The Language of Symbols

If life is truly a journey, the hero's journey, then we needs signs. Guide posts to follow. We need the Language of symbols. Where do we look for them? How do we recognize these in our lives. It used to be that we could find them in the highly symbolic religious imagery available to people in the past centuries. In angels and voices in the storm belonging to God, dictating the creed and the rituals that go along with it. Religious imagery has lost its power. Still we search for this connection, this voice that speaks to us and shows us the way. Carl Jung had a deep understanding of how much we need these. He tells us that today our symbols have become bankrupt, and he goes on to say : "Any one who has lost the historical symbols and cannot be satisfied with substitutes is certainly in a very difficult position today: before him there yawns a void." For Jung the answer lay in the unconscious. We have channeled our need inward and there we find the answers to the questions of our souls longing. Any answer we seek, any signs we need to direct us toward an understanding of our journey can only be found inward.

In the words of Joseph Campbell:

"The goal of the hero trip down to the Jewel point, is to find those levels in the psyche that open,open,open and finally open to the mystery of your Self."

The Journey

Joseph Campbell writing some 20 years ago in a “ hero with a thousand faces “ tells us how the hero’s journey is to overcome not the forces of the outside world pushing down on you but rather the journey inside to make sense of how we interpret the world and our reactions to it. “ It is not society that is to guide and save the hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal…….not in the bright moments of his tribes’ great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.” Joseph Campbell.

So it seems that the hero’s journey takes on many forms, it comes in as many shapes and sizes as there are lives and people living them…but the essential nature is always the same: that the hero setting out into the world, encounters many challenges, that he slays the dragon and finds his way home victorious and now with a certain knowledge. Essentially, that in the labyrinth of daily living, the hero has found the way home.

The challenge in today’s world is ; with the absence of symbols how do we find the way ?

How do we interpret the world without symbols to follow? Where do we find the language to guide us through?

When Daedalus crafted the labyrinth for the Minotaur, It was constructed so that no one could find the way in or the Minotaur find the way out. The answer to finding the way was finally given to Theseus by way of a simple linen thread that he had to attach to the entrance and unwind as he went further into the maze, and so find his way back. Finding the way in the labyrinth is just that simple, but without help, without the language of symbols, the way out of the labyrinth is riddled with desperation.

In our lives the pendulum swings from secularism to fundamentalism, to the popular merging of the religions of the east and west, to the wisdom of the great sages. Each of us trying to find meaning in what speaks to us, before shedding the idea once again to find another hat that fits best.

I’m sure it’s not lost on everyone reading this that the self-help category is now one of the most popular genres in books today. Everyone wants answers to the infinite questions of their soul. They look for it the abundantly well stocked shelves of bookstores and libraries.

I think if we turn to Campbell’s words we can see the way much clearer.

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

“Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss.”