Metaphor

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A metaphor is a figure of speech that directly refers to one thing by mentioning another to provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas.

Metaphors show up in literature, poetry, music, and writing, but also in speech. If you hear someone say “metaphorically speaking,” it probably means that you shouldn’t take what they said as the truth, but as more of an idea.

Historically, language emphasized metaphor more, in fact the language of the early Bible (aramaic) was a language that was primarily metaphor.

“The Middle Eastern languages assign multiple meanings simultaneously to words; the listener “in a Middle Eastern way … must consider all possibilities simultaneously”

Neil Douglas-Klotz

In “Dreams, Language of the Soul” Marion Woodman presents how the very destiny of the soul is directed through metaphor and dreams. In rich detail, she helps us explore the images, myths, and metaphors that express our collective concerns, and grasp how dreams allow us to navigate and fathom the future.

“Metaphor is the language of the soul. Through a physical image, metaphor reveals a spiritual truth or condition.”

Marion Woodman

Matthew Fox asks “How are you practicing life as a metaphor and not just a literal experience?”

Our beliefs are largely based on a mix of interpretation (eg how we treat incoming experience like words) and subconscious awareness (the accumulation of past experience which we observe as emotion).

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world”

German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein

Richard Rohr says: “Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about mystery. The underlying messages that different religions and denominations use are often in strong agreement, but they use different images to communicate their own experience of Union with God.
Metaphor is invariably more meaning, not less.
Literalism is the lowest and least level of meaning. We need good metaphors to go deep.
We are all trying to get beyond the Shadow and the disguise of every metaphor, every symbol, every verbal formulation to knock on the hard and wonderful reality that is underneath mere words.”
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