In nonduality, we use the term, "The false self." And that's exactly what it is—it's not real, it's false. When that drops away, the real you is revealed.
The real you is something that does not need to be defined; it's simply the experiencer. When the false drops away, the real is there.
The Language of Destruction
Saving the World with Nonduality
Basically, we can’t save the world using the same language that’s destroying it
now.
That might take you back… like, “What? It’s not the language that’s destroying the Earth; it’s everything that we’re doing—our pollution, our capitalism, and all those things.”
But where did these things come from? Where did we first get the idea that we’re separate from the world enough to want to use it as a commodity? How did we step far enough back from blending into existence to the point where we actually can extract things from the Earth and use
more than we need? Where did the ideas of money come from?
It takes language. We often call this thoughts, but it’s thoughts of separation are created by the language that we’re taught. So… we’re not going to be able to save the world using the same language that’s destroying it. We either need to come up with different ways to speak, or we need to learn how to use our thought processes in such a radically different way that we’re always interconnected with
everything.
Native American wisdom teachers who are coming out and speaking today say that their languages had no nouns; they were all verbs. Everything in thought and concept was interconnected all the time. Everything was moving and related. You have to have a noun in order to have money, don’t you? A one dollar bill, a gold coin—it’s worth this much. You have to have nouns in order to have capitalism: “Here’s my product that I’m selling,” right?
To make
the radical change that is needed now we have to examine our minds; not as vague ‘thoughts’ in our head, but the fact that every thought I have is in language.
I only speak English. Every thought I have is in English. I know a few words from other languages, but I tend to take those and “English” them. I turn them into nouns. For instance, there’s a native word for “All My Relations.” We English speakers turn that into nouns, and we add a possessive: all my relations. My
relations.
Noun: relations. Possessive: they, them, are my relations. We’re so programmed. We have to own everything: “Those are my relations out there. Those are mine.”
This is not the true meaning of the word. These native words are talking about the total interconnectedness of it all in which the human being is not the highest creature. As a matter of fact, in Native teachings, we’re the dumb cousin. Like, why do we need this big brain? It’s because we’re
really so dumb… it takes this much mental power for us to get through the day. You know, a squirrel just runs around and is a squirrel. Birds fly around, and they know how to be a bird. All without a big brain.
To make the radical change needednfor sustainability we must scrub our minds clean of preconceptions and of the words that we have given to our perceptions.
This is the job of Nonduality. We can reach a place of emptiness where we start seeing how
everything works together. We need lots and lots and lots of people to get as close to this place of emptiness as possible. It’s a place of possibility. If you’ve ever had a moment where your thoughts have stopped, then language has stopped right in that moment. This is a place of no language. A place where we can start seeing a totally different way to live.
