Today I have done nothing but eat, sleep, and read. I’ve read so much, my brain has turned to slush. I expect any minute now it will run out my ears and onto my shoulders. Even if it did, I’m too tired, too physically depleted to care. I’ve been wiped out all day, despite sleeping in this morning and taking a nap this afternoon.

My body is a mystery.

Currently it’s past midnight, and I’m on information overload. Earlier I finished a book on the meaning of symbols, and since then I’ve read a few chapters in a book about hypnosis and over a hundred pages in a six-hundred page book about alchemy and mysticism. Don’t ask me to intelligently summarize anything I’ve read today. Not that I haven’t learned anything, but it just hasn’t congealed yet. My inner perfectionist wishes I had instant understanding and recall of everything I read, but that’s simply not the way learning works for me. I need exposure and then application before understanding comes.

And sleep, I need sleep.

One thing I have learned–about symbols, specifically–is that they speak to both our conscious and subconscious minds. A simple as letters on a page or as complex as a mandala, symbols can range from the jewelry you put on each day to the dreams have each night, and are essentially forms of communication–a crown that denotes royalty, black clothes that indicate mourning, a red door that means “you’re welcome here.” And whereas some symbols have to be explained, others are automatically comprehended by the subconscious. For example, the four points of the cross stand for the four elements (fire and water, air and earth) or the four cardinal directions (north and south, east and west) of the physical world. So–among other things–the image of Christ on the cross is about going beyond all pairs of opposites. It’s about finding your center point, your immovable spot, your soul. But if you’re organically drawn to this image, no one has to tell you what it means. Part of you gets it.

The way I think about it, symbols CALL US to be something we CAN BE but aren’t currently. They’re like examples, seeds that are planted in our minds that, if properly tended to, can grow into the thing they stand for. Honestly, I’m not sure they work if they’re used logically and rationally and not mysteriously. Like, several years ago I bought a picture of a man dancing, then later bought a chandelier with several children dancing along the edges. I’m a dancer, of course, but it wasn’t about that. The IMAGES simply compelled me. They still do. Looking at them now, I know it’s because, deep down, I associate them with freedom. They communicate to my spirit (or rather, they communicate FROM my spirit) that there’s another way–a lighter, less encumbered way–to move about in this world.

I hope this makes sense. The point is that symbols have the power to awaken within us dormant energies or ways of being if used correctly. By correctly I mean that you have to personally identify with the symbol–it has to to you in some way, and no one else (including me) can tell you what a specific symbol means. If you look at the crucifix and want to vomit because you had a bad experience in Catholic school–well–find yourself another image. Or if dancers don’t give you a sense of peace and freedom but the beach does, go with that.

Put some sand on the back of your toilet. Hang a picture of the seashore on your wall.

Lately I’ve been chewing on the idea that both symbols and the subconscious are powerful and capable forces. For years I’ve read about people who were “free” and wondered if I ever would be one of them. Internally, that is. But I’m learning to trust that just as I can read information, apply it, and watch it come together, I can also trust that I’m attracted to the symbols I’m attracted to for a reason; my life is coming together too. In other words, the symbols that fascinate us aren’t there to tease us (look what you can’t have); they’re there to transform us. Personally, I’m coming to respect them more and more. Because they work. I used to look at those dancers and think, Wouldn’t that be nice to be free? But now I think, Yes, it IS nice, this feeling of freedom. Sometimes it even comes so naturally, I think, Part of me has been a dancer all along.