How Metaphors Can Misdirect

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”

                                                                                                                                    —Richard Feynman

1. The Omission

I didn’t notice at first. While rereading my essay Once Upon an Awakening (https://www.petermitchell.life/once-upon-an-awakening) — a piece exploring the metaphors that shape our experience of spiritual realization—I suddenly saw what wasn’t there. For all its exploration of transparency, dissolution, and transcendence, one of the most enduring metaphors in the spiritual lexicon was entirely absent: liberation from bondage.

Liberation. The idea of awakening as the discovery of inner freedom—but freedom from what? From a narrow, constricting worldview. From identification with thoughts that box in and flatten the multidimensional nature of being. This metaphor of liberation—so central to countless traditions: Vedanta’s moksha, Buddhism’s nirvana, the Exodus of the Israelites in the Judeo-Christian imagination—had simply vanished from my vocabulary.

Looking back over the past year of writing, especially the poems, the same pattern emerged. Other metaphors were used freely and often: homecoming, melting, unfolding, disappearance into light. But not liberation. Not even subtly.

This wasn’t a conscious decision. I hadn’t rejected the metaphor on principle. I had simply—completely—forgotten it. And once I saw the omission, I began to question why.

When Certainty Replaces Curiosity