Words are pointing to something. The word is not it. The word “flower” is not the flower. The flower is your experience of the flower. And that goes for all the words we use. The essence that the words points to, cannot be expressed in words. Words are pointers. And that is the way I use them: gentle, confronting sometimes, small, still.

If there were no “words”, would there be thoughts? If there were no words, would there be emotions? If the thought had no words, if the emotion had no words, how would that be? Words are like ripples on the surface of the ocean: ripples that can be little waves, big waves, tsunamis. Eventually all waves disappear in the water again, the water is what we are made of in the first place. The wave disappears; the water stays.

Would there be a world if there were no words? How and where would a tree exist if we had no word for tree? When you look at a tree, without using the word tree, what do you see and how would you experience the tree?

Would there be an “I” when there was no word for “I”?

When there was no “I-word”, there would not be a “my-word”? 

No longer: my body, my house, my garden, my dog, my chickens, my cat, my mother, my father, my sister, my brothers, my friend. No longer: I am going to my house, I do my dishes, I go to my friend, I go with my car.No longer: my freedom, my consciousness, my enlightenment, my joy, my stillnes, my pain, my love.

How would it be then? I go home, could be like: A body goes to a home. And who is the one who is experiencing that? How would be then: I write? That would be: There is writing. And: there is walking, there is eating, there is talking.

Would there still exist a sentence like: I believe this or that? When there is no “I-word”, who is it who believes then this or that?

Would there be then something like “my” opinion? And when there is no “my opinion”, when there is no “my country”, when there is no “my faith”, when there is no “my-word”, would there be war?

When you dare to ask questions of everything you always thought of as true, that is freedom. Freedom unfolds in a free mind. A free mind is a mind, that welcomes all the questions and dares to ask them. Freedom is inside of us and has nothing to do with doing or not doing things.

For some people asking questions, or rather, allowing questions to be asked, is annoying. They live in an organized world: everything in it’s place and everything on it’s own time. Children often ask these people: Why is it like this? And their answer is: Because it was always like this. And when something happens that doesn’t fit in this organized world, that is very painful for those people. Realizing that something can mess up your  organized and nicely arranged world, can be a great shock.

If the body of a child wouldn’t change, how could it grow? If the seed wouldn’t sprout, how could the plant come to grow? If the cloud wouldn’t change to rain, where should the rain then come from?

Asking questions to the words, that is what I do. To every word I ask: “Oh really?”. Words are sounds, just like music. We have names for the musical notes and when we hear the notes as tones, we hear sound. When we listen to music, and with some musical pieces we experience it so very clearly, it touches us directly. It touches you in your heart. Your head, your mind is not interfering, can not interfere. It moves you, tears come, you experience gentleness, warmth, openess, vulnerability, love.

And sometimes, when you listen to moving music, the feeling comes to you that you love the whole world. Some words do that also. Those are the words that go to your heart directly. The word: “compassion” is a word like that. And the word: surrender. Two words that touch, what you could call, the unname-able; that which can not be spoken of. And music can touch the unname-able. Words, music, sounds can express the same, can touch the same: your heart, your essence or whatever you call it.

 

Posing questions, asking questions, is allowing  ‘doubt-words’ in you. Asking questions is allowing ‘doubt-thoughts’ in you. Asking the question: “Oh really?”, is punching a little hole in the thought-defense, that expresses itself in words. The more holes, the more stillness. And eventually all the words fade away and then, no more words are needed.

It seems that we are stil using more and more words. We don’t know if more words lead to better understanding. As long as we consider words as true, as absolutely true, we chain ourselves. No word, no thought contains the absolute truth. There is no absolute truth. Every word, every thought, every so called “truth” is always relative and relatively true. Up cannot exist without down, busy not without quiet, disturbed not without normal, man not without woman, love not without fear, compassion not without hatred, me not without you, black not without white.

There are all kinds of words: gentle, harsh, profane, lovable, naughty, cold, arrogant, involved, distant. Do these kind of words exist or do these kind of thoughts exist? Do these kind of thoughts exist or do these kind of people exist? The answer is that it all exists. And everybody is every word and every thought. No exception.

When we have seen all the words for what they are, what remains? When we know, deep inside of us, that there are no stories, what remains? Do you dare to be with someone without uttering a word? Do you dare to be with you in silence without the distraction of people, music, the newspaper, the TV and radio? That which remains when you have seen all words and all stories for what they are, cannot be explained. Some words attempt to express that and point to that like: gratitude, joy, stillness, gentleness. And even those words are not that. Every word expresses an accompaning feeling. And feelings appear and disappear.

What appears and disappears is not what remains. Something remains in which everything appears and disappears. Space, emptiness, eternity, infinity are also words that touch what remains. What remains contains everything. What remains contains nothing. What is that in which everything appears and disappears and what is it in you that knows that it appears and disappears?

At a very early stage, we learn to keep inside the words that want to come out. Those words, so we are told, are not appropriate, not polite, not right, not at the right place, not at the right time. “Shhhhht, you shouldn’t say that”, are the words we grow up with. And that is how we are pressed into the  straitjacket of our society, our surroundings. For us, the demands thrown upon us by society and the environment, to meet those demands, becomes a way of survival. We adjust ourselves, every day, every hour, every moment, we keep inside of us what wants to come out and we speak our own lie, again and again and again.

And that is how words from the outside overshout words from the inside. And that is how we are taught to moderate the words from the inside. And when they come out, those moderated words from the inside, they come out as words from the outside again. More and more lies, more and more fear to do it wrong, more and more stress and pain to keep the inside inside, to keep the lid on our heart.

Totally distorted we arrive at adulthood, not knowing what is true or false any longer. “I totally lost myself” that is what you hear people say: at work, in your relationship, whatever.

And sometimes, in the deep deep darkness of our thoughtprison, it happens that  a ray of light shines through the bars: at exactly the right spot at precisely the right moment. It seems that you wake up for a moment; that the glass breaks. You rub your eyes and the clarity makes you blink your eyes to the light.

That ray of light had the power to pierce throuugh the darkness. It seemed as if it came from the outside. Maybe. Or did it come from the inside?

Cautious at first, some words from the place inside of us come out. We hear this word, a bit strange, again, back from never away. The other one, to whom we speak, might not even hear what we say. WE are the ones listening. And then we discover, what we tell the other person, is really meant for us. All words are meant for us. We can never know if the other person hears what we say or understands what we say. We are the ones hearing what we say and understanding it, finally.

At last, after all those years, we hear the words as they were meant to be. Drops of light for the soul that walked in darkness.To let out and utter words from the inside gives us great fear. We are afraid to be hurt again, to be rejected. But then, that ray of light that touched us in an uninterpreted moment, found Light, in you. And now they melt together and become bigger and more powerful.

Nobody knows how long it will take. At a given moment you notice that words come out of your mouth by themselves. You realize that it doesn’t matter at all anymore if the other is listening or not, understanding it or not, disapproving of it or not. You speak your own truth; you speak you; you are made of truth. Freedom is living your own truth. You are also made of freedom. And to be freedom is to live freedom; to be truth is to live truth.

Yes, it can be difficult to live your own truth. We live in a world where it is common to live lies and unfreedom: lies to the Light in you; unfreedom to the bonds that keep you chained to name and form. Like to say Yes when to mean No. That is what we do and in that way we betray ourselves.

Not telling someone we love him and knowing and feeling that we do, is unfreedom.We are made of: to Love. Living something else than to Love, is living a lie. And sometimes we call this lie: “Being brave”. And then, when we sit at the deathbed of the one we love, we finally can speak our truth: words of Love and Light.

Death opens the way to truth, the light and the love that we are. When you have died, when you have died to lies, the fear and the untruths, truth, love and life arise from the death. THAT arises from the ashes. At first the form dies and then the formless can appear. When the form is almost transparant, as it sometimes is when someone is dying, you can see the formless shine through the form. That is what you are: this formless true light. And that wants to come through the form; it wants to come out. The more dense the thought structure is, the harder it is for the light to come through. Everytime you die to a form, a thought, there comes a little hole in this dense thought structure. So everytime the holes become bigger and bigger. And then, it is inevitable that, at a given moment the form becomes so transparant that you can see what is inside of it.

Words of light want to come from that place, that place inside. The more holes, the easier it becomes. And when it becomes more easy, and you feel at ease with it, you don’t have to worry anylonger that the whole form falls apart. You already know by then that you are not the cheese remaining. You are the holes!! And of course that is only a matter of speaking.

That is why we feel so good when we hear words of love and truth. Those words resonate with who we are in essence, with the formless, the unnameable of whatever we call it. We all are that in essence, allthough it is hidden under a pile of dung sometimes.

In this era it seems we suffer most in relationships: with our parents, family, children, partner. We want the other one to be different than he is. When there is a solid oaktree in front of me and I say to that tree that I want it to be a flower, people think of me and say to me that I am insane. And they are right. And that is exactly what we do to other people and with all the people: we say, or at least think, that they should be different than they are. And we try everything to accomplish that the other person meets up to the image we have in our head.

What image do we have of another person? Of what does the image of the other person consist? The images we have are our words, our thoughts we have about the other. And what pushes us to want the other to be different than he is? Well, when the other meets up to our image, then we feel good. It is that simple. When we want our partner to communicate with us more, we want that because then we feel good when he does so. When we want our parents to understand us, then we want that so we can feel good.

What happens exactly when we want the other to act differently? When we meet the other, out of the blue all kinds of thoughts come into our head. Those thoughts become words and we start believing those words. And because we believe those words, we tell them to the other person. Our belief in those words is so strong, that when the other person does not act according to our beliefs or disagrees, we start to be aggressive or to be violent.

That is how our program works. Until we know that that is our program, we are innocent; we don’t know any better, until the light comes and shines on the darkness of our conditioning. Then you see that the way you act is your conditioning and has nothing to do with who you really are in essence. When you react according to your conditioning, you act according to centuries old patterns. You have learned it from your parents, and they from their parents and so on and so on. To react or act according to your conditioning is being or acting very predictable. When you don’t do that anylonger, when you are present with yourself in alert stillness when the other person calls you names, when you don’t react or act upon it, what would happen?

And, after this verbal abuse, when you say with clarity and clearly: “I have heard what you just said and have a different idea about that”, what would happen? To be present with you, to be still with you is taking care of you. Taking care of you in stillnes is loving you. The patterns are so strong. And … at a given moment, you notice some changes in your contact with other people. People notice your still, alert presence. They ask why it seems to not bother you what people say about you. And you know that it doesn’t seem that way; it in fact doesn’t bother you at all. Not vulnerable in your vulnerability, silent in the noise, loving in the midst of fear, peace during war. It starts with you. You can stop the war by stopping the war inside of you; by stopping feeding the war outside of you.

And that is about very small things. Wanting to be right is one of them. Wanting to change the other person is creating war. And eventually all those small things can lead to a big war. Every moment is a good moment to stop the war in you. And suddenly that happens.