Beyond Language

Warning: This blog entry must include a number of internal contradictions as it attempts to talk about limitations of language using the very limited and limiting tool.

When I experienced a sudden intense suffering about three years ago, the shell of my ego must have cracked open, at least partially. In retrospect, I must have started to see a little light of my soul for the first time that had been covered by my ego. Then I realized suddently that I had been trapped in my own egoic mind.

I also came to realize gradually that language is not only a limited tool but also limits us as the guard of this mind-made prison. It didn't take me long to lose my interest in linguistics though I had spent about 30 years occupying myself with it professionally. Since then I've been trying to go beyond language.

Most of us must be prisoners of our own mind-made prison to a greater or lesser extent, and many of us end our lives without even become aware of this very fact. Our problem is worse when we are unaware of it. I have been trying in vain to explain to my fellow cavemen with the help of this same prison guard that there seems to a vast world that transcends language though I have only had some brief glimpses of it.

Even after realizing my status as such a prisoner and seeing the possibility of liberating myself from it of my own free will, I haven't been fully successful to take advantage of this possibility as this prison guard called language is extremely cunning.

One of the most cunning tactics of language, hence the egoic mind is labeling. It loves to label other people and peoples. Paradoxically, the more we label them, the more we distance ourselves from their presence, hence their very essence. The ego seems to love separation. With the help of its faithful servant called language it separate itself from other beings. This separation is an illusion.

Recently I'm also realizing that even mindfulness is limited and limiting. It divides our being into the subject and the object - separation again. I've already stopped practicing mindfulness meditation and switched to breathing meditation in order to go beyond language. I still seem to have a long way to go to liberate myself from my mind-made prison with a cunning guard called language.

Next 16 of the 60 Lessons in the Marketing Seminar by Seth Godin

This is a sequel to First 10 of the 60 Lessons in the Marketing Seminar by Seth Godin. Here are my answers to the prompts from two of the lessons in Lessons 11-26:

Status Roles and Tension

One of the most important messages I would like to deliver through my practice of Jewish life coaching as well as my teaching of Jewish spirituality, on which this practice is based, is the importance of the awareness that status of any kind is an illusion of the individual and collective egos and we have to go beyond it to have a meaningful life true to our higher self. I'm fully aware that this message won't be understood except by a small number of people.

When I was still a prisoner of my own egoic mind, I was also trapped in this illusion. Since I became aware of this, I have been trying to tame my ego. I have absolutely no intension of manipulating my potential clients with this illusion.

Please allow me to quote one passage about the higher self from a new book by Wayne Dyer entitled The Power of Awakening, which I happened to read yesterday:

Your ego tells you that you have to compete and consume. In order to prove yourself, you must have more toys. You need to accumulate more. You must achieve more. Your ego tells you that how good your body looks and how you smell and how much jewelry you have is important. There is a whole world of egos dealing with egos out there, everybody telling everybody how important they are. But you don't have to give in to that! You don't have to say, "Yes, but you should have heard what I did! Let me tell you.

The less self-absorbed you are, the more freedom you have. When you're so hung up on everything having to be a certain way, your freedom is taken away from you. The ego promotes that sort of attachment, while the higher self is unattached to it.

It can be helpful to think of the ego like a shadow: When you go out into the light, you cast a shadow. The shadow, like your ego, is not real. You can't get hold of it. It's an illusion. Your higher self, of course, is what is real. It's wonderful to know your real self because then you don't live with the illusory shadow, which is always changing.

Similarly, you look at this packaging you're in, and every gray hair and wrinkle that appears is like a little notification that reminds you of your death. The ego wants you to believe that your body is where you should attach your primary identification. For the ego, the most embarrassing event in the world is death. But you know you are not this body; you are that which is observing it. Your real self is eternal and changeless.

The most fundemental tension in our life is between our ego and our higher self. We have to tame our ego before it tames our higher self.

Existential Needs vs. Dreams and Desires

The first and most vivid image of my target clientele - prisoners of their own egoic mind - that comes into my mind is that of cavemen in Plato's famous (and my favorite) allegory of the cave.

I myself am a former caveman. Until I had the luck to take a glimpse of the world outside the cave through a crack that suddenly opened by some unexpected suffering, which I came to consider "Divine grace" later, I never imagined that another world existed. Somehow I've successfully escaped from this cave and started enjoying a totally different life that is also aligned with my soul purpose.

Though I've already left the cave, I still keep visiting it without entering it and whispering to those who come with curiosity to this small crack from which I escaped about the outside world, hoping to convince them to follow me. Their existential needs may be fully met in this cave, but a totally different life filled with joy is possible outside the cave.

Some of my former fellow cavemen start realizing for the first time that they have been in the cave their entire life and even start dreaming of escaping from it. But not many of them have the courage to leave this cave. Even the most courageous still seem to hesitate to fully trust me. They seem to be desiring to have some external confirmation that will push them into water.

This is where I am now. I have been trying in vain to convince many cavemen to trust what I've been telling them in various ways. What else should or can I tell them and in what other ways should or can I tell them so that they may allow me to help them escape from their cave?