Language is a function of the mind, and the mind is not a "feeling" device. Mind "thinks". So language cannot "feel", it can only talk -- about the thinking that Mind is doing about feeling. Thinking about a feeling is not feeling the feeling. No more than eating a restaurant menu, or its press reviews, tastes like eating the meal.
Pure feeling and awareness have been available to us long before we were born. We can "remember" in-the-womb experiences through dreams, meditations or under hypnosis, but we cannot recall them verbally or describe them because we didn't have the language at the time with which to tag them, so they are beyond the reach of the conscious mind. A Languaging function was developed after birth, and inserted somewhere after the perception of a thought or feeling, so that our we can give a verbal expression of that experience and file it away for easy access -- by the Mind. Along with our ability to communicate with others through language, we also developed the same ability to talk to ourselves. The vocabulary and the grammar were, and remain essentially the same. The level of sophistication and authenticity we show when we talk socially is the same level as our self-talk, and vice versa.
While we are languaging, we are in mind. We may be talking out of a feeling, we may be talking about a feeling, but we are not having the feeling, not while our lips are moving. When a genuine feeling wells up that either we want to have, or that overwhelms us -- we stop talking, hadn't you noticed? Languaging can take us to threshold of that place, and can help us take others to a similar threshold in their experience. But in order to allow the experience to be felt, we have to --
shut up.
When someone is mouthing off angrily, they are expressing their feelings, of anger but they are not HAVING them. No transmutation of the feeling can take place. Nothing is going to change. That feeling will come up again and again and again, and that person will keep on mouthing off, ramping up the rhetoric and the volume in a vain attempt to get rid of it. Little does he/she realise that, with every replay, the feeling is being driven deeper and deeper into the wound. If you want to have done with a recurrent feeling that is doing you damage --
give yourself space,
SHUT UP
and
HAVE THE FEELING
Don't be embarrassed. If there's someone with you, ask them to wait while you Have it. Most people will be glad to give you the space, rather than have you dump your feelings onto them.
If we feel into them, words like "Love", "Peace" and "Energy" can help us access the states of being that they symbolise. Without taking a moment to feel into them, however, those same words will suppress and form a resistance to the experience. And this "feeling into" is not something that can be faked. It has to be a genuine, willing enquiry to access and explore the experience.
Choose a word for the context or condition you find yourself in right at this moment. Say the word to your self. Meditate into its essence -- let yourself go into what experience the word symbolises. If images or memories come up, be with them until they leave of their own accord. Let the word lie there in the light of your question -- "What does it feel like, and what do I need to learn in order to experience ...............?"
Give yourself the space to experience (without language) whatever comes up as you stand in your question. If language intervenes, don't resist that -- feel into those words for the experience. Whatever comes up will be exactly what you need.
Allow the words to grow in depth and significance
Day by day.
As you progress, your words will gather real meaning
and the authority of real experience.
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