What is the word that you would most resist to use to describe yourself, but that you would most want to use? As you read this, I would like to invite you to keep that word in mind…

The great battle, begun thousands of years ago, increased in intensity to white hot a few hundreds of years ago. Finally the invaders have overcome those who resisted, no matter how deeply entrenched they were. To this day there continue to be small enclaves of resistance, but the battle was so greatly lost, and lost so long ago, that those who continue to resist don’t remember why, which makes the loss eminently more tragic, fearful and profound, more painful, and more complete.

We think things are different now, but we actually don’t know how they are different. We have been taught, and have accepted the teaching, that words are mere abstractions of what they represent, and are completely arbitrary conventions. This is easily, scientifically proven with a scanning electron microscope, which can quickly reveal the letters of the word of the name of a substance are not engraved on its molecules, empirical evidence showing there is no necessary reason for using particular words to represent things. We could use any sound and call it a word. Language is simply a social convention, and carries the implication of being a fiction. We just make it up.

Before the great war, words had mysterious, magical power. Names in particular were kept secret, or at least carefully shared, for knowing a true and complete name gave one power over the named. Anciently, prayers, charms, incantations, curses, even salutations and benedictions all commanded respect, even reverence. And once something had been uttered, sometimes even idly, it could not be revoked. The utterance could be altered, influenced, and even used toward a different advantage than was originally intended when spoke, but it could not be completely undone. One of the reasons for this is that all utterance was assumed to be done with intent of the user, and with connection to the earliest stories of creation. This was always so until the war.

Now an utterance can evoke response, but just as quickly can be dropped, with less effect than litter on the street. Now we wonder why the world seems strangely empty when it is obviously full of stuff. The trouble is Objectivism via a “scientific” mentality has not just created objects of everything and everyone, it has introduced an intermediate psychic distance that functions to literally limit the type and quality of what we perceive and express. It’s not that language has lost its power, but now we understand language in a far too literal way. We fail to understand that the ancient power of language was because it operated metaphorically first, and then referred to literal things second. This allowed for the potential interconnection of everything, and particularly if one knew the true names of things and people. Every mythic or folk tale will show this in operation. Now we fail to appreciate what metaphorical thinking actually means, and what it can do, because we have relegated, à la Aristotle and Descartes, metaphor to a simple part of speech with a well defined function. Now we’ve got it backwards: literal referring is primary, metaphor is secondary. And language functions in exactly the opposite way that it did anciently. It serves to disconnect and create semantic barriers between what a thing is, and therefore what it cannot be connected to.

However, the power of language remains, and is available to anyone who dares to use it. But metaphoric language cannot be objectified as a simple tool and demands a different mindset, a different psychic worldview. The first principle of which is a reciprocal relationship. So language allows us to use it, but requires we allow ourselves to be willingly and equally used by it. Uh oh. In a world where control is the operating dynamic, this would be referred to as abnormal, at a minimum. But consider the implications: instead of language being an abstract barrier between ourselves and direct experience, it becomes a bridge, a connecting reality more real than either me or my beloved, which allows, even requires us to honor the holiness of what is created by our connectedness.

From time to time I hear the secret names of plants and animals that live or pass through our garden. But to be honest, it’s extremely difficult to remember those names when I hear them. After that, trying to write or say them is truly impossible,. To do that I would have to know how to control their magic.

But the rose bushes, spiders that live in the rosemary plants, and the garter snake that sometimes shows herself don’t have that problem. I assume that other species didn’t either fight nor lose a similar war. I suppose they fear humans because we are the least connected in the garden, the most foreign.

Now to the name. The word that you would most resist to use to describe yourself, but that you would most want to use. You might want to consider keeping that word to yourself for a while. Obviously, it has power for you. It still acts in that ancient way, metaphorically, to connect you. The second principle of metaphoric communication is the courage to use it.

Well then. Enough of that.

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