Metaphor

You all know the word, and you also understand the difference between, literal, metaphor and symbolism, yes?



Unless you begin to comprehend the source and origin of those concepts, you remain bound by them, bound to them, as Brer Rabbit is bound to the tarbaby. The more he tries to extract himself - his limbs - from the tarbaby, the deeper and more tightly he is consumed. http://sammoore.org/archives/000149.php



The metaphor that man is living a life in darkness, but can emerge into the light, points to something existing in literal reality. When the light in you that shines on, and on, and on each day you arise from your bed, is but an ember, it's glow is like the reddened eyes of a monster emerging from that darkness.



The embers existing in reality - from the caveman's fire at his feet - exist first somewhere else, that only metaphors can suggest. The metaphor is not the literal reality, except in one and only circumstance, then it becomes the living history of the sun itself.



The same holds for all other metaphors, and all language is built upon the wordrock of metaphors - this is like that, and that is like this, and so metaphorical life begins... AT the redburning ember existing in the only reality it can know.



This is a three-way switch, somewhere, that allows all of tangible and non-tangible reality to take form.



The two known directions the switch can be moved to - by forces man can only imagine (metaphorize, symbolize) - is a union of opposites, and metaphors and symbolism are those opposites. The third direction, is the literal (as in, finding the source and origin of those linguistic-only (intangible) devices), made Glowing like the Sun.



All these metaphorical representations of man's **apparent** condition - that man is asleep but can awaken, or that man is living in the dark but can step into the light, or that man is existing in a kind of inner captivity from which he can escape, is beautifully poetic and as useful as they can be, but, gawd are they FAT... slovenly overweight, wastefully hefty. The key-phrase being, from above, "as useful as they **can** be" - being only for you and every human who's ever lived, metaphors and symbolism - for there, is no the 3rd direction, the 3rd mode of human existence - awake in the light of freedom, in a KNOWN literal reality.



ps- the tarbaby story was intentionally written, and the several metaphors freely represented therein, were intentional, and the briar patch is a real existing place, etc., etc., but you do get the drift.... right?