Abstract

This heuristic journey to the Self occurred spontaneously from my life quest. While living with and gazing at symbolic images in my room, I captured their voices unfolding the same message about "going deep down inward to search for the Self." I followed the message coming from inner wisdom and realized that my symbolic images and their message were closely related to Cari Jung's perspective of the Self. In this heuristic self-inquiry, I have pursued the self-experience leading me to the essence of the Self, and the symbolic images along with reflexive knowledge were a major guideline to the self-experience of encountering the Self in a metaphoric, safe way. I experienced the symbolic manifestations of the Self by the images of the Shadow, pond, castle, mandala, apple, heart, Christ, and lotus flower. I also experienced fears, which caused resistance or hesitation in my heuristic journey to the Self. In the process of recognizing and resolving my fears, I could proceed with my heuristic self-inquiry and diminished my resistance. Then, I could expand my limited concepts of the Self, God, and my religion and reached a new understanding of the essence of the Self that the Self is a manifestation of God residing in the heart, deep inside of us. Also I discovered that a heuristic journey on a topic can have several layers of heuristic inquiry, like a spiral shape, in aiming at reaching the core of what is being investigated. I hope this heuristic self-inquiry can be beneficial to others to better understand the Self in their process of healing, maturity, or transformation, and as well to art therapists to better understand their clients within artwork processes in clinical practice