Is heaven whatever you want it to be?

The problem is that whenever the stories were told, neither by the teller nor the listener were they ever understood as being merely metaphorical.

Can you link me to somewhere that can determine this for sure? If you could, unless I understood his position incorrectly, it would probably render the philosophies of Campbell mute.

why bother keeping the word if we already have happiness, bliss and the like for it?

Why only use those words? Why can't "heaven" describe its own level of happiness, as associated with its mythological origins? What's so wrong with using it?

In the meantime, we can leave exaggerations and fuzzy meanings to the poets, for they need them. If we take their strong words and reduce them to casual meanings, they'll have trouble doing their beautiful art, sooner or later.

I am a poet. There are many others here. You might learn some things from us that you never considered before about language that exists outside of the confines of your typical perception.



As Alan Watts put it... there are two kinds of people... those who are prickly and those who are gooey...

Those who are prickly insist on defining the world much like you do... very definite, mathematical, scientific, physical, etc. Those who are gooey, insist on defining the world more exclusively on artistic, indirect, spiritual, etc characteristics.

But what both don't understand is that the world is not only prickles... and it is not only goo.... The universe as a whole is gooey prickles and prickly goo...

And because of this, it seems to me, that it could be healthy for someone who is a prickle to allow themselves to learn something about goo, while those who are goo learn something about prickles. Why not?

I have always dealt in both, because excluding one's self to only one or the other shuts out at least half of the whole reality that you are attempting to "grasp" as you put it.