Yesterday I started reading a book about dream interpretation and active imagination, active imagination being a technique you can use to dialogue with various parts of your unconscious. For example, you could dialogue with the part of you that’s depressed, angry, or lazy. Or the part of you that doesn’t want to lose weight (and probably has a good reason for that) even though you do want to (or rather, your ego or personality does). The basic idea is that you get quiet and still, then ask your unconscious to present an image or symbol that represents that energy pattern in your life. I’d like to talk to the part of me that’s resentful. Then you see who or what shows up and you have a conversation with it, with yourself.

As I spent most of today continuing to read the book I started yesterday, I tried this active imagination exercise earlier this evening with several different parts of myself, including my resentful part. Y’all, it was fascinating. It presented itself as a poor, newsie-type boy with bad grammar. “Whadayawant?” it said.

“I’d like to hear what you have to say,” I replied.

“Oh yeah, you ain’t been so interested before,” it said.

“Well, I’d like to try again,” I said.

I’ll spare you the rest of the conversation, but this is an important point in active imagination or talking to your internal parts–because they’ve been so frequently ignored, they often won’t want to chat. So you have to let them know you’re serious about (re)establishing a relationship with them. Sweetheart, I’m here for you. In the case of my inner resentful kid, he ended up saying that I give him a lot of crap for not knowing enough, not knowing enough being an internal attitude of mine that manifests itself as my cramming book after book into my brain and always having to learn. “You must think I’m a real dope,” he said. Later he said that it wasn’t that he was against learning, but he’d really like to have a break now and then. “Maybe you could just sit around and chew on a toothpick,” he said.

I realize this may sound like a bunch of crap, but it’s something that hit home for me. Lately I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to produce, stay busy, learn more, and even heal. Because my outer life doesn’t look like I want it to, I feel like I’ve got to DO something about it. And whereas this may be true, going nonstop is exhausting. But when I think of that kid I dialogued with this evening, I picture someone free in his body and world. A kid who’d just assume lie around or play baseball than read a book or LEARN. Honestly, that sounds nice. I could use more of that–relaxation.

One of the book’s points is that when your unconscious gives you information (in a dream or via active imagination) it’s not enough to think about or even interpret that information–you need to do something with it. For example, after my inner resentful kid told me I could be a real stick in the mud, I went for a walk and–according to his suggestion–didn’t listen to an informational podcast along the way. Last night I dreamed I drank pickle juice, which I associate with being sour but also full of electrolytes (energy). And whereas I’m still chewing on the meaning, I’m thinking it has to do with the idea that although some of my current experiences are sour, they’re giving me energy for what’s to come. Anyway, the point is that in order to HONOR the dream, I drank some pickle juice for breakfast.

This idea, that you need to do something with the knowledge your unconscious gives you, seems to be true across the board. For example, recently I got a text message that fundamentally bothered me. Essentially it was from someone I really don’t know that well who wanted a favor. Well, this has happened a number of times before, and although it’s always bothered me, I just ignored it, which is to say I ignored the part of myself that was bothered. However, when it happened this time, I dealt with it directly. I said no. And whereas my answer was well-received, that’s not the point. The point is that when your unconscious or even your intuition gives you information, it’s usually asking you to take an action. To further illustrate the point, there were a lot of insights about my relationships I had in therapy that never really “sunk in” until I had the balls to have difficult conversations and–in some cases–set boundaries.

Granted, my therapist says that you don’t have to take action EVERY time you’re alerted to a problem or a situation. “The important thing is to see things for what they are,” she told me once when someone I knew had said something shitty to me. In that case, I acknowledged their behavior for what it was and let it slide. Still, I had fantasies of telling that person off and ultimately wasn’t satisfied until I said SOMETHING to them.

For the record, I didn’t tell them off; I was simply honest. I think this is shitty. This is another point the book I’m reading makes–that our dreams and fantasies are often extreme because they need to get our attention. Last night after the pickle juice dream I dreamed that I was yelling at someone who wouldn’t let me have fun with my friends or, later, be by myself. “FUCK OFF!” I said. And whereas I think the interpretation of this dream goes back to my needing to go easier on myself and take a break now and then, the point remains the same–my unconscious isn’t asking that I start aggressively telling other people, or even my inner task master, to fuck off. Rather, it’s simply trying to alert me to the fact that a previously ignored part of me would like to be heard, would like to be considered.

For quite a while now, there’s been a (small) idea floating around the globe about equality–equal rights for women, for all races, for all sexualities. Along these lines, there’s also the idea that everyone deserves to have a voice. And whereas sometimes when I look at the flapdoodle people say and share on social media, I fundamentally agree with this–the right to free speech. Also, and I realize I’m not the first to do so, I’d like to propose that equality and freedom of speech start at home, inside of you. What I mean is that if there’s any part of you that’s angry, resentful, sad, depressed or anything else, and you’re unwilling to listen to, hear, or consider it, then I guarantee that you’ll be unwilling to listen to, hear, or consider something or someone outside of you as well. Conversely, the more you open up to the variety of voices inside of you, the more you’ll open up the variety of voices outside of you. Want everyone in the world to be accepted? Start by accepting every part of yourself. This isn’t easy, of course, but it’s how you truly change the world. You change YOUR world.