A Little Insight About Language

[phoenix666]

Today I had an insight about words and language in general. I was meditating outside beside a river, using the mindfulness technique with the labeling of 'seeing' 'hearing' 'feeling'. Since English is not my native language, I mostly use my mother tongue in my head (or should I say for thinking, just to sound less crazy;)) But the last couple of years I've been watching and reading a lot of content in English. So I sometimes notice myself thinking in English - a quite common phenomenon.

Whilst meditating I felt a cold breeze and I caught my mental voice saying 'so cold' in my native dialect. I labelled it 'hearing' and then I tried to savor it by repeating it a couple of times mentally, to bask in the sound of my inner voice. And hearing the sound in this raw dialect made it very easy to detach from the meaning. (I just realized that I mostly use English when I am in a state of higher awareness, interesting). The two words sounded so strange, even foreign. So I completely distanced myself from what the words stand for. I just concentrated on the pure sound. And then it hit me that words are just chosen symbols. conventions. historical? cultural? definitions of things. labels, which by definition are not the thing they refer to. completely arbitrary. yet our world, our society, our relationships, everything works based on that arbitrary, vague chosen construct we call language. Our thinking and rationality also bases on language. this makes it impossible to communicate the Truth. 

I know, sounds pretty obvious. And surely have been thinking about it before, but I've never seen and felt it so clearly as today. Just wanted to share this insight with you. 

Thank you for reading if you're still with me.

Edited June 9, 2017 by phoenix666

[cetus]

@phoenix666 Have you seen the movie "Arrival"?

Edited June 9, 2017 by cetus56

[Visitor]

@phoenix666 Some words/phrases/meanings are deeply imprinted from early age.

Truth can best be described with no words. The best expression of truth is unconditional love, for truth is liberating, fearless, doubtless, reliable, constant, and always present.

Words, from one to many, is the thread that weaves a cover-story that can veil the truth.

[phoenix666]

7 hours ago, Visitor said:

@phoenix666 Some words/phrases/meanings are deeply imprinted from early age.

Truth can best be described with no words. The best expression of truth is unconditional love, for truth is liberating, fearless, doubtless, reliable, constant, and always present.

Words, from one to many, is the thread that weaves a cover-story that can veil the truth.

that's why religions have failed and turned into mass manipulation machines.

[cetus]

15 hours ago, cetus56 said:

@phoenix666 Have you seen the movie "Arrival"?

Maybe not?  An alien race communicates through logograms instead of verbal language (which is a very slow and limited way of exchanging large amounts of information).  Their language was also beyond all mental concepts such as time, as in- yesterday, tomorrow, was, will be, ect  If your interested, check out the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis http://blog.wolfram.com/2017/01/31/analyzing-and-translating-an-alien-language-arrival-logograms-and-the-wolfram-language/

[Delinkaaaa]

Wih this inside you might come to like science of semantics. 

Semantics is a linquistic discipline studiing the meaning of the words.

For people like you and me, people interested in spiritual exploring, it is usefull because it give us basic understanding of what human words realy are.

Each word has its "Denote" and "Connotation".

Denote is the meaning that people gave to the word and Connotation is what people feel about it.

Here you can see that words are not just what we name by them, but even what we feel about their meaning.

Do that is basic nature of the words 

[phoenix666]

@cetus56 that's exactly what came to my mind; reality being beyond mental concepts such as time. Since our thinking is based on language, which is in turn based on all those concepts, it simply is impossible to think our way to the Truth or reality. Leo mentioned it before in some of his videos, but there is a difference between hearing it from someone and experiencing it, that's why I wanted to share it with you

@Delinkaaaa I've heard about semantics before, I've always been interested in literature at school and also outside of the educational system. It reminded me a lot of the 'Sprachskepsis' of Wittgenstein and the crises with language some writers like Rainer Maria Rilke and Hugo von Hofmannsthal had at one point of their life. The inability of words to describe emotions. 

it's an interesting topic, I also noticed that I am emotionally attached/reactive to words.

[cetus]

@phoenix666 I hear you. The English language is especially full of concepts and dualities. Most or what we convey to each other is in reference from the location of "I".

" Yesterday I seen a bird flying south" for instance.

Edited June 10, 2017 by cetus56

[cetus]

1.  LANGUAGE STRONGLY INFLUENCES THOUGHT.  Benjamin Whorf, like Sapir studied Native American languages.  Whorf sites several examples form the Native American language, Hopi, to support his hypothesis that thought is strongly based on language.  According to Whorf the Hopi language does not contain any words, grammatical constructions or expressions that refer to the English concept of ‘time.’  Whorf goes on to explain that it is possible in the Hopi language to express the world or reality in ways other than what many languages refer to as ‘time.’  The Hopi view of reality is specific to the language and can only be best expressed if one is familiar with the language (Carroll, 1956:57).  In this example where Whorf feels language strongly influences thought

[phoenix666]

48 minutes ago, cetus56 said:

@phoenix666 I hear you. The English language is especially full of concepts and dualities. Most or what we convey to each other is in reference from the location of "I".

" Yesterday I seen a bird flying south" for instance.

I think all latin derived languages strongly 'relies' on the ego, the separation from 'me' and nature, other beings. and yes, absolutely true. I would even dare to say that thoughts ARE language. mixed with images maybe? It's so difficult to 'think' outside of all those concepts language lies upon our mind. (I don't know if my point comes across, I struggle a little with my english....there you see, language itself can be an obstacle in communication)