Pure Mind Over Matter
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
"In the beginning was the word…"
—Bible: John 1:10
The English language is solid--a language of matter. It affects how we think and believe. It expresses a view of the world as made up of many separate and independent things. If this is your original language, then this shaped your view of the world and of yourself. Remember those voices from the past we talked about letting go of earlier? Well, even deeper than those voices is the impact of language itself. English is a language of naming things and establishing categories. Most European languages originate from the same language family, and that is why translation is so easy. Yet when you begin to learn about other languages, those of earth-based cultures, you hear something very different. Many traditional indigenous North Americans understand that vocalization is a living alchemical process. The vibrations of sound create the world of form (this is a common idea within almost every spiritual system in the world). Many of the languages of indigenous North America are direct expression of this reality. Rather than being noun-based (naming and categorizing), these languages tend to have words which express relationship. They are more focused in the now, and the power of the voice is respected, as there is an inherent awareness that every utterance lives and has an effect on the whole.
In Lighting The Seventh Fire: The Spiritual Ways, Healing, And Science Of The Native American (1994), written by F. David Peat, in chapter 9, entitled "Language: The Sacred Vibrations", Peat tells us:
"When people sit in a circle ‘popping wind’—as the Mic Maqs say—they are creating physical vibrations within the universe, and these vibrations evoke and bring into direct manifestation other vibrations, powers or energies. Speaking is a positive action that can bring about change, for what is said can come into actuality."
So the fluid nature of reality is understood directly: Language is a living, creative process, not merely an expression of thought or a way to categorize and be separate from. If you were born into the English language, you had a handicap to begin with, in that these realities of sound, language and vocal expression were hidden from view, under the surface, relegated to the subconscious, encoded in esoteric teachings. This is part of the reason we are so drawn to the teachings of Native America.
Peat goes on to comment on the lack of categories and the emphasis on relationships in Native American language/thought processes:
"The concept of fish does not exist in the Algonquin language. The Cree do not have a word in their own language that corresponds to our fish, rather they refer to the processes of animation that take place in rivers and lakes. Likewise, they do not have a concept of 'bone,' instead they use words that refer to specific animals, or to parts of an animal's body, or to something that is in a medicine bag... the Hopi worldview does not contain a sense of movement or advancement of time. Rather, there is a notion of process whereby the manifesting enters the manifest, and at the edge of this process. The Hopi language is able to talk about things that are on the verge of coming into manifestation."
In the book House Of Shattering Light: Life As An American Indian Mystic (2003) by Joseph Rael, Rael describes the contrast between his native language of Tiwa, and the later acquired English language:
“Tiwa words convey a dynamically unfolding reality that is constantly in process… when I translate Tiwa into English, what I have to do is add the nouns. I have to turn action in to nouns. I have to turn relationships into nouns. I have to do that because I am now communicating with people who have nouns and pronouns in their language… Tiwa language has no nouns or pronouns, so at Picuris things don't exist as concrete, distinct objects. Everything is a motion and is seen in its relationship to other motions.
"For instance, a cup is tii, but tii likewise means crystallized awareness, or awareness that is in the process of crystallizing and de-crystallizing. That cup is not fixed. In Tiwa it is a continual unfolding of tii, and tii means “the essence of the power of crystallization that is influencing awareness" and that awareness is the awareness of holding something in, like a spoon, or like tea or coffee. That coffee or tea that is in the cup is not static, either, but it's also in continuous motion. Of course, tii is not a noun or a pronoun, but a verb; therefore it means not a cup but a cupping, the holding of energy in the process of cupping, and it is cupping another energy that is in the process of being coffee. Everything is a process in relationship with another process."
Another beautiful example of this is the Native American understanding that the vibration of a song existed before the world of form, and that the singing of it is the channeling of a living spirit through the voice. Rather than say, “She sang a song,” one might say "The song moved into her, the song sang her."
Imagine your original language expressing such fluid realities. How would your view of yourself and your environment be different? When we become quiet, and bring our attention to the energetic flow we are riding, we understand beyond the limitations of our language. We enter pure mind, the matrix of creation, where sound really matters. Here is something from Tolle on the subject: "Many expressions that are in common usage, and sometimes the structure of language itself, reveal the fact that people don't know who they are. You say: 'He lost his life' or 'my life,' as if life were something that you can possess or lose. The truth is: you don't have a life, you are life. The One Life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe, and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy."
Can you sense deep within that you already know that? Can you sense that you already are that?