Up: [[Pay Attention MOC]] Created: 2025-09-14 Updated: 2025-09-15 My deepest desire in life’s third act is to feel fully alive every single day. I can provide keywords like “vitality,” “connection,” and “deep participation,” but I can’t define what fully alive means, partly because it’s different every day. Like a sunflower orienting to face the sun, I engage in a continuous process of tiny tweaks and adjustments in response to the question I use to set each day’s intention: “What shift will help me feel fully alive today?” I may not be able to define my terms, but I do know how to achieve my desire. With this note, I am putting my stake in the ground and recommitting to walking the path of a symbolic life. ### The Path [[Mary Oliver's Poem]] gives me the path in three simple, not easy, steps: — Pay Attention. Be Amazed. Tell About It. — Of course, these three steps apply to so many things, from a single creative act to Nick Milo’s ARC loop in my personal knowledge management system. So here I do need to define my terms. What is a symbolic life? I’ll start by saying what it is *not*. ### A Symbolic Life is not… business as usual. It is a different state of consciousness from the rationality, practicality, and toxic productivity focus of today’s world. Psychotherapist [Kikan Massara](https://www.kikanmassara.com) makes the excellent point that in the quest for our attention, *the world is being interpreted for us and it is getting increasingly difficult to tell truth from fiction.* I’d add that with AI now on scene, that situation is only getting exponentially worse. Also more and more people are making their living from taking things literally, relentlessly promoting their personal opinions and commenting, judging, and sometimes shaming, others for theirs. The impact one me is a kind of psychic deadening which shows up as overwhelm, exhaustion, some compulsive behaviours, and a deep yearning for life to feel more meaningful than it does. ### A Symbolic Life is… a life lived in communication with your soul which, in Jungian terms, is also called [[The Self]]. A symbolic life is not a religious orientation, but you do have to be able to accept that there is something beyond yourself. And you need to be willing to tolerate the uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox that comes with that recognition. In a symbolic life, you - [[Pay Attention]] through mindful noticing in the context of stillness, reflection, and appreciative savouring of your personal experiences. - [[Be Amazed]] by allowing yourself to open to and engage with mystery, wonder and awe. - [[Tell About It]] by living what you’ve learned, incorporating it into your daily life. ### Theoretical Underpinnings [[C. G. Jung]] was the first to use the term “symbolic life.” He taught that beneath our personal unconscious, unique to each of us and our individual histories, there is a [[Collective Unconscious]] that contains the archetypal motifs and qualities common to all of humankind throughout time. Our soul, or [[The Self]], communicates to us through [[symbols]] which, by definition, are the bridge between the conscious and unconscious layers of our psyche. Because in a symbolic life we access both the personal and collective layers of the unconscious, we are able to take a wider and more compassionate view of our personal concerns, situating them in the broader human story. We have a more intuitive understanding of our personal problems, and solutions become easier to access. ### Portals to a Symbolic Life Any activity that invites a personally meaningful dialogue with our inner world/soul/ [[The Self]] can be a portal. From the beginning I have been constructing this vault to provide information and ideas for accessing these portals, but I am a long way from complete. Portals that I’ve begun, as well as those still to come, are roughly organized under Mary Oliver’s poem headings. Some have moved to a different map of content than has been listed below. Others are still bound to change. #### [[PAY ATTENTION]] - [[Savour]] - [[Wheel of the Year]] - to come: Stillness, Awe, Rituals, Living Questions, Symbolic Objects #### [[BE AMAZED]] - [[Active Imagination]] - [[Dreams]] - [[Esotericism]] - [[Moon]] - [[Place]] — will include Sacred Sites - [[Spirituality]] - [[Tarot]] #### [[TELL ABOUT IT]] - [[Life Writing]], especially [[Introspective Writing]], [[Myth-Making]] and [[Poetry]] - [[Expressive Art]] - [[Image]] - [[Story]] - [[Mythology and Fairy Tales]] - [[Visual Arts]] - to come: Muses