Language is limited. We may not think about that very often because language seems so useful. Using language we can describe the things we see. We can think about things in ways that seem infinite and endless. But language is very, very limited. It can only describe things to a certain point because it uses words.
Words are limited by their definitions. Like the color red—what is that really?
If I say ‘red,’ then you start thinking about red. I’m also thinking about ‘red’. But are we thinking the same thing?
What if I say I have a red flag. Certainly, we know what red is. But then you start getting into it deeper and… which exact shade are you talking about? And what is red anyway? Scientists say, ‘It’s the way that light is reflected from different things.’ But does that really define it?
If we want to go deep into this with real woo-woo thinking we can wonder if I see the exact same thing that you see when you see red? It only makes sense that we don’t see red the same. The synopses in my brain are formed in a certain way (from genetics, my history, learning). Does it really make sense that my brain works exactly the same as yours works when I see red?
Look how quickly it gets messed up! We start talking about one simple thing and boom! The next thing you know it’s impossibly huge and complicated.
It’s language itself that is the problem.
Language is limited is because no matter how hard we try, we can’t get to the end of the subject using just language… because language itself can’t quite grab the unity and complexity of things.
There is a lot more to each of us than just the language in our heads. We can use a different part of our consciousness to simply look. Simply look at red. It’s possible to simply look. We can simply know about things without having to describe it.
Noun based languages cause division.
Now, think about languages and words. Every language has a different word for the color red. Each word is going to describe a slightly different quality. There might be some languages where the word red expresses its brightness: how it’s similar to fire. Some languages might just have a really boring word for red, like ‘red.’
When a word is assigned to a thing as a noun it becomes a fixed thing. But if the word for red was a verb it could only be expressed in its relationship to other things.
So the way languages are structured matters because it determines our basic point of view about reality.
Language can only do so much to help us understand the world. This is what non-dual teachings are so about— the fact that if you can step back from your thoughts and simply be alive. It means that when we step back from our language we see this broader perspective.
Without language we’re going to be closer to the truth. The actual truth about red can be better understood by looking at it than by talking about it, right?
This is what nonduality is trying to teach us—that you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts drift in front of your consciousness. Your thoughts are language. In a nutshell: you are not your ability to describe things.
There is something more aware in you than your ability to describe things. If you can find that something, you have discovered who you are. You are this awakeness. You are the awakeness that can see the color red, no matter what word there is for it.
A language can create a fixed perspective. Language is also limited by the history of the language itself. This is how Nonduality and Native Traditions intersect.
Native traditions use a different type of language from our civilized traditions and civilized languages. Native languages also use the community, the interconnected whole of the people speaking the language unseparated from the people who are speaking it. This can only be done when there is no written language.
Instead of making things objects many native languages talk about the relation, the link, between things and how things move. The world isn’t fixed and separated by nouns.
In Nonduality and Enlightenment Traditions when you hit the point where you realize that you are not your thoughts, you are not your language, then your natural state sees everything in this interconnected way. Enlightenment is overcoming your addiction to your language.
Think of it this way: Language is limited, but you are not. Your awareness can understand things beyond language. The most important point is to understand that native traditions, for centuries and centuries, lifted people from birth into this living state where everyone could see how interconnected everything is. The very language they used created this interconnection because interconnection was inherent in every thought.
In civilized societies, and in civilized language, we’re taught from the very beginning to see things as existing separately. There’s you, and there’s me. There’s your ball there, and this is my ball. In our language noun things are all separate, and it messes up our brain.
Maybe what I’m really trying to say is that in our particular language, the words that we use to inform our world, messes up our brain. This is why we need spiritual practices like Nonduality. Nonduality is the tool we use to calm down the definitions and even step completely beyond it.
How do you step beyond it?
This is a case where you can’t fix the problem using the thing that caused the problem. You can’t think your way out of the fact that thinking in English doesn’t work in a living field of unity. There is no description for the living field of unity in which we each exist. You got to step completely beyond it, and then you’re there.
So, this is the intersection between native wisdom and nonduality.
Native wisdom doesn’t really have the tools to take someone who’s all messed up and bring them back to reality. It doesn’t have effective tools for opening our consciousness to the place of pure unity. It requires a whole tribe, a whole family, and a whole life to be a fully unified human.
Civilized civilizations, let’s be honest, don’t have tools that do a good job with it either. Our spirituality usually just furthers our confusion, the confusion inside ourselves, and the confusion between us all.
Nonduality is only a tool. It’s not the truth itself. It’s a great tool but has been relatively ineffective up till now. Nonduality is currently lost in a mine field of ineffective definitions. Circular thinking. How do you disassociate from your addiction to your mind by using the drug that caused that very addiction? How do you explain unity using a language that defines everything as separate, that makes you think everything is separate just by thinking it!? How do you disassociate from yourself from that so that you can see that everything is actually connected, so that you can be you?
When we put these two things together we can start to see that Nonduality is a tool we can use to be able to more easily, gently and effectively step into this place where Native wisdom can live. Native wisdom is the story of what it looks like to live there, because our brains need stories. This is the story of where we’re going to, how we want to live, and what we want to be.
So between the two, they’re a very good match.