[Dennis Slattery]

Hi Drewie: I love your wrestling with such passion over the constellation of meaning/experience. By putting the slash in I don’t mean to suggest that they are antagonists of one another. If I might share my view: I do not think there is objective meaning but rather imaginal meaning. What something ultimately means may shift and squirt like Proteus when folks try to capture him, as Menelaos and his men do in Book IV of The Odyssey. But tenacity does pay off and they wring from him the data they need to get home to Sparta.

I think that meaning cooks slowly like a good Irish stew; we speak of stewing over something and the metaphor is apt. I am with you, however in learning to enjoy in the present moment what wants to present itself on its terms, not mine. Then I am able to slip the reins of ego and move into that meditative space, even a reverie, over what is before me.

I believe offers us experiences by analogy, obliquely, by indirection; it seems that psyche loves the circuitous and the elliptical rather than the frontal assault. Once I begin to hunt down meaning, I, not the experience, is cooked, actually over-cooked. I am continuing to learn to relax into what is in front of me after a lifetime of living in the past or anticipating the future. I hope this helps and thank you for your insightful posting.