The Symbolic Life – Ruling Your Inner Kingdom

Carl Jung challenged us to live a symbolic life, a life of meaning. If we are to accept the challenge of living a symbolic life, we must gain understanding of the essence and mystery of symbols, their importance in our individual and collective lives, and ways to honor and accept the enriching and healing aspects they hold for us.

From The Symbolic Life, Volume 18 of the Collected Works of C. J. Jung:

You see, man is in need of a symbolic life—badly in need. We only live banal, ordinary, rational, or irrational things—which are naturally also within the scope of rationalism, otherwise you could not call them irrational. But we have no symbolic life. Where do we live symbolically? Nowhere, except where we participate in the ritual of life. (CW 18, pp625)

Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul—the daily need of the soul mind you! (CW18, pp627)

—when people feel that they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors  in the divine drama. That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing children, are all maya compared with that one thing, that your life is meaningful. (CW 18, pp630)

Last year I became a fan of the television series, The Crown. As I watched the episode of the Queen’s coronation, it became clear to me that the ritual and regalia used in the ceremony were not just for the “historical royalty” but can have symbolic meaning for each individual on the journey to become one’s true self….to rule one’s own inner and outer kingdoms.

Join me for an experience with a collection of these symbols so that each of us might expand our capacity to embrace and understand how ritual and symbols enrich our lives and offer us the opportunity to live a more meaningful, symbolic life.

Loyally, Sue Hunter