It's okay to look inside

Creative inspiration and energy can come from many sources, but the most important source is us - our own abilities, thoughts and feelings, including the inner stuff we may not want to look at because we think it is "immoral" or "sick" or otherwise "bad."

Artists, of course, realize that it is not only okay to look into our hidden inner selves, but that doing so can reveal creative material and insights.

In her new film "Stephanie Daley," Amber Tamblyn portrays a 16-year-old girl who is accused of murdering her newborn, but claims she didn't know she was pregnant and the baby was stillborn.

"I feel like it's been a friend of mine or a little sister of a friend of mine or myself or my mother," she said.

"I don't mean that in a 'there's a little Stephanie Daley in all of us' way. But I think there is quiet vulnerability that we all have to allow us to shift in and out of the gray areas of what is right and what is wrong and what is moral and not moral.

"This for me was a way to look at gray areas in our lives, at the things that we were terrified of."

[Los Angeles Times April 26, 2007; photo from "Stephanie Daley"]

Director Mike Nichols once commented, "We tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator."

The book Jung on Active Imagination notes that Carl Jung developed this concept of active imagination during a period of his life when he was "disoriented and experienced intense inner turmoil; he suffered from lethargy and fears, and his moods threatened to overwhelm him.

"Jung searched for a method to heal himself from within, and finally decided to engage with the impulses and images of his unconscious. It was through the rediscovery of the symbolic play of his childhood that Jung was able to reconnect with his creative spirit." [From publisher summary]

More on the creative inner parts of ourselves can be found on many pages - including:
depth psychology
depth psychology: sites articles books
the shadow self
shadow self: sites articles books
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