There is a certain moment in our lives when we become disillusioned with the outside world. We have followed all the rules that we were told would lead to success, so why does our life feel so bland? We begin to feel empty and unsatisfied. We ask ourselves, is there more?

This is the call to journey inside the cave.

The cave is a symbolic fixture in our culture. It represents the womb, the passage into the unknown. Shaped like the curve of a pregnant belly, the structure is dark, mysterious, and presents a space for creation to take place.

The cave is a part of the hero’s journey; inside, the hero confronts her deepest fears to realize a greater truth and emerge changed.

Humans are naturally drawn to light. A willingness to approach the darkness signals a change – a symbol of welcome self-metamorphosis. 

To psychoanalysts, it represents the pathway to the underworld, the maternal unconscious, the cosmic womb from which things are birthed. 

Caves are cocoons that prompt us to shift inward, to feel intuitively rather than sense externally. Without our eyes to see, we begin seeing with the heart. 

Inside, we find things waiting that we may have ignored. We choose to embrace the parts of us we may have judged as undesirable and messy.

It is a nurturing of our deepest seed – our inner child – so it can be brought into the world to grow.

In The Bible, Jesus is buried and then resurrected from a tomb, a burial cave. A cave is a symbol of birth, death and rebirth of the physical body but also the identity.

Inside our cocoon, we question who wrote the standards by which we live. Did society decide the way I should think, look, dress? What would it look like if I got to have a say in that? We enter this liminal space to set an intention to emerge a butterfly and experience a life meant for us, not anyone else. 

This moment of stillness, represented by the quietude of the cave, is a chance for us to ask ourselves what our path is and why we have decided to take it.

It is our opportunity to find our own reason for being – a place to stop and gain clarity about ourselves so that when we exit the cave, we deeply know how to find our way back to our truth.

We can return to the cave anytime as a reminder of why we’re living life – and it doesn’t have to be an actual cave. It is any space that causes you to look deeply inward at your own journey and intention.

We mine treasures like minerals and diamonds from inside caves. Except from this cave, we emerge as treasure itself.