Those of you who have worked with me know the particular importance I place upon the use of language, both in communication with others and in internal dialogue. Following my previous post, and in the face of an increasing sense of helplessness in the face of massive global change, I would suggest that one very real manner in which we as individuals can effect change in the world around us is to change our language. The corporate media know full well the power of langauge and daily manipulate our vernacular in order to secure the interests of various mechanisms of control. I feel that it behooves us all to question and modify those structures of language which do not serve our collective evolution.

Below is an example of the kind of language that is an ever increasing part of our linguistic consumption. The inference that nature is a force of aggression which "beseiges" humanity's defences serves only to further separation, fear and denial of the fundamentally biological nature of our existence. If we are "at war" with nature, then we are at war with our very selves and those about us we purport to love and support.

Simon

BBC NEWS | Americas | Storm batters southern US coast:

Mayor Ray Nagin said he had received reports that some water had already breached the defences.

"This city is under siege," he said.

I have been thinking about loneliness of late, discussing it with my selves and others, and wanted to express the relationship of my work to loneliness. I say "my" work as a linguistic convention, for I realise there is very little by way of ownership of this facilitation of a process that is omnipresent in the world and in humanity's relationship to it. I am, as various teachers have pointed out, but "a hollow bone".



Carl Jung said;

"I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. Lonliness does not come from having no people about one but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissable....If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely"

Carl was a product of his culture, and his observation does not apply to solely to the male gender. In my observation, many individual problems are reflections of a much broader cultural malaise. We live in an extremely mediated society, and many find that their immediate quality of felt experience does not match the view that culture at large holds. This is often internalised as an individual failing, and various illnesses result. It is my hope that this forum can become a space for the telling of story, and the realisation of the fact that actually our stories as humans are very similar, and all equally important. In the weeks to come, I shall be posting recordings of various interviews with exceptional people. Exceptional not necessarily because of their cultural achievements, but because they have had the courage to pursue the path of their heart's knowing, and have grown beyond their own expectations in the process.

I hope that this process, and others that I engage in, can in some way ameliorate the prevailing sense of loneliness and separation that is so much a part of the current human story.

May peace prevail.

Simon