Images,

 

We have all heard the stories of people, who, when they felt that they were dying, supposedly, saw their whole life, in a series of images, passing through their mind. If there is any truth to these reports – I believe they are true – they signify that, commonly, we keep imagining things until the very end. Due to our usual way of talking, we engage in Disembodied Language (DL), in which we, unconsciously, hang on to images of ourselves and of each other. Moreover, our disjointed, chaotic, conflicted lives, are based on what we call our mind, the tragic, stupid, stubborn psychological fantasy, that inevitably arose from the way of talking, in which we couldn’t be ourselves.

 

In DL, we believe, as a speaker, that the listener is someone else, but not we ourselves. Consequently, we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak, that is, we disconnect from ourselves every time we speak. We don’t have any sensitive, ongoing, immediate, sound-experience of ourselves, while we speak, therefore, we can only have an idea or an image of who we believe and claim to be. Our relationships are shallow, meaningless and troubled, because we only know how to communicate the images, we have of ourselves and the images we have of others.

 

Surely, genuine relationship is impossible as long as we can’t talk about who we really are. Obviously, we are not an image, but our DL, unknowingly, reduces us to an image of ourselves. This happens, as we never get to talk about these images, which form the content of what we call our consciousness. If we would talk about what is in our attention – and if we would put the image-maker back together with the image – we would find out many valuable things.

 

These images of ourselves and each other, are visual distractions from crucially important matters, which we should learn to speak about, so we can finally begin to listen to them. Our DL would immediately stop, because it was always based on the separation of the experiencer and the experience. Whenever we say, we have an experience, we assume, there is someone, who has this experience, but the reality is, the experiencer is also our experience. However, we will only find out about this, when we talk out loud with ourselves and listen to ourselves, and, therefore, engage in Embodied Language (EL).  

 

In EL, in which the speaker realizes, that he or she is always his or her own listener, there is no maker of images or what we call a self or a mind. This is why we are continuously new and our language can flow naturally and effortlessly. The crux of our EL is, that we are not looking or, as they say, witnessing or observing, this whole image-making business, but we are saying it and listening to it. We can only hear the sound of our voice, in the here and now and so, no time passes, between the making of the image and the image-maker. We instantly hear, there is no image-maker and, with that, the image dissolves.

 

Once we have heard, felt and experienced the great difference between our DL and our EL, our sense of reality has permanently changed. Everything isn’t put together – as we previously believed in DL – with thoughts, but with our language. Obviously, the reality we put together with DL is profoundly problematic, since we imagine language to exist inside of us, as our mind and thoughts. Of course, reality or nature doesn’t depend on our language, as it exists without it. We can only describe what is, or what is happening right now, with language that doesn’t create an image of who we are, as such an image would separate us from that living reality.

 

The images we have of ourselves and our world with DL, are incorrect and giving us nothing but trouble. It is only when we participate in ongoing EL, that we can solve the conundrum of the observer and the observed. The observer is merely an image of who we claim to be with our language, but when we say it out loud and carefully listen to it, we come out of our language illusion. Simply stated, the speaker is the listener, but that means, there is only speaking going on, but there is no speaker and there is only listening going on, but there is no listener. Also, this speaking and listening happen simultaneously, as our speaking and listening behavior are jointed.

 

Another way to approach the issue of image-making – and go get clear about the divisiveness it creates, as an individual language matter – is to talk about the supposed difference between the analyzer and the analysis. It is instantly clear in EL, the analyzer is the analyzed and there is no more possibility to get lost in fantasies about ourselves. It is laughable, but also sad, that even scientific people, psychiatrists or psychologists, don’t take the difference between DL and EL serious, while poor mental health patients – what a totally stupid concept – like all the so-called professionals, erroneously, believe they are troubled by images in their head. Getting rid of images is also a big issue in dealing with trauma, but EL shows us, unequivocally, that the entire premise is wrong.