit a place and explore to see who you meet there. Third, if there’s a mood you can’t shake off, begin talking to it as you would to an imaginary friend. And fourth, if you have vivid or troubling dreams, contact something from one of your dreams and engage in a dialogue.
Carl Jung called the spirit in which we undertake active imagination “willed introversion,” because it involves deliberately focusing on inward energy. Introverts tend to be more comfortable with this kind of self-reflective focus, as well as with waiting silently for the unconscious responses to surface. The rewards of the practice are largely internal, too, including a resolution of inner conflicts, improved inward harmony, and a greater sense of meaning.
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