Stephen Pinker, How The Mind Works (1997) The Softback Preview, London [page 355]:

"Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied. ... These concepts and relations appear to be the vocabulary and syntax of mentalese, the language of thought. ... And the discovery that the elements of mentalese are based on places and projectiles has implications for both where the language of thought came from and how we put it to use in modern times."

George Lakoff, 'The Neurocognitive Self' in The Science of The Mind, edited by Robert Solso and Dominic Massaro (1995) Oxford University Press [page 229]:

"We have discovered, over the past decade and a half, that a conceputal system contains an enormous subsystem of thousands of conceptual metaphors -- mappings that allow us to understand the abstract in terms of the concrete. Without this system, we could not engage in abstract thought at all -- in thought about causation, purpose, love, morality, or thought itself. Without the metaphor system, there could be no philosophizing, no theorizing, and little general understanding our everyday personal and social lives. But the operation of this vast system of conceptual metaphor is largely unconscious. We reason metaphorically throughout most of our waking, and even our dreaming lives, but for the most part are unaware of it. At present, the metaphor system of English has barely begun to be worked out in full detail, and the metaphor systems of other languages have been studied only cursorily. Working out the details would be a huge job -- not as big as the human genome project, but most likely more beneficial. For what is at stake is our understanding of ourselves and our daily lives, and the possibilities for improvement through that understanding."

I'll send you a private email Alex. You can delete my last comment if you think its inappropriate. But you should understand that I have no desire to engage in flame wars. I will explain myself in email a bit later.

Oh congeniality! Lord of all!

I'm not flaming Ted I'm asking him to be more constructive with his criticisms. But I guess you aren't going to ban Ted for instigating flame wars, you will only ban him if he succeeds in making himself an accomplice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra's_net

You can also disable Javascript or add en.wikipedia.org to your IE Restricted Sites (for which Javascript is off) and you can put the code $("#content").show();_$("#mw-sopaOverlay").hide(); into your browser. You have to use Ctrl + Shift + K in firefox.

"Read-A-Book (not a sports page, or a magazine)" - D-Mite [Not-A-Rapper]

That whole kinetic reference: "rise above". It's metaphorical of course, where is the spatial locale of fear exactly or of one (self) doing the rising?

Of course this kind of allegory slips into our descriptions unwittingly. It seems when one says "God above" the assumptions is that God inhabits a spatial locale "up there" somewhere, but when we talk about rising above fear that metaphor has no problem being interpreted as a metaphor, I mean its automatic for us to do so.

It certainly isn't as satisfying when you are in constant disagreement with popular opinions. I think the greek parable of Narcissus really speaks to these psychological mechanisms. Narcissism is not just about seeing one's own physical appearance, it is also about staring into the reflection of one's own ideals, politics and companions.

Just know that self is a misnomer. What is really going on there is an aggregate of somatosensory processes. It can be said either that there is no one or that there is only one (totality). All this kind of disorder in society can be traced back to the predominance of delusions about self-hood. Self-hood can be a prison for the mind causing despair and elation depend on one's ability to see themselves as an integral and valuable part of a larger system. In truth, because the self is an aggregate, it is already always an integral part of a larger system. It is just misrepresented in every aspect of culture.

[deleted]

I say this because it is common among esoteric (truly esoteric) teachings that when the individual becomes liberated from the prison of egotism their value system is inverted and that which they detested becomes desirable, and that which they desired detestable.

If Jesus literally turned water into wine then that would make him a magician, but if he turned people away from wine and onto water that would make him a true spiritual leader. I think the expression is misinterpreted to mean that he literally changed water into wine and not that by the administration of some wisdom his followers' desires shifted to water from wine, as if the value of the two substances had been inverted.

"Good versus Evil equals confrontation" - Partners in Kryme

Note that all words derive from much simpler origins in ancient language. This makes sense if one imagines language to be an evolving process. The first human to utter a word probably wanted to talk about the bear or tiger lurking in the woods and abstract conceptions about reality didn't enter into the fold until many centuries later when those same terms were adapted. A word like "Nature" comes from simpler words meaning "birth". It is then abstracted out to refer to all of reality. Or "universe" from unus "one" + versus, pp. of vertere "to turn". Ancient languages that lacked these forms of linguistic abstraction still relied on simpler-familial terms to relate to abstract intuitions about reality.