Plato gets it right about the cave! but didn't know about oompaloompas

Oompaloompas come from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which wasn't written down in ancient Athens by a man called Plato

Through the words of Socrates, Plato paints a graphic picture of man stuck in a cave facing one way towards a sort of early cinema.  There wasn't a cinema in Socrates Athens, so in his cave the images at the front are carried along on sticks by something or somebody that I see in my mind as a bit like an oompaloompa.  We, the watchers, see the objects and name them as they go by not realising that there is much much more than we can see, there is a great big world outside the cave with flowers and birds and sky and everything just perfect.  But in our seat, facing forwards, we are condemned to a repeating performance of objects which we associate with different feelings and until we get really really bored of their repetitive nature we are transfixed.

This all sounds a bit distant and of course because we walk around and get in cars and aeroplanes and talk on telephones or even Skype to one another we think this refers to a bygone age whereas we/I am free.

However, try a bit of disturbed meditation and you will see like me that the mind is just like a mechanical cinema screen which has various favourite objects giving rise to every sort of emotion, there is the acquisitive emotion where we replace old objects with new and feel better…there is every sort of emotion relating to people; affection, animosity, admiration, denigration, jealousy…there are future plans and a mixed bag of memories giving rise to both feelings of success and feelings of failure, feelings of happiness and feelings of shame.    And then, you/I wake up to what is going up and feel our way back to the peace we really seek, we listen to our mantra, we try to stay steady but then those old oompaloompas go back into the box and bring out all the old favourites.  This is not a good way to spend half an hour but it shows that Plato knew what he was talking about even if his carriers weren't called oompaloompas.

Oompaloompas come from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which wasn't written down in ancient Athens by a man called Plato