Now that's a potent metaphor--floor:

Foundation floor in building--footings--solid ground beneath one's feet
Rock bottom of AA ("upon this rock I will build my church")
the boxer floors his opponent

Its almost as potent as and related to 'path'

Apparently Elizabeth wound up cleaning not so metaphorical floors in the middle of the night in Bali, women's work the world over.

One could extend the metaphor--floors and flaws.

If we did not think of ourselves as flawed--incomplete-- there would be no need for these epic spiritual quests for the supposedly missing, metaphorical bits.

Well, OK, but the floor metaphor was around long before ELP and BK. "I was floored", "my jaw hit the floor" and so on. A million movies show a character hitting rock bottom emotionally by showing them on a floor crying or puking or whatever. It's kind of a go-to metaphor, not at all unique to ELP or BK.

Having said that.... yikes, there must be a lot of people out there who identify with the floor metaphor and that in itself is pretty scary.

The French gourmet Brillat-Savarin wrote, tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.

Tell me what metaphors you think with and I will know who you are...including how to access your inner landscape.

That is how rhetoric/oratory has worked in ages past and that is how potent forms of communication work today including the ones described for us by The Anticult.

I didnt mean to suggest that this floor technique was unique to BK and Gilbert, it just struck me is interesting that there was this shared element in their stories and I had a sense of familiarity.

Stoic and margarets saw things I missed. Hitting bottom? This has become a classic phrase.

In Western culture, where we live using tables, chairs and couches and beds, to be on the floor means hardship, degradation or what one does when camping.

Kneeling on the floor, grovelling on the floor--you're brought low.

'Scrubbed floors'--that really takes one back. That is entry level, servile work. Unless one sees it as 'seva' at an ashram.

Tell me what your metaphors are and I will know how to find the back door into your inner life.

"Tell me what your metaphors are and I will know how to find the back door into your inner life."

Heh - now there's some metaphors in action!

Did you do that on purpose corboy?

I wasn't suggesting that BK or the author invented the metaphor, just that they both made use of what is already a potent symbol in the language.
We can only think in metaphor and these carry connotations or parallel meanings that are not at first apparent.

I personally pity the poor sap who finds the back door to my inner life--good luck finding your way through that maze, its defeated me and I was the one who built it!

Here's a nice Robert Anton Wilson (a master of metaphor) story where he weaves in and improves on Aleister Crowley's teaching on the Soldier and the Hunchback....? ! ? !

[www.rawilson.com]

I like the mongoose story too.

Crowley apparently began to believe in his soldiers according to this chap. He's never had much appeal for me so I won't comment:

[larabell.org]

Using Crowley's metaphor choices to gain access to his inner life:

' Crowley is emotionally driven to find a way out of questioning and into certainty, while the Pyrrhonist sees questioning as a pleasant state sufficient unto itself. Again and again in the essay he expresses his desire that questions marks should turn into exclamation points: "we may now resume our attempt to drill our hunchback into a presentable soldier," "wouldn't it be jolly if our own second ? suddenly straightened its back and threw its chest out and marched off as ! ?", and so on. Elsewhere he says that "doubt is a good servant but a bad master". He wants to have absolute conviction in a religious system yet still be a skeptic.

This desire for certainty led him to create a dogmatic religious system. The definition of his magical order A.·. A.·. contains this belief requirement:

"All members must of necessity work in accordance with the facts of Nature... So must all Members of the A.·. A.·. work by the Magical Formula of the Æon. They must accept the Book of the Law as the Word and the Letter of Truth, and the sole Rule of Life. They must acknowledge the Authority of the Beast 666 and of the Scarlet Woman as in the book it is defined, and accept Their Will as concentrating the Will of our Whole Order. They must accept the Crowned and Conquering Child as the Lord of the Æon, and exert themselves to establish His reign upon Earth. They must acknowledge that "The Word of the Law is Thelema" and that "Love is the law, love under will."

A skeptic would respond simply "maybe, and maybe not."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2010 03:18AM by Stoic.

I knew Liz Gilbert back in 2002, when we happened to be on the same yoga retreat in Bali. This was her first trip, where she met Ketut Liyer for the first time, and she was sent by a magazine -- can't remember which -- to write an article. She was already divorced or split from her first husband, in a relationship with the guy who introduced her to Siddha Yoga, and already a devotee.

'She was already divorced or split from her first husband, in a relationship with the guy who introduced her to Siddha Yoga, and already a devotee.'

So, she took a few liberties with time scales--as writers and storytellers often do--to produce a more punchy and gripping narrative:

"You too can have the same wonderful experience that I did, except that I didn't have it in quite that fashion or on quite that time scale--in fact it was really quite boring and mundane and just like your life, but then you wouldn't fork out for the book and film (and hopefully become a devotee--of me, if not Gurumayi) if I told the literal truth, would you?"

(to be clear, the above is me chaneling the real Liz--in other words I made it up, just like Liz did)

Here is a nice comment on the pilgrimage or spiritual quest that 'Eat Pray Love' makes into an expensive and seductive travelogue:

[tibetanaltar.blogspot.com]

'Today, I want to tell those of you thinking of pilgrimage, or preparing to go on pilgrimage, or actually engaged in pilgrimage -- whether such pilgrimage be great or small, conventional or unconventional, in your native land or abroad, in past time, this time, or some future time -- that when you look upon the land, you look upon yourself.

Even sacred monuments of shattered stone, no longer extant yet nonetheless immortal, visible by their very absence.

To the Native Americans around here, plants, animals, and even rocks are sentient beings. It is believed that they derive from superior beings who were willing to be transformed into myriad appearances, to benefit others. '

Full disclosure: There has been considerable controversy and flame wars over this blog writer who may or may not be a recognised Tulku. Whatever, he is a very learned and perceptive writer.

According to 'Seekher', the well informed ex SYDA Yoga devotee who maintains the Rituals of Disenchantment blog, Gurumayi has not been seen in public since 2004.

Guruphobiac wrote

Quote

I knew Liz Gilbert back in 2002, when we happened to be on the same yoga retreat in Bali. This was her first trip, where she met Ketut Liyer for the first time, and she was sent by a magazine -- can't remember which -- to write an article. She was already divorced or split from her first husband, in a relationship with the guy who introduced her to Siddha Yoga, and already a devotee.

Nu....?