Imaginal Field | Anavami Center

Blog #3A Imaginal Field: Refrigerator an Archetypal Portal

Mar 2, 2022

Mark-marking this week continued to cultivate somatic intelligence as we access the Imaginal Field. By becoming-like other things, we expanded the felt-body response by cultivating vision into the unknown through imagination. It is an ancient portal that the age of reason has upstaged, and yet is alive in science and all the arts, music, performance, literature and every aspect of life that is carried to artistry, like architecture, landscaping, cooking, parenting or even politics.

This shape-shifting is becoming easier as we recognize how many ways we slip into each other and address other with empathy and compassion. It is an ancient way of learning, expanding perception and gaining new insights. Through Marking, we soften the demarcation of inside and outside, experiencing more and more how our defined physical body is really integral to a greater biosphere.

In the arts, an archetype creates an immediate sense of familiarity, without need to ponder why a character or event is understood. Archetype can be defined as an emotion, character type, or event that is notably recurrent across the human experience. Consider the archetypes of things around you. The chair that holds you for comfort and ease to do things like eat, work, converse or travel. It is a structure adapted to human body, a kind of a container to easily enter and leave. It has a history beyond function and culture denoting social status and even termination of life. Our inquiry is interested in the metaphor and poetics of archetypes in relation to the Imaginal Field.

Your home, a safe private place, like a nest or a shell, is what Gaston Bachelard marks as the place to dream. In the introduction to his book, The Poetics of Space. Richard Kearney says, “Poetics, for Bachelard, is not a matter of anonymous floating signifiers; it signals a relational dynamic between beings, involving vital dimensions of intimacy, secrecy, desire and repose.” And later, “Imagination is at its best when it is incarnate, elemental, opening out into time and space, even when the space is elsewhere—before being, beneath being, beyond being, more than being.”

This week we explore universal archetypes as organizing principles, which unite physical matter with consciousness. We used opening a refrigerator door, that everyday utilitarian object, as the start for everyone to step into a unique Imaginal Field. My refrigerator contained containers, preserving sustenance and enjoyment. This container has a physical inner structure but also a metaphoric structure related for me to the psyche. I thought of how different the freezer compartment is from the shelves on the door or the vegetable bins. The archetype of refrigerator gave us a poetic fulcrum to investigate being in our marking.

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Blog #2C In-Bodying the Field, Reciprocity: Flirting and Animism

Feb 20, 2022

There is a way to explore animism in the practice Marking by flirting. The definition of animism we are using it is the essence of an object or entity. It is the spirit that energizes, even if at first it is beyond our sensorial recognition. Rather than a belief we are cultivating more an attitude or practice as we become comfortable and adept in the Imaginal Realm. You could also say that it is a poetic approach. Poetry of the plastic arts, music, literature and performance all seek deeper and meaningful connection through the intelligence of the imaginal realm. Through marking we explore the reciprocity of the life and essence of the field in relation to flirting.

Flirting can be subtle or blatant, social, sexual or aesthetic behavior involving spoken, written word or body language communicated in creative exchange by one person to another. We are extending it to what we usually think as objects. It suggests an interest in deeper relationship or simple unfolding amusement. In the spirit of Reciprocity notice what catches your attention, your eye, or perhaps kinesthetically, your body. Not just people or objects but how the light slants through the trees, the stance of a crow, a gesture that brings back a memory. Because flirting goes back and forth you need to give some space to whatever you are flirting with to respond. Let your imagination start an exchange. Give the encounter some leeway to play, transforming into new possibilities. Engage in the exchange for deeper relationship in the Imaginal Realm.

Some approaches in Transpersonal Psychology and Process Therapy look at physical symptoms not as pathological but invitations for creative encounters that offer important insights and information. Arnold Mindell talks about symptoms as dreamings. They have important information for guidance for assimilation and integration. Flirting is a way to engage secondary process, which at first lies outside of our immediate awareness. If our true self is nonlocal, then anything that catches your attention is you, an edge of the bigger-you. Flirting goes back and forth, so take up the baton.