Marian, you should be able to find a lot of different thoughts on active imagination by Googling something like "Active Imagination Jung". I found various blurbs, articles, a video and a podcast. I'm not promoting any of them (I didn't follow the links), but they might be worth exploring.
You can always begin with or return to Daryl Sharp's Jung Lexicon definition of
Active Imagination. From that definition:
The object of active imagination is to give a voice to sides of the personality (particularly the anima/animus and the shadow) that are normally not heard, thereby establishing a line of communication between consciousness and the unconscious. Even when the end products-drawing, painting, writing, sculpture, dance, music, etc.-are not interpreted, something goes on between creator and creation that contributes to a transformation of consciousness.
Always a bit of Jungian oddity, I've never been that drawn to active imagination, although I do agree with its principles and support its practice for many people. But for me personally, it has proven less effective at "establishing a line of communication between consciousness and the unconscious" than other things. For instance, either my poetry writing or my more theoretical essaying have always felt to me like they reach deeper and more related spaces. I recognize, though, that the ability to reach these spaces by these means is significantly influenced by a kind of (for lack of a better word) "mediumistic" or trancelike state I seem to be able to enter into fairly readily while writing.
I have read and known many writers for whom something quite the opposite occurs, i.e., they start writing and become shut off from their autonomous inner voices or "unconscious".
I have also had more success with dream work and come to trust it more than active imagination. Dream work has always been more challenging to my preconceptions and complexes. It also has a more differentiated dialog between "conscious and unconscious". The Other is more clearly other, and the self (as conscious dream worker and interpreter) is more conscious, robust, and familiar. I mean to say that there is a true dialog in good dream work.
In active imagination, there is a much greater risk of falling into a monolog and eclipsing the Other. That, at least, is the problem I've had with it. The conscious, interpretive mind (perhaps something to do with the brain's left hemisphere?) has not shut down enough when I have tried to do active imagination. I've found it difficult to do AI with the fairly extensive knowledge of Jungian thought and symbolism I've acquired over the years.
A similar problem would present itself in my poetry writing, but I placed very strict ethical objectives on my poetry writing. I kept working at something and revising and rewriting it until I felt like I had managed to break through to the Other and make some kind of gracious and welcoming appeal. Poetry writing for me was filled with oscillations between "inspired" channelings of phrases, lines, and images that "just came to me fully formed" and more intentional and strategical attempts to places these into an "artistic mechanism" that best allowed those "inspired" pieces to express themselves and do what they do.
This involved a battle of grinding away at the failed attempts to facilitate this Otherness and the places where I felt there was too much "ego" in the way. Ultimately, the poems become true dialogs . . . but it is the act of craft, like a kind of devoted prayer and study, that enabled the dialog. In essence, as a poet, I needed to have a specific value system in order to move away from active imagination into art. Where I accomplished that, I felt there was much richer communication with the Other, and that I learned a great deal from that communication.
Even now, when I reread my poems, it feels as though they were co-written by someone else who had amazing insights into my psychology and sense of meaning. It continues to educate and reorient me from time to time . . . even as in other ways I have probably moved on from the mindset of the poet I once was.
Although I think many others (and other Jungians) probably have fewer troubles reaching an authentic enough place of communication through active imagination than I do, I have also noticed a lot of Jungian misuse of active imagination. And that combined with my own experience with AI has probably made me a little more cynical than I should be.
By "misuse", I mean that images from active imagination fantasies are taken up as "truths" and indications of profound insights, revelations, and spiritual realities. Jung himself, who was generally very good at tempering active imagination with an ethic and self-analysis, could get a bit carried away with thinking that, because he imagined something during AI, it was profoundly "true" and indicative of a genuine, revealed psychic Other or object. Yet, to me, his Red Book does not really read this way. It is powerfully shaped by his expectations and interpretive consciousness.
In fact, as I have written on my blog (I think Keri linked to it in another thread), I find the thrust and ultimate conclusion of the Red Book problematic and entirely in line with my own experiences of the limitations of active imagination. In short, the Red Book is largely made up of dialogs between Jung and imagined or inner psychic characters. These dialogs are usually characterized by extreme defensiveness on Jung's part, and only grudging and half-hearted acquiescence.
At least that is the way the dialogs with female characters play out. Jung always acts very oppressed and does everything he can to weasel out of the relationship. In the dialogs with male (mostly "senex"/old man types), Jung begins by being fairly attracted to the other's position, but eventually comes to "transcend the father" and detect the one-sideness or limitation of that position.
The Red Book concludes with a final identification that Jung seems to accept: with the character of Philemon, who has been re-crafted as a powerful Gnostic-pagan wizard. As soon as Jung accepts this identification (and does not transcend it), all of the other voices in the Red Book are silenced and expelled. Exorcised.
That is the real problem with active imagination that I have seen. In the hands of a clever, intellectual, and knowledgable person, it may begin as an approach to the Otherness within but it usually ends with the exorcism of that Otherness. Otherness, like the alchemists' Mercurius, is extremely volatile and difficult to "fix".
Of course, I am talking about extremely "high level" active imagination here. The kind that Jung did. The kind that a spiritual seeker might use with the intention of attaining some kind of ecstasy or potential enlightenment.
That is where AI becomes problematic.
Where AI is used just to tap into "creativity" and a little bit of communion with the Other, a small taste from that wellspring, it can be extremely helpful and should not be discouraged. But Jungianism attracts many spiritual seekers and enlightenment/transcendence groupies, so many of these people are in danger of misusing AI.
It doesn't sound to me like you are running that risk in your own use. And perhaps it is the "naive" approach you try to take that aids this success. I see no reason for you to increase your vigilance or resistance to AI. It may be that at some point AI becomes more than just an orienting mechanism or healing wellspring, when it becomes a problematized ethical issue. There is a loss of innocence in that, but those Falls are also part of journey.
Best,
Matt