Robert Bosnak, in
Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming, defines and differentiates between two forms of "active imagination"
:
Unlike lucid dreaming---as in...[a] dream where I know I am dreaming---active imagination takes place while being awake; it occurs on the waking side of liminal [i.e., a state between sleep and waking; hypnagogic --ja] consciousness. The experience of the reality of the dreaming environment is considerably less absolute in the case of active imagination than it is with lucidity. However, active imagination can be achieved at any waking moment and, with some training, more or less at will.
I differentiate between two forms of active imagination: bound active imagination and free active imagination.
Bound active imagination is used in the service of dream recall. It tries to move as closely as possible along the contours of the dream as it is recalled.[I would label this as "redreaming." --ja]
Free active imagination is what Jung calls "dreaming the dream onwards." [It] starts with an authentic image (I usually prefer to begin with a dream image, so I won't start out with an ego invention) and lets the authentic action unfold from there---while the waking self remains constantly aware of the reality of the images it observes. Jung said that if, during active imagination, you see a lion on the Bahnhofstrasse (the main shoppping street in Zurich) and you don't respond with heightened alertness or a sense of fear, you are not in active imagination, because it is not real for you. (For this reason, expecting such a lion to speak to you always seems odd to me. A lion is a lion, wherever you meet him, be it in the jungle of Africa or on the Bahnhofstrasse of your dreams. If the lion wants to speak, that's his business. But if you make him speak, you're probably inventing things.) Another hallmark of true active imagination, be it free or bound, is the occurance of entirely and sincerely unexpected events. If the imagination unrolls in a predictable fashion, you're probably doing some screenwriting. [Bosnak, pp. 156-7]
To these two definitions [which I abbreviate
bai and fai in my journals] I add a third,
restricted associative imagination [rai], which I define as a continuation of the dream by conscious association, a free association wherein the images are new, proceeding from the dream material, but not an authetic part of the dream. It is the "screenwriting" that Bosnak writes of, except that it is not so "intentional" as it might at first seem to be. It is akin to the free association of psychoanalysis, where you "think" the first ideas/images that pop into your mind, without any attempt to censor them.
Finally, the uppermost level, of course, is simple creative thought, those ideas and images we all conjure up that are the fodder of every artist and writer---not that artists and writers do not also make good use of the other three levels too, but typically we do a lot of self-censoring before we make our work visible to the public. (It is my intent in these "therapy" journals to try to avoid that type of censoring, since I do not so much avoid it elsewhere in my work. Of course, you can't avoid some form of self-censorship, no matter how hard you try. If it were my goal to reveal myself, I'd worry about this fact. As it is, I'm not so sure what my goals are any more---if I ever was. Writing is a kind of purpose, but that is more of a need than a goal. Getting new work published used to be a goal, but...well, it's a lot of hard work that I no longer want to do so much. I guess getting material onto the web is a goal, though. Actually, I probably have a lot of goals. It's just that I don't take them as seriously as I used to. Life is slowing down. Finally.)