This isn't exactly lucid dreaming but I think it may fall into the category of dream consciousness so I'll post about it here..
Has anyone here ever tried active imagination? It's a little bit of a strange process, I had a lot of doubts about it at first, but I seemed to actually get some results when trying it. Active imagination is a process in which you revisit a dream through imagination. You try and vividly imagine a scene in a dream as accurately as you can and then interact with it. You can supposedly ask the dream a question and then if you simply let your imagintion go it will provide an answer. It's supposed to help you understand some of the more confusing aspects of dreams.
Does this sound like something feasible to anyone else here? Or where my interactions with active imagination simply my mind getting ahead of itself?

Do you have any more information on Active Imagination? It sounds interesting.

It does sound kind of like lucid dreaming. There is a type of lucid dreaming, called a Wake Induced Lucid Dream (WILD) where you wake up, decide that you like what you were dreaming about before you dreamed, so then you willingly make yourself go back into the same dream.

The part about asking the dream a question sounds sort of like lucid dreaming,too. Because often in a lucid dream you can make things happen, so you would be able to make the dream produce an answer to yor question.

I know just a little bit about active imagination. I had a dreaming based english class last semester that required that we attempt active imagination for 2 dreams. So because of this I only know the process behind active imagination, not the theory or reasoning. But the process is that you simply imagine a scene you have had in a dream and attempt to immerse yourself in that imagination. Once you feel connected with the dream again you alter the dream or ask it something, then let your imagination "go". That is you stop controlling the scene and allow your imagination to respond in some way.
It seems confusing, I didn't think that anything would come of it at first but I was actually really surprised when I tried it.
I could post my experience as an example if you like, I wrote down the dream and the active imagination experience for my professor.

It would be interesting to read about your experience.

I've never heard of a dreaming-based English class. Does that mean that you practice creative writing by writing about your dreams?

Yeah, it was a basic English course and each class had a similar rubric as to what you wrote about, but each class also had a different focus. When I heard there was one on dreaming I jumped on it! We investigated a little bit of dream history, dream theory and then our own dreams. It was a fun class but it made me want to take a class solely focused on dreams.

Here is what I wrote about a year ago when I tried active imagination. The first bit is the dream and the second bit is the active imagination.

"The dream is a little hazy, I remember the dream in two specific and completely different parts. In the first part I was helping Clara, a girl I knew really well in high school, cope with death. We were in a three room house that had two small closet sized rooms in the front and the back, and a moderately sized living room in the middle. The house was decorated how I remember Clara’s house looking, slightly cluttered, with paintings and such on the wall. “Death” was some sort of physical object we were trying to remove, I can’t remember what the object was though. Clara was upset, becoming hysterical, and I was trying to calm her down and help her get rid of the “death” object. I remember feeling very nostalgic as I comforted her.
Active Imagination:
I used the same tactics I described earlier to try and read further into this dream. I cleared my head and imagined myself back in the cluttered house, the main room with Clara standing next to me. I tried to imagine the death object but I still could not picture it. So I again asked a question in my mind, out into the air not really focused at anything. “What is the death?” I heard Clara say “Mom”. I snapped out of it for a moment, I was a little disappointed by this because I knew that Clara had lost her mom and that this was the root of her depression. Unsatisfied with this, I went back into my dream scenario, this time I asked “Why am I here?” I let my imagination go and I heard Clara say “because you never wanted to let me go”. This, like the man with the glasses, almost shocked me. This might all be a little bit personal for a school assignment, but I knew how personal this dream was when I decided to investigate it, I just truly wanted to understand this scene more. I left my imagination at that, what I had heard almost troubled me, it made me question some choices that I had made in the past and wonder why they were being brought back into my consciousness at that moment. Active imagination was a strange process for me, it was almost like dreaming while I was awake, like my mind was making decisions without me, but I was thankful that this process had been brought to my attention, because it is a very interesting and thought provoking idea."

Sorry if the writing seems a little confusing, It was a part of a bigger paper so it may come off as a little disjointed when I reference other parts of the paper.
Hopefully this clears up active imagination a bit. I would definitely recommend trying it out. It helps to keep a dream journal if you are going to try it, just because it keeps the memory of the dream more vivid.

That's very interesting. It seems like a good way to help you remember your dreams, too.

About the dream being too personal for a school assignment - most dreams are very personal so I would think the teacher would expect that. In fact, I think if people wrote about dreams that weren't very personal, I would suspect that they were making up and didn't really dream them at all.

I believe the term "active imagination" was coined by Jung. I have done it but it is not easy. You can also get some very good insights just by inner dialoguing with dream characters.