Symbols

A powerful symbol can do more than simply stand for some hidden truth or aspect of reality, it can also act as a window that opens up a view of something beyond itself. If we approach it in the right way, we may be able to look right through it and catch a glimpse of what it symbolises. At such a moment, when the symbol yields a sudden insight or flash of intuition it actually seem seems to turn transparent like a pane of glass and reveal a hidden vista full of unexpected depth and meaning.

…We suddenly see the implications of what it symbolises stretching away before us, as if into the far distance. The symbol gives us a sense of an open and spacious panorama that extends beyond the limited horizon of what we know…symbols act in this way by setting up mental images that awaken and direct the attention of deeper levels of the mind. Using the description or representation of a symbol as a guide, the intellect shape and orientates the frame of a mental window, so to speak, while the emotions fill it with glass of the correct transparency and tint.

If a physical window faces the right direction and is clear enough, it will give the view it was designed to give. In a similar way, if the intellect and emotions set up an image of the right orientation and clarity, it can awaken a deeper level of awareness that looks through it to see what the symbol is supposed to symbolised….

…at first we are attracted to the symbol by its superficial beauty and interesting appearance. As we examine it more closely, analysing the details of its design, we come to regard it as a meaningful sign or as ap icture of something else. After searching for what it might represent and tring to explain it in various ways, we recognise the symbol as a window and begin to look through it. In the process it turns transparent, loses it owns features, and merges with what it reveals. At the end we see cease to even see it as a window, it has become one with what it symbolises. The view that it opened up has transformed the symbol into an expression of reality itself.

Notes from Richard Bernbaum's "The way to Shambala"