Looking away,

 

Nowadays we often hear the term looking away. In the most literal sense, it involves averting one's gaze or avoiding the gaze of someone else. For example: she saw him, but quickly looked away. In a figurative sense, it's about ignoring and pretending something doesn't exist. For example: the violence in the town became so intense that the major could no longer look away. Looking away can also be used to make someone feel unwelcome, to make them leave. For example: the mother with the crying child was stared down by the customers in the fancy store.

 

Looking away goes hand in hand with listening away. Although looking away is the common term to indicate, that we deny what is going on, listening away is the actual reason why we look away, because we always only talk about what we can see, but not about what we cannot see. Disembodied Language (DL), in which we as speakers do not listen to ourselves, is our unconscious, habitual way of dealing with language, which facilitates looking away, but with Embodied Language (EL), in which we listen to ourselves while we speak, we are fully aware of what we do and, thus, we face everything.

 

A student, who is not interested in the lesson does not pay attention, because he or she does not listen to what the teacher explains, but constantly looks bored out of the window or at his phone. A shy child also looks away and does not want you to talk in the way and with the tone of voice that makes him or her feel unsafe. When we are taught at school to pay attention, it means, that we are actually forced to listen to what the teacher says, but not to pay any attention to how he or she says, what he or she says.  So paying attention, staying alert or being obedient involves and requires selective listening in which we are instructed and urged not to worry about how someone sounds. So, we are taught from a very young age, to listen away so to speak.

 

If a speaker is not listened to, 

who, during a meeting, 

insists in vain that a board

 should not continue to 

look away,

but should actually 

talk about the enormous 

dissatisfaction and 

division that exists 

among the members, 

this is an example of 

listening away. Listening 

away – which rarely 

comes to our attention, 

because, due to DL, we 

only, very rarely talk 

about looking away

 – is primarily about not

 listening to ourselves, 

while we speak. Listening

 away, therefore, is not 

about the fact that others

 do not listen to us, but 

about the fact, that we do

 not listen to ourselves, 

while we talk.

 

When journalists risk their lives, to let the rest of the world know about the horrible wars in which everything is destroyed, they try to come up with images and news in the hope people cannot look away. However, their powerlessness is as moving as the injustice they report. Everyone somehow knows somewhere, that looking away and listening away is also necessary, since we have not found a solution for the indisputable fact that DL is our common use of language. DL is, in essence, a dissociative use of language, in which speakers are not in touch with themselves. Threat is the only reason DL continues, because as soon as we listen to ourselves - and can hear in the sound of our voice that we really feel safe - then our DL ends and we effortlessly have EL.

 

Both looking away and listening away concern all kinds of things we do not want to see or do not want to hear. With DL it is often said and written, very punishing, demanding and overwhelming, that we should actually look at what we do not want to see and we should listen to what we apparently do not want to hear, but with EL, we are finally going to focus on what we want to hear and what we want to see. When we are forced to face the truth with DL it always happens involuntarily, but the truth that we discover with EL, is voluntary, as it is our freedom.

 

Due to our usual, automatic DL, there is, as of yet, no attention paid to the sound of our own voice, while we speak. We listen to others, but not to ourselves. We also try, in many manipulative ways, to make others listen to us, but we do not hear ourselves and we are consequently totally carried away by our language. Our confusion about our unspoken and unheard language has inevitably led us to erroneously assume and fantasize, that language takes place within us, inside of our heads. So, because of DL, we are stuck with the illusion of an inner conversation that we are having with ourselves, but which cannot be heard, as it is supposedly, silently, covertly, representing our true thoughts and feelings.

 

When we notice the stark difference between our DL and our EL, it suddenly becomes abundantly clear to us, that all our language – and I repeat, all our language – can be said, heard, written and read and that that elusive inner language – our so-called thinking – absolutely doesn’t exist and is only a way of speaking, which was maintained by our DL. In other words, in EL the listening away stops, as we really hear ourselves for the first very time. This is always accompanied by a sudden, pleasant, noticeable energy flow, which shows, we have started to use our language in a completely different way. Because we no longer listen away with DL, we are immediately aware of our Language Enlightenment (LE) with our EL. Once this has happened, it will be impossible to look away or listen away from our LE. They say, with DL, seeing is believing, but with EL, there is nothing to believe or to see, because we can hear, experience and know what we say. With EL, we listen to ourselves, and it is clear that we do this because of our LE.