Active Imagination Session Worksheet

To establish a safe container, preserve a literal session record, separate observation from interpretation, hold competing hypotheses, and return to ordinary reality.

Complete the readiness check first. Set a short duration and stop plan, record the encounter literally, compare at least two interpretations, ground afterward, and do not act automatically on inner imagery.

This page does not collect, transmit, or store imagery, dialogue, reflections, or worksheet responses.

Educational only. An imagined figure cannot establish external facts, issue binding commands, diagnose anyone, reveal consent, or replace qualified care. Stop when voluntary control, orientation, or reality testing is uncertain.

What Is the Active Imagination Session Worksheet?

The Active Imagination Session Worksheet is a private browser-based tool for containing, recording, and reviewing an active imagination exercise. It separates the literal record from later interpretation and preserves the reader’s responsibility for real-world decisions.

Nothing typed into the worksheet is sent to WordPress or stored by the website. A visitor may choose to print or download a local plain-text copy.

Use the Readiness Check First

Complete the Active Imagination Readiness & Safety Check before beginning. Do not continue alone when orientation, reality testing, voluntary control, or present stability is uncertain.

Why a Written Container Helps

Active imagination asks the ego to attend to inner imagery without either suppressing it or surrendering responsibility to it. A written container establishes a short duration, an exit plan, grounding steps, and a distinction between what occurred in imagination and what can be established externally.

The worksheet also discourages retrospective polishing. Recording exact words, images, emotions, and responses before interpretation makes it easier to notice where expectation or theory may have altered the account.

Five Stages of the Worksheet

1. Set the container: record current condition, purpose, duration, stop plan, grounding, and support.
2. Record the encounter: preserve imagery, dialogue, emotion, bodily response, choices, and ending.
3. Separate observation from interpretation: distinguish the literal account from personal associations and ordinary influences.
4. Hold competing hypotheses: develop more than one possible reading and keep contradictions visible.
5. Return to ordinary life: ground, identify a modest evidence-based action, and name what you will not act on.

Important Boundaries

• An inner figure is not an external authority.
• Vividness does not prove truth, prediction, recovered memory, or supernatural contact.
• Do not use imagery to diagnose another person or infer consent.
• Do not make financial, medical, legal, relationship, or safety decisions solely from an imagined encounter.
• Stop if the exercise becomes involuntary, disorienting, compulsive, or difficult to distinguish from external reality.

After the Session

Return to food, movement, daylight, ordinary conversation, practical tasks, or another grounding activity. Delay major interpretation until emotional intensity has decreased. Recurrent or distressing material may be better explored with a qualified mental-health professional familiar with imagery-based methods.

Write a Stop Rule Before Beginning

Define the time limit and stopping conditions before engaging the image. Examples include rising panic, loss of orientation, commanding content, inability to end the dialogue, or confusion about whether an event is internal or external. Also record the grounding action and person to contact if needed. A prewritten rule protects judgment when the material becomes emotionally compelling.

Sources and Method

• Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon: Active Imagination.
• C. G. Jung’s discussions of active imagination across the Collected Works.
• Original educational worksheet created for Individuationing.