Symbolic Life & the Spiritual Path

Much of the spiritual life unfolds through symbol rather than explanation. Images, dreams, metaphors, and stories carry meanings that cannot be reduced to concepts alone, yet they shape how we encounter God, ourselves, and the world. This short reflection explores why symbolic life matters so deeply for spiritual maturity — and why reconnecting with it is essential for inner work on the spiritual path.

Modern society may have lost something of the power of symbolic life, but we have not escaped our need of it.

What Is a Symbol? Beyond Literal Meaning

A symbol is a term, a name, or an image that in itself may be familiar to us but which through its connotation and application also points to hidden, vague or unknown meanings. For example, the image of the cross. For Christians a cross means much more than the intersection of two lines. It has wider unconscious aspects, qualities than can never be precisely defined or fully explained. It also has not one but many possible meanings beyond itself. It is in ongoing exploration of these symbols that our minds are led beyond reason and logic to living with paradox. There are indeed innumerable things beyond the range of rational human understanding.

Symbol, Soul, and the Healing of Inner Splits

The concept of symbol is nearly as powerful and difficult to define as soul. A clue to understanding is found in the etymology of the words, which are related. The dictionary describes a symbol as a word or image that represents something else by association, 'especially used to evoke the experience of something invisible.' Cymbal means 'to strike together,' like the percussion instrument used in an orchestra made up of two pieces of brass that are clashed together to make a composite sound. The root of the words symbol and cymbal in Greek is sumballein, which means 'to throw together', and we might say that the symbolic process is putting back together that which has been torn apart, that which has been split or set aside.

Symbolic Life as a Path of Integration

It is the power of symbols that heals the oppositions of ego consciousness. Words articulate reality into fixed entities but symbols are open-ended. Symbolic language does not primarily differentiate; rather, it fuses things into one another. For example, a flower in a poem opens itself up to diverse possibilities. As the conscious mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason. And in, for example, the spiritual practice of Ignatian imaginative prayer or in praying with art we have a tremendous resource of using imaginative symbolism for healing and growth.

The unifying power of symbols is one of the deepest and most powerful secrets of human life. That power is embodied in all of the world's great religious systems, art, poetry, music, science and culture. We have a deep and rich heritage of symbolic life, but in contemporary times something has gone wrong with our relationship to many of the symbols contained within our cultural traditions.

Jung, writing in the 1950's, could see that people in the West were increasingly living without a symbolic life. He wrote, 'Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul - the daily need of the soul. And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of this awful, grinding, banal life in which they are 'nothing but'. When it was feasible, Jung would refer clients back to the religion of their up-bringing to help them deal with their problems. He understood the malaise in the soul of modern life, and that the great religious systems have historically provided the images and community to support symbolic sensitivity. Sadly, however, in current times in the West, embedded in rationalism and secularisation, we seem too often to have lost this resource in our religious communities.

In Depth Spiritual Direction, symbolic life often becomes a vital doorway into areas of the inner world that cannot be reached through conversation alone. Images arising in dreams, prayer, or imagination frequently carry the emotional and spiritual truth of a person’s experience long before it can be named. Attending to symbols with care allows psychological insight and spiritual discernment to meet, opening space for integration, healing, and deeper responsiveness to God.

Dreams and the Natural Language of the Unconscious

Every night in our dreams symbols arise naturally, for dreams happen and are not invented. Dreams integrate the different energies of our being, utilising symbols that seem to preexist in the unconscious. If you dream of the fruit salad you had for dinner last night, the dream is speaking of the fruit salad as a symbol, not just telling you what you already know, a dinner menu. A symbol pulls together qualities, ideas, or experiences that to the conscious mind seem separate or even contradictory.

If you would like to explore symbolic life more deeply, you may find it helpful to read further reflections on imaginative prayer and dream work, both of which offer natural ways of engaging the symbolic language of the soul.