This is a story from Aulden Schlief's archetypal work. To find Aulden's home page click Here.

She wasn't beautiful. She could be described as frumpy. Her hair wasn't stylish, but short and practical. Her demeanor was not warm, although she was caring like a teacher with a student. She was stern.

Aulden loved her. He loved sitting with her in The Church at The Center of Consciousness where they watched images forming in the mist.

She was the perfect person to teach him about images, because she was an image herself: an archetypal image. They sat together for three months, talking about methods of understanding the meanings of dreams, such as compensation and subjectivization. She told him to see images as primal, and to not let social rules and cultural norms distort his view. Of all that she taught him, one word meant more than anything and everything else. That word was "look."

One morning Aulden woke from a troubling dream and he sat in meditation, trying to understand the dream's meaning. Frustrated, he gave up and asked her to explain the meaning of the dream. After she told him, Aulden said, "It's so simple. I should have seen that."

She responded quickly, "But you couldn't, because you didn't look!" and she added, "Look, and look again!"

On another morning he dreamed that he was with a female acquaintance and he was holding a crystal skull. When he met with his teacher later, he asked her, "What can you tell me about the skull?"

She said to him, "Why don't you look at it?"

Aulden imagined himself holding the crystal skull, examining it. He said to her, "It's natural, not hand-carved."

She observed, "You were thinking, when you said that, of the woman - that the relationship was natural, not forced."

Aulden asked, "So what is the skull?"

She told him, "Natural higher thinking. Now let go of the woman. Let things form naturally."

After three months she said it was time for her to leave. Aulden asked her to stay with him longer. She replied, "You already know everything you need to know." By that, Aulden knew she meant that the word "look" was everything in understanding images such as the images in art and in dreams.

It didn't escape Aulden's notice that other archetypal figures, when talking about finding love or overcoming psychological projections, said, "Watch, listen and wait." To watch is different than to look, because watching is the passive stance of an observer. Looking is the active behavior of an investigator.

She agreed to stay until Christmas and she even promised that she would come to him at any time if he called for her. She was a teacher, however, and the semester had ended.