LIFE IS A METAPHOR

ALSO WE FIND LITERAL VALUE

In Hindu tradition we hear life is Maya, meaning dream. Drams are real, just not as real as they seem. Very rarely are they literal, but they all have real meaning. This Maya we live has real literal and symbolic meaning.

Metaphor: a word, description, action applied to an object (or event) to which it is not literally related.

A literal event occurs, but it is understood to stand for another meaning. The understanding of a metaphorical event, not the literal interpretation of the event, becomes the real meaning of the event. This is the language of symbology, the study of semiotics.

Having been a student of Jung for over 40 years, my interest in dream interpretation required a study of semiotics, the study of the language of symbols.

This has brought me to recognize that not only dreams speak in symbolic language, but so does life. As we naturally begin seeing dreams to be literal, only to learn they almost never are, so we tend to see life to have symbolic interpretation.

For purposes of day to day function, we need to see the literal meaning in life. But, to gain a deeper view of the meaning of our lives, we need to look to the deeper meaning of our “literal” experiences, and consider “what does this literal event symbolize, what does it really mean?”

When I suggest life is a metaphor, it none the less, for our ordinary functioning, needs to be taken for its face value in literal terms. Such is…