https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=uRyEYmDcptQ
All right, Susan A. 7Likes says, what are some ways to identify when we’re falsely interpreting a symbol, text image or happening or glossing over more challenging symbolic meanings in preference of meanings that are more comfortable, convenient or more aligned with what we already believe about reality confirmation bias? There are a few ways to know whether you’re falsely interpreting symbolism, or at least some hints that can help you understand that. One is if you gloss over the information, that’s a big one. Like if you just kind of gloss over the text and you don’t look at it carefully, or you don’t spend, I always tell people, like if you’re interpreting a movie, for example, stay in the movie as long as possible, like as much as possible. Keep your interpretation inside the movie. Use the parts of the movie to interpret other parts of the movie as much as you can, before like going to some other, like some other interpretation. And so that’s true of a movie, but then it’s also true of a Bible story or a gospel story. The first thing you have to do is to see if you’re getting the facts straight in the actual story you’re interpreting, for example, if you’re glossing over some elements, if there’s some elements that you’re just ignoring, because they don’t fit your symbolic understanding, then the second one is to compare it to other structures. And so if you have an intuition about the meaning of something, you have to ask yourself, are there other stories that have a similar structure? Can I find the symbolism in other stories, in other images, in other, and if so, which ones? So that, and then compare them, look at them. Do they share the same structure? Do they have the same, is that what’s happening in it? And so those are the ways to help you. One of the things you want to always avoid is isolating a symbol. And so, for example, saying, reading a story and seeing that there’s a rose and be like, what does this rose mean? And then you start interpreting the rose without taking into context, into account everything else that’s in the story. So then you kind of disconnect from the text and you start interpreting the symbolism of the rose. You always have to interpret symbolism in their context and trace them in contra point to what else is there in the story so that you get that pattern right. I would say that’s the way to do it. Often what happens is not so much that we have wrong interpretation, so some people have really bad interpretation of symbolism, but often, even if you do have a sense of symbolism, is that often you, it’s often that we don’t have enough. And so we interpret a symbol, we interpret a story symbolically, we kind of see the symbolism in it, and sometimes you get it right, you just don’t have it enough. You’re just not seeing deeply enough into it, you’re not seeing the levels. And that happens to us all the time. There are stories that I’ve had insights about, the crucifixion is a good example, which is that I can say things and help people see the symbolism in the crucifixion, but I feel like I’m always missing something. I feel like I’m not at the end of it. There are more levels to perceive that I’m not able to perceive. And that in some ways is probably inevitable, especially for the very, very deep stories. So that’s what I would say is the best way to do it. If you can find other people or other stories that have the same pattern, if you can find it in the hymns and the icons and the hymnography, if you can, you know, usually you’re on the right track, but if you can’t at all, and it’s just kind of completely idiosyncratic, then you’re probably missing something.