https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=KWtT9G4_zts
Alright, so Nate Barker says, hey Jonathan, do you have any tips or guidelines for interpreting stories symbolically? That next. Next. I have a grasp on the main symbols that you and Metri talk about, heaven and earth, space and time margin, but I often have trouble interpreting what a story or a part of the scripture is trying to say on a symbolic level. Can we allot the rest of the time for this one? This is a good one. It is a very good one. So there are a few things. So one is the pattern that Metri, for example, sits out in his book is the very powerful, it’s almost geometric, right? It’s geometric, it’s mathematical, it is this kind of pure pattern where if you see the pattern then you start to see it manifest itself in the world, but you also need a kind of experience. So just because you read Metri’s book, you probably won’t have enough to then go and interpret everything. You have to practice. That practice also means filling up the pattern with information, with details. So what you need to do is you need to read a lot of stories. You need to read the Bible, read the Bible, read the stories, know the stories. Do you know the stories? If I ask you, can you tell me the sequence of Genesis? What are the different stories in line? And can you know after that what happens in Exodus and Joshua and the judges? You have a basic story structure in your mind of history, of the Bible, and then you also probably need other stories, especially in our world now. Do you know your fairy tales? Do you know the stories? So there is a kind of work that you have to do that is not just learning the pattern. Then when you know the stories and you have them in your mind, especially if you have them in you, then the connections will start to happen if you’re attentive. You’ll start to see the patterns and you’ll start to see, well, this is a stand-in for that. This is a stand-in for that in that story, especially within Scripture at first. And then slowly your muscle is going to, say your interpretation muscle is going to start to manifest itself. So that to me honestly is something that I think is important. And so you have to be patient and it takes time and it takes, like anything it takes practice and it takes attention. And I think slowly you’ll get there. Yeah, I love some of the guidelines you’ve given in the past about these things too, that like also it should work practically up and down. It can be the element of the story can be description of an internal process. It can be a description of like a family in action, a city, a cosmic pattern. Also looking for things that appear in the story as a condensed pattern that happens in reality. You know, for example, if you’re watching a story and you see someone go to a crossroads and they’re going to sell their soul. Like this is like a fun trope in movies I like. And so that pattern happens slower in real life. If you ever known someone who’s been going after something at the sake of everything else, you can see that they’ll make these incremental decisions. They won’t necessarily sign one document one time and that’s the moment they sold their soul. It’s something that happens over a longer period of time and it gets condensed. And then the other side of it is there’s patterns and stories that are things that happen very quickly in life that are expanded. Like the actual pattern of the story itself. And so if you start to see those things, I think it becomes more helpful to interpret. Yeah, that’s really good advice. That it’s definitely good advice to always when you’re looking at a story, try to apply it at different levels of reality. Like you’ll see it when someone asks a question or sometimes when I’m interpreting a text. You’ll notice that I’ll often give an example like a personal example, a social example, and maybe an analogy with another story to try to kind of move across all these different levels and different instantiations to verify whether or not my intuition about the story is right. If you don’t do that, that’s when you can kind of be led astray, especially with details. People get caught up in details of stories and start to interpret a symbol on its own. But you always that’s another advice too, is you always have to interpret whatever symbol you’re interpreting within the context of the actual story, but then also in analogy with other stories and other levels of reality. So another thing like for a more complex story, one of the things that you were pointing to, Neil, is that you’ll often see it within the story. You’ll see a fractal relationship, which is that the elements of the story will manifest the bigger narrative, the bigger structure of the story. And so if you can start to see that, then you’re probably on a good you’re probably looking in the right direction. I think Tokens on Fairy Stories is a good sort of adjacent work to this idea, the way he’s explaining some of the patterns. I think Token was very careful not to injure the story as he breaks it down, which I think is something. You can see that in the story of Peter Pan, that when he’s been telling these stories about Peter Pan, their dog Nana drives the shadow off because that’s the grounded one trying to keep everybody grounded. And to go on this journey and to kind of break because Peter Pan, especially in the Disney movie, is a really clear like discussion of symbolism and past storytelling in the modern world. So they recognize right away that there’s an injury you have to do to the story to make it participate in the more real, like practical way. And so that’s where Wendy gets the needle and thread and sews the shadow back on his foot. Right. And so but it’s also a warning, like, you know, because in that I think that movie they left the pain out of it. But I mean, in the play, there’s some pain associated with sewing that back on to Peter Pan’s foot. And I think that’s also an important thing to think about that you don’t necessarily have to understand it explicitly to participate in the story to its fullest at all. And sometimes you can actually you can actually make it a little bit like you’re instead of being in the story anymore, you’re looking at a little snow globe you’ve shaken up. So you do give up something when you try to break down the story, too. Yeah, definitely. Because the story will have more than just the analysis that you give of it. But if you’re aware of that, then you can be careful when you’re when you’re doing interpretation. So, yeah, good advice, Neil. Good stuff. I did it. I did it, guys.