Words Aren't It
Ways to go beyond them, into knowing
There is a delicious irony in this post, that I hope you will appreciate as much as I am, writing it. The truth is that despite being a writer, and spending so much of my time seeking and crafting the right words, I find the most value in the space beyond words. In meditation that space is called direct experience, somatic presence, pure awareness and other such terms.
It’s the quiet space that emerges in your mind just after you wake up in the morning, and right before you slip into sleep at night. It’s the space that flashes open suddenly when I see birds wheeling in the sky at twilight, or the moon floating high above in an ocean of darkness. It’s the space between one sentence and the next, the space waiting behind the flashing cursor, before the next word flows from my fingers onto the page.
What lives in that space? Space is a mystery, in more ways than we can know. We think it is empty, but it isn’t. Spaciousness is a gift, hiding in plain sight. When we touch it, something settles and opens inside us. Our perception shifts. We see the Whole of things, momentarily. Consciousness awakens and rests at the same time.
I’m not sure if you know what I’m talking about, but if you’d like to bring more space into your life, please read on. (And then, when you’re done, let my words dissolve too, and come back to space.)
sound
The space behind and between sounds is better known as silence, but again, it isn’t totally silent. Maybe quiet is a better word. It’s the space that arises inside when someone says just the right thing to you, that changes your state or shifts your perception. Suddenly you realise, oh, that’s it, and your whole mind stops, takes a moment to rearrange itself around that new understanding.
Or maybe you encounter something truly vast, awesome in the original sense of the word, which is ‘to provoke both wonder and terror’. That experience chases away your inner chatter and reveals you to this space, the quiet inside that is receptive, perceptive and open. Disbelief meets presence and affirms, yes, this really is possible, yes, this really is what the world is. Lately this happens to me when I witness something amazing that someone has done, like surfing this wave, or freediving, or surviving some incredible hardship and turning that experience into meaning and beauty.
This is the space that comes alive in the magical pause at the end of a concert, before the applause begins; or in the resonance of a room as a piece of music fades away. My current favourite way to find it is to listen to the sound of temple bells and singing bowls. There is actually a meditation technique that involves following sound into silence, and resting your mind there:
The ear that is tuned by rapt listening Learns to hear the song of creation. First like a hand bell, Then subtler, like a flute, Subtler still as a stringed instrument, Eventually as the buzz of a bee. Entering this current of sound, The Listening One Forgets the external world, becomes Absorbed into the internal sound, Then absorbed in vastness, Like the song of the stars as they shine. —Radiance Sutras 15
Often when you drop into this space, something emerges out of it that tells you what to do, or which way to move forward. The more you go beyond words, the more you find that sound is a form of communication, as is silence. Something is being said, or revealed, to you, in the sound of the birds singing outside your window, in the timbre of your friend’s voice, in the honking and revving of the cars on the street and the fragments of conversation drifting out of your neighbor’s window. Sound is frequency, the vibration that all of life shares, and you can learn to tune into it anywhere, and receive its message. (For more about meditating with sound and music, check out this post I wrote last year.)
In Buddhism there is a saying that goes: in the beginning, the student can hear the teaching, or the truth, (the dharma) only from the master. Later, she starts to hear it from others around her too (meaning she sees its truth reflected in more and more places). And finally, she hears the dharma everywhere, no matter where she goes or who she is listening to.1 This is because the dharma is resounding everywhere, endlessly—it is the nature of the universe to proclaim itself over and over, after all.
vision
As all artists know, there is a language of light and shadow, texture and pattern. In the words of Edward Hopper,
If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.
Something more, or else, is communicated through the way that things appear. And even though appearances are deceptive, they are also part of reality, and the way reality chooses to manifest. There is a meaning in the yellowness of the frangipani flowers that fall outside my bedroom window, in the greyness of the clouds before a storm, in the look in a stranger’s eyes on the train. Something is shared and understood by the colours and patterns we wear, the spaces we construct and choose to inhabit.
The secret to understanding the language of vision is to connect your heart to your eyes, your feeling self to your perceiving self. What do you feel when you see? Where does it land in your body? Where does it awaken sensation, or emotion, or the urge to move? In order to make this connection, many of us need to desensitise, or at least find some quiet, empty space in which to be for a while before we begin to see again.2 We need to drop the tendency to verbalise and label everything, and trust that there is a way to know behind and beyond words. And we need to remember that it is OK to not feel anything when you see something. Not everything will resonate with you. As my yoga nidra teacher used to say, even the absence of experience is an experience. But the more you start to see in this way, the more things will touch you.
What do you see?
A few of Hopper’s paintings, since I quoted him above:
movement and sensation
Physicality is one of our best antidotes to the overwhelm of language. You can escape out of your head into your body when you take a breath and feel the air on your skin, the stretch of your lungs, the softening of your shoulders. Space emerges as you sense the rhythm of your heartbeat, the push and pull of your muscles, the weight of your body on the ground. Who is the one becoming aware of all this?
The reason that movement becomes addictive is not only because it feels good to the body, but because it rests the conceptual mind. It’s a break from the planning and strategizing, the evaluating and deciding—a time to just be, do, to create and act directly, and see what happens. In movement and sensation we discover other ways of knowing, like intuition, instinct, experimentation, muscle memory, creative or lateral thinking, organic and somatic intelligence. (More on these in the next post.)
We know ourselves and others through movement and perception. This is why there is such a fascination with the study of body language—we recognize that something is being communicated through the way a person gestures, sits or stands, moves around or is still. But the irony is we can only know what is being communicated at the nonverbal, or preverbal, level: words aren’t it. When we try to put that intangible thing into words, it loses some of its power and can even start to sound cheap or trite.
When I was training in Laban movement, we learned an entire language (of words) to describe movement: light, strong, Inner/Outer, growing, advancing, scattering, sustained, direct, gliding, flicking, jabbing…3 But when it actually came to the observation practice, we were told to let go of all the concepts, just observe and see what you notice. Don’t try to stick the concepts on to the movement of the person. Instead, let the person’s movement communicate itself to you—and later you can find words for it if you want. It was a reminder that the Whole of what you perceive will always be more than what you can state in words.
words and experience
I want to end with a brief re-orientation on the value of words and space. The modern world prizes verbal and linguistic cognition above all other forms of knowing.4 It’s what we learn at school and at work, and for some people it becomes the way they relate to others, to themselves, to everything. But as I said in the title of this post, words aren’t it. They aren’t it in the sense of being the thing we’re looking for, as well as in the sense of being all, being everything. Language is limited, a poor yet mighty substitute for the richness of experience and the openness of awareness. When we conflate words and experience, we feel hollow, that something has been turned upside down and inside out within us; because words are meant to point to experience, to open reality up. They are not a substitute for it.
I’ve noticed that what is hardest to articulate is often also the most powerful, the most meaningful. It’s the words that come from space and point back to space that touch people. Such words are fresh, they feel real and authentic, they are unique to the one speaking them. They are not copied-and-pasted, imitated or otherwise cobbled together from other people’s ideas. We find such words in the simplest of moments, the most intimate of conversations. The further away you get from yourself, the less words make sense.
Sometimes I feel inundated by words. There is a literal sense of heaviness in my head, behind my eyes and around my temples. When that happens, I enter one of the avenues I shared above to bring myself out of that tangle and into space again. It’s a way of starting over, fresh. That shift can happen in an instant, a breath.
true knowledge
The spiritual, mystical and artistic traditions of the world regard nonverbal knowledge as true knowledge. In the Zen tradition, the famous image used (and painted above) is that language and concepts are ‘fingers pointing to the moon’. The moon is reality, not to be confused with the path that indicates it. Words aren’t it.
What you know by being and doing—that knowledge is priceless and unitary. No one else can have, or will ever have, that knowledge. Only you, in this form and this moment, have access to it. And only you can communicate it, which you do by being the way you are, in your embodiment and your presence.
This knowing beyond words is the way that we understand music, the language of sound. It’s the reason that art and beauty move us inside. It’s what we become aware of when we catch a glimpse into another being’s heart. It’s the way we feel when we’re with animals, children, or in nature. It’s how our bodies move together and apart without thinking, in the ceaseless rhythms of dance, breath and life. What more is there? This is it.
If you enjoyed this post, or any of my writing, please share it with friends, stick around by subscribing, and consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you can. I appreciate you being here, more than you know.
I plan to follow this post up with another one about different ways of knowing (intuition, instinct, experimentation, somatic intelligence and more). In the meantime, let me know in the comments below your favourite ways to slip behind the veil of words into what lies beyond…
I heard this from one of my teachers, but haven’t been able to find the source despite much searching. If anyone knows where this is from, or if it is referenced anywhere, please let me know.
A beautiful book that goes deeper into this is The Zen of Creativity by John Daido Loori.
All of these are technical terms for specific types or aspects of human movement. The beauty of the Laban/Bartenieff movement system is that it uses simple, ordinary words that make sense to regular people in order to distill and communicate the essence of movement, which is among the most complex and sophisticated of human activities.
In my view, it is not knowledge that matters so much as perception (or awareness). Then again, I may be biased by all my years of meditation ;)
Some music and the sounds of nature like wind or water take me in to a realm beyond words.
Thanks for the words, Vaishali.
What do you mean "...reality chooses to manifest.'?