Liberation,

 

In this writing, I write about May 5^th, which in my country origin, Holland, is celebrated, every year, as Liberation Day. It was due to the Allied Forces, consisting of brave, young American, Canadian and British troops, that the Dutch, who were almost starving to death, in what was known in the Netherlands as the Hunger Winter of 1945, were freed from the Germans or the Nazies. My father, who as a boy grew up in this horrible period, went through many traumatic experiences. While I was silently walking – myself as a boy – with him and hundreds of other people, on May Fifth, along the war memorial at the Waalsdorper Vlakte, where, in the beautiful Dunes, many people had been executed, I felt so very close to my father…

 

I use the Second World War as a metaphor to refer to Disembodied Language (DL) and the liberation from the brutal oppression, as a way to talk about Embodied Language (EL). During the occupation, you were still concerned with your DL, but shortly after the liberation, shortly after you finally noticed the immense difference between your DL and your EL, you were set free - by yourself - and you could finally enjoy your Language Enlightenment (LE) – who you really are – with your EL. You need some time, to recover from your captivity and from the torture and turmoil you have endured, but all that suffering and chaos is now completely behind you.

 

DL was never properly addressed and spoken about with EL. Radicalization of students at universities always takes place because of our DL, which is still, although nobody takes any note of it, the language of instruction everywhere. Something like this could never, ever have happened if we had EL together. And, this is a realistic, but not an idealistic view. We do it, or we don't do it and we can do it, or we can't do it yet and that's the beginning of our journey.  

 

With our unconscious DL, of course, nobody is ever going to be de-radicalized, as everything only keeps getting worse. The process by which a person or group increasingly develops views, that are at odds with, or totally opposed to, the democratic legal order, whether we want to believe it or not, has to do with our usual way of speaking. As a person or as a group, we attach – with DL – fewer and fewer consequences to our behavior, especially to our oral and written expressions. This is also encouraged by the anonymity provided by so-called social media.

 

Whenever we talk about polarization, extremism or terrorism, we are, unconsciously, talking about a way of speaking that produces and maintains those phenomena. We do not yet know anything about the difference between DL and EL and that is why we are completely unaware that the DL, which we deal with and are involved in every day, is the cause of everything, that is escalating over time, every time.

 

In EL, there is neither polarization nor escalation, as we are no longer running wild over and over again with our ridiculous belief in inner language, or in what we call us-them thinking . The so-called high level of tension between groups, happens because we, as participants of these groups, have lost our way with ourselves. When we can experience the transition from our DL to our EL, we experience, for the first time in our lives, the liberation from group behavior and, thus, our individual freedom. It is not polarization that led to radicalization, but it was DL.

 

Another feature of DL is extremism, in which a person or group knowingly breaks the law in order to presumably remain true to his or her identity or ideals. Extremism clearly involves breaking the law and constitutes a criminal offense. If we look at and listen to the origins from which these criminal acts come about, it has nothing to do with - as is often claimed - some writing, some theory, some dogma, but with how we speak and spoke with each other. As with polarization, extremism is the result of our common, never properly addressed, insensitive DL.

 

We will have to realize, at some

point in our lives, 

that the 

justification and underlying 

promise of DL, is a direct 

reference to the so-called

 liberation, that polarization,

 extremism or radicalization 

would supposedly give to us. 

This is of course a total lie, 

which DL has perpetuated, 

because it gave hope for 

something better, which 

was always in the future. 

The present moment, in 

which we have always 

continued to struggle with

 our DL, was always sacrificed

for the future, which never 

produced EL. However, anyone 

who speaks about DL with his

 or her EL, inevitably comes

 to the conclusion, that the

 possibility of our liberation

 was only a pipe dream, 

because genuine liberation

 - of the individual - can

 only take place, if he or

 she knows how to use

 his or her own language,

 in such a way, that his

 or her own experience 

is expressed correctly 

and satisfyingly.

 

Radicalization is the consequence of our DL, our unconscious, conditioned, effortful language, in which we, as individual speakers, do not listen to ourselves and are only concerned with always listening to others or trying to get them to listen to us, in some way. Naturally, radicalization is always a process in which years of compulsive DL have come to determine what our so-called sense of reality is. There is a recognizable pattern in which extremism,  radicalization and polarization will come about.

 

Simply put, everyone in DL, wants to get attention and everyone does whatever he or she can do to get the attention. It doesn't matter if commanding the attention from others happens with a pitiful victim role or with our grandiosity and arrogance, the fact remains, that in our ordinary way of speaking, there is always a struggle going on for attention, which must escalate, so it can become clear, who is the presumed winner and who is the presumed loser, who has the power - who is allowed to threaten others - and who must follow politely, obediently - who is apparently unimportant or unworthy and who has nothing to say, to whom no one listens. No conscious attention has ever before been given – with our ongoing EL – to the DL, which maintains the hierarchy or power-structure in every society. When we do that, immediate liberation takes place, because we no longer look up or down to others.

 

Our liberation from DL is

 only discernable to the 

extent that we are still 

getting used to our EL, 

because as soon as our 

EL starts to flow, we find

 our EL normal, but we 

then find our DL abnormal. 

Our LE, which initially, as

 EL continues, is something

 very wonderful and special, 

eventually becomes our 

everyday experience, where

every trigger for our DL, 

immediately effortlessly catches

 our attention and makes us 

tune into EL again. However, 

we are constantly aware, that 

our liberation from our DL, is 

achieved by us, by us alone, 

and that feels so good.

 

So, our liberation is celebrated not just once a year, on Liberation Day, but every day with EL. It is also of great importance, for those who automatically, out of conditioning, habitually carried on with their fear-based DL, to recognize that they - without ever being able to understand this before – spent all that time in hiding and were able to survive in that way. When they have EL, instead of DL, they come out of their hiding timidly and cautiously. Liberation with EL is overwhelming and almost unbelievable at first, but it is true. We are slowly, happily, getting used to it.