When reading your post the thought came to mind of a need to reconcile the objective language and symbolic language when it comes to describing the expected, assumed, actual experience of the world.

For example the idea of Santa Claus being real or not real. The stories are real, the guys dressing up as him each year are real, and more importantly the idea of Santa is real in that it is related to. Does Santa have to objectively exist to be real and only then related to? Our answer to that question say about our experiences being a shame or not.

You might find the book Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski helpful as well as the work of Joseph Campbell.