How a practical psychosynthetic exercise employs imaginative personification to bypass conscious resistance, opening a channel between the personal self and spiritual guidance
By Roberto Assagioli
Doc. #14375 | Assagioli Archives, Florence
Original title: Come Decidere?
Translated by Jan Kuniholm
Editorial Note
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sørensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered.
Abstract
In this practical instruction, Assagioli describes a method of decision-making through consultation with the spiritual Self. He identifies mental, emotional, and sensory interference as obstacles between the personal and spiritual centres, and outlines three modes of response: direct, symbolic, and external. A psychosynthetic exercise of imaginative personification is presented, in which the practitioner envisions a wise figure whose counsel bypasses conscious resistance and allows intuitive clarity to emerge.
The Soul, the spiritual “I’ or Self, is the first Master. It is like a Sage, like an Instructor ready to guide, instruct and enlighten. I recommend doing particular exercises; that is, proposing a specific, precise problem to the Soul, to the spiritual “I” or Self; preferably an unimportant problem, so that it does not arouse worries or other emotional resonances. So focus more on the exercise itself than on the importance and usefulness of the answer. Then ask for the answer and try to grasp it. There are various ways of reception.
What would seem most natural and easiest, that is, an immediate response, is often less easy — less easy precisely because many psychological elements stand between the ordinary “I” or self and the spiritual “I” or Self: the workings of the mind, the tumult of emotions, desires, impulses, the influx of sensations from the body and the outside world. “The line is not clear,” to use a telephone image. So not infrequently the reception is delayed; that is, the message “comes down” little by little — when it finds an opening — into the illuminated area of consciousness. Therefore, if there is no immediate response, don’t be discouraged; this is to be expected. Moreover, it can come at the most unexpected moments, when we least expect it.
As for the mode of responses, they can be of three kinds: Direct responses, either expressed in words, or as clear impressions, and clear urges to act.
Symbolic responses: these are frequent, since the natural “language” of the unconscious is symbolic. These are images or scenes that must be interpreted.
Finally, Responses from outside: it is not easy to understand their mode of action, but in many cases they are so obvious that their reality cannot be doubted. They may come through speech, “messages” from other people, in which we recognize the answer to our question while the “messenger” is unaware of it. Or we find the answer in a book we open “at random,” in a publication that falls into our lap or is sent to us. In other cases it is events, circumstances, sometimes sudden changes, in which we can recognize the “answers.”
Then there is a special “exercise” by which responses can be encouraged, even provoked. It is an exercise that I have people do in psychosynthetic treatments and which has given and gives good results. It involves putting oneself in a state of inner concentration, of calm, then clearly formulating the problem, the question; finally trying to imagine what a Master, a Sage, known to us or not, would tell us. Sometimes the answer comes ready, clear, and convincing. This should not be surprising because a part of us, the spiritual Self, already knows. The “staging,” the imaginative “personification,” helps to circumvent certain conscious or unconscious resistances of our personality, to create an ‘objectification,” a detachment that allows us to “see clearly.”
