We had over seventy responses to our cover image survey for Opening the Inner World. We are so grateful for all the input we received, both qualitative and quantitative.
The Winner!
We all know the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but the truth is, we all do! The cover image makes a big impact and is our first chance to create a sense of interest and connection with the reader. A picture is worth a thousand words, but in our case, this image is worth over ninety-thousand words! That’s a lot to convey in one image! Not to mention the subject matter pushes the boundaries of what many people conceive of as consciousness itself. So how do you put that into an image?
In our cover survey, the winning image stood out beyond the rest, scoring a full point ahead on average over all the other options. Something in this image resonates with many. We see a human figure in relationship with a shining light which illuminates the surrounding space. The person is in a cosmic landscape full of flowing colors, interconnected lines, and stars.
The Power of Images
Imagery is a form of language and communication we all inherently know and participate in. Swedenborg claims that the power inherent in imagery is on account of how it can be a conduit for love and wisdom. He writes, “The universe, from beginning to end and from first to last, is so full of divine love and wisdom that you could call it divine love and wisdom in an image,” (Divine Love and Wisdom §52).
The divine imagery at play in the outside world is also alive inside of us. Both occur through what Swedenborg calls correspondence. He writes,
Everything in the universe answers to something in us. Every single thing that comes to light in the created universe has such an equivalence with every single thing in us that you could call us a kind of universe as well. There is a correspondence of our affective side and its consequent thought with everything in the animal kingdom, a correspondence of our volitional side and its consequent discernment with everything in the plant kingdom, and a correspondence of our outermost life with everything in the mineral kingdom. (ibid.)
The correspondence which Swedenborg is describing here becomes operationalized in Internal Family Systems therapy. When we look inside and get to know parts of ourselves, we find a sensually rich experience that is full of meaning. IFS calls this practice insight. Insight involves seeing and relating to parts of yourself in your mind’s eye.
In Opening the Inner World, we explore how the inner landscape of imagery you find in yourself when you “go inside” in Internal Family Systems seems to abide by the nature of correspondences in the spiritual world as described by Swedenborg.
In the spiritual world, the thoughts and feelings of angels and spirits are observable in the objects and landscapes of that world. Swedenborg writes,
This kind of correspondence is not apparent to anyone in our physical world, but it is apparent to observant people in the spiritual world. We find in this latter world all the things that occur in the three kingdoms of our physical world, and they reflect the feelings and thoughts of the people who are there—the feelings that come from their volition and the thoughts that come from their discernment—as well as the outermost aspects of their life. Both their feelings and their thoughts are visible around them looking much like the things we see in the created universe. (ibid.)
Everything we see on the inside has a correspondence with what we are experiencing on the level of our thoughts and feelings; we connect with parts in settings and appearances that reflect the natural world but are full of personal meaning. We can interact with this inner dimension with all of our senses which opens us up to perception about our beliefs, feelings, and intentions.
An Invitation Inward
When we look at a book cover image and feel something stir in us, we are getting a taste of the vibrancy of the power of correspondences available to us in the spiritual world. The winning cover for Opening the Inner World captures something of the idea of how the microcosm reflects the macrocosm, that we are all receivers of an inflow of divine love and wisdom, and how the design of our inner and outer systems is something we can utilize for the sake of healing. This cover is designed with the invitation to see yourself as the figure in its center and to explore your inner world with Swedenborg and Internal Family Systems as your guide.
Opening the Inner World will be published on May 15th, 2025 but is available to pre-order now! Reserve your copy and look forward to seeing what Swedenborg and Internal Family Systems have to say about the inner realm and how to navigate it.
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Hear what others are saying about it!
Read and understand Swedenborg through the lens of IFS and contemporary scholarship! This reading brought a Swedenborg that is accessible, relevant and fascinating. This is a book I will annotate and return to for additional insights.
Dr. Donald Davies, MD, Psychiatrist
When we invite clients to focus on their parts, they often seem to enter a separate but real inner realm where they interact with one another, which is what I’ve studied the past forty years. Swedenborg seems to have spent much of his life exploring that realm and other, more spiritual ones. While some of his reports on those explorations are more challenging for me to translate than for the three authors, I delight in others that show how he was traversing the same territory as I have been, and clearly he encountered and has a lot to say about Self, but did it almost 300 years earlier. And, for those interested in the spiritual side of IFS, he points to worlds we have yet to explore.
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, Founder of Internal Family Systems Therapy
