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February 14, 2011

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Metaphor appears less mystical and less confining (or damning) when released from its imprisonment. It is a much more playful and creative state of mind when the bounds of metaphor are dissolved into the apperceptual awareness of the moment - or so it seems.

The Buddha worked in metaphors all the time -- and look where it got his teachings: Literalists took 'em over and misunderstood a good chunk of what was being said. Metaphors are great in context. Also, metaphors may help with a breakthrough to insight -- when the linear process is getting us nowhere, sometimes a metaphor acts as a colored lens that helps to bring certain strands, certain connections into better focus. But lose the context of the metaphors and o!lordy! what problems crop up.

How far is the city from the space it resides in ? Where is boundry between the city and the world ?When did the solid ,separate stable thing called a city begin ? Are these simply concepts ? Can Nothing or anything called a city actually ever be found

If all reality is really the biochemical construction in our brain, then what we actually witness as "reality" is just a mental and chemical construction. "We", as the personalities we perceive ourselves to be, as the constructions of character traits we believe define us, are nothing more than conceptualizations. "We" as we know ourselves to be are no more real than "God". "We" project onto ourselves anthropomorphic, "self aware" qualities that don't really exist. We are conditioned creatures that respond to stimuli. We are no more self-aware than a street lamp or a temperature guage.

Whatever we sentience we project as "God" we do so to a much greater degree to ourselves and each other.

But in all cases it is a projection, and not reality.

"We" as "personalities" are no more real than God - and both we, as we really are, and God and this physical reality are generally outside of the realm of human perception. We can only see them through the metaphor of our own biochemical and conditioned, filtered, and reconstructed mental imagery.

Our self-perceptions of sentience are as false as our attributions of God.

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