Active Imagination Readiness & Safety Check

To help a reader review present readiness and identify preparation gaps before attempting active imagination; it does not diagnose, prescribe, or provide safety clearance.

Answer for your condition today. Choose Yes, Not sure, or No. A Not sure or No on any grounding or reality-testing item takes priority over the total score.

Educational and non-diagnostic. This checklist is not a validated clinical screen and cannot determine whether active imagination is safe for you. Do not continue alone when reality testing, orientation, stability, or voluntary stopping is uncertain.

What Is This Readiness Check?

The Active Imagination Readiness & Safety Check is a private educational checklist for reviewing grounding, containment, support, interpretation, and action before attempting active imagination.

It is not a diagnostic instrument and cannot certify that the practice is safe for a particular person. A high total must never override uncertainty about reality testing, present orientation, intoxication, severe sleep deprivation, acute destabilization, or the ability to stop voluntarily.

Why Preparation Matters

Active imagination deliberately gives sustained attention to inner images, figures, dialogue, movement, and emotion. That can make the practice psychologically demanding. The goal is not to surrender control to an inner figure or treat imagery as an external command. The ego remains present, observant, ethically responsible, and capable of ending the exercise.

Preparation creates a container: a limited duration, a stopping method, a way to return to ordinary activity, and access to support if the material becomes overwhelming.

How to Use the Check

1. Answer for your condition today, not for how you usually feel.
2. Choose Yes only when the statement feels reliably true now.
3. Treat every Not sure or No response as a preparation task.
4. Give the first four grounding items priority over the total score.
5. Reassess before a later session because readiness can change.

What the Three Areas Cover

Grounding and Reality Testing

These questions address present orientation, the distinction between imagination and external events, current stability, and the ability to stop. Uncertainty here is a reason to pause rather than push through.

Containment and Support

Containment includes time limits, grounding actions, ordinary routines, trusted support, and recognition that an introspective practice cannot replace professional care.

Interpretation and Action

Vivid imagery can feel convincing. Responsible practice records the experience before interpreting it, holds multiple hypotheses, and refuses to obey an image automatically or act impulsively because of it.

When to Stop or Seek Support

Do not continue alone if you cannot reliably distinguish inner imagery from external events, cannot stop the exercise, feel acutely unsafe or destabilized, or experience rapidly intensifying fear, compulsion, disorientation, or loss of ordinary functioning. Qualified mental-health support is especially important when trauma, dissociation, psychosis-like experiences, severe mood symptoms, or impaired reality testing are concerns.

If immediate safety is at risk, use appropriate local emergency or crisis support rather than an online reflection tool.

Privacy

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Readiness Changes

A result is specific to the present session. Sleep loss, conflict, medication changes, grief, substances, trauma activation, and available support can alter readiness from one day to another. A previous comfortable experience does not guarantee that today’s exercise is appropriate. When any grounding or reality-testing answer is uncertain, postponing the practice is a valid outcome rather than a failed attempt.

Sources and Method

• Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: Active Imagination.
• C. G. Jung’s discussions of active imagination across the Collected Works.
• Original educational readiness checklist created for Individuationing. It has not been validated as a psychometric or clinical screening instrument.