The symbolic themes that are incorporated in Rik Smits' full color pencil drawings deal with the process of humans undertaking an existential journey which leads towards finding spiritual and emotional enlightenment. The main focus of this journey lays more on the process itself than on the final goal. While engaging in this adventure, which has the purpose of becoming the best possible version of ourselves, we have to undergo many psychological changes and expose ourselves to possible dangers. It is our inevitable vulnerability and the courage it takes to show this, which is the most significant factor in the images of the drawings. When we are in a vulnerable state and when we are willing to accept this, only then the human soul is most open to a possible metamorphosis that allows us to change and strengthen our character, so that it will give us the necessary tools to engage in the mystery of life. A mystery that unfolds a duality between love and hate, safety and danger, selfism and altruism, all the possible emotions within the spectrum of the human soul which are purposely integrated in our collective unconscious, so that we are able to survive. But what we actually want in life is to exceed our mere survival by aiming for higher moral values and standards that will bring us a more profound and meaningful existence.