The Language Demon Robs You With its Gift

All words, how ever profound, are nothing more than vibrations crated by our vocal chords. They are communication, nothing more. They are meant to communicate the intent of our hearts. We have created the trap of language, the trap of allowing ownership of words. Words are nothing more than a translation of thought and how can anyone own that? I can think of the copyrighted word Coke and there isn’t anything they can do about it. I think it all I want.

For this rant, essay, conversation with myself or what ever you’d like to call it, it would be best to begin with an explanation of impermanence and how I understand it. I want you to know where I am coming from. Nothing is permanent, not one single thing.  If you doubt this, go back to your home town, the place where you lived when you were eleven years old and see if it looks anything like you remember it. The world is nothing like it was in the time of Cesar. Nothing is permanent. You could point to artifacts in the museum and I’d say “give it time, it’ll fade too”. The point of this is to illustrate the pointlessness of clinging to things and those things in this talk are words. You can copyright the word, but you don’t own it. You may have some temporary legal action upon it, but give it time, it’ll fade.

Now I’m not talking a bout life being pointless, rather I’m trying to shift us a different direction. We use our words to hurt, entrap, protect, attract, coerce, offend, anger… we use our words to manipulate life around us. We often use our words in this manipulation to validate ourselves, to prove our existence. We hold up the words of others to define who we are. We wage wars based on the words that we’ve held as our definition because if they are attacked, so are we. I feel it would be best if we understood that words are just words and the matter at hand is our intent, our heart, not the vibrations of sound.

My good friend, my spiritual Sister, had on her refrigerator a collection of words on little magnetic pieces. We all took turns making funny sentences or phrases. I wrote one, it just popped into my head, but it would consume my thoughts for some time after. I don’t own these words, I didn’t “craft” them, they popped into my head and I placed them on her fridge. “The language demon robs you with its gift”.  I have found this to be true. As soon as I lock a beautiful thought into words describing it I lessen it’s innate beauty because mine was only one perception of a concept which is open and available to all people, all perspectives. It exists before words, before thought. When I capture it with my words and put it on display for all to see they can’t experience its true beauty, only the diorama of my perspective.

So when we come to religious texts we experience the same dynamic. They wrote the words from their own perspective. Whether they were inspired by Jesus, Guatnam Buddha or any other holy figure, they are only words and simply describe a perspective. Even if they were written by that holy person themselves, they are still words; still the mental currency of the ignorant.  I say ignorant because if we weren’t ignorant of this we’d all be holy and we wouldn’t be here. We cannot be so full of ourselves and our own ego as to think that the divine would sound anything like our speech. We cannot be so egotistic as to believe that only those who speak the same language it was written in were meant to have it, were somehow more holy or special. We have to understand and acknowledge that God is pronounced differently in every language. It is the perspective of that person who heard it. Even if God him/herself spoke their name to a person it would be the name that person, in their ignorance, could understand.

If we could just realize what our words are, what language actually is. They’re our innate connection to each other. They aren’t under attack; it’s just someone trying to express themselves in a manner we’ve all been taught. Remove your attachment to your words so you can fully understand, without bias, when others may use them. In this way you sacrifice yourself for your fellow human beings expression. In this way you’re an empty cup waiting to be filled with their knowledge. In this way there is nothing between you and their expression and you will know them, and yourself, better for it. Remove your intent from words like freeing them from a prison.

I believe in a concept, a dynamic, I can only express as love. I do not paint the word “love” with my understanding when someone else uses it. I do not trap them in my definitions. I listen to hear what they are saying and I look for it in the skies of my beliefs which float endlessly. So hold dear the intent of your heart and watch for it always in the words of your brothers and sisters. Remove the fish-hooks from your transmission so others can experience them with a truly open heart and mind. Do not cheapen those words which reflect your heart by using them as a shield, or worse, as a weapon.

Namaste