Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Metaphoric Filters,By Leila Raven

Everything we 'think' is a metaphor. We can 'think' no other way.
language is a metaphor, we 'process' in metaphors, symbols that are
meant to represent 'reality'.
Until people grasp that what they hold so strongly as some ultimate
truth, is really just a child's metaphorical scribble with a crayon of
what is. That is the best we can do, little movement can be had.
We need to humble ourselves to the reality of our limited capacity to
mentally understand the divine, the infinite, the highly spiritual.
We strive so hard to wrap the mind around things that are beyond it. Our
mind is a rough primitive tool, like a broken box of crayons in the
hand of a toddler. We can think we can draw out our understanding, our
metaphorical understanding of the great divine, the infinite, the
workings and pinnings of the cosmos... we can't, well we can, but we
have to recognize it for the inherently flawed metaphor it has to be.
We can barely understand our own broken box of crayons.
However, like a child with crayons, it doesn't matter that the
representation, the metaphor, the understanding we hold is so
fantastically primitive, limited, restricted, simple, infantile, it is
as precious as any other great work of art. Because each child IS a part
of the divine, the infinite, the creation of the cosmos, as is any
crayon scribbling they may produce.
We are children with crayons, scribbling our truths out, and bickering
with each other over who has drawn a better apple tree. Whose apple tree
is most like a 'real apple tree', the reality is they are all crayon
scribbles and no crayon scribble will really depict an apple tree better
than another to a really significant extent. Yet people are fighting
over whose representation, and metaphorical understanding is more
correct. People will kill other people and other beings over such
nonsense.
Not only that, but there is a great deal said for creative licence.
Creation, comes from taking liberties with ones interpretation of
reality.
Even if we have seen, touched, smelt, eaten from an apple tree, we still
don't really 'know' everything there is to know and understand about
that tree. We are still processing it through our metaphors. The tree
would be perceived completely differently by an 'alien' non human
mind... insect, canine, off planet, yada yada. A dog would 'see' the
tree primarily in scent. An insect may have a total chemical
understanding of the tree we don't. Another being may see into the light
spectra of infra red or ultra violet and visually see aspects of the
tree we cannot. Now, those are only the metaphors of our limits of trees
I can conceive of because science has discovered dogs can smell more
than us, other animals can sense chemicals we can't, and light spectrum
vision occurs outside our own. There are probably who knows how many
other ways of perceiving, sensing and understanding an apple tree that
my mind is completely unaware of and may never ever grasp or may never
be grasped by any human mind. In fact, I'd be disappointed if their
wasn't. Never mind the apple trees experience of itself.
The problem is, we get so caught up in the power of our own belief, that
we refuse to see how terribly primitive and silly and limited all of
our beliefs are. We have no problem laughing at other peoples or
attacking them.. "Hey, can you believe these people? they believe in
heaven and hell, and no sex before marriage, and pro life, and they're
killing people over it!, nut bars!" " Hey, can you believe these people?
they believe reptillians are running governments, nut bars!" Hey, can
you believe these people? they think the world is coming to an end in
2012 and that they come from planet Chewbaca, nut bars!".
All our beliefs are crayon drawings. We are primitive naive children
passionately playing with rough tools trying to capture the essence of
things far beyond the scope of an apple tree. Yet how many of us can
accurately truly deeply passionately understand an apple tree, draw an
apple tree, know an apple tree? Yet many of us profess to know great
secrets of the universe... Do we?
Of course we do. We ARE great secrets of the universe, we are divine
children, we need not bother with trying to understand the impossible
through broken filters, we simply are it. When we play with the
metaphors, with language here on this site, we are playing, we are
creating, we are making art, like children with crayons. As long as we
realize that, that we are expressing something symbolically and playing
with it conceptually, and no one's drawing is any better than anyone
elses, will we really be able to move on to the next stage of our
emotional and mental development.
We need to learn our limitations as well as our divinity. We are
infinite, eternal, divine, and gods... yes, and we are also finite,
momentary, profane, mundane, and peons. We are the spectrum. We are
nothing and everything, the alpha and the omega, as are all things are.
We need to learn humility in
equal measure to divinity, there must be balance, and truth, or there is
stagnation.
ill we be quibbling tantrum blowing toddlers with broken boxes of
crayons for ever. Possibly. Until we mature enough to realize the
reality of our situation, embrace one another and ourselves, and move
on.
Live in Love
Everything I say is my personal theoretical truth, I hold it as no
more correct or valid than the truth of any other, whether in
contradiction or agreement to my own.

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