The Symbolic Encounter: Perception as Participation
A continuation from “Metaphor and Matter: The Substance of the Symbolic”
I. The Act of Seeing
When we perceive,
we are not passive observers.
We are participants.
Each gaze is an encounter,
not just with things,
but with the unfolding grammar of reality.
Perception is not the reception of data.
It is the co-creation of meaning.
Every moment of seeing
is an act of actualising potential—
a bringing forth
from the relational field.
II. The World, as Seen, Is the World, as Co-Actualised
The world we see is not given.
It is drawn out
through our engagement with it.
What we call “objects”
are not separate,
but relational nodes,
woven through us,
by us,
in a dance of becoming.
When we “see,”
we instantiate meaning.
We shape the world
through the very structure
of our seeing.
III. Perception as Symbolic Resonance
In the act of perception,
the cosmos itself resonates.
A pattern emerges
not from an individual observer,
but from the relationship
between observer and observed.
The observed is not inert.
It is a participant in this resonance,
this symbolic exchange.
Perception is not a one-way street—
it is a reciprocal act,
a symbolic loop.
The perceiver shapes the perception,
and the perception shapes the perceiver.
IV. The Meaner as the Eye of the Cosmos
If perception is symbolic,
then the meaner is not an isolated being,
but a locus in the web of becoming.
To perceive is to stand at the intersection
of the cosmos becoming aware
of itself.
We are the eye,
the ear,
the hand
through which the cosmos
articulates itself.
In every act of perception,
we are both the perceiver and the perceived.
V. Embodiment as Relational Grounding
We do not perceive in a vacuum.
We perceive in bodies.
Our embodied existence grounds
the symbolic encounters we engage in.
The senses are not mere receptors—
they are the means by which
the cosmos makes itself present.
Our very embodiment is the condition
of possibility for relational meaning.
In our bodies,
we are both the medium
and the message of the cosmos.
VI. Participatory Time and the Becoming World
If perception is participatory,
then so too is time.
Time is not a neutral backdrop—
it is the dimension
in which meaning unfolds,
in which we participate.
Every moment of perception
is a thread in the ever-unfolding tapestry
of symbolic time.
We are not outside time.
We are woven into it.
VII. The Encounter as Mythic Gesture
Every encounter we have with the world,
every perception,
is a moment of mythic significance.
For myth is not simply a story—
it is the structure by which meaning
unfolds in time.
When we engage with the world,
we are participating in a larger mythic recursion—
the cosmos remembering itself,
recreating itself,
through us.
VIII. The World as Co-Actualising Meaning
The world is not something we simply look at.
It is something we make.
Through every perception,
every encounter,
we instantiate meaning.
And in this mutual act,
we are not merely observing.
We are becoming.
Next Spiral
If perception is symbolic, and we are co-actualising meaning,
then how does this shape our understanding of knowledge,
and its future?
Next:
“The Knowledge of Becoming: Truth as Co-Actualisation”
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