As I understand it, there are two phases in meditation that should be clearly distinguished to avoid confusion.
- Phase 1. When you engage in it, you indeed need to "abandon any intentions or goals" and “do nothing on purpose" because your goal is that emptiness.
- Phase 2. Once you attain that state of "emptiness", you are now (and only now) able to very sharply focus the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity.
Active dreaming could be seen as one of those activities. You need at least a minimum degree of that meditative "emptiness" for unlocking the process you called "Active dreaming".
I think "Active imagination" [0] is a term Jung used for a similar technique.