What About Words?
The following is an adaptation of a foreword that I originally wrote for Oak Mountain’s indispensable book: What In The Word?
Our world is not simply just the way it is. Our felt-sense understanding brings real creative energy to the transformative pulse of Creation. We enliven stories through our meaning-making capacities, breathe life with our words, and dance with change through momentary form.
The Tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the Origin
of all particular things.
Free from desire, the mystery is realised.
Caught in desire, there are only manifestations.
- Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu is credited with transmitting the perennial wisdom of Tao into writing nearly 2500 years ago. The first verse of his poetic exploration (as I just mentioned) is curious indeed. How can one begin to write or speak about the Great Mystery that nurtures the creative force of Life, other than to first state the most obvious fundamental Truth: that we cannot capture the mysterious through the use of our intellect. In fact, that is the nature of mystery; it is not malleable to the institutions of categorisation and standardisation; it is not easily bent into submission by human desire.
Being a mystery, the complex order of Creation is quite different from the order that we impose through the rules of our syntax and use of our grammar (which are relatively simple and biassed). So it is that when we attempt to use the order of our words to explain life’s mysteries we find it nearly as impossible as drinking water with a fork.
And yet, there is an inherent quality held within the bone marrow of humanity that allows for the possibility of real integrated meaning-making. The animating spirit of our humanity draws us into the aliveness of earth, while our hearts unwaveringly awaken us to the possibilities that emerge from our dance of Life. Through our embodiment we are given direct access to the spontaneous Truth of the living moment. We dance and sing our humanness out into the world with our body and our voice. Together we (re)generate meaning; stories come alive through us.
Before our intellect has the chance to distort reality (for our brains are excellent at this), our heart touches upon the Truth and is offered the enriching opportunity to be changed by a depth of meaning that the intellect can only begin to orient around. The heart’s capacity to exchange meaningful felt-sense information with the spontaneous, living experience of Now is ultimately that which directs an integrated being toward ever wholesome communion with Life. And out of the most wholesome of communions arises the most holistic and worthy stories to live by, woven with words, infused with the breath of Life. Such stories guide both intellect and culture further into the subtleties of reality, where a wellspring of ripe reflection resides. As a result, our trust deepens for our own capacity to hear the Truth and speak valuable meaning into the world.
For as Oak so vividly explains,
Speaking without meaning or value erodes
any potential for genuine trust in communication . .
. . trust, like truth and value, are rooted in
the living instantiations of any given speech.
As we communicate with the living earth (including ourselves, our fellow human beings, and our more-than-human kin), whether through story or conversation, we are bestowed the responsibility of ensouling our speech and language with Truth so that we may carry with us — through the winding path of life, entrusted by our community — an ethos of integrity and impeccability. And over time, it becomes painfully obvious that one of the most important skills to cultivate along the path is the ability to listen.
For as Oak reminds us,
Remember, we are transformed
less by what we say,
and more by what we hear.
Are we not here to be transformed? To be filled up by the fullness of Life and be created anew moment to moment? To hear the depth of our shared beingness, which co-arises and co-creates with the breadth of the Kosmos, and respond with reverence and respect for the betterment of All? (Questions best answered by listening in full, hearing even that which has gone unsaid.)
Our ultimate response to the moment comes through our bodies, our voice, our speech and our language, and through our capacity to align with the truthfulness of Now. Such alignment may only arrive through real listening. That kind of full body openness that hears (and feels) the cry of an eagle and responds with an alertness, turning toward the sky, tracking magnificence, spreading arms and smiling mouth, and for a moment sensing that liftoff and flight is a real possibility. That kind of full body awareness that hears (and feels) the powerful sharing of a mother at a protest for women’s rights, who just two days before had her own daughter violently murdered simply because she let her hair flow in public, where an embodied and inspired upsurge of energy leads to action-oriented steps toward empowering and protecting the rights of all women, everywhere. That kind of full body receiving that hears (and feels) the joyous primal upwelling of laughter from a new born baby, and becomes immediately awakened to the possibilities of true love, true appreciation, true abundance.
To be taken up and transformed by the moment, to be stirred into responding to Now in a Good Way, we must trust the intelligence of Life. Our embodied listening allows others to feel that we are here and willing. That we trust there is something to learn and live into. That we hold an intention of integrity, inviting the world to freely participate with us. For when others give us the gift of their listening, we have the blessed opportunity to strengthen the foundations of communication and deepen the roots of our shared stories.
Oak suggests that,
To live with integrity is the means
by which we justify the trust that others
have bestowed upon us.
I would suggest further that there is a trust bestowed upon our entire species, as living children of earth and lineage holders of the creative force of Life. This inherited trust calls us toward greater awareness; it amplifies our need to unearth the latent powers of our communication, to listen in fullness and respond in like; it clarifies our motive for greater integrity. To choose such a path is to claim responsibility for this life; a claim necessitating essential self-and-other-empowerment. An initiation of mythic proportions: to live and speak the Truth; to spread the Good Word.
Through sharing our stories with heart, we have the opportunity to metamorphose, to transform into something different. We are able to more fully integrate the narrative nature of our reality. We begin to awaken to a wholeness that is so much greater than the parts. We self-organise with a higher definition of honesty and Truth. But we must emphasise our care and intention for our voice and our words so that we can continuously unearth a hidden depth of awareness to guide our precision. Each time we tell our story in this way, there is an opportunity for our own trust in the process to be (re)claimed in a new way. Each time, we deepen a little more into our truth.
For as Oak precisely states,
To live truthfully is to sweeten
the lives of those you encounter,
and likely those not yet born.