Entering the Inner World: Why I Love Guided Visualization

Approximately a 5 minute read

There is a moment I have come to love in the groups and workshops I facilitate.

We have been talking. Exploring an idea. Asking questions. Perhaps discussing dreams, parts of ourselves, creativity, resistance, symbols, or the places in our lives where something seems to be shifting.

And then the talking stops.

I invite everyone to settle a little more deeply into their chairs. To notice their breath. Perhaps to close their eyes.

And we enter the imagination.

A path appears.

Or a river.

A house we have never visited before.

Perhaps there is a door, a forest, a threshold, an animal waiting beside the path.

We don't know what we are going to find.

And that is part of what I love about it.

When understanding isn't enough

There are many things we can understand intellectually and still struggle to change.

We can know why we have a particular pattern. We can recognize that a fear is disproportionate. We can identify our resistance. We can understand that a part of us is trying to protect us.

And sometimes that understanding is enormously helpful.

But sometimes we need another way of approaching the question.

Instead of asking, Why am I resistant to this?, imagine meeting the resistance itself.

Perhaps it appears as a gatekeeper standing in front of a locked gate.

Now the question changes.

Who are you?

What are you protecting?

What do you need me to understand?

We have moved from thinking about something to entering into relationship with it.

That shift fascinates me.

The language of the imaginal

Dreams already speak this way.

They give us images, places, characters, animals, objects, sensations and stories we did not consciously choose.

Guided visualization can open a similar kind of space.

I might create the doorway into a journey, but I cannot know what someone will find once they enter it.

A river may be rushing or almost dry.

A path may disappear.

A house may have one welcoming room and another with a firmly locked door.

Someone may encounter an animal, an unfamiliar figure, a younger version of themselves, an object, a word—or nothing they can easily name at all.

This is one reason I try not to rush toward interpretation.

If an owl appears, I am less interested in telling someone what an owl means than in becoming curious about this owl, appearing to this person, at this particular moment.

What was it doing?

How did you feel in its presence?

What happened when you approached it?

What associations do you have with owls?

What does the image stir in you now?

An image doesn't necessarily need to be decoded.

Sometimes it needs to be encountered.

Meeting what we find with curiosity

Of course, not everything we encounter inwardly is comfortable.

Sometimes imagination brings us toward something tender, frightened, angry, protective, forgotten or difficult to understand.

I have been thinking lately about the practice of becoming a Compassionate Observer of our inner experience.

Not detached. Not indifferent.

And not believing that everything that arises inwardly must automatically be acted upon or taken literally.

Instead:

Something is here.

Can I notice it without immediately rejecting it?

Can I become curious about it?

Can I listen before deciding what it means?

There is a gentleness in that stance that I am increasingly drawn to—particularly when we are encountering parts of ourselves we would rather not see.

We don't have to fling every inner door wide open.

Sometimes noticing the door is enough.

Sometimes we remain at the threshold.

Sometimes we discover we are ready to enter.

The magic of imagining together

Something else happens when we do this work in community.

People may travel through the same guided visualization and return with entirely different experiences.

And then someone shares an image.

Another person hears something in it that touches their own experience.

A word catches someone's attention. A connection appears. A question arises.

No one needs to tell another person what their experience means.

We can simply listen.

Witness.

Wonder together.

There is often a kind of resonance that moves through the room when we do this—a sense that our individual inner worlds are uniquely our own and yet somehow capable of speaking to one another.

It's one of my favourite parts of facilitating this work.

The journey doesn't always end when we return

And then we open our eyes.

We journal.

We talk.

We return to our day.

But sometimes the imagination isn't quite finished with us.

An image from the journey appears in a dream several nights later.

An animal we encountered inwardly suddenly catches our attention in the waking world.

A phrase comes back to us while driving.

Something we didn't understand at the time begins to make sense differently.

Or a question simply stays with us.

I don't think we always need to decide exactly what these experiences are in order to honour them.

We can leave some room for mystery.

We can continue to notice.

Returning to our lives

For me, this is an important part of imaginal work.

The purpose isn't to disappear into an inner world and remain there.

We return.

We bring something back with us.

An image.

A question.

A different relationship with a part of ourselves.

Something to grieve.

Something to create.

Something to protect.

Something we are finally ready to put down.

Or perhaps simply a little more curiosity about the life we are already living.

This is why I keep returning to guided visualization in my work.

Dreamwork, journaling, creativity, symbolism, parts work and the imagination may look like different practices, but increasingly I find them meeting in the same territory.

They offer us doorways.

And I love creating those doorways.

Not because I know what someone will find on the other side.

Because I don't.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of entering the inner world:

We return to the outer one seeing a little differently.

A reflection to carry with you

If you were to imagine a doorway somewhere within you right now, you don't have to open it.

Just notice it.

What does the doorway look like?

And what happens in you when you imagine standing before it?

You might simply stay there for a moment and become curious.