Spiritual activity experience or metaphor? (funeral, coffin, choices, choice)

[sojourner]

Originally Posted by Willamena

And if those were considered to be metaphor, what might the images they present symbolize?

If it's metaphor, what is the reality that the metaphor represents? I think that, for those who have noticed God, there is no greater reality, no greater truth than that experience. For those of us who have had that experience, it is, rather, the "real world" that becomes metaphor for the truth of our spiritual experience.

[stephenw]

Originally Posted by Willamena

And if those were considered to be metaphor, what might the images they present symbolize?

For me
The image thinking about God symbolized to me was understanding myself.
Sitting in a church symbolized understanding through a specific cultural paradigm.
Going to church could be seen as a metaphor for a spiritual journey.
Weddings, Christenings and funerals symbolized certain stages in life.

I saw these things, for me, as things that allowed me to make an attempt to get to grips with reality. They were a way of getting my head around reality but assuredly not reality itself. I was mistaken, these things are reality, they are not metaphors, they do not "call into question the underlying category structure".
These activities are an experience that is complete in itself, they are not a metaphor.

[Willamena]

Can't they be both metaphor and an experience of reality? After all, we experience metaphor, too.

[stephenw]

Originally Posted by Willamena

Can't they be both metaphor and an experience of reality? After all, we experience metaphor, too.

I understand metaphor as questioning the underlying category, perhaps I am mistaken in doing so. The way I understand things they can't be both because metaphor is not reality, it is a way of representing reality that doubts itself.

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by stephenw

I understand metaphor as questioning the underlying category, perhaps I am mistaken in doing so. The way I understand things they can't be both because metaphor is not reality, it is a way of representing reality that doubts itself.

I think of metaphor like a window. Metaphor presents us with an image, and if the image rings (like a bell) (yes, I'm using metaphors) for us, then we understand what the message its intended to portray is. Once we get the metaphor, we are seeing reality through that window.

[mball1297]

Originally Posted by Willamena

I think of metaphor like a window. Metaphor presents us with an image, and if the image rings (like a bell) (yes, I'm using metaphors) for us, then we understand what the message its intended to portray is. Once we get the metaphor, we are seeing reality through that window.

That's a very good simile.

[Dunemeister]

What sorts of things do you call "spiritual activity"?

[stephenw]

Originally Posted by Dunemeister

What sorts of things do you call "spiritual activity"?

I outlined my view in Post #9 of this thread.

[Bishadi]

it seems a metaphor could be like looking into a fish tank and say, 'fish'.... we see it, know it, experience the observance yet unable to put a name to the variety or specific species.

is that what this means?

call into question the underlying category structure".

So it may appear that each are capable of experiencing the metaphor of 'God's existence' without having to define the experience into words..

Seems like you have 'experienced' existence, without the words to define what it is.

And then if you read through the various religions we find each are describing what that experience is; different words, variety of terms; but the same 'experience.'

So then in a pure set of words it is pretty easy to recognize that just about every soul ever born could be 'experiencing' the same thing but there are no definitions to put each account into a unifying frame to reference.

Now do you see the goal, my friend. No joking around, for each to comprehend what these phenomenon are in a physical frame is what allows not only equality, as the application is literally universal but also to ground the realities so comprehension can be understood to remove the contradictions of opinions which cause isolations and rebellion.. (conflict)

The same existence (God) is universal; it is the words that are lacking to combine the logic.