Have you ever heard that the psyche speaks another language? Psyche's language consists of images, symbols, music, and poetry. For this reason, many psychoanalysts encourage their clients to draw and paint. The active use of this imaginal muscle gets things to shift inside, often shifting things which have been stuck for a very long time. For this same reason people are encouraged to pay attention to dream images. Dream images are theorized to be important and decodable messages from the unconscious--- they are spoken in psyche's imaginative symbolic language...
"What we call a symbol is a term, a name, or an image which in itself may be familiar to us, but its connotations, use, and application are specific or peculiar and hint at a hidden, vague, or unknown meaning...A term or image is symbolic when it means more than it denotes or expresses" ~Carl Jung
Symbolic language and images point beyond themselves.
These elements (images, poetic and symbolic language) have the power to shift us from the inside out. Sometimes, actually often times, the shift takes place without conscious comprehension/understanding of what has taken place, just like poetry.
"Love after Love" by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome.
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
~Derek Walcott
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"Feast on your life",
Regina