The Transformative Power of Symbols
A labyrinth tale
In a recent session with a client, we got talking about her journey to date and reaching a point where she was emerging into new life. I suggested her path mimicked a labyrinth.
She immediately pulled back and said that labyrinths frightened her; and recalled a time when she walked a labyrinth garden path - one of those where the hedges are grown very tall to create the feeling of an enclosure, and where it is hard to tell if what’s ahead is a dead end, or if could be a turn and continuation of pathway. She recognised how at the time this unsettled her - to be enclosed, to not know where she was going, or have a sense of where she’d been. She got out quickly and scurried back out.
This inspired both of us to then keep riffing on this idea of labyrinth as a symbol … of the life journey more deeply. Where we’ve reached dead ends and had to backtrack, or even intuitively choose to follow a path, choose a direction at a crossroads.
And perhaps some of these choices meant potential dead ends were avoided (which we would not even know about because we avoided them!).
After the session, I pulled on the thread of this word/image/symbol.
… It had me recall the myth of the Minotaur who in Greek mythology waits in the centre of a labyrinth …. What does that point to? …. . and a mental bookmark to re-read the Myth.
… It got me to re-acknowledge my very public and long-term connection to labyrinths and the related spirals that have informed my work …. Labyrinth is an image that lives deep inside me ….,
… then as I looked about my room, I saw an old sketch of a crooked spiral I made on a sticky note. There it is again.
The image, symbolism, and story of what lies within labyrinths enlivened something in me (and my client), and we were keen to explore how symbols express themselves and point to things in our lives.
What are the symbols - as images - that are showing up in your life now? Do they enliven you? How?
Symbols are images. Not words.
But this article is not about labyrinths or spirals - even though my labyrinth-like story-telling would fool you otherwise. I’m talking about symbols - perhaps synchronicities, and how paying attention to them can guide, and infuse your life with mystery.
June Singer spoke about Carl Jung’s conception of symbols as: “... the images which people create or discover - as expressions of the not yet known”. The mystic Meister Eckhart said, “When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it”.
Beautiful words but, what does this mean for our life? How do we live that?
Mystics like Eckhart and Jung lived naturally in the space between the mundane and the Mystery. The Indigenous lived like this too; knowing that everything encountered meant something, and had a place in a broad context of interconnections. But for a culture that defaults to logic, and minimises the significance of things that can’t be easily explained - the symbolic and imagination is easily dismissed as immature, naive, or meaningless.
Re-learning the language of symbol - becoming bi-lingual
Our lives are full of opportunities to re-learn the language of symbols and experience the effect it can have on us. The key is to not shut them down as irrelevant. You don’t need to abandon rationality, but by becoming once again naturally “bi-lingual” we can enhance, widen and even transform our lived experiences.
Before contemporary psychology, fairytales and folktales were passed down orally by the ‘old ones’ - for wisdom, guidance, and entertainment. These ancient tales activate the psyche through the rich symbolism in their characters, elements and narrative.
Every night our dreams send us symbols as images that reflect something about our unknown inner world. They can carry seeds to new consciousness and the answers to our problems. The unusual (labyrinth-like?) storylines often defy reality and linear sensibilities, so we can grapple to make sense of them if we insist on logical thinking.
And, I love working with the tarot. Certain images, symbols, and objects in a card might come into view, to activate something in you. If you remain curious about it and open to what is being illuminated, it can show you something new to challenge a perspective.
What is the context that these images/symbols show up in for you? In conversations? in art? songs? dreams? as objects in your world?
Are you discovering them? creating them? or both?
What associations can you make about these symbols - the objects, colours, shapes, archetypal characters in your dreams, in your favourite myths and folk tales, in the tarot card you just drew?
In her book The Enchanted Life, Sharon Blackie speaks about encountering the things that exist in our environment from a panpsychist perspective instead of a materialist one - where every creature, plant, object, and structure is not just something to observe but something we are in a relationship with. Converse with. Immediately the context in which we exist broadens and this offers more psychic space that can heal deeply and effortlessly - it’s about opening up to the symbolic, the mystery not efforting into it..
This is the perspective of Indigenous thinking; they told stories - orally - to bring greater context and meaning to their lives and consciousness to the country, places, beings, and things in their world. It made sense that they placed themselves in relationship to these, unlike the narrow anthropocentric stance of humans being central to existence. To them, image, pattern and symbols infused thier life.
I see a goose (for real I did in the street this morning); what does goose ‘see’ when it looks at me?
So back again to …
How do I live that?
You listen and act on it.
To honour the symbol, and work with the mystery and ambiguity, you ‘converse’ with it, create something from it, or enact the symbol. Like the old ones and the Indigenous, perhaps you could write a tale, or even create art, dance as a ritual, or maybe the symbol is telling you in its own way to do something specific.
Listen - What might the symbols in your life be pointing to? Act - How might you pull on that thread to find out?
Recognising and opening up to the symbolism in the every day, can serve to transform your experience of life, for enjoyment, and a feeling of fullness and completeness - things not easily accessed through language and words alone.
For me, I’m looking into the Minotaur Myth, and finding a labyrinth hedge path to walk.