Reading,

 

Just acknowledge, that you are simply reading and understanding this. If you know English language, these words are not alien to you and you know what they mean. Why did I write this? To let myself know, I understand my own language. Why do you read this? To understand what I’ve written. Why would it be of any importance to you, to understand what I understand and to understand your own language? Only you could answer that question, but I can answer it for myself. I want to understand my language, because I somehow got distracted from it.

 

If I understand, that a bread is a bread and a book is a book, there is no need for me to understand my language, but when I call a book a bread, there is a problem and I need to understand, I got it wrong. It isn’t immediately clear to me, why or how, I got into this odd belief, a bread is a book, but I didn’t switch these meanings around, because these words both start with the letter b. Also, didn’t read any book in which they were talking about bread and reading a book isn’t anything like eating bread. However, I can imagine, as a metaphor, that digesting bread, is like understanding what is in the book, but that seems like quite a stretch, as to me, a book and a bread are unrelated. You could say, that I was, at some point, hungry for knowledge and the bread I ate, was some book, but why did I keep feeling hungry for more knowledge? Why didn’t the bread satiate?

 

I grew up in a Catholic family and probably because of that, I remember an old idiom from the Bible. The phrase “man cannot live by bread alone” means that people need not just food, but also poetry, art, music, etc. to live happily. I looked it up and the full saying comes from Matthew 4:4, who was one of the twelve apostles. He wrote that Jesus said “Man does not live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God”, which is commonly understood as: people need more than material things to truly live. Surely, it is interesting that God, presumably, created man in his own image, that is, with a mouth. It is very unlikely, that the religious infatuation with God, is ever going to remind us of the importance of the words coming from the only real mouth: our own mouth. God’s mouth isn’t real and neither is yours. I was distracted from my own language, because of someone else’s way of talking.

 

I got distracted by what someone said, so quickly and so unnoticeably. It caused me many problems, as it happened so often. I was puzzled, why this was happening and I had to find out. When, in my early twenties, for the first time, I listened to my own voice, while I spoke with myself, I felt, I had finally found out, why I kept being so easily distracted: in what I now call Disembodied Language (DL), I was never listening to myself, but in Embodied Language (EL), I am always listening to myself, while I speak.

 

While it was an epiphany, to discover the difference between DL and EL, it didn’t mean, I was cured from being distracted. To the contrary, it became more apparent to me, how distracted I had always been by the DL of others. In effect, I kept losing myself in my own DL, again and again, but, as I had already found out about the difference between DL and EL, I was, quicker and, increasingly, more skillfully, able to return again to my EL, which I viewed as my own language. Moreover, returning to EL, meant, I could attend to and achieve my own priorities and goals.

 

I know from experience, what it is like, to have lost my own language. It is a very scary, uncomfortable feeling. I absolutely don’t like it, when some alien language takes possession of me, because I have no control over it. My own language, I can control and although I wasn’t always able to control my own language, I have become capable of it, because I noticed, how magnificent it is, to have control of my own language, but also, how frightening it is, to be overtaken by a language, which isn’t mine, which, therefore, I cannot control. My own language gives me control. Each time, I was not paying attention to my EL, I was feeling lost, conflicted and troubled.  

 

When I say, I am in control of my own language, I literally mean, I am the master of my own language. This doesn’t, in any way relate to what people mean by control, because they are used to DL and have no idea at all, what ongoing EL could be like. For those, like you, who, unknowingly, every day, engage in DL, control means: trying to deal with your fear. In other words, the issue of control only comes up, because you – justifiably – fear not being in control. Control in EL, by contrast, means: the absence of fear. Thus, our way of dealing with language, in DL, results in control out of fear, but in EL, in control without fear.

 

Of course, you too have your own language – your EL – , but you have only had it shortly, sporadically and unreliably. In effect, you’ve lost it immediately, the moment you’ve had it. You’ve lost it so fast, that you don’t even know what happened, because you don’t acknowledge and know, you actually really have your own language. It’s paradoxical, because, supposedly, at some level, you know, you must have your own way and, therefore, your must have your own language, to have your own way, to be able to live a happy and satisfying life, but you also know very well, that what you want – your language – is continuously under attack and overwhelmed, by the language of others. In DL, speakers always compete with each, to get the attention. Surely, the language others have, to dominate your language or anyone else’s language, is not their language. The fact, that people, everywhere, try to force their language on each other, signifies they are not in touch with or aware of their own language. When we have our own language, we know: nobody can force their language on us. EL inoculates us against this evil.

 

When parents teach their children their language, children do with this language – and everything they were taught with this language – what they want. If what the parents taught, was truly to the benefit of the child, the child would recognize that, feel that,  acknowledge that and know that, but if, claiming it is for your own good, parents only wanted their child to be how they wanted them to be, the child will feel conflicted about how he or she was taught.  Even under the best of circumstances, when one grows up and becomes independent, one inevitably has to sort through the many conflicting messages, received from father, mother or other care-takers.

 

As we, presumably, mature, the question becomes: how do we deal with our own language? How could I have written this blog, if I hadn’t dealt satisfactorily with my own language? For a long time, I wondered why my insistence on language, isn’t recognized and rewarded, but – although I found this very hard to accept and didn’t even want to believe it – nobody has their own language. It was baffling to realize, that – although, for many years, I myself was barely capable of continuing with my own EL – apparently, I was the only one who knew how to do it. Stopping my DL, was and is like waking up from a bad dream.  I fully admit, I sometimes still briefly engage in DL.  

 

When you wake up from your sleep, you may be able to remember, you had some dream. No matter what it was, it was merely a dream and since you have woken up, whatever you dreamed about fades away. People have made all sorts of assumptions about their dreams, because they tried, in vain, to make sense of the strange events, they believed to have experienced in their sleep. They were just lying in their bed and everything was, happening only in their head and their imagination was running amok. Surely, dreams have a relationship to how we deal with our language. Their very presence, basically, indicates, we have lost our own language and their absence signifies, our language is properly used.

 

We are as enthralled with our dreams, as we are obsessed about our death, as we cannot have any language about it. You could say both, in sleep as well as in death, language ends. Since we haven’t had our own language and were always having DL, we, unconsciously, want our dreams and deaths to make up for this incredible loss. We project, as we say, our language on dreams and on death, in the same way as when we find fault in others, because we refuse to admit our own faults. Certainly, we use our language incorrectly, as we attempt to put our language to work when it comes to others, but we remain mute, when it comes to ourselves. Stated differently, dreams are always expressions of our fears, which we have never properly spoken about with EL. In the exact same way, that we fear death, we fear our dreams, as we can feel, we are not in control, but our language isn’t catching up with this.

 

As stated, in EL, we are in control of our language, because we truly have our own language, but in DL, although we pretend to be in control, we are not in control of our language, as we don’t know what it is like to have our own language. Indeed, DL, our usual way of talking, which sets the stage for how we deal with our language, is the language of fear. Unless we discover our own language, we never overcome our biggest fear, which is: fear of our own language.    

 

Although everyone in DL tries to be somebody, who they are not, no one succeeds in not being fearful of the language, which contradicts their superstitious beliefs. Only those, who have EL successfully deal with their fears of language, as they talk with their EL about their DL. What they previously – in DL – feared others might say about them, they have already said about themselves. Moreover, they know for sure, their fear was never about their own language, but of DL, the language of others. In EL, we have faith in our language, as it tells us what we need to live a peaceful, successful and healthy life. Our own language, like our breathing,  heart-beat or  digestion, goes by itself. There is no one, who says this, no one who writes this and, therefore, there is no one to fabricate or imagine any nonsense. And, remember, you are not reading this either, as there is no you, who reads. Talking would make it very clear: you are not, who you believed to be with DL.