Strong personal intentions but flexible external expectations
With the many portrayals of psychedelic experiences in the media, it is easy for someone uninitiated in this realm of experience, to create expectations about what a ketamine-induced state might be like. You might expect sacred geometry designs and objects in fluorescent colors to dance around you to the music of an Ascended or mythological being playing the flute while you float above your body and see it all from a bird’s eye-view perspective. Those experiences are certainly a part of ketamine-induced states and states arising from taking other psychedelic substances. However, it is a very real phenomenon, that sometimes a ketamine experience might just be a feeling, such as a feeling of calm or clarity.
On the other end it might be a tight sensation around your chest or forehead that creates pressure and tension contributing to feelings of unease and anxiety. These less technicolor-like psychedelic experiences are not to be underestimated in regards to their benefits for healing work. They are the gateway to better self-knowledge and insight and initiators of the more life changing experiences so many of us are after when doing the work of healing and transformation.
To better harness the healing effects of even less awe-striking ketamine experiences, Jungian Active Imagination can be a most helpful adjunct. By using Active Imagination, the healing practitioner invites the client to focus on the feeling, sensation or thought that arises, and allow it to express itself in the way that feels most natural and seamless to it. The feeling might become an image or a sound, and it might want to blare out loud, radiate in waves, or bounce from one corner of the room to the other, to finally rest gently on the client’s lap. The practitioner might finally ask the client what the best thing to do with that blob of energy might be, of course with its agreement. The technique of Active Imagination is a great gateway to more spontaneous ketamine and other psychedelics experiences.
