There are many things that make up our personal language. Not being an etymologist or a linguist I can only give my interpretation of this. When we are born it would appear that we are incapable of communicating past the most primal, instinctive expressions; i.e. crying for food, cleaning and/or attention. As far as I can ascertain, these are the primary functional needs of a baby. Past this, the baby is essentially being. Whilst they may be thinking on certain levels, it is not with words as you and I use them. They are still making sense of the world. Refining their wants, interacting with the world around them through trail and error and developing that most sophisticated computer, their mind.
Shift forward to now and you and I have learnt thousands of words and can put them in a reasonable order. But what of communication? Knowing words, how to string them together and speak at people is one thing, knowing how to communicate is another.
One of my biggest assumptions for years was that people thought the same as me. When they didn’t understand me or vice versa, it would make me upset to varying degrees and of course I was the victim. I was the good guy trying to be the right person, it was them not understanding me. I put so much meaning on it such as ‘they don’t like me’; ‘they don’t understand me’; ‘they are not even trying to get me’. Which is fine. I am certainly not making myself wrong about that. However I have had the chance to readdress this and notice as to weather this really offers my life expansion. Thus through realizing that I could get so much more from life by changing what I do, I have chosen to readdress my interpretation and realize that it is just that. Just my set of rules, neither right nor wrong. But to realize that they are just rules gives me the chance to completely change the game that I thought I had to play. The game can change whenever I wish it to. The game I am currently playing involves getting the most out of communicating with people. Rules include being truthful, being compassionate (mainly of the fact that everyone often works from their own set of rules without even realizing it) and being open.
I talked briefly earlier of us refining our wants as babies. We become increasingly sophisticated at this as we get older. Refining our strategies of getting what we want can certainly be seen as a good survival tactic. The main way it survives is through hiding itself from its own creator, you. How does it do this? When it is created and we discover that it works and gets us what we want (in terms of reactions, emotions, material goods etcs), we identify with it so much that it becomes part of our identity; how we see and interact with the world. This could be referred to as our context. Kind of like tinted glasses that we don’t even know we are wearing, they colour the world. If it is pointed out to us that we have glasses on many of us will walk around looking for them, through the same glasses. If we attain a place whereby we can realize that we have these glasses on and take them off then the world does look different, our interaction with others is suddenly unknown. We have no rules. Literally no frame of reference. Empty. It is a place of space. A place of nothingness. A place where you can create anything you want without the guise of your context, your tinted glasses. Although the journey there can appear difficult and possibly even painful, once you get there you realize how incredibly simple it was to get there and how calm and fresh it is to be there.
This is the place of true communication; the communication of awareness. Not coloured by our strategies and interpretations. Eckhart Tolle wrote “Ego and awareness cannot co-exist in the same place”. This makes a lot of sense to me. In this place of open communication ego is spotted as soon as it tries to enter the arena and is calmly observed until it slinks away again. Awareness is so incredibly powerful and yet is nothing in terms of thinking, in terms of language. It just is. Communication requires us to use language and so we use the best words we have available to us in order to share that place, but those words are not that place. This whole entry is like me explaining how a sweet tastes. You can get an idea from my words, but until you have tasted it too, you have not really experienced it. So I invite you to communicate with me. Share this space of calm, this space of nothingness. This space of new and changing rules.
Truly, communicate.
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