Janet K Bloom, M.F.A., C.E.I.T.
Janet K Bloom became Certified as an Eidetic Imaging Trainer at Dr. Akhter Ahsen’s Image Institute in 1985. She continues to train with Ahsen, the founder of Image Psychology, as he continues discovering ingenious and richly rewarding new ways for all of us to see our way clear of being in trouble.
Before devoting her life to writing from eidetic imaging, and teaching people of all ages how to use the healing powers of our imagination, Janet was honored by a federal, state and city funded CETA Artists Project grant as a Teaching Fellow with Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and two residencies at The Mac Dowell Artists Colony, as well as residencies at Cummington Community Of The Arts and the Ossabaw Island Project. She received her B.A. from Bennington, and her M.F.A. from Goddard.
Her articles and poems have been published in Architectural Record, Architectural Forum, Holiday, Arts, The American Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Parnassus Poetry in Review, Poetry Now, New York Waterways, Journal Of Gerontological Social Work, Teachers & Writers Magazine, Light Voices, To Your Health and William Packard’s “The Craft Of Poetry.” She has several books documenting eidetic imaging nearing publication including Soul Progressions: Harmoniously Releasing Ourselves From What Got Into Us, with a preface by Akhter Ahsen, and Coming Into Being.
Seeing Our Way Clear
Alone & Together
A Mission Statement
I enjoy engaging my students in the new eidetic approach to personal growth that enables them to outgrow their complaints, their weaknesses, inadequacies and ailments, and fill out their picture of themselves, through surfacing new self-images that show them exercising formerly hidden strengths and health. It is wonderful to know that the more they engage in this new transformational form of self-imaging the less they will have to go on feeling small, weak and sickly, and live the remainder of their lives dependant on drugs and coping skills or outside help they can ill afford.
I want everyone to recognize that eidetic imaging enables us all to go beyond our current emphasis on self-help and personal growth to develop interpersonal growth skills as well, skills showing us how to relate better in all our relationships. Through the practice of eidetic empathy imaging we prompt each other to release new self-images that help us outgrow the grievous confusions, misunderstandings and stalemates many of us feel heir to and stuck with, and, at the same time, start seeing into other people nearly as clearly as eidetic imaging alone enables us to see into ourselves.
Taking us beyond the limits of the self-consciousness and self-expression that we are used to, eidetic empathy imaging shows us how to enjoy developing the powers of communal communication that we did not know we have. In using them we realize we can resolve some of our most profound problems by looking into them deeply together.
You will see what I mean by this in the transcript of a session of empathy imaging in action in my essay on Lucid Improvisations, the dramatic eidetic group process I am developing for staging transformational imaging. In that scene a student and I shed growing light into each other’s interiors, greatly freeing up and enhancing each other’s sense of self-discipline through releasing new self-images that bring out profoundly illuminating and mutual inner growth.
I know of no skill more thrilling and rewarding and needed than this. It trains an imager to systematically open him or herself up to receiving mutual illuminations that help him in one way while helping a fellow imager or imagers in another way at the same time. I’ve shown third graders and seniors and invalids and prisoners how to do this. Such deep gratification can be enjoyed by many as soon as we know that empathy imaging is possible, and get into practice serving our mutual interests instead of feeling required to go on sacrificing them to self interests.
Eidetic empathy imaging is a joy to behold. During it, while releasing our own heroic and triumphant abilities to outgrow weaknesses and deficiencies, we are inspiring others to do likewise. Together we outgrow the impressions made on us at an early age that have kept getting us down and making us feel small; and together we become greater. What more, and what better can we ask of ourselves?
As I see it, eidetic empathy imaging can clearly help many people around the world who, like myself, having no nuclear family left, need some clearly effective way of continuing to be familiar with and helpful to instead of estranged from the human family. It may even be, as often happens through eidetic imaging, that out of some lack we end up coming on stronger than others in the area of our deficiency, and may be extraordinarily helpful in helping others develop the skills of compassion that grow with eidetic empathy imaging. These skills can help us all, at any age, grow the far deeper and broader sense of family understanding we need to have in order to live in peace with ourselves and each other.
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