"twisting reality into words"

You know there is something that you must pay attention to when the words “pop” for you, such as the title of this post did for me. I read these words while perusing some blogs that I don’t follow, finding the links on other blogs that I do follow. This particular quote comes from a blog called: The Dalai Grandma. If I understood the context in which she was writing this she was saying that she felt like she kept “twisting reality into words” instead of just living reality.

I’ve been feeling this lately myself, although not for the same reasons. I have noticed that almost everything I experience I reference back to writing a blog post. In the middle of the experience I am thinking about how I’m going to write the post! The experience immediately becomes words, and I fall out of the experience itself. I fall out of being in the moment, not giving myself the time to just settle and be *in* the experience. I immediately reach for the pen and paper, trying to twist reality into words, instead of just being in the reality of the immediate experience. I love to write, but it seems the words might be getting in the way of fully experiencing Life directly!

In the ‘non-dual/advaita community’ there also seems to be this “twisting [R]eality into words”, in a little different context. When I read the plethora of the non-dual blogs that are out there, there seems to be a conundrum of words being used in trying to express the Wordless… And I have noticed that some of these die-hard non-dual folk also have a need to correct other people’s words; questioning other people’s direct experience of the Wordless and Inexpressible – as if some of us aren’t using the “right” words. Instead of seeing the *essence* of the words being used, the heart of what is being expressed, the words themselves are focused on. Since when do words become the indicators of so-called “enlightenment” – or measurements of one’s level of “non-dual awareness.” Now there’s another twisting of Reality into words. What *is* “non-dual awareness” anyway? Is there such a thing as “dual awareness”? Just asking… I thought there was just Awareness – just BEingness. And isn’t this creating duality by “twisting Reality into words”? - creating distinctions, differences - creating “other” (which of course I realize I’m doing here. :) And isn’t this need for word games, and to correct others’ words, the “me” that they claim does not exist? Oh dear… You can see the rabbit holes that we can fall into with words…

Rupert Spira, a well known non-dual teacher, added some clarity for me when I read an excerpt of his book on line, called The Transparency of Things: “Do the words themselves affect [Awareness]? Does it matter to [Awareness] what is said in the words? Does the content of each experience affect the awareness in which it appears? Every experience only expresses Awareness… Awareness is the open Unknowingness on which every experience is written. This open Unknowningness, the source, the substance and destiny of all experience is" [all there is.] Yes!

And then I came across this wonderful quote, which seems to sum it all up. It is from a blog called The Vibrant Heart.

“Spiritual concepts and non-dual language cannot…penetrate the protective walls around the heart. [Words] are like mental arrows storming the castle walls of the ego-mind that just bounce back. Love is the great dissolving agent... It breaks the trance of the mind…”

And so, I’m going to be more aware of how I twist reality/Reality into words, of how I jump into words to describe my experience, reaching for the pen, instead of deeply listening to, and sitting with Reality, the Essence of Life… And when my mind moves to correct someone else’s expression, I will try to remember that every expression is Love expressing ItSelf in all ITs forms of expression… Love just living reality…

~*~