I hope you like this talk because I learned something in it. The Teddy Bear informed me about what it is as a living metaphor. It’s not a living metaphor for me now, but it was for me as a child. Now its a dead metaphor. But I can use it to help me explain metaphor, so maybe it’s not dead. The living metaphor require a surrender of your IT identity. What I am is just a bunch of ITS. Everything that I am is an IT….But That I AM is not an IT. That I AM has no quality, no adjective, no definition. That I AM is not in the dictionary.

When relationship becomes a metaphor, which is what love is, the Relationship make That I AM alive. When the relationship dies, THAT I AM dies because it was dependent upon the relationship. That I AM when dependent upon an IT cannot be sustained. Therefore, the spiritual practice is to divest your THAT from all ITS. THAT I AM when not dependent upon that which dies, does not die. This is what Buddha was talking about.

Spiritual metaphors are like a guru or Christ, or any metaphor that points to THAT I AM. Spiritual life is an evolution of metaphor, or mediators between you as an IT and you as THAT I AM. You see the Objective world of ITS and the Subjective world of you as THAT I AM is a polar opposite, neither of which can be known simultaneously. The Metaphor as Mediate creates an Intermediate Zone were the two become One.

Romeo and Juliet is a metaphor for this Unity of Two into the One of Love. Shakespeare’s play is a metaphor. You can enter or not. You can let the play become your liberating metaphor or not. Movies are metaphor. You can let Avatar be your metaphor or not. It can just be a movie…or Avatar can be YOU. Jake Sully can be just a movie character, or I am Jake Sully. If you experience Avatar AS Jake Sully experiences it, then You are Avatar.

Or you can experience e the movie objectively, and it is entertaining, but you don’t know why. If the movie bothers you. If the movie won’t let you go. Then its metaphorical power is working on you, puling you to surrender like the Phantom of the Opera. Listen to the music of the metaphor.