The self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function. For me, this insight signified an approach to the center and therefore to the goal.
Source - C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books 1965), p. 199.
The process of centering became, for Jung, the touchstone for the recognition of the self and for the individuation process. He represented the center and centering process in mandala-like forms such as the "Window on Eternity," the golden castle mandala, and in an impressive geometric rendering of the Philosophers' Stone. These images came to Jung as a compensation to the chaos of the unconscious, and he created them in his effort to gain stability in the midst of this turmoil. Jung was able to see the potency of the self and the healing value of the centering process. Images representing this stabilizing function capture the "archetype of orientation and meaning," but it is important to remember that the self is also a destabilizing power that continues to deconstruct the ego's effort to represent reality in any kind of static hypostasis that obscures the self's reality.
Source - Stanton Marlan, C.G. Jung and the Alchemical Imagination: Passages into the Mysteries of Psyche and Soul (Routledge 2021), pp. 44-45.
Art: Danilo Martinis