If the Unconscious is Unconscious, How Can We Come to Terms with It?
To touch the participatory rhythms of an in-between, enchanted world and, to engage with the many figures that dwell there, requires only the desire to do so. C G Jung has said that to stay with the image is the first step in coming to terms with the unconscious. For Jung, to "stay" with the image means to maintain a self-reflective, conscious attitude toward the images, feelings or intuitions that emerge from the depths. The second part of the imaginative process, which is illumination, then follows, moving with the speed of a lightening strike, or with the pace of a glacier. An expeditious time frame is not our call. IMAGINAL FIGURES IN EVERYDAY LIFE: STORIES FROM THE WORLD BETWEEN MATTER AND MIND is an offering, an illustration of this process in daily life. In this book, I share with my readers the way in which engagement with image, through active imagination, has brought a gift of personal healing. I explore too, cultural figures waiting, like shadows in the darkened wings of a world stage, to be illuminated, that is, to be fully seen and deeply experienced, so that the calamitous trajectory of the 21st century might alter its course. ht.ly/VLVsn
