Q: Can you explain the influence language has on our perception of reality as spiritual beings?
When we’re born it’s with total awareness. The full connection to the All–That-Is is still intact. When you look into a newborn’s eyes, you can see the ancientness of the soul. Because that infant is still completely connected.
Then, in order for us to live within the families and cultures into which we’re born, we need a unifying, shared reality. A new program gets layered on. The cultural beliefs are primarily passed on through language.
Even though as soon as we take on language the remembering for most is quickly forgotten, there is still the seed of full remembering. But because it’s now gone dormant, there’s hardly any awareness that this seed exists. But there’s a vague sense. A yearning. And this is where culture quickly steps up to fill in the so-called blanks.
Many are trained through culture to believe that the seed exists outside of them. Though there are those lucky few who remember that this seed is within, and they set themselves on the path to enlightenment. Because enlightenment is the return home to full remembering, full awareness..
Q: Why doesn’t the need for connection to the All-That-Is overpower all the cultural forces?
If a baby was, from the beginning, taught how to remember, what to remember, why to remember, then that would not be the case.
Q: How can that be taught?
Each of these questions could have volumes written about them. Briefly, it can be taught energetically. It can be taught in meditation. In experiencing a direct connection with nature as frequently as possible.
It’s not so much that it needs to be taught as much as it needs to be prevented from closing down. The mere act of language closes everything down to the one right answer. The word “hammer” determines that this object can only be a hammer. It can be nothing else. And so on. As soon as language anchors energy into an object, it automatically limits the beingness to that three-dimensional awareness.
Q: So, should we try to stop talking and communicating as much as we do?
This is the purpose of meditation. Once language is given, the mind loses its natural ability to be silent. Once language is installed, even if one is not speaking out loud, one’s mind is speaking incessantly. There is no room for the awareness of anything greater to enter, because the sound symbol and the image symbol overtake everything. It creates such a dense reality, there is no room to experience anything else.
One of the strongest ways to help young children stay connected is to teach them meditation and to have them spend as much time in nature as possible. Work with them to learn and understand energy. What it is, how it moves, what it does. How it is not separate. That’s how you help a being stay remembering.
But once that ship has sailed, getting it back to that port becomes almost impossible. It will land at many ports on its journey. But it would be incredibly rare for it to make it back to its original port. Because now other influences are in play. And the cultural values that shape and influence and decide one’s reality, based on what that culture values, have already been installed.
All human beings are looking for ways to identify within themselves who they are. Very often for a spiritual person, it is framed as, “What is my purpose? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?” But from a cultural perspective, the questions become “How can I be a good son or daughter? How can I be a good member of the community? Father or mother? Friend? How can I be part of the capitalist system? To make an income to provide for the people I care about? To obtain those items which seem to be necessary? All these questions are determined by that culture and time and place.
The cultural setup is, in fact, arbitrary with the intended result being control. And yet it’s seldom recognized as that because it all seems as essential as breathing. That’s because many of the underpinnings of the cultural setup are connected to fear. Fear of being liked, fear of being accepted, fear of not being successful, etc. At its root, it’s fear of extinction. If I am not part of the culture, how do I know who I am or what my place is? How do I survive without what that culture provides? If I have no education, job, or money, I become homeless and a social pariah. And so on and so on. Fear is pervasive as a means of control in all cultures. Because culture becomes its own organism as a group entity, with its own power. It survives at the sacrifice of the individual. The greatest power always wins.
The core problem inherent in language is that, by its very nature, it separates us from reality.
There is reality. And then there is the image symbol for the reality. Once removed. And then there is the sound symbol for the image symbol for the reality. Twice removed. Then there is the line symbol for the sound symbol for the image symbol of the reality. Three times removed. It is a reflection of .a reflection of a reflection. How can one hope to know what the original face is?
Language can be used to create any reality, any emotion, any state of being. It is one of the most powerful energies in human existence. It can start a war. It can stop a war. One can change realities—seeming realities— simply with words and yet people are so careless with how they use language. Because they don’t think about how it is used. The irony is that language is often used to silence. Not to give voice.
Language is used to control the stage and the play on the stage. To convince everyone that this is the reality—this stage, this play, these players. Only by breaking free of language, can one remember that it is a stage with a play and players. Without learning how to free oneself from the shackles of language, one can never stop acting as a player. One can never get out of the play.
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