Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth

Looking into "how to" do shadow work on oneself, i came across this book as a recommendation. This book turned out to be so much more than that. The techniques can be practically used by anyone trying to look within for answers. Be it to spiritual question or a practical day to day problem. I literally "devoured" a book after a long time. It was an eye opening experience. As an attempt to lucid dream, i started taking notes of my dreams since the last few days. The idea was to bring the dreams to a "conscious" level. The notes stayed there in the journal without me doing anything with them. While reading the book, i picked a particularly bizzare one and used the techniques to try to analyse it. Before i was finished however, i realised the not so bizzare ones had equally profound messages for me. I couldnt have imagined anything equally or more profound than my meditation practice in bringing me closer to conscoius awareness. This book changed that for me. Although my meditation practice has brought a sense of wholeness over the past few years, i realised it left some parts of my "being" undernourished. It gave me the insight into why after years of trying to calm my mind and having made significant progress, why sometimes parts of me come up which i can barely recognize about myself. I have not read any other book on dream analysis or active imagination before this one so I am not in a position to compare. However, after reading several books and spending plenty of time on self development, i feel this book will always be one of the few that hold a potential to bring an actual change in my life. I recommed it to anyone who seeks answers and realises that the only place where they can be sought is "inside" oneself.

Interesting Insights. Book will give you a lot of work to do. Can help you understand yourself better. Go for it.

This book can't be read casually; you can do that, but then it will give you a casual and limited understanding. But if you try the exercises, they can bring you face to face with a new world. I haven't read a more powerful book than this. A word of caution: please seek out a therapist before embarking on this journey, otherwise, things can feel scary. You need a trained specialist around you, to hold you when things begin to take forms that you can neither predict or imagine. Highly recommended!

I think his understanding of Hinduism and it's philosophies is marred by the use of his Christian framework. There is a certain amount of distortion of key ideas, that can be a bit annoying if you're Indian. Also, ngl, some parts of active imagination especially, seem like an invitation to descent into craziness. But overall, some concepts are certainly thought provoking. They can be used as jumping-off points to launch your own understanding of self, universe and the meaning of life. Overall, definitely an interesting book.

Map for inner exploration

I am not a book person but i started reading wid Robert Johnson's editions ...n ds book is simply the best i read so far. Even for a layman it is beautifully written that u vl b completly engrossed n excited to know more.

Interesting read

Very informative and detailed book on dream work. It is quite helpful.

Un livre de grande qualité , très pédagogique permettant de mieux se connaitre grâce à la grande expérience de Robert .A Jonhson dans le domaine de la connaissance de soi sous toutes nos facettes .

Gives lots of tools to work on yourself. His explanations cleared out a lot of my doubts about practicing active imagination.

This is the book I've been looking for all my life! I've always loved the idea of deciphering my dreams, but dream dictionaries and other dream manuals always fell short of the mark. Well, no longer! It takes some work, but if you're willing to put in the work, you'll suddenly realise that your dreams are a lot more relevant that you might give them credit for, and it's not the woo woo thing that everyone seems to agree on. Dreams offer us pure unconscious material filled with symbology, which this book helps us to not only decipher, but to integrate said material and resolve ongoing issues that may have plagued us for years. It feels like a light has been switched on, as I now have direct access to my own inner wisdom, in a way that is far more objective than I ever thought possible.

Excellent introductory book to (unsupervised) Jungian dream analysis and active imagination for beginners. The author gives an approachable overview of such necessary jungian terms as unconscious, archetypes, symbols, ego, consciousness and individuation and how their interplay in dream and active imagination images, when properly understood and directly related to our everyday life through ritual (the translating of spirit into matter or of intellectual understanding into physical reality), they contribute to a deepening and widening of our consciousness and goad us steadily on the journey to individuation. This does not claim to be the ultimate book on dream analysis because there simply cannot be such a book. When it comes to inner work one can only get so much from books the most valuable contribution being one's lifelong commitment to the painstaking journey itself. I heartily recommend this book

I found the book very helpful in explaining inner work in a way that made it easy to start practicing myself. It is also decently concise and focused. An easy recomendation for anyone looking to start dream work and or active imagination.