One hundred years ago the painter and poet William Blake lamented the ever-increasing violence of industrial society with these words: "Art degraded, Imagination Denied, War Govern'd the Nations." The dominance of war and war mentalities... all this is the price we have paid in the West for denying imagination, repressing or forgetting it, and thereby degrading art… To create is always to learn, to begin over, to begin at zero... With art as meditation we truly listen to the cosmos within us and around us and give birth to the ongoing cosmogenesis of our world...
The overwhelming experience of fly fishing is Mystery.It deals with the Unseen, with what lies in the invisible dimensions beneath the shimmering, rippling surface of an ever-changing mountain stream.It exercises every ounce of imagination and can bypass conscious awareness for extended periods.Fly fishing is an open doorway into the unconscious.After all, one is often standing waist-deep in water, which is a mighty symbol of the unconscious mind.There is no way to rush this process: One must STAND in the Mystery. ... In order to be a decent fly fisherman, on must BECOME the fish ... To enter Trout Mind means giving up the self. ... Landing a trout provides a great opportunity for nonattachment: thanking and blessing the fish, and releasing her.
~ Larry Dossey in "Quest"