What are thoughts?
This is a series of videos I’m doing on how Nonduality and Native wisdom intersect. Each video is going to build on the one before. I’m trying to not repeat myself a whole lot, so if what I’m saying isn’t making sense or you’re wanting more information, go to the Integrating With Native Teachings course on my website and work through everything in order.
So, what is language? We probably never really stop and think about it because it seems so obvious. We speak language, we study language in school. We know what language is, right? It’s a whole bunch of words that are said in a particular way.
We know that people all around the world have different languages. It’s so obvious that we don’t often stop and think, ‘What is language, anyway? How does it work inside of our heads?’
Your Native Language
I only speak one language. I know little tiny bits of other ones, but basically the extent of my knowledge is that I know other ex-languages exist. But I really only speak English, and this is probably true for a lot of people.
Some people are bilingual, and some people speak a bunch of different languages. But no matter how many languages you speak they all have the same basic effect inside your head. Language creates your worldview. When you only speak one language you only have one point of reference for how the world works.
How does that work?
In short… every thought that I have is in English. That means that the only thing I can “think” is English so I am limited to that vocabulary. I’m also limited by the logic of English sentence structure. Very often, we don’t notice this. We tend to think that our personal language can describe anything… but, in fact, that’s simply not the case.
Getting rid of thoughts is getting rid of language
Non-dual teachings are focused on thoughts: How to get rid of your thoughts, and how disassociate yourself from your thoughts—but what are thoughts? Thoughts are language. All thoughts go through your head in a language. Your language is imprinted into your brain with electronic synopses that tick together inside your language centers. When you are listening to your thoughts you are hearing words drift by, telling stories inside yourself.
There can be nothing completely, totally unique about a thought because all thoughts use words. And all words are concepts you’ve been taught. Words and concepts are limited.
We are limited by our language. Maybe there’s thousands and thousands of words in the English language. Maybe we can invent new words. But in the end you are limited by the concepts that the words represent.
We invent new words all the time. But still, each word has a concept. It’s important, as we go through this series on Nonduality and Native wisdom, to deeply notice the effect that languages have in our consciousness. Language is critical in telling us who we are. It’s in the stories that we’ve heard, in literally, the way that we think.
A few points that we’re going to address as we move on is the fact that native languages are very different than our Western languages. One of the big differences is that English is a noun-based language. We always think of things as things. Many Native languages are verb-based. Everything is an action, and everything is interconnected with everything else. That’s very important in the way you end up viewing life.
Are things solid and independent. Is each thing a separate thing? Or is everything interconnected? Our very language will dictate how we habitually see these things. As we go through this next set of five videos on language we’re going to explore many different ways that language informs us. Hopefully we’ll pop out of the trance our language has put us in and go, ‘Whoa, I see how I’ve been shown to think. Maybe there’s a completely different way.’
That’s where we’ll find, the interconnection.
What about Enlightenment?
Here’s a little tip. The point I’m trying to make in these videos is how native spiritually and enlightenment traditions intersect. The purpose of Nonduality is to get to Enlightenment, right? I’m saying that this is the exact same state that Humanity has lived in for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. This is the wisdom that is coming to us from native traditions. Hopefully, if we can put these two ideas together, we can rewrite the story and find a way to burst forth into our full potential as human beings.
With this intersection we can stop wasting lifetimes in a spiritual search. We can come together in more effective ways than we ever have before. We can create a beautiful interconnected world if we get rid of our limiting conditions. Conditions that all come to us through language.