The difficulty of communicating experience

I have been tempted to delete the last two posts in this blog because when I read them, they just seem so inarticulate and don't really get across what I've been trying to say. I realise now, though, that this is the whole point. It's a paradox to be writing about how experience is beyond words, when the very thing I'm trying to do is to put into words my experience. Perhaps It's better for me to leave the last two posts and call them poetic licence or something, because they are, in effect, communicating the point I was trying to make.

It's interesting how the Universe speaks to us...
I was thinking about this topic and how to communicate it and I happened to pick up a book I am reading. It's by Joseph Campbell, called "Myths to live by". The chapter I was busy with was on Zen. It just seem to jump out of the page as if the author had been reading my mind. This is what it had to say:

"..it is actually impossible to communicate through speech any experience whatsoever, unless to someone who has himself enjoyed an equivalent experience of his own..

..Life defined is bound to the past, no longer pouring forward into the future......anyone continually knitting his life into contexts of intention, import, and clarifications of meaning will in the end find that he has lost the sense of experiencing life..

..(Zen) holds to the realization that life and the sense of life are antecedent to meaning; the idea being to let life come and not name it. It will then push you right back to where you live - where you are, and not where you are named. "

The meaning of - well anything really..

I often hear people saying "it's just psychological" or "but that can be explained", almost as if something can be explained then it no longer has any deeper meaning.

Things have different meanings depending on your attachment to them. To a logger, a forest is there to be cut down, the wood is there to make money. To an inhabitant of that forest, it is home. To a builder, a house is brick and cement; to an architect it's a design and to the people living there, a shelter and a home - full of memories and meaning.

An email between two people is, on one hand, 'just' data. To the people communicating, however, it is something rich with meaning - these electronic impulses that move at the speed of light have meaning. What I'm writing will be stored as "just data" somewhere. I have no idea where, but as you read it, it comes to life. Perhaps it will mean something different to you than it does to me, and even if no-one reads it, it is meaningful for me to write - to try and put in words some of the things inside my head.

So - the next time you hear someone say "it's just... whatever" - perhaps think about the idea that meaning goes beyond just one way of looking at something.

Keeping an open mind

If I look at a object, for instance a coin, I can only see one side, unless I turn it over. Then I can see the other side. If it was impossible for me to turn the coin over , and the only way I could see the other side was by talking to someone else who could - my knowledge of the coin would only grow by listening to the other person - by trying to "see it" through their eyes.

I think life is like this. It is impossible for one person to know everything because we can really only see and experience life through our eyes, and our body. To grow, then, I need to listen to others and open my mind to their point of view. The more different their point of view is to mine - the more it will stretch me. I don't need to agree with them - just try and see what they see and experience what they do. Truth is often found in the middle of two opposite points of view.

Some more thoughts on words and communication

I'm not sure who originally said it - but I love the statement "words don't have meaning, meaning has words".I find this is so true in communication, especially when one moves into the realm of beliefs.
Someone asked me the other day what I believe in. I asked them what they meant by belief - it's a very loaded word. From their answer I learnt more about them. They asked me if I believed in a higher power. Now what does one mean by "higher" and "power"?
I think that when you move away from the "correct" answer to these questions and start looking deeper - honestly, you find "something" that is beyond words. The challenge is then to put "that" in words so that "it" can be communicated. But can it really be communicated, other than encouraging others to do the same, and to figure it out for themselves?