Marrying words

It just dawned on me that words, in fact, are an experience. Rewind? Okay.

I am adjusting a scientific article on spiritual experiences in nature. One of the central problems is the definition of the word ‘spiritual’. It has so many meanings! It all depends on who describes it. Some authors have the courage to define it as something ‘non dual’. They say that within a spiritual experience, there is no connection between a person and God, because there is no distinction between them.

One can dismiss those words as elitary blah blah, but whoever does that ignores the fact that every word manifests itself as an experience to the one who uses it. He denies the experience of another. It is the same with words such as God or Allah. The user experiences them and they are therefore meaningful.

This is an essential insight for a frequent writer such as myself. It might be one of my core drives. Writing, for me is about letting go, about enjoying the ride. It’s about discovering my relationship to the words, separately and combined. And I invite you as a reader to do the same.

So how did I get entangled in this quest to pin down ‘spirituality’ as a truth seeker? It seems paradoxical to look for objectivity in a place where the topic cannot exist without the lived, personal world. But it’s a beautiful paradox, because the role of the truth seeker brings me to a new experience of the word ‘spiritual’. As a scientist, you have to believe that words have a certain objective meaning in order to create a valid story. Even if only temporary, you have to believe in order to be believed. In that sense, science is not more than a theatrical act, an impersonation of ‘the objective’. And by impersonating the objective, we get into a closer relationship with the word ‘objective’. A word that cannot exist outside of our experience of it.

The relation we ultimately have to our words defines our communication. The more we cling to the word, the more intimately we experience it and the harder we are willing to fight for it. It makes sense, because the way in which we experience our words makes us who we are.

The Mysterious Bird Shit

Take a good look at this picture. What do you think the artist tried to show with it?

Four years ago on a nice summer day, I entered my room and found a little house sparrow flying against the inside window. I opened the window, guided the bird to the hole, and it was gone. It took a few days before I noticed the white stain it had left on my black booklet. It struck me that even if the booklet was only about 5 x 10 cm, not a single bit had dropped next to it. I liked the pattern somehow, so I chose not to wash it yet.

Some months later I interviewed a remarkable man about his spiritual experiences in city parks. He was all about synchronicities. One day, he was biking through Amsterdam when the thought occurred to him that he should adopt a White Buffalo. They are very sacred animals according to people from the Lakota tribes in North America. The instant this seemingly crazy thought popped in his head, bird shit fell onto his knee. It triggered him to crowdsource a trip to the wild west. When after five days he stood at a ranch of white buffalos with the stain still on his knee, the caretaker pointed out that it looked like a portrait the one he just adopted.

That night I looked at my spot again and started noticing shapes. First, there was the skull with big black eyes and a strange short trunk, out of which it shot two little orbs. Then, a shooting star propelled out of the upper jaw as a tooth after sudden pressure. Its tentacles then turned the whole creature into a medusa swimming through a big void with shiny stars in its surroundings. It was only when I took its portrait that I realised that between its gaping eyes, on a spot that had dodged my attention thus far, shone a massive flaming third eye.

In some eastern and esoteric traditions, the third eye is an energetic point in our forehead that functions as a place for overview beyond physical thought. To me, it is a place out of which you can let your fantasy flow between the shores of knowledge and overflow them if you want. You can splash them violently, erode them gently, reaching out for new perspectives on things that have been observed forever.

Ever since I’ve redefined the bird shit stain this way, it reminds me of my relationship with it. Think about it yourself for a while. Where did this picture come from? Out of the air? Out of the berries that our flying fellah ate? The further you let your imagination reach into it, the more meanings you’ll find until, ultimately, you’ll know that somewere in a distant galaxy void, a lonely medusa skull hovers around and finally has the chance to look at you.

What does it see?