I’ve always wondered what Jung meant by the symbolic life.
Jung suggests that as we individuate, we begin to live symbolically—that a symbolic life is inseparable from a meaningful one. For a long time, I imagined this as a different mode of living, almost fantastical. As if, instead of walking on the ground, we suddenly learned how to fly.
Recently, while giving away most of my library, I found myself leafing through old books. One of them was Words as Eggs: Psyche in Language by Russell Lockhart, and it brought the question of the symbolic life back into focus.
The symbolic life isn’t an alternate reality; it’s an orientation.
To live symbolically is about a different experience; it is to be guided through life differently, by the symbols of one’s unconscious.
In Jungian terms, living a symbolic life means recognizing which symbols resonate with us—and following them as if they were markers on a private treasure map. These symbols appear in dreams and in synchronicities, in moments when inner life and outer world suddenly align.
Jung’s own work offers a famous example. While treating a patient whose rationalism had reached a dead end, she recounted a dream of a golden scarab. At that exact moment, Jung heard a tapping at the window. He opened it and caught a scarab-like beetle. The event broke the patient’s psychic impasse. But the power of the moment was not that a beetle appeared. It was that the image mattered—that it completed something already alive in the psyche.
The scarab was not an explanation; it was a breadcrumb on the treasure map.
Symbols work this way. They are not ideas we think about, but they are images that present themselves to us, in our dreams (our inner life) and in what we notice in the world (our outer life). We are drawn to certain symbols without knowing why. Exploring them—following their lead—is how the symbolic life unfolds.
This way of living isn’t opposed to an ethical life, a just life, or a spiritual life. It’s adjacent—orthogonal. The wager is that by attending to the symbols of the unconscious, we slowly bring what is hidden into awareness, and in doing so, we arrive at a life that actually belongs to us.
So what does this look like, concretely?
I had a dream the other night that I was in my parents’ house. Off one of the bedrooms was a hidden room. Inside it stood a slim rattan cabinet. I knew immediately that I didn’t want anything else in the house—but this cabinet, unmistakably, was the one thing I desired.
When I opened it, I found jewelry arranged with great care: rings on mounts, necklaces on holders, as if lit from within, as if already waiting to be chosen.
Some symbols announce themselves clearly. Others take time to unpack and interpret.
In this dream, I noticed possible symbols of adornment, natural fiber, something handmade and lightweight, kin, inherentance, and value. To live symbolically here might mean learning about ratan or working with natural materials. It might mean paying attention to adornment—not as decoration, but as delight. It might mean asking: What is my relationship to family and kinship? What am I willing to inherit, and what do I refuse?
It might also mean creating, in waking life, a private cabinet of my own—a way of honoring and organizing the things that matter to me, beautifully, without explanation, without public display.
The word symbol comes from the ancient Greek sumbolon (σῠμβάλλω), meaning “to join.” A sumbolon was originally a broken object—often a token or piece of bone—split between two people. Each kept one half. When reunited, the pieces confirmed identity, relationship, and belonging.
I find this deeply moving.
The symbol is the missing piece; in reuniting our symbols, we live a whole and integrated life. Weaving the inner, unconscious symbol with the outer, conscious action through symbolic resonance leads us towards this integrated, and symbolic life.
I could talk here about yoga (as that which joins), about decision-making (and human design), and about how Jung and the symbolic life are part of a long lineage of awakening and human potential. If this sounds interesting to you, we are hosting our first Human Design meetup in Brooklyn on January 7th. Zoom is also available. Sign up here.