The power of words and the ideas they impress on us.

We use all sorts of words and combinations thereof that are unique to each of us. Like a fingerprint. However, unlike a fingerprint, words not only define us individually, but they also describe us and often form us.

(Disclaimer: I have an ongoing challenge with using certain words under the guise of “punctuation” or mimicry (me me cry) of ostensible past self, or others. So, a work very much in progress.)

Words form us because with each use we channel deeper the rut of some thought-life-pattern. We don’t do this consciously. It’s an deeply ingrained aspect of our consciousness.

It’s very hard to think or see clearly when we are bogged down in words, and its very hard to think or see clearly when we are afraid of words. But the words we use, and their context, are really much more windows to our “soul” than the eyes.

We lay ourselves bare while reinforcing the “self”.

We all know people who use their words in terrifically facile ways and can obfuscate and misdirect and hide with them.

Usually not for long though. We see through most things except when we are in a fog ourselves. Angry, happy, despairing, in love, out of love, in yearning, in despising, in grasping after, or pushing away; in any number of mental conditions that cloud clarity.

We rarely know when we are using words in wonderfully facile ways to delude ourselves, because when we are angry, happy, despairing, in love, out of love, in yearning, in despising, in grasping after, in pushing away; the nature of this fog is to build that false sense of the “self” (i.e. ego) and take it for the truth and purpose of life.  At the cost of not being able to see that other people are just as deluded as we are. Mostly because of the words we cling to. They are the expression of habitual patterns of seeing ourselves in relation to the world outside of us.

Quite a muddle.

Seemingly.

The value of being still, deliberately still, for a period(s) of time. Perhaps each day, but certainly on a regular basis really is profound. It is through these moments of agreeable stillness and quiet that we can begin to glimpse past the habit patterns, and sometimes see how we construct them.

And then comes the mystical part. We don’t have to do anything. We can just see them.

And then comes the practical part. We can change in small ways how we repeat (or refer to), these patterns.

Between the above two “and’s” is a transformation in how we do and how we think.

“I can’t breathe!” means a lot of different things to different people at different times. But we know it can’t be good.