Make it Conscious - Inner Work Exercises

Today I'm going to be sharing more with you about the basic framework of this technique — this three-step approach to active imagination practice that you can use on a daily or regular basis, today the third step: bringing content into the imagination and connecting with it. 🌿 This work begins with understanding your own psychological blueprint. Take the free Personality Dynamics Assessment: http...

Continuing through the three-step basic technique for active imagination that you can do on a regular, even daily basis — watch your mind, note what appears, and connect with it in the imagination. This exercise focuses on that second step, noting. 🔔 Work with Max: Book a free Perspectives call — https://makeitconscious.com/coaching/ 🌿 Not ready to book a call? Take the free Personality Dynamics...

In this exercise we focus on the first of three steps in this active imagination technique — watching the mind. Using the breath as a canvas, we turn the mind back on itself rather than remaining lost in the natural flow of discursive thought. This is the foundation of the practice: simple, repeatable, and available no matter what's going on for you. This exercise uses active imagination, a techni...

Active imagination is a technique developed by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who described the conscious mind — the ego — as like a cork in an ocean, to illustrate the vastness of the unconscious relative to what we're aware of. In this exercise, we engage with the unconscious directly using a simple three-step method you can use on a daily basis. The unconscious mind is a vital part of who we...

In this exercise, we're going to be working with the shadow. The shadow is everything we don't like about ourselves that we also hide from conscious awareness, and it exists for good reason. We have to take a stance in life, and any time we do that, something else must be left out. But if there's anywhere that our shadow gets revealed, it's often in our relationships with other people. Some of the...

In this exercise we're going to be working with anger. Anger is one of the most misunderstood emotions across virtually every tradition — religious, therapeutic, cultural. This is quite simply because most do not differentiate between conscious and unconscious anger, or at least having a conscious relationship to anger or not. As Alan Watts once said, "The idea that there are no wrong feelings is...

In this exercise, we're working with conflict — interpersonal conflict. This is a good exercise to do if you've had a conflict recently, especially one with an emotional charge that lingered and where you know there's something more to uncover about yourself and the situation. Interpersonal conflict is one of the best windows into understanding ourselves and our own minds. But whatever self-knowle...

In this guided active imagination exercise, we're going to be working with the shadow. The shadow is everything that we don't like about ourselves and that we keep out of conscious awareness. Any time we take a stance in life, something else gets left out, and this creates a number of challenges. What gets left out must find expression somehow, and is a vital and necessary part of our personality...

The house is a symbol that immediately incites something in all of us. The psyche of its own accord very regularly produces the symbol of a home or a house to communicate the self. There is so much in the symbol that relates to the structure of our minds - houses have multiple floors, multiple rooms, high parts and low parts, underground sections. They contain various objects and various different...

This exercise is designed to be used on a regular basis for working with and becoming aware of feeling. Feelings are how the body communicates its needs. Whatever you're doing in life, whatever you're working towards, in whatever way you're growing, it's necessary that every action you take resists something else. So we have many needs, but not all of them can be addressed or met at the same time....

In ancient Egypt, the word for mirror and the hieroglyph for life shared the same root - "Ankh." From the very beginning, the mirror was understood as offering more than a surface appearance. It was a place where something essential about a person becomes visible. Before polished metal, people saw themselves only in water, and across cultures the mirror appears not as a passive surface but as some...

The inner critic—a figure most of us can relate to on some level—is often assumed to be on our side, pushing us to improve, to achieve, to become who we're supposed to be. And that's not entirely wrong—it does produce movement, it does compel us to take action. Often entire careers or lifestyles are built around meeting the demands of the inner critic. But often that movement, while it feels like...

<p>For most of human history, the moon was the only source of light after dark, reflecting back the sun's light. It gave humans a sense of time — the word "month" comes directly from the same root as "moon" — and there is evidence to suggest that humans have been tracking its cycles for at least 30,000 years. The moon is probably the most universal symbol of the femin...

In this exercise, we're going to be working with fear. As Carl Jung famously said, "where the fear, there is your task!" Working with fear is a very important part of the individuation journey, and in adult development more generally. There is little growth without confronting fear at some point or another. Often what makes fear so challenging is more about how our mind is relating to it than the...

In this exercise, there's no need to decide ahead of time what you'd like to work with. It's appropriate for when you aren't sure quite how you're feeling, or you know there's something that is bothering you but you can't quite get a handle on it. Instead, we ask the question 'what is coming alive in me that is calling for my attention,' and let the unconscious present the seed for the active imag...

In this active imagination exercise, there's a particular focus on how to engage with the unconscious effectively. In active imagination practice, one of two things can happen. Either there's a tendency to try and control the experience a bit too much — the ego gets too involved and the unconscious takes a back seat, producing what it already wants to create, and you come away having not really le...

In almost every tradition, the gods are placed on the mountains - Olympus, Sinai, Fuji. The mountain is where heaven meets earth. In alchemy, the mountain is considered the source of prima materia, containing the raw materials needed for transformation. The ascent of a mountain gives you perspective, expansion, maybe a fleeting peak experience - it literally involves rising up above the earth, but...

In today's exercise, we're going to be investigating the symbol of the cave. Caves form a profound part of our collective psyche. Long before we had temples or structures of our own, humans were entering caves. The oldest known art on Earth was made deep inside caves. To enter a cave is literally to go inwards, to go beneath the surface — making it a very useful symbol to work with as a way to fac...

In this active imagination exercise, we investigate the symbol of the ocean. Oceans are possibly the most potent natural symbol of the unconscious mind available to us. Water, when it shows up in visions and dreams, very often represents the unconscious. Some liken the ocean and the psyche to visible and invisible forms of the same reality. We came from the ocean biologically and ancestrally, and...

In this active imagination exercise, we investigate the symbol of the forest. Forests continue to play a vital role in our lives. Much of Europe was once dominated by forest. Today, the Amazon Rainforest is believed to contain around 10% of all the world's species. Forests are often associated with the unconscious itself - they contain many unknown elements, and you never quite know what you're go...

In this exercise, you'll engage with the four main functions of the ISTJ personality type through active imagination. You'll meet the Stalwart (introverted sensing), the Commander (extraverted thinking), the Lover (introverted feeling), and the Explorer (extraverted intuition) in symbolic form, allowing for direct dialogue with different aspects of your mind. You can do this exercise whether you a...

In this exercise, you'll engage with the four main functions of the ISFP personality type through active imagination. You'll meet the Lover (introverted feeling), the Tactician (extraverted sensing), the Seer (introverted intuition), and the Commander (extraverted thinking) in symbolic form, allowing for direct dialogue with different aspects of your mind. You can do this exercise whether you are...

In this exercise, you'll engage with the four main functions of the ENTP personality type through active imagination. You'll meet the Explorer (extraverted intuition), the Sage (introverted thinking), the Caregiver (extraverted feeling), and the Stalwart (introverted sensing) in symbolic form, allowing for direct dialogue with different aspects of your mind. You can do this exercise whether you ar...

In this exercise, you'll engage with the four main functions of the ENFP personality type through active imagination. You'll meet the Explorer (extraverted intuition), the Lover (introverted feeling), the Commander (extraverted thinking), and the Stalwart (introverted sensing) in symbolic form, allowing for direct dialogue with different aspects of your mind. You can do this exercise whether you a...

In this exercise, you'll engage with the four main functions of the ISFJ personality type through active imagination. You'll meet the Stalwart (introverted sensing), the Caregiver (extraverted feeling), the Sage (introverted thinking), and the Explorer (extraverted intuition) in symbolic form, allowing for direct dialogue with different aspects of your mind. You can do this exercise whether you ar...