Making language work wonders

Good writers use examples, showing instead of telling, by using verbs.  Storytellers help build community by encouraging members of groups in conflict to share their personal experiences in hopes that they may develop more empathy and compassion.  Good actors have motives, intentions, desires and history; they do not emote: they TOUCH us, we say.

We are moved when we are touched. And what exactly is happening in that moment?  How would you describe your physical experience?

Coaching and training often include the use of visualization, imagining going through the motions, the steps of a future action.  We are told that it is possible to generate wealth or true love by visualizing our dreams.  We have all had experiences of thinking of someone who then materializes in our presence or over the phone or Internet.  We have picked up exactly the right book at the right time.  What is happening here?  It is sometimes referred to as the power of intention or the law of attraction. How would you describe the process, not knowing what the actual mechanism is? How would you describe your felt sense of it? If you had never heard anyone speak of it, what language would you use?

And so, when we move into even trickier “woo-woo” territory, how do we work with it?  Often, we turn to conceptual thinking to try to capture what we may feel is  beyond our capacity to know. We reach for -isms and -ologies in order to simplify.  Terminology is coined to make sharing possible.  If I say U.S. dollar, you have a pretty accurate representation available based on experience.  But when I begin to use the words “soul” or “god”, things get much murkier, and we are likely to reach for ideology to help.  There is a physical distance and difference between the idea and the experience, so how do we learn to communicate our individual experiences of what we each call “god” or “soul” or “dream” or “love” or “spirit” or “higher power”, to name a few of the most powerfully imbued and emotionally charged words in the history of man? How can we make our experiences of these wonders more accessible, and our communication with others less offensive and authoritative and more personal and subjective?

I would like to learn to speak of these experiences that we value so much with a gentler hand, so I ask myself to turn my gaze away from the limitations of the -isms as well as my personal frustration with them, and toward the experiential and practical descriptions and uses of them, hoping  to develop a language and process to reclaim more personal language for what I believe to be our basic nature.