There is no harm in trying to articulate spiritual ideas for the reasons of pointing towards truth. However I’ve found that sometimes intended outcomes can be scuppered by being over explanatory.
I’ve mentioned how language itself can be a barrier when it comes to these matters. As soon as we try to explain, we are actually leaving the realm of experiential truth and probably talking about something different, or at least not quite the same. It’s the ultimate square peg-round hole problem.
So we could stop writing altogether (still on the table as an option for me) or try a way of speaking that has the potential to connect more, whether with the written word or in verbal.
The Three treasures
We could equate some of the concepts that are too intellectual and theoretical as an over reliance on mental and brain faculties, using our ability to abstract ideas. Phil Shepherd would call it an over-reliance on the masculine energy, the locus of which is the cranial brain.
We therefore could try incorporating the feminine intelligence for balance. The locus of this is pelvis or abdomen area and is now in many fields of study understood to be the ‘second brain’.
In the middle of these two brains is the heart, and if modern heart research is anything to go by, this too could be called a brain of sorts. There is not enough room or time to start listing the modern science of the heart so let us just take it as read for now, and maybe come back to that another time.
These three areas are incidentally the three main ‘energy centres’ in much of Oriental philosophy and mind-body practice. In Qigong philosophy they are called the ‘Three Treasures’.
Speak from the heart
We have all heard the phrase ‘speaking from the heart’.
It may sound like an analogy. Well, it is.
But there is an aspect of that which makes sense and is real and practical.
Speaking from the heart may not make as much ‘sense’ but could be more truthful.
The extra beauty of connecting with the pelvic region is that this could be seen as the energy of integration, of bringing ideas into something more ‘whole’.
Again, you may think ‘how is it possible?’
How could it be possible to communicate by incorporating the heart and/or pelvis?
Before answering that, just a few more words on the pelvic/abdominal region: It may be somewhat confusing to call this the centre of feminine energy or intelligence, especially if you are male. However we are not talking about gender or sex. The feminine intelligence is the way of seeing the world that Iain McGilchrist would say is right brain; the holistic, contextual, inclusive mode of perception. Instead of ideas remaining abstract and pulled away from their context, they are rooted and grounded in living experience.
Practicing Presence
In terms of how we actually may incorporate this ‘thinking’ into our communication, we can literally perform certain exercises before and during our communication, verbal or written.
For example, we can do whatever we may be familiar with as a ‘spiritual’ practice that enables us to be more mindful, less consumed by the frantic mental chatter, the need to prove and squeeze things into ideas. Practicing presence, say.
I’m doing it now, live, during this writing. When I do this, i literally and very consciously move my centre of awareness down from my thinking cranium, down what I relate to as the central channel, into and past the heart, and down into the pelvic region. This practice has been developed over time in practicing Qigong, and also doing some great work with Phil Shepherd.
This is something that just helps with becoming present, aware of, but not dragged along by, the thoughts in the mind. Many people probably have their own ways of attaining a state of presence. What they are is immaterial. The main point is that this seems, at lest for me, to be a state of more genuine communication. This is because experience of reality itself appears more full, more whole, while in this state.
Male Dominance
When I looked back over some of the initial writings I could see how consumed by thought I was. I had forsaken the feminine, left it behind. There was a clinical edge to the writing. A bit like those hard boundaries I mentioned we use to box in our ‘Self’ and other things in our world. It just had that feel to it. This is the irony with some of my work, it can end up being everything I am attempting to ward me and others off from.
The whole journey of writing about these ideas has encouraged me to either stop writing and focus instead on experience, or incorporate the state of presence more in the act of writing.
I am literally experimenting this second. I am using the practices and exercises above, to a small degree anyway, to bring me ‘into the heart’ and ‘into the pelvis’.
It inspires emotive language. It’s like tapping in to another source of wisdom, another well of material and ideas.
Let the music play
Being a musician and songwriter, I recognise that intuitively I have ‘gone there’ to come up with material, and that sometimes thinking too much produces sub-standard material, at least by my own standards. I am never stuck for inspiration when I lock in with what makes me emotional, or what I feel strongly about – speaking from my heart.
Rather fittingly, this philosophical journey now seems to be manifesting in a new focus on producing some music in 2023, with rehearsals underway.
I’ll also be holding sessions for people to sit and ‘practice presence’ over a three week period, every morning. Putting words into action. Living out the philosophy. Walking the walk. This is the crucial element if we are going to to talk the talk.
Stop making sense
Writing in this way doesn’t always have to make sense or be logically sound.
Ideas become 3-dimensional, growing outwards from a hologram.
Sometimes words aren’t needed. Words will come if needed, regardless of whether my mind thinks it needs to prove something. There’s no need to force thoughts and answers or hack away at these imposing blocks of ideas, to sculpt them into something understandable.
Sometimes dropping into this space is more like awaiting guidance on what to say, or what to do.
I’d like to finish this with a quote by Ram Dass I came across recently which fits very nicely:
‘We’re sitting under the tree of our thinking minds, wondering why we’re not getting any sunshine”.
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