Language to Inspirit Souls
Hi everyone. I´m not really sure how to introduce this article. It´s mostly about language, where I believe it comes from and some thoughts about how we should use it. Hope you enjoy.
We are far off course as humanity. We are not living in alignment with the structure of the universe. We´ve created identities that are separate from It, living individually (or with other egos) in our own made up universes, instead of collectively on our home - planet earth.
Language has become nothing more than a tool to push ahead our own individual agendas, chasing money, power and status. Our authentic expression hidden under a heavy armour of misunderstood individuality.
On top of that the internet has created a digital world that is completely disembodied from our human nature. Build on the idea of separation and language as just a tool, pulling us deeper into delusion. The Internet is a great place to find support for even the stupidest ideas.
Because of this many children today are growing up without an intrinsic sense for evolution / god / nature, the fundamental way the universe works, instead adapting to the laws of the modern digital world and manifesting the same thing all over again by living the patterns of the modern way.
But all of this happened after we began abusing language as tool for propaganda, advertisement, lies, treason, gossip… Could it be that it all began with this? Even Buckminster Fuller mistook language as (only) the first industrial tool (tool that
couldn´t be developed by one person alone) humans developed. But language is no tool. As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy said:
“Ich erfuhr, dass die Sprache kein Werkzeug des Menschen selbst ist, sondern der weg, auf dem er sich wandelt”.
“I learned that language is not a tool of man himself, but the path on which he transforms.”
There´s a deep need for us to embody the language of transformation he´s talking about. It´s either that or staying stuck collectively.
Lies to get by
The lie, probably the stupidest invention (though necessary) we as humans ever had. Yet most of us lie on the daily basis. We tell ourselves stories, why it´s okay in certain situations to lie. We don´t want to hurt anyone with the truth. But can it be good to lie? I don´t believe so. But it´s the way modern society works.
You can even lie not knowing. Most of us believe many things, never questioning them. Things not based on our experience, but things we´ve read, heard or seen somewhere. In fact there is a War on Sensemaking (I´ve linked a great piece on that) going on.
So why do we do it? The answer probably lies in the state of the world. Your deepest nature is universe, you´re it as an individual with a unique role to play. Yet it´s easier to live “my life” than life, fully connected to the whole and playing your role when it seems like all is to late.
There´s also the economic system which works by separating everyone into individual wallets. I can win (money) without you also winning. In fact I can win the money game, by doing what is bad for the whole or other individuals. This creates an incentive for me to get rich not caring about the externalities, the external effects of what I do whether they are harming anyone or not.
Though there´s another layer to lies. In a way everything I write here is a lie, just a few words making sense to some, non to others. The truth doesn´t lie in the words, but who they make you. Is the story you tell yourself your truth? Or just a way to cope with your insecurity about yourself and life?
Have some “Begeisterung”
There´s a german word I would like to use to go further, so here it is: “Begeisterung”. The german word for “enthusiasm”, “rapture” or “excitement” according to dict.cc. But that just won´t do it for me. Language in it´s original form and purpose is a vessel for Begeisterung. Meaning it transfers the spirit, which means “Geist” in german. The word I like to use in english is inSpiritation.
The easiest way to see this are animals in pairing season. There are people studying them assuming there is specific content they want to convey. In truth they
don´t have anything to say to each other, just something to disclose.
The pairing season brings the animals together. The animals open up to each other. They sing, dance and express to drive out the skin. The love is disarming them. For this they have to melt away their individual weight and being. The noises the animals make are changing them physiologically. The peacock is displaying his courting to be able to mate.
The sounds he makes are the vibration in the physical sense, without it his seed cannot leave his body. The individual can only become part of the whole species and mate by vibrating to the sounds it is making. This is the same for humans, we are still animals. Wherever you separate song and sex you are raping nature. “Sex without song is sin” Rosenstock-Huessy used to say to his students.
So the animals don´t have anything specific to say to each other, as many animal language researchers believe, only the need to inform each other. With the sounds and noises they make each other understand they “leave their individual nature”.
Many people, even scientists, cannot understand this today, since this misunderstanding around language - being a tool to convey information that one has in oneself from one individual to another - has been going on for millennia.
As it turns out language is a medium that influences the speaker himself. What we do, when we speak from our deepest conviction, is the same thing the peacock does. You are vibrating yourself out of your individual self that is trapped under your skin, becoming part of the whole. So speak from Begeisterung to connect to the whole.
“Die Körper von Männern und Weiber sind durch die Haut voneinander getrennt. Der Geist sieht die Menschen ohne Haut. Er lässt sie einander durchdringen. Dazu müssen sie aus der Haut fahren. Und der Akt, kraft dessen wir aus der Haut fahren, ist die Begeisterung.” - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
“The bodies of men and women are separated by their skin. The spirit sees people without skin. It lets them penetrate each other. To do this, they have to come out of their skin. And the act that makes us jump out of the skin is inspiritation.” - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
True names
Giving names is the first thing that Adam does in paradise, after god gives him the assignment to name all things, plants and animals.
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19-20)
This was the first poetic act of the human and with it begins the story of humankind. Giving the true name (not just a label) to unnamed things and beings is one of the most fundamental skills of us humans. Without giving names we can´t relate to the things we know.
By naming things and beings we make them real and part of us, while at the same time dividing the thing we named from the whole, as if it would exist on it´s own.
A necessary sin that allows us to become conscious beings.
Today most of us don´t give the true name anymore. We let language & vocabulary as a tool do the labeling (not naming) for us and just use the pre-made system. So what´s the difference between a true name and a label?
The untrue name / the label unrealizes the thing or being it should name.
We cannot connect to it in the same way as we could with the real name - without losing some realness ourselves.e.g. people calling what they do in bed “Sex”, while in truth what they do is just “fucking”. Basically using each other for pleasure. By naming it “Sex” they kill the possibility to experience the real thing, as they believe they already have it.
The true name can only be given by our own poetic nature, understanding what we name in connection to ourselves and the whole.
e.g. speaking about your true feeling when someone asks you “how are you?” We all have this tendency of just saying “I´m good.” But with that you kill the possibility of your inner poet to truly name your whole experience allowing yourself to connect deeper to everything and everyone around you.
We need a new “Wirklichkeit”
There is a name that the english language is missing. And I haven´t found a good substitute: “Wirklichkeit”. By dictionary you would translate it with “reality”, but we have “Realität” for “reality”, and the word means more than that.
“We” in german means “wir”. So “WIRklichkeit” is the “felt spiritual space / reality”, you create in authentic connection with someone or something else. You´re in a state of reciprocal opening into the unknown while in deep connection and growing. Children are a great example of living in Wirklichkeit. They are connected to the surroundings and people around them and don´t block out it´s impact on them.
Reality on the other hand is simple everything that is and can become a story we tell ourselves as it is everchanging. So Wirklichkeit is something we as humans create consciously and / or unconsciously within reality.
So what´s the big deal? I believe there is a universal human Wirklichkeit, we are all connected to. It´s beyond reality, it´s what we as humans create together - currently unconsciously. It´s the whole mess we are in. It´s the reason we have egos as strong as we have. It´s the reason most of us have given up believing in a better future.
Today our Wirklichkeit is at a point that is unlivable. The easiest way to see this is by looking at the division we created between children and adults. We´ve built a whole different Wirklichkeit for our children, with “children´s literature”, “children´s movies”, “children´s toys”, ... So even our society knows a soul cannot grow up in our Wirklichkeit, as in other cultures children and adults do live together.
What our society celebrates as “logic” and “scientific progress” seems to bring forth the exact opposite of what is good for a soul (a newborn child). No wonder, as both are “dead language”, creating “dead thinking”, creating something that isn´t serving life.
When did we break the world in two?
The beginnings of todays children literature can be found at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before that there were “fables”, but fables weren´t written specifically for children. Fables weren´t even made-up stories. They were true stories based on a different Wirklichkeit than today, in an interconnected universe of myth. Still speaking the language of oneness.
The world was a place to live in together, for both, children and adults. The only difference were the degrees of wisdom and knowledge. Then the modern era began…
Modern intellectualism replaced the old spirituality, as so called objective sciences exterminated even the last remains of any anthropomorphic worldview. Making the world a literally unlivable world. Materialism taking away the meaning behind culture, religion, suffering… Even the human became nothing more than a lump of cells and tissue. The soul officially became an illusion - looked at “objectively.”
Even Newton fell for the same thing stating that we can not and shouldn´t connect scientific truth with religion, for it would become heterodox or put our religious truth into science, for it would become fantasy.
Today this is the normal state of mind for the sane people, dividing his thinking on the one hand and his moral on the other.
“Sie haben die Welt in eine "subjektive" und eine "objektive" auseinandergerissen. Und Sie haben nicht gemerkt, dass sie damit einer totalen Fiktion aufgesessen sind. Sie wollen nicht begreifen, dass es eine Welt ohne menschliches Bewusstsein überhaupt nicht gibt, denn um sich eine solche Welt zu denken, bedarf es zumindest eines menschlichen Bewusstseins, nämlich das Bewusstsein desjenigen, der sich das menschliche Bewusstsein wegdenkt.” - Michael Ende
“They have torn the world apart into a “subjective” and an “objective” one. And they haven't realized that they've fallen for a total fiction. They do not want to understand that a world without human consciousness does not exist at all, because in order to imagine such a world, at least a human consciousness is required, namely the consciousness of the person who imagines human consciousness away.” - Michael Ende