Once your journeying object is awake, you can choose to become it, to pour your awareness into its shape and understand it from the inside.
This move is easiest to do after having already performed the Crystallize move, but it can be done on any journeying object, whether it’s gone through that process or not.
Most of our imaginal work functions by allowing you to interact with the presences of your deep Psyche. You can walk through the scenes, interact with the figures, watch the unfolding of wordless impressions. These are all excellent and they have their place — but they do keep a certain attitude of “you” over here and “imaginal figures” over there. An implicit separation.
In the merging move, we are able to become those imaginal figures.
It’s one thing to “unblend” from an angry part of yourself, and to have a conversation with it about its anger — it’s another thing entirely to unblend from that angry part, let it express itself, and then pour your own awareness into it and feel firsthand all the power, texture, flow, and nuance of that anger, as well as its relationship to other currents in you.
You may recognize that progression, if you’ve ever tried out 3-2-1 practice before, often used in shadow work. The numbers point out a progression from 3rd person (it) to 2nd person (you) to 1st person (I). This slow path inward can be very fruitful, as opposed to just jumping to immediately be the figure — a task that has the unsavory distinction of being difficult, dangerous, and not very effective.
This is why I mentioned at the beginning that it’s best for merging to follow crystallizing. First, allow the journeying object to find the shape it wants to take (as you watch it unfold in the third person). Then, interact with the journeying object, whether that means talking to it as a person, wandering through it as an environment, or harnessing it as a natural force (interact with it in the second person). Finally, with the understanding and intuition gleaned from the first two steps, you can let yourself merge with the journeying object — whatever form it has taken. This will often involve letting yourself feel as if you are thing as diverse as an animal, a storm, a mountain range, a tree, or a vast expanse of starry space. It’s one thing to let these forms take shape in your imagination — it can be quite another to become them. It may take some skill-building and some patience with yourself.
If merging with the full figure itself remains difficult for you, it may be helpful to remember that the core of this practice is about merging with the underlying drives of the figure, no matter what it’s shape. If you can feel the driving eros that it wants to act on, you’re getting what you need to get.
Fair warning: this move can be intense. The move in general isn’t for everyone, and in specific situations, merging is maybe not a good idea for anyone. But used responsibly and skillfully, it’s hard to match the direct insight available by merging with the underlying drives of something in your Psyche. It’s roughly similar to the way that you understand someone better by walking a mile in their shoes than you ever would by simply listening to them describe their life. Or the way that someone might describe their experience to you a hundred different times, but it only deeply clicks when the same thing happens to you.
Getting that kind of insight into your own Psyche can be priceless, under the right circumstances.