The Ministry of Mycelial Arts creatively explores radical connectedness—within our inner landscapes, outer landscapes, and each other. This entangled artistry hopes to nurture the mycelial-like thinking needed to co-create our more flourishing and feral futures.
Today, I’m sharing a creative journaling technique that can help you better understand your ‘inner landscapes’ and work through any mental blocks.
How does this relate to ‘radical connectedness’? Often our insecurities, shadows, and neglected parts of ourselves are root causes of many forms of disconnect. They can block a deeper understanding of ourselves, stall our journey towards actualisation (connection with authentic meaning), and, worse of all, when projected onto Others they can cause tragic forms of division that contribute to entire wars.
Unknown, Pinterest
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“With shadow projection, we see others as evil, as greedy, as lustful or destructive in whatever way, while we fail to see the relationship between their so-called evil and our own. They hold our evil for us. They take our projections. In actuality, the psyche of every human being contains all of the same base materials.” Colin E.Davis
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Intro to ‘Shadow Scripting’
I’ve had a journaling writing practice for 20+ years, and used many writing exercises as part of creative workshops too. Regular journaling of any kind is a really useful practice for self-discovery and reflection. It’s been a lifeline for me, and also illuminated self-knowledge that I’d otherwise never have uncovered.
I was introduced to this scripting type approach via a past therapist, and since then reflected on how to turn this into a useful journaling practice with psychological context & examples. This technique is overall designed to help you understand recurrent inner (and outer) barriers (sometimes called “inner demons”). For example, in my case these are: imposter syndrome, self-doubt, living within a society that oppresses creativity, and an overly harsh inner critic.
I’m fairly sure this ‘scripting’ practice originates from the work of Carl Jung. While I don’t agree with everything Jung said. As an artist I appreciate his life-long dedication to unearthing the importance of intuition, subconscious worlds, and dreams.
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Relevant ‘Jungian’ concepts and tools to explore further
- Shadow work: about recognizing and facing the parts of yourself you might have ignored or denied, like aggression or envy.
‘The shadow contains all sorts of qualities, capacities and potential, which if not recognised and owned, maintain a state of impoverishment in the personality and deprive the person of sources of energy and bridges of connectedness with others.’ Christopher Perry, Society of Analytical Psychology
“If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is his shadow does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses etc “ [CW9 paras 422 & 423].
Christopher Perry
- Active imagination:“Active imagination is a process in Jungian psychology used to bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious minds: opening oneself to the unconscious and giving free rein to fantasy while at the same time maintaining an active, attentive, conscious point of view. The process leads to a synthesis that contains both perspectives in a new and surprising way.”
The Active Imagination Technique: A Quick Guide for Beginners
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How it works:
You’ll characterise and write your inner blockages into a live script. Think of it like a marriage counselling session with a bunch of inner demons. The idea is to name them, understand (with empathy) why they exist, and explore how to live with them in a healthier relationship. I’ve included an example below to give an idea, but everyone’s experience will be different.
Some key elements:
Freewrite: Write without stopping to edit or correct yourself. Just let thoughts flow. Write anything, it could be ‘I don’t know what to write…’ I didn’t even have to consciously think of my inner demons, but maybe you’ll find it useful to list down some ‘characters’ first.
Imagine characters: Explore your inner blockages as characters and give them names. They can be serious, funny, or whatever feels right. Drawing them might be fun. Maybe they remind you of a character in a film, or piece of fiction.
Creative expression: This isn’t about perfect writing, it’s about expressing yourself. It’s a creative exercise, but the focus is on expression and imagination, rather than craft, technique, or quality of end product (though it could form into an artwork later). WE’RE ALL CREATIVE.
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For an example: this video by UK artist Ren is an example of a ‘shadow script’ turned into masterpiece.
If you decide to have a go, would be curious to know if you unearth anything interesting. If you’d like to read my more raw written script this is on my personal Substack (attached to bottom of post).
Mush Love,
REMa