What is the boundary between the familiar, known world of ego awareness and the unfamiliar, unknown, even incomprehensible world of the unconscious? What holds that boundary in place? And what makes it porous, open to transport, even for a moment? Those of us who are students of depth psychology know that Freud and Jung spent their lives using dreams and active imagination to cross this boundary, to move from the known to the unknown world and back again, like intrepid explorers.
This presentation takes the archetype of creativity — preparation, incubation, inspiration, production — and adds the dimension of the unconscious Shadow. At each stage of the creative process, there are potential unconscious blocks that prevent the crossing of the boundary into the imaginal realm, or the creative unconscious. If we use shadow-work to identify those internal saboteurs and learn how to observe them without following them, we can make a relationship with the creative unconscious that has more flow than frustration, more joy than disappointment.