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myth : metaphor
"Reasoning by metaphor is
an ingenious technique that
remedies our weaknesses by capitalizing on
our strengths - using things
we can visualize to think,
talk, and
reason about things we can
not visualize." - Daniel Gilbert
A metaphor is
a symbolic conceptual image that suggests
something else.
For instance, I may say to an individual, "You are a nut."
I am not
suggesting that I think the individual is literally a nut.
"Nut" is a metaphor.
In sacred text metaphors are used to
reference abstract thought
constructs transcendent of literal physical objects.
To think of a
metaphor itself as the reference is like going to a restaurant,
asking for the menu, seeing
an image of beefsteak, and
eating the menu.
In
conceptualizing metaphor, a subconscious automatic
mechanism for using inference
patterns and language from a
source domain to think and talk about another domain comes into
play.
"Human qualities are vague and
fluctuating.
They are best remembered by a physical sign.
We
ascribe impressions
visualized as metaphors human qualities." - Walter
Lippman
"We think in metaphor.
Most of our commonplace
thoughts make use of an
extensive subconscious system of metaphorical concepts from
a concrete realm of
thought used to comprehend
another, completely different domain.
Such
concepts are often reflected in everyday
language, but their most dramatic effect
comes in ordinary reasoning.
As
so much of our social and political reasoning makes use of this system of
metaphorical concepts, any adequate
appreciation of even the most mundane social and political thought requires an
understanding of this system.
Unless one knows the
system exists, one may miss
it altogether and be
mystified by its effects." - George Lakoff
That is literally what is
being said.
The
denotation would appear to be that Jesus ascended into the sky.
If
that were really the intent of the message, we have to throw the message away,
there would have been no such
place for Jesus to literally go.
Jesus could not have ascended to
heaven because there is no physical heaven
anywhere in the universe as was thought up until
the time of Galileo
Galilei.
Even ascending at the speed of light, Christ would still be
in the galaxy.
Astronomy and
physics have
simply eliminated that as a
physical possibility.
If you read 'Christ ascended to heaven' in
terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that
Christ has gone
inward - not into
outer space but into inward space, to
the place from which all
being comes into the consciousness of the Source of Life - the
Kingdom of Heaven.
These images are an
outward reflection of an inner reality.
To ascend with Christ we turn
inward.
Returning to the Source,
alpha and
omega, of leaving the fixation on the material behind and going to
the dynamic Source of Life.
In the standard way of thinking of Christ ascending to heaven,
we cannot identify with Christ,
we have to imitate Jesus.
To say, "I and the Father are one,"
as Christ said, is blasphemy for
us.
In the Gospel of
Thomas, dug up in Egypt in 1946, Christ says,
"He who drinks from my mouth
will become as I am, and I shall be he."
This is Buddhism.
We are all
manifestations of Buddha consciousness,
or Christ consciousness.
The
word "Buddha" means "the one who woke up."
We are all to do that! Find
liberation.
To
wake up to the Buddha or
Ḉhri§t
Ḉon§ḉiou§ne§§ within us.
This is
blasphemy to Christians that take
the Bible literally, but it is
the very essence of Christian
Gnosticism and of the Gospel
of Thomas.
The metaphor in Christianity that corresponds to
reincarnation is limbo.
If one dies
with a fixation on the things of
this Earth then one's spirit
is not ready to behold the
beatific vision, therefore one has to
undergo a purgation,
one has to be purged clean of
one's limitations.
The limitations are
what are called sins.
Sin in this sense is simply a limiting factor
that limits consciousness fixing it in
an inadequate condition.
In the Eastern metaphor, if you die in that condition, you come back
again to have more experiences that will clarify, clarify, clarify, until you
are released from these fixations.
The reincarnating soul is
the principal hero of Eastern myth.
The
soul puts on various personalities, throughout life and life after life.
The reincarnation
idea is not that personality will be reincarnated.
Personality is what the soul throws
off.
The Eternal
Soul may wear a dozen different personality
types, depending on role
needed, to clear itself of attachment to the
field of time.
In
India prophets,"rishis". are said to have 'heard'
the scriptures.
The
sacred sound of Ohm.
Now anybody might open his ears, but not
everyone can hear the scriptures.
Many times they think there must have been a mistranslation.
There is training to help you open your
eyes, to pull the needle out
of your own eye, so that you can
begin to hear metaphorically instead of literally.
Carl Jung
understood myth is grounded in subconscious archetype.
Creative
work requires yielding or
submitting to the creative
Self.
To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that
is given to you from what have been called the
Muses - or, in biblical language,
"God."
This is no
fantasy, it is a fact.
Inspiration comes from the
subconscious, any communal group of
the people have much
in common, what the preacher,
rabbi,
teacher,
shaman or
seer brings forth is something
waiting to be brought forth in everyone.
When one hears the story,
one responds, 'Aha! This is my story too!
This is what I had always
wanted to say but didn't know how to say it!'
- adapted from Joseph
Campbell
"Metaphor is
not merely a matter of language.
It is a matter of
conceptual structure.
Conceptual structure is not merely
a matter of the
intellect - it involves
natural dimensions of
experience.
This structure includes not only mundane experience but
aesthetic experience as
well."- George Lakeoff & Mark Johnson
Metaphor is a word derived
from Old French Metaphore, which came from Latin Metaphora, meaning carrying
over.
Allegory is a word that has been derived from Latin Allegoria,
meaning figurative or veiled language.
A metaphor is a figure of speech
wherein an unfamiliar subject is
described using an attribute of a familiar subject.
An allegory is a narrative in which an
element, such as a character or
setting, is
representative of a particular
value or underlying idea.
"William Golding's Lord of the
Flies is a highly symbolic novel, and he uses both metaphor and allegory to
make his point." - Lori Steinbach
Metaphorical allegory is an extended
comparison of seemingly unrelated objects or actions composed upon a phrasal
foundational plinth using both metaphor and allegory interwoven into a spider's
web.
The final result can be either the chaotic haphazard
helter-skelter any-old-which-way irregular overdone hit-or-miss reckless
slipshod web woven by a Black Widow playing a red violin,
comparable to pulp fiction
belonging in the trash bin of
non-recyclables, or the fine re-usable weave of a Cross Orbweaver who
bears the Cross for all to see while
hanging out and rolling up her weaving, comparable to
a fine leather-bound gold-leaf
embossed timeless piece of literature that is faithfully returned time
after time to its cradle between old friends on a shelf behind beveled crystal
glass.
The feeling of well-being cross'
cultural boundaries as
metaphor.
If the same forms of
well-being are widespread globally, we expect the same
metaphors for morality to show up in
culture after culture - and they do.
A system of metaphors for morality as
a whole is far from arbitrary.
Stubbing your toe in the dark is
evil, being able to see where you are going is good.
Better to walk
upright like a man than to slump like a chimp - moral men are on the up and up,
they stand up and are upstanding.
Immoral men do low things,
are underhanded, are snakes in the grass.
To do evil is to fall,
to descend. To do good is to
ascend.
To climb is to ascend
with support - repaid or not - as in lizards on the apex of the ponzi
pyramid climbed over the investors backs.
A moral person is strong;
an immoral person is
weak.
Some people have a "heart of gold", "do not have a mean bone in
their body" while others are "rotten
to the core".
Anger
trumps fear creating
courage to stand up to
immorality.
We speak of a
"degenerate" person, the
"erosion" of moral standards,
the "crumbling" of moral
values, the "rupture" of the moral
fabric.
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