Away With Words

I love words. I love getting to know others through conversations. I love being taken into other worlds through reading. I love to write, using words to describe experiences and understandings. Words are powerful and magical and the foundation to so, so much.

And yet. . .

When we put words to what we’re experiencing, it gives us a sense of control. We obviously need this. To some degree. So much of life feels a little out of control these days. I’ve started to wonder, though, what it would feel like to have a more immediate and open relationship with my own experiences. More wonder. To what degree does my mind categorize experiences as they’re happening, lessening the pure impact of the moment? It’s hard to know. I’m curious to know if seeing something in nature, like a tall tree swaying in a breeze on a sunny day, would feel different if it were somehow new. If my mind didn’t jump in and assume this was just like every other tree from the past.

There are spiritual practices that invite this kind of beginner mind awareness. The Serpent invites us to shed our skin, including our eyes, so that we can see things – including ourselves! – completely anew. We can open our aperture and visually receive everything around us instead of looking at things, our energy rushing out towards the thing we’re perceiving. We have ways that we can work with our minds and our perception to experience a newness and restore that beautiful sense of awe and wonder.

This inquiry started inside of me in the early pre-dawn hours this morning. Because the thinking mind works to define experiences inside just as much as around us. I was barely awake and sensing emotions inside of me and felt my thinking mind’s rush to name it. Maybe the half-sleep created a lovely pause in the process because instead of locking down what I was feeling into a category, I was able simply to feel. To stay curious. The sensations moved, from constriction in my belly, to waves rolling through my chest. My breath had been shallow then was able to deepen. I realized that, in the past, I may have named that first feeling of constriction as “anger” and then fished around for a reason. In hindsight, I probably found my way into anger unnecessarily! Staying with sensations felt freeing. The sensations simply were, they existed, without need for story or definition.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with your mind’s need to define, or with practicing beginner’s mind. Or any other comment you’d like to share!