One man named his dead otter Be Like This:
“Here, Be Like This! Commear boy!”
No one who knows what they are doing will commear.
(This applies also to your own consciousness, it might be noted.)
Don’t you just love it? A secret, that doesn’t have to be kept secret.
One boy caught a bird the likes of which he had never seen before. It was so extraordinary that the experience became the high point of his life. But the winged one could not be continually held without either killing it, or his holding hand. What a marvel: a bird that cannot be held to be kept.
As regards the time, location and age of metaphors and myths:
They have no time, locale or age. The myths of men’s minds are the un-writ schematics of his consciousness projected outward, away from him, so that he won’t get splattered and mess up his civilized suit.
One benefit of being religious is that if you read, for instance, in your holy book that God said, “Cheer up,” or “Don’t do that,” you can pretend to believe that it has more weight than if just another human said it. (Of course, hearing something you want to hear from another person is still preferable to hearing it from your own mind.)
All in all, men understand the real value of words, which is why they must constantly attribute to them substance that they experientially do not demand. Words are a game, as is the whole second reality they create, and in which the ordinary spend so much of their consciousness coin.
A man with principles is a dunce;
only a man with understanding has anything.
J.