It’s very rare to come across a person who really knows what they’re talking about. It’s rare to be truly enthralled by someone’s speech, and when you are you are very much so. This is because (spoken) language is actually a very primal activity to participate in if we don’t understand what it’s meant to do.

---

A Key To The Mind

Words, from what I can tell, are simply keys that unlock images and/or form connections inside of the mind. It’s debatable as to whether or not these connections are formed on the spot or if they already exist and just need to be realized; regardless, speaking to each-other helps us understand what we’re talking about because they invoke images and/or feelings.

We’ve gone ahead and attributed certain words to certain physical objects so that when we say the word we see the object in our minds. For example, if someone has finished telling me how their room looks they will probably put a good picture in my mind. If they do, I may respond with the words, “I see what you mean.”

A cat isn’t a dog, but we could very easily switch the words around so that what we call ‘cat’ we now call ‘dog’ and vice versa. In other words, we have the power to “assign” a word to any image or feeling out there.

We know that attributing words to physical objects is possible, but some of us have gone even further and created words that are attributed towards a unique point in metaphysical space. Abstractions like “home, good, bad, freedom, love, morality” etc aren’t attached to any physical object but are supposed to invoke a certain image or feeling  in one way or another.

What you see/feel when you hear these words is different for everybody, and in that way they hold a different meaning than words attached to physical objects; that is to say, hearing the word ‘love’ will attract different feelings/images for everybody, and the feelings/images felt/seen will be what is most meaningful to the person who hears it.

Most of us don’t seem to notice how powerful words really are. Our daily conversations can be (and from my observations, often are) evoking feelings or images that we don’t need to experience anymore. They can also show you an image or a feeling that you need to heal from, or perhaps they can give you a burst of joy.

The possibilities are infinite; words are the key to trapping yourself or liberating yourself based on the reality you create with them. 

---

The Solution

Most of us aren’t in dire need to be free from the words we use, but for those that are there doesn’t seem to be much help available, and so I feel compelled to write a solution:

It is our responsibility to know which words invoke which feelings/images in our minds. Some words will matter more to us than others, and if we find our “trigger words” and keep paying attention to their realities we’ll find that they aren’t so bad after all. It is also our responsibility to consciously attribute words to the feelings/images we want to see/feel.

For example, we can consciously create the reality we want to experience when we think of the word “safe,” or “good,” or even words like “negative”, “bad,” so on and so forth. If we do this with multiple words, or even with every word we can think of, we’ll come closer to realizing the full extent of our power, and we’ll also become more individualized than we were in the past.

It’s also helpful (and sometimes funny) to create your own words in response to a situation or an event that hasn’t been realized by the whole of society yet.

This is very much an individual process. Creating and using words that are supposed to refer to something everyone can understand (for example, “book”) can cause a lot of problems if the words are taken too seriously. In other words, if too much emphasis is put on the word instead of the object it refers to, then negative thought patterns become a plague that has to be treated (see my post on Word Analysis Philosophy).

Also, if we never properly asked the question, “What does this word mean exactly,” then we never have the chance to create our own reality using the words provided to us by the people we know/have known, and thus we stay in the same metaphysical reality that we’ve always known no matter what happens to yourself or anybody else around you.

I’ve created a few words that describe some unnamed points within the metaphysical, and I must say it’s quite liberating. One day I felt a strange mix of fierce determination combined with immeasurable sadness and decided to call that state of being “kuti.” Since there doesn’t seem to be a word for the act of paying attention to attention I created the word “wadina” to describe this. “Tasmodia” is a word that describes a person who is a genuine, raw lover of the earth. “Lukana” is the sensing of tiny, subtle subconscious ripples in the back of your mind. “Krisikara” is the state of feeling enlightened through massive amounts of feeling, imagination, realization, and transformation while recognizing that the state itself is only a feeling that will help continue the cycle forever.

The only problem with these words is that they become less meaningful to the next person who hears them, starting with me; that is to say, these words are most meaningful to me, then they will provide slightly less meaning to you if you have never seen or heard them before, and then they will provide slightly less meaning to the next person you tell than they did for you.

That is why (if you feel the need) you must create your own words for yourself only. Hell, it’s even fun to make a new word for something well-known instead of calling it what everybody else does! 

---

The Primacy of (Spoken) Language

Language is a tool that is meant to bring someone to a certain point in metaphysical space. It does a rather poor job of this unless it brings someone to a point of metaphysical space that mirrors the physical world.

For example, the word “parrot” brings a picture of a parrot to your mind, but the word “compassion” will probably also bring a picture of a physical event, situation, object, or person into your mind despite it’s true power lying deeper into the metaphysical.

In other words, some words like “compassion” have the potential to (for lack of better wording) bring you further into the mind when it is fully realized. It can give you an image/feeling that is unique to you instead of an image that mirrors the physical world. Why is this important? Because consciously invoking the uniqueness out of different words provides the feeling of meaning to those who feel trapped by them, and even to some who aren’t.

With this realization (and by doing this ourselves) we can transform language from a damning trap into a subjective art that provides infinite meaning!

Perhaps I’m in a different position then most, but I often fall into negative thought patterns that can last for days, weeks, or months on end. These negative thought patterns are often unconscious (oh boy, how fun) and they almost always consist of words that have a negative connotation in society, such as “terrible,” “shameful,” “useless,” and the like; words that are meant to degrade my being and make sure I never get back up again.

In response to my own turmoil I’ve created a new branch of philosophy called ‘Word Analysis Philosophy.’ Its purpose is to take a particular word, break it into smaller pieces, find out exactly where it comes from, exactly what it means, how it could be said better, and what exactly the ‘it’ happens to be that I’m trying to explain.

For example, a word that’s bugging me at the moment is “useless.” I could let this word roam around in the back of my mind and leave it unchecked, but that would lead to a lot of suffering since me telling myself “I’m useless” is a bad thing, right? Maybe, but I’m not entirely convinced that this is the truth. Let’s take this word, “useless,” and analyze it a little further instead of simply taking it at face value.

The Process

If I break the word into smaller bits and pieces I find that it’s made up of two words; “use” and “less.” Just breaking the word apart sends a different message then “useless;” instead of suffering to no end I now receive the message that I should “use less” of my computer/phone since I’m on them all of the time for work and play.

Now I take the two words “use” and “less” and find their origin. After all, the cultural context they were created for at the time is everything, and if a word is created in a different context then what we’re experiencing today then it could have a completely different meaning then what we think of it to be in the present day.

A quick search from www.etymoline.com gave me me this: ” use (n), c. 1200, “act of employing,” from Anglo-French and Old French us “custom, practice, usage,” from Latin usus “use, custom, practice, employment, skill, habit,” from past participle stem of uti “make use of, profit by, take advantage of.”

Also, “use (v), c. 1200, “employ for a purpose,” from Old French user “employ, make use of, practice, frequent,” from Vulgar Latin *usare “use,” frequentative form of past participle stem of Latin uti “make use of, profit by, take advantage of, enjoy, apply, consume,” in Old Latin oeti “use, employ, exercise, perform,” of uncertain origin.

This Latin root, “uti,” certainly has its place in the English language; utilize, utensil, inutile, usury, and use all come from this stem “uti.” So immediately we think of a tool, a device, something we take advantage of, etc etc.

Looking up the word “less” I see two different definitions, the first being “Old English læs (adv.) “less, lest;” læssa (adj.) “less, smaller, fewer” (Northumbrian leassa), from Proto-Germanic *laisizan (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian les “less;” Middle Dutch lise “soft, gentle,” German leise “soft”), from PIE root *leis- (2) “small” (source also of Lithuanian liesas “thin”) + comparative suffix,” which is a complete mouthful for someone who is not etymologically inclined. However the second definition made a little more sense to me;

-less, word-forming element meaning “lacking, cannot be, does not,” from Old English -leas, from leas “free (from), devoid (of), false, feigned,” from Proto-Germanic *lausaz (cognates: Dutch -loos, German -los “-less,” Old Norse lauss “loose, free, vacant, dissolute,” Middle Dutch los, German los “loose, free,” Gothic laus “empty, vain”), from PIE root *leu- “to loosen, divide, cut apart.”

If we take the first part of this definition (modern english “-less”) then we get a word that spells “useless” which generally means “lacking utility,” “cannot be taken advantage of.” If we move to the Old English root -leas then we can spell the word “useleas” (or dare I be so bold to spell it “uselease”) which means means  “devoid of advantage,” “false utility,” or even “free of use.” Moving on to the third part of this definition (the Old Norse root -lauss) we get the word “uselauss” which means “vacant utility,” “dissolute advantage,” or even “loose utility or “loosely advantageous.”

The older the root, the less sense it makes when we combine it with modern english, but right away we can see a few choices when we take another look at this word; we can choose to see the word “useless” as meaning “free from use, unable to be used,” as “lacking utility, devoid of advantage,” or even as “use less” (as in using something less than usual).

If you’re like me and this word runs through your head every now and again the first definition will most likely be the most freeing out of the three since we usually assume the second definition by default. The third way to see this word is useful if we’re doing something more than we should be. 

Now that we have the definitions out of the way we can get a little more philosophical on the matter by asking questions such as, “What exactly is the thing that is useless?” “What is the opposite of ‘using’ something?” “Why do I feel bad when this word pops up again? What does it mean for me?” The longer we ask questions about a word (or a sentence or a phrase) the sillier it becomes. If I answer the first question by saying, “Well, me! I’m useless,” then I’m forced to ask the question, “Which definition do you mean?” Then I might say, “The second definition. I am lacking utility; I am devoid of advantage; I am completely and utterly useless to society in every possible way.”

What I have done there is made the unconscious thought pattern completely conscious by forcing myself to give a straight definition as to what it is I mean exactly.

Sometimes just attending to a subconscious thought pattern is enough and you’ll start to feel much better. In this case, though, my initial assumption hasn’t left; it appears to be very, very grounded in reality.

From here I could ask a few different questions; “Is this assumption grounded or ungrounded? If so, why?” “What skillsets should I develop in order to change this reality, and why exactly?” “Why is this a core assumption that’s been in the background for so long?” “Am I doing something I shouldn’t be doing, or not doing something I should be doing?” 

I won’t type my follow-throughs for the sake of time, but at the end it became quite clear that some of my fear, anxiety, sadness, and guilt stem from a core assumption of  the feeling named shame if I conclude that I’m not being useful enough to the people around me. Of course now I should examine the word “shame,” and I probably will after this post.

Conclusion

WAP is meant to help over-thinkers like myself calm their minds with a bit of effort and a bit of brutal honesty by accepting the thoughts as they are.

It’s not necessarily a step-by-step process because the answers will be different for you and me then it will be for everyone else. But looking into a word (or a sentence or phrase) for long enough will reveal its silliness to you, and it may reveal another secret that cannot be said… I’ll leave that one for you to figure out!

First, I recommend you read/listen to Carl Jung’s work titled “Approaching the Unconscious” and then his following work “Man and His Symbols.” Carl Jung has studied this subject in far greater detail than I could ever hope to cover today, and after you read them you may even find that you don’t need to read this post at all!

Second, if you’ve come back after reading his work, I would like to remind you that dream interpretation is still very new and it relies on a highly intuitive process that has little (if no) scientific basis whatsoever. We cannot exactly explain how or why dreams give us the pockets of meaning that they do, but we can definitely talk about what dreams are, why dreams are important, what they try to tell us, and how we can receive these pockets of meaning for ourselves.

What Are Dreams Exactly?

It seems as if the best modern-day answer for this question is something to the extent of, “a series of images that are created by the mind” or any kind of variant thereof. However, I’ve observed dreams to be far more than this, and I will attempt to answer the question as best as I possibly can:

Dreams are an enjoyable, unpleasant, or neutral environment in which something must be learned from. They’re messages from yourself to yourself about something you need to attend to in your waking life, and what you remember from each dream is more important than what you don’t remember. 

The reason for this definition is because of my personal experiences of having a dream, interpreting it for myself, realizing what I need to realize, and then learning a lesson that I can consciously integrate throughout the day. I haven’t found dreams to be neither random phenomena nor synchronized with waking life, but are phenomena that express their ‘lessons to be learned’ through symbolic representation, and that applying the lessons hidden within are the sole purpose of every dream that’s existed, ever. I will carry this realization through the entirety of this post.

Why Bother?

Why shouldn’t we ignore our dreams and focus on our daily, waking lives? Why can’t we ignore the lessons they’re trying to teach and carry on with what we’re already preoccupied with?

Ignoring the subconscious (aka the part of you that produces the dream and is the dream itself) will only make it scream louder. If screaming doesn’t work then it will control your life from the inside out until you consciously acknowledge the (usually unpleasant) results that it (you) produce(s). Sounds scary, right?

Well, the reality is almost every American alive right now is primarily controlled by their (either repressed or unrealized) subconscious fragments, and that they (the subconscious processes controlling the people) will not stop until they become realized in one way or another.

We get to be this way, of course, because we grow up in a society that doesn’t value the imagination, or intuitive knowledge (any knowledge?), or dreams, or expression of self. Since dreams are experiences meant to inform us of (first personal, then collective) neuroticism then the reason dreams exist is because we stand in the way of our own (and even worse, each-other’s) nature enough to become confused, disoriented, and unsure of “the meaning of life.”

But we don’t pay any mind to this so of course more dreams appear and help guide us along the way, but we continue to ignore them as we become more neurotic and unstable, and the cycle can continue indefinitely.

This is why it’s important to listen to the messages your dreams give you and learn as much as you can from them (you). We’re living in a society that doesn’t value mental health, but we as individuals can begin to listen to ourselves and heal from our own personal trauma and then begin to experience and heal the collective trauma. These disturbances, of course, are most likely to be discovered when dreaming and/or day-dreaming. If we do this then we are one step closer to a fulfilled life and a society that truly values health as it is.

How Can We Learn From Our Dreams?

If we read Man and His Symbols we’ll know that each and every part of a dream is a symbolic representation of a part of the self (yourself). Jung was able to say that these symbols represent different “archetypes,” of which cannot be seen, heard, felt, or touched, even after knowing which archetype is represented by each symbol.

I want to simplify it a little bit by adding that what you remember to ask yourself about the dream is what matters the most, since losing memory of a part of a dream (or even an entire dream) is a sign that you’ve either completely ignored it or processed it in its entirety.

Since what we remember about our dream is important the question arises, “Is the entire dream important despite our emphasis on the parts of it that are important?” The answer is yes; after all, you’re having the dream, and simply losing memory of it does not necessarily mean that the energy behind the dream has disappeared or even become less important. This is why it’s important to remember as much as we can about every dream – the environment it took place in, the people that were in it, any object that felt like it had significance, etc etc.

When we remember a dream it’s important to ask questions about it in our waking lives. If a person/environment/object feels important then you will answer yourself immediately, and when you put all of the answers together you will have one, integrated, meaningful realization that will probably help you feel amazing for the rest of the day, and will certainly be one more step towards an integrated self. I’d like to give an example of a dream I had the other night that held some significance for myself so that I can show you what I mean.

It was nighttime. I was in a very small, swampy area with trees and brush surrounding me on every side except my left side. On my left side was a small, unclimbable hill. There was a cage next to this hill and it held several kinds of animals only two of which I remember – a monkey and a snake. A mysterious man owned the cage and the animals within, and we met and spoke for a while before he disappeared into the brush. I was left alone with the animals, and I could only stare at them before I awoke with the strong urge to interpret the dream.

Every detail in this dream is important – I could have merely mentioned that I was in a swampland but I felt like I had to include the time of day, the brush surrounding me, and the hill that was on my left side. After asking myself the necessary questions I found that the nighttime represented calmness and tranquility, the brush represented a barrier to prevent my possible escape, and the hill represented the nostalgic feeling of climbing it just to see what’s on the other side. The reason it was on my left side was because the right side was beyond the brush and therefore meant doom and suffering.

The cage represents relief since it bars the animals in and prevents them from getting to me. The mysterious man represents a person who is highly evolved, wealthy, and out of reach to me, the common man. He owned the animals. The monkey and the snake represent parts of myself that can further be described as primal action in both the intellectual and physical parts of life, respectively.

Each piece of the dream has been individually interpreted, and now I must put it all together. The tranquility of the situation was a clear indication that the brush surrounding me wasn’t that big of a deal, and simply meant I had to stay there in order to learn something, which is a big step for me since I value freedom very strongly. The hill also aided in the setting of the scene since I enjoy the feeling of nostalgia described above. Since the cage represented relief, since the man who owned the animals was “out of reach,” and since the monkey and the snake both represent primal intellectual and physical action, the realization to be had here is that I’m relieved that another part of me is taking care of the primal urges so that I (the conscious self) don’t have to.

Of course the lesson to be learned is that I must integrate with this “caretaker” since he appeared separate from “myself” inside of my dream, and I must take care to consciously notice my primal urges when I’m living in my waking life as well.

Now I have my “duty” for the day and I’ll work at integrating the caretaker into myself. Of course, as a bonus, I get to feel indescribable relief  throughout the entire day! Had I simply ignored the dream and gone about my day I would’ve also missed out on becoming more integrated and more developed as an individual, and the more developed and integrated you are the more peace you will experience throughout your life (I’ll explain this further in a future post).

Conclusion

It requires building trust with yourself and being brutally honest with what’s going on, but I can promise you that integrating the lessons learned from your dreams is very beneficial in the short term and the long run alike. I definitely recommend you start interpreting your own dreams as soon as possible so that you may realize yourself more and more every day. Have a good day!