Imagination as Portal to the Unconscious

As I read James Hollis' book, Mythologems, I am finding it a very comfortable read.  One of the things that this reading is doing for me is the fact that it is providing me a bit more structure in my posts here.  In the past, there was less flow, in my opinion.

As well as flow, Hollis' words are encouraging me to look closer at my images, to see what is to be found in these images besides a copy of the objective world.  Photography allows me to do both, record visual data as well as portray something "more."

Tucked between modern high rises that line one of the many canals in Changzhou, are little homes that have been cobbled together.  These canal-side dwellings evoke a different time and place, one that finds its way into many of the folk art expressions in China, a scene that is both nostalgic and poetic. - Or, is this scene just another set of dilapidated residences housing those who can't pay for a better place while hoping the authorities don't tear down their squatter quarters that can be viewed as a blight on the edges of a modern city?  It's all imagination regardless of which version of the image you hold.

"The German word for imagination is Einbildungskraft, the power of creating a picture. The picture may come as an intentional act of mind, as these sentences are, or a gasp of aesthetic or horrified phenomenological experience which is embodied as image.  The phenomenological appearance of such an utterance, such as image, is a de facto manifestation of something powerful about our nature.  We are imaginal creatures; through images the world is embodied for us, and we can in turn embody the world and make it conscious.  Such an act seems, in its generative, nominative and constitutive power - all godlike to me."  (Hollis, Mythologems, p. 31)

 Powerful words, "we ... embody the world and make it conscious."  For me, this is the key as I try to bring more light into the process of self-discovery.