Symbols Revisited

Long ago I went on a symbol kick. I wrote extensively about it though not in this blog. The gist of my idea was that we live by symbols, and judge ourselves by them. Recently I read a piece by Alan Watts in which he stated

"..(we) have for generations confused symbol with reality, money with wealth and peronality (or ego) with the actual human organism."

He goes on to discuss this in terms of the "material" world which we are all part of. By material he refers to earth, air, plants, etc. A much different symbol for materialism then arises.

To continue about understanding ourselves and our relation to the material world he says

"For when the individual is defined and felt as the seperate personality or ego, he remains unaware that his actual body is a dancing pattern of energy that simply does not happen by itself. It happens only in concert with myriads of other patterns -- called animals, plants, insect, bacteria, minerals, liquids, and gases. The definition of a person and the normal feeling of "I" do not effectively include these relationships. You say, "I came into this world." You didn't; you came out of it, as a branch from a tree."

All this has put me back on the path of symbols. How we use them to define ourselves away from the true materialism. I need to think this through some more and determine what it really means. In the meantime I believe I will start examining many symbols I have taken for granted as factual, symbols I have tried to live towards, and question how they align with the "material" world. How they align with our interconnectedness with the earth and each other.