An image will not explain itself. It offers no introduction, makes no apology, and waits for no conclusion. It simply arrives—unbidden, unmeasured—then lingers. If you are attentive, you may feel its effect before you can name it. A feeling in the chest. A ripple through the nervous system. The scent of memory. And still, the image says nothing. It has done enough just by appearing.
We are surrounded by images. Most of them do not ask anything of us. They flash by on screens, hang in waiting rooms, interrupt a thought. They are meant to catch us, not hold us. But beneath this flood, there lives another kind of image. One that waits to be received. One that calls us to stop, sit down, and keep company.
In the language of soul, these images matter. Not because of what they mean, but because of what they do. They bring the unconscious closer. They serve as bridges, drawing what has no words into the light of reflection. When Jung spoke of individuation, he placed the image at the heart of the journey. The image carries the unknown into the known.
But the ego has a habit of reaching too quickly. It wants the image to become information. It wants to label and file it away. That is the hunger of a mind trained to solve, not to relate. Yet the soul does not hunger for solutions. It longs to behold.
To let an image be is an act of discipline. It asks for presence without interpretation. You sit with it like you might sit with an old tree. You watch its gestures, feel its moods. You listen without needing to respond. And in time, something shifts. The image ripens. It may become a symbol. It may remain a mystery. But either way, it has touched you.
One of the most essential teachings in analytic work is this: value the image for its own sake. Do not rush to know. Let the image come to you as it is. Let it change you. When you record a dream, write it with care. Do not explain it. Just write what you saw, what you heard, what you felt. Let the dream speak first.
There is a way the psyche offers healing that does not go through understanding. It moves through contact. Like the way music can reach you before you know what the song is about. Or how a child’s drawing can bring tears even when you cannot say why. The image works on us in a similar way. It pulls from some deep well and asks us to feel its presence.
The teacher in this course, a thoughtful and grounded voice, reminded us that we metabolize images much like food. They enter, they move through us, and they shape what we become. But most of us are on an image diet too rich in speed and too poor in meaning. We scroll, we skim, we glance. And the image—this quiet emissary of the soul—is lost in the noise.
To heal, the image must be met with attention. Not only the eyes, but the heart must see it. And sometimes, the body. A tingling, a breath that catches, a heaviness in the stomach. These, too, are ways the image speaks. It is not only what you think about what you see. It is what stirs in you as you see it.
Even the most ordinary image can become symbolic when given time. A raspberry in a dream. A spiral carved in stone. A shape that looks like a man kneeling. Symbols do not arrive fully formed. They emerge through our willingness to stay with the image. Through association. Through reverence. Through not knowing.
There is an ancient part of us that cannot leave an image alone. The child inside who must draw it. The poet who must speak to it. The lover who must return to it again and again. We do not look at images only with our minds. We look with memory, longing, pain, delight. We carry the image into the folds of our being. And in time, it carries us.
The world does not lack meaning. It overflows with it. But we must slow down enough to notice. Not in order to master the mystery. Only to meet it. Only to say: I see you. I am here.
And then we wait.
Tim – Soulful Nuggets Team
This blog is a reflection on the course ‘Complexes and Archetypes‘ taught by Ken James .
