sapling1What could be a visual symbol for growing up?

A tree, perhaps. It goes through all of the stages that people do.

A small helpless shoot, a sapling that needs protection, and it grows and grows until itself it gives protection …

The tree of life, the wish-fulfilling tree, the bo tree under which the Buddha sat, trees have served as symbols for many aspects of life, several of them spiritual.

For the next few posts I want to develop the ideas around symbols of the self.  They are very useful for understanding ourselves in ways that simple analogies or metaphors cannot accomplish, because they bypass the mind.

The key to understanding the self is found in understanding awareness.

What would be a symbol for awareness?  For the growing, blossoming, flowering expansion that is the growth of awareness in life?

The lotus.  More.  After i write it.  Enjoy