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Another image of great magnitude, and quite surprising to her, gave her the feeling that the split her parents’ divorce had left in her was being healed. This sense of healing developed the more deeply she concentrated on an image that staged a reunion with the deep bond of affection between her father and Lena, the woman who cared for and played with her, and was the pillar of stability for her when she was a child weathering this stormy situation.
Surfacing Mythic Structures
She shows step by step how skillful handling of negative images releases positive antidote images that move an imager into new positions and states of mind and body that are free of the negative reactions they were used to being saddled with.
Most Moving Images
The image that showed her to the source of her dejection, and extensive suicidal ideation is among the most moving images Janet recalls going through. It began with seeing herself as a child driven to her knees under the kitchen table – or her bed – by her mother furiously glaring and shaking a pointing finger at her and chewing her out.
Janet later saw that her depression was so deep and protracted because it was composed of two clearly interlocking components of this scene. The first component was the extreme state of compression and despair that her mother’s furies drove her down into. The second component was the compaction or tensing up she went into mirroring the way her father tensed up in fear of her mother letting all hell break loose. In this way he controlled himself but not the situation.
Upon seeing how she had been trapped under the interlock of her mother’s fury and her father’s fear of it, Janet felt released from the dread that had kept overshadowing her life. She currently sees this as the greatest miracle her images have worked.
Table Of Contents with Highlights
excerpted below
Précis
This retrospective of an eidetic imaging trainer’s healing journey presents the case that all sorts of people can enjoy the benefits of practicing preventive medicine on themselves, and each other, by looking methodically into the overlooked eidetic (eye-deht’-ic) level of imagination, and seeing how the inner motion pictures that move us work.
Passages from Janet K Bloom’s Transformational Autobiography show how releasing her dramatic eidetic images, during her nearly daily practice of Akther Ahsen’s eidetic method self-analytic consciousness, keeps bringing more and more light, calm, wholeness, balance and verve out in what had long been her overwhelmingly dark and volatile interior. These passages show how a person can outgrow disturbances as severe as narcissism, alcoholism, manic-depression and Tourette’s syndrome by releasing new self-images that balance out and overtake the old self-defeating images. The once shy, wavery and snappish girl who was once told she had “a doubting disease,” shows up as the solid and forthright citizen she has longed to be.
Part 1 FROM DAY ONE, As It Happened
A Deep Perspective
Janet K Bloom is the eidetic dancer with the light. Reading her “soul progressions” – as she calls her eidetic imaging explorations – is like watching light dancing through water. The brilliance, agility, and daring of her writing, with its superlative sensitivity to the subtleties and depths and reaches of eidetic imaging, makes following the threads of inner light she is following so engaging that they become illuminatingly entwined in one’s own journey.
Janet On The New Nature
Of Following Eidetic Pathways
My need has been to see my whole picture come together; and to see other people’s whole picture come together along with mine. Akhter Ahsen, a fine poet and playwright himself, but also a rigorous scientist, has developed a method of concentrating that gives all of us ways of seeing ourselves … and each other grow whole, from inside out, deeply and clearly. We haven’t been able to do this before.
…What is most important first of all is realizing that there is now a way in which all of us can start doing this in order to see ourselves and each other whole, from inside out, deeply and clearly. We haven’t been able to do this before.
Getting The Whole Picture
In this retrospective view of the journey that Janet’s practice of eidetic imaging has taken her on so far, we were both interested in putting her issues in true perspective, while at the same time presenting a portrait of her eidetic journeying that would give others a sense of the healing progression of pictures they, too, can release from their inside stories by embarking on seeing themselves eidetically. Her story illustrates the way in which each person’s unique journey of images can shed new light in the psyche, and grow dynamic new understandings of dramatic family structures that shape body and mind interactions lifelong.
Empathic Confessions
Although Janet’s writing may at first seem to be only autobiographical, she, in fact, writes with the aim of enabling readers to develop their own empathy expeditions in parallel with hers as they read. She keeps showing that people can, through eidetic empathy imaging, see other people’s inside stories nearly as clearly and helpfully as they can see their own. (See her video, Finding The Father You Always Wanted.)
… Her “soul progressions” do not merely give people vague hope. They actually demonstrate specifically effective means I’ve developed that people can use immediately to see their way clear of the negativity of their own histories.
Epic Ways
Janet’s approach founds a new form of writing which is not a solo act. It is writing with arms out to a dancing partner. It poses to the reader the prospect of entering into a companionable search for mutually illuminating interactions, involving exact self-transformation experienced in a deeply personal yet social context.
Two New Transformational Art Forms
The live sharing of eidetic empathy imaging that she evokes during Lucid Improvisations invites two or more imagers to enact variations on their own and each other’s eidetic images. This develops an interlace of illuminating and elevating transformational interactions.
Through following the dynamic principles of eidetic empathy imaging that my research has set forth, Janet’s work sets people up to gracefully and even comically release themselves from confusions and stalemates they’ve felt stuck with. They discover all the surprising verve, vigor, joy and sense of direction that is at the ready to surge up in them.
… While expanding her inner ground, the eidetic images that are meeting her needs are also presenting the other players in Lucid Improvisations with many occasions for richly furthering their psychic developments.
A Desaparecido
Thus her eidetic imaging work, recounted here, has centered essentially on bringing out the powers of presence within her, and the sense of being somebody, that she, like so many in our culture, feels the want of.
Powers Of Concentration
She is forever fascinated with how right on eidetic images are. She sees them as intriguingly accurate corrective signals that release an imager from a deep problem by making the essential nature of the problem dramatically clear, while at the same time revealing the next moves the person is ready to make to free himself from this problem. She has seen into and clear through many extremely baffling and perturbing problems by looking into each of her images like somebody discovering more and more and more interior facets of a living gem.
Self-Analytic Consciousness:
Profoundly Effective Self-Help
Because she feels that no one can afford the amount of therapy they want or need, she is grateful for, and a great exemplar of my self-analytic consciousness approach. Her work shows that imagers can methodically follow their eidetic images in order to show themselves out of troubles they may otherwise never get help for.
Showing People To Their Health
When people in need not only see but also feel right away the dramatic difference imaging makes to them mentally, emotionally and physically, they are readily motivated to do their eidetic imaging homework. They also like pursuing this profound form of imaging because they enjoy nothing more than solving the deepest mysteries of their lives on their own, of their own accord.
Janet’s Progress
She is grateful that her practice of eidetic imaging has enabled her to outgrow being jerked around by the whirlpools and whiplash in the currents of her consciousness that were the legacy of her disruptive early family life.
… Going on these illuminations she has emerged from constant drawbacks, and gained a sense that a sustained impetus is continually projecting her into the world, moving her beyond any predisposition to feel reluctant and withdraw.
A Deeper Outlook On People
Picking up on her acuity, those who become familiar with Janet’s work will see how to replace blind projection with imagining more accurately what a person is going through; and be more able to draw their attention to searching out the underlying health that is being overlooked.
Scenes On The Way
She said that, while she was writing one day, she noticed that a metaphor is like a helicopter flying sky high, providing only a fragmentary and distant analogy to a subject, which looked at eidetically became a whole living picture up close and personal, touching and moving her.
Swift, Profound, & Lasting Transformations
People who release this hidden natural aptitude for transformation look into difficult situations boldly, instead of reflexively turning away from them. They become fascinated with the possibility of swiftly and straightaway getting out of a trouble that will otherwise drag on ad infinitum as long as they leave the situation in obscurity, stuck on replay.
…Janet has found that not getting rid of the troubles eidetic imaging can free us of is a lot more trouble than she wants to face, in herself or others.
The Eidetic Dancer With The Light
by Dr. Akhter Ahsen & Janet K Bloom
A New Picture of Narcissism
Standing tall and large in the image, Kali is holding the infant Janet, who is hanging over her right arm, fiddling with a toy in her hands. Modeling Janet’s mother, Kali is looking the other way completely, militantly giving Janet the back of her head, a wall of hair.
… Janet was looking straight into the split that sometimes made her mother so contrary or perverse, and left Janet endlessly perplexed. In that moment her last hope of giving her mother a proud mother moment was terminally dashed.
… To Janet, our deepest challenge is to surface and restore a fundamental sense of centered concerted effort in consciousness, in order to overcome being chronically astray and at odds.
Letting A Coherent Picture Emerge
Looking at herself hanging over Kali’s arm, with Kali’s head turned away from her, Janet saw that, through being “abandoned to everywhere,” she consequently had little or no focus, destination, or destiny. She thought this might be the early state of consciousness that graffitti, and a culture necessitating graffiti, arises out of.
This image showed her that, instead of being held in the focusing embrace of her mother’s caring attention, she’d been left alone, hanging on her mother’s arm, her mind abandoned to everywhere, not knowing where to go. Her attention was thus too wide open for Janet to funnel it towards a coherent sense of direction, until eidetic imaging gave her occasion to do so. This disability gave Janet a keen appetite for and appreciation of all the senses of direction and directional signals her eidetic images keep bringing out in her.
Dropped
She’d long known, and seen in others, that eidetic images draw people into relationships that present them with just the problem they need to resolve.
Being Shocked and Shocking
Janet had once asked an analyst – her mother’s, in fact – “Does what got into you have to come out?” He had no answer for her. Now, in eidetic imaging, the answer keeps coming out: Sure enough.
Part 2 LETTING THE INSIDE STORY
WORK ITS WAY OUT
Out Of Fear
In this passage the reader sees Janet exhibit the surprisingly penetrating self-healing brilliance that eidetic imagers can expect to discover within themselves.
From Janet’s Transformational Autobiography:
“My mother held me hostage too. I see myself age three sitting on the breakfast nook table bench swinging my legs. I am looking up at Mommy standing talking away on the phone. I must have spent many hours of my childhood like that. Not free to go out to play. Held hostage to watching Mommy do her thing. My life, my play life, my life of action on hold.
“A narcissist has no thought for the damage that putting you on hold like this – disregarding your interests – interests – does you. You are nothing to them. Absolutely nothing. You know it and feel it. But you are not allowed to protest. This image reveals the position I’ve held in far too many
situations. …
“And I see now that a narcissist’s blindness to you is the red carpet by which she or he walks all over you. !!!!!!!!
“Hence what I recently called ‘the dissolution of identities.’ In their blindness narcissists project their identity onto you so they don’t see the difference between the two of you. So you are disappeared; being engulfed in their projection.
“But yet, at the same time, you are entangled in some entwinement that falsely treats you as if you were a free agent, a free and independent employee.
Free To Be Baby
“So here is the solution to the longstanding mystery of my fascination with smiles. I would hang in fascination on other people’s smiles. But what I really wanted and needed to do was get down to my own. I couldn’t see where other people’s smiles were coming from until I went beyond being suspended in fear, and knew my own pure, original wholehearted smile.
From Janet’s Transformational Autobiography a day later:
Seeing Buddha Face To Face
“Today what strikes me as I see this image – which gives me a slightly more distant perspective on the scene – is the alignment. I am standing conspicuously on the central axis of Buddha’s frontal gaze. I am standing straight. I can even feel the sense of containment in the child’s way of being on good behavior, standing with toes slightly in, hands down at her sides, and a demure pleasant smile on her face, which is turned very slightly to the left. There’s no sign of any outbursts about to come out of her. She is simply deeply pleased, happy. Happy with herself face to face with Buddha. ‘Yes,’ my inner voice says.
Sudden Violence
“I just looked up the word ‘soothe’ and discovered that in its roots the word means ‘verify’! Eidetic imaging is so soothing because it allows you to verify experiences that no one, including you, want to believe ever happened. The eidetic image accurately portrays – sometimes in dramatic caricature – the extremity of some emotional mechanism that has overtaken you, and will run you, until you face it, and free yourself from it, giving yourself the latitude to become more human.
… “Non-specific words and will power give a person little leverage on this convoluted anger. Continuously releasing increasingly ingenious and pleasing self-images gives you more than leverage. It pops you out of the twisty bad habit. A person is drawn to releasing more and more positive self-images that make him more pleased with himself, and more pleasing to others.
… “No wonder I’ve had difficulty getting into position to be the performer I’ve long wanted to be. I didn’t have this alignment. I had to wriggle my way through my knots before I was free to stand straight before Buddha, meeting him face to face. If I can look Buddha in the eye, I can face an audience, I am thinking. Buddha gives me a big belly laugh in response to that daring statement.
Part 3 FROM DAY ONE, As It Can Be
Looking Forward To Discovering Your True Self
Her eidetic stories substantiate people’s need to find themselves, and should encourage souls who’ve been feeling as lost as she felt for years to realize that they now have brilliant, liberating, self-substantiating, self-revelations to look forward to.
Beyond Terror
During this retrospective Janet became more thoroughly aware of the extent to which her sense of herself had simply been trashed by her mother’s angry critical attitudes. Through eidetic journeying Janet has been able to move into places in inner space where those old sour waters turn sweet. She has seen her way beyond the rapids of chronic insecurity and doubt she was thrown into; and she has seen how to raise up and cherish and prize the essential aspects of her being that had been dismissed and despised.
… Janet’s images – including playing ball with Shiva, Ganesh, Eagle, Aphrodite, Jesus and her parents – have exposed her to better attitudes than those she grew up with; far more accepting, receptive and playful attitudes, conducive to pleasantness and health. With her inner game thus renovated she can more easily seek to enter into play with others.
She sees her images as clearly showing what attitudes we need to clear out of family life if we want to cease to be surrounded by the mounting problems of degradation and homelessness and disease that hasty, pressurey, judgmental, careless, dismissive, throwaway attitudes create, even in those who try hard to be good parents, but have insufficient insight to go on.
A Fundamental Reversal
From her teens to her forties she had spent all her years in therapy looking for what was wrong with her. When she began imaging she was relieved to turn her sights to finding out all that is all right with her.
… Eidetic imagers find that they become what they see, becoming wavy concentrating on a wave, or standing tall concentrating on a tall tree. This is one of the fundamental dynamic principles by which eidetic imaging works. Part of what imagers see is the progressive, proactive nature of eidetic images: the eagerness with which these brilliant images go for the problem and get beyond it. While enjoying the benefits of this eidetic determination to bring out what is all right and good in a person, imagers learn to take themselves seriously, which is to say serially enough to unearth their well being.
The Heroic Trajectory
She now relishes every move that she sees her own and other people’s eidetic images make, knowing that these images are always being holographically helpful, making moves in a person’s consciousness that are improving the whole picture a person has to go on.
In telling of her heroic eidetic exploits Janet hopes to prime other people to not only seek out the tributaries of inner light within them, but push on, going far enough in following their intricate pathways to reach the mainstream, where growing inner strength and health have the power to take over their lives.
Giving Way To Health
It has been my aim, through extensive scientific experiments with eidetic imaging – published in my many books and the scientific, peer reviewed Journal Of Mental Imagery – to demonstrate in detail the reliable dynamics by which eidetic imagery operates, so that all sorts of people can readily access the healing mythic functions of consciousness directly and clearly. They can thus enjoy the practical, personal and universal effectiveness of mythic images; and experience the concerted, cooperative efforts figures from different traditions contribute to consciousness. Students of different persuasions have expressed profound gratitude to Janet stating that their work with her deepened their faith.
… It is this heroic momentum of triumph – present in the eidetic but not the ordinary memory level of consciousness – that primes people to expect to overcome the odds against them. …
… a dramatically effective, commonsensical, preventive and beautiful approach to health care is now in practice, and available to anyone ready to give way to health and thus significantly reduce health care costs.
Using The Arts As Preventive Medicine
… Her view is that once the effective and entertaining nature of eidetic imaging is adequately understood – so that it is properly incorporated in arts education – the arts can become a great source of preventive medicine.
She has seen third graders expressing their eidetic images in drawing, writing, speech, movement, drama and sound, discovering at an early age how to readily get out of trouble, instead of digging into it in ways that become so immensely costly to their mental, emotional and physical health and our society.
… Eidetic imaging carries people beyond shame and blame into fascination with that level of the imagination that reveals the naturally transformational inner workings of human character. Because Janet sees and writes not only from her mastery of eidetic imaging but with the fully rounded lucidity and sensitivity of a fine writer, she can show people into an awareness of the fineness of their own character that they might not otherwise readily discover. She does this by showing people how to develop soul tone by practicing eidetic imaging skills the way athletes practice sports and artists practice voice or dance.
The Clear Solution: The Heroism Of Seeing Structurally
“This makes it so clear that the heroism in eidetic imagery work is the heroism of seeing: the heroism of gathering all the light that comes in from every direction, from all the images that associate themselves with the solution to an issue of yours, until your seeing gathers the mainstream strength to see you clear of the problem. The difference is that in pursuing a problem eidetically you keep making sense because you stay in touch with your body responses, and let them guide you, so you don’t go off on some half-cocked verbal interpretation. Your moves are grounded in keeping on keeping on making sense
… But, as I wind up this eidetic exploration I once again wish that people would see eidetic imaging as bringing out the passion in them that reveals their ability to solve their own mysteries, as no one else can. Why can nobody else do it? Because they are outsiders they simply can’t get the goods on you that only your view of your inside story will cough up. Imagine a nation of ace emotional detectives solving problems right and left.
The Picture Of Health
“I was recalling yesterday the scene in Akhter’s waiting room the day I arrived with the zipper of my coat jammed, and had to take it off over my head. When he came out to bring me into his office I somehow had the wits to show him the problem. He took off going back into his office, came out wielding a flashing letter opener, picked my coat up off the coffee table, and whisked off to the workroom in the back where there was a vice. I was too shy to go back there and watch what he did. The next thing I saw was Akhter standing triumphantly on the steps leading into the waiting room, holding my coat up. He then laid it down on the table, smoothing it out like a professional tailor, and showed me how well the zipper was working, opening and closing smoothly all the way. I knew instantly that was a sign Akhter was giving me of how working with eidetic imaging was going to fix me up. Sure enough.