CH 12: Therapeutic Considerations in a Shift of Consciousness

The therapeutic task is not to suppress imaginal experience or explain it away. Nor is it to romanticize every unusual perception as awakening. The task is to hold the experience safely enough that it can clarify, mature, and integrate. A mature approach to the Imaginal requires psychological literacy as much as spiritual openness. It requires the capacity to distinguish expansion from destabilization, symbolism from literalism, insight from projection, and transformation from deregulation.

This is where therapeutic skill becomes essential. The Imaginal must be welcomed without being indulged, explored without being inflated, and interpreted without being fixed. It is not enough to open the doorway. One must also know how to remain oriented while passing through it......