The Language of Spirit
I love the idea of language offering universal meaning and connection. I like to imagine that words historically held a more universal meaning than they do today. However, spiritual words are especially ambiguous, laden with multiple meanings and supercilious tones. An important part of our spiritual journey is to define for ourselves what spiritual words actually mean to us. Spiritual words are old, they speak to culture, lineage, religiousity and systems of belief. It is assumptive to assume we all mean the same things when we use them. In crafting your own personal meanings, start with the basics… Oxford Dictionary, Rogers Dictionary, or Websters. From there, notice how the definition relates to your experience, notice how it feels in your body, and sit with it. Then compare and contrast the definitions, use them as baselines to work off, and add your own experience to the mix. Not everybody may agree with you, but you will have created something meaningful, authentic and helpful you can use and call your own.
Years back, I met a woman (Martha) who was writing a dictionary. Not a spiritual dictionary, just a regular modern Webster’s. At the time I thought, “My god what a horrible task.
It had never occurred to me that word definitions are largely about time and place. They are colloquial and not only change with culture and society (yes I was young) but, like art, they change with internal experiences and collective consciousness. When I pick up a dictionary, I am often disappointed by the limitations of a definition, especially a spiritual definition because I know that it doesn’t include my experience or the experiences of others I know. Also, as Martha could attest, writing a dictionary takes a long time. Martha estimated it would take her four years to complete, not including publication. In four years a lot can change internally and collectively.
Words and their meaning are the cornerstones of communication. In thinking of all the misunderstandings I’ve had in my life I bet at least half of them were simply due to the subjectivity of language. Think of all the time and energy a person could save over a lifetime if miscommunication due to language subjectivity was understood.
As I’ve mentioned definition limitations are most exacerbated with spiritual and esoteric words. Since I am a spiritual writer, it does create an opportunity, maybe even an obligation, to explain what I mean by certain words. As a Heart Centered Mentor-Coach what better starting point than to share with you my spiritual language.
It is my intention in sharing these definitions to express clarity about my thoughts and experiences NOT to redefine them for you. You decide what you should or should not believe. If these definitions lend a hand to your own experience, please use them, if they challenge you or don’t fit for you, toss them aside and stick to your own spiritual definitions.
Carleen’s Spiritual Definitions:
Being: A deep sense of presence, absent of force or the need for change. At the heart of the feminine Soul.
Belief: An internal conviction with a biological location. A pillar of Story and Self-story. Acts like an attractor field.
Consciousness: The energy behind awareness. The unified field of all life.
Destiny: The circumstances a person can create when they become conscious of and in right relation to their Fate (the patterns they inherited).
Divine: Consciousness of the universe.
Embodiment: Conscious cellular knowledge and wisdom.
Enlightened: A continuous state of divine connection and right action.
Fate: The individual patterns that arise from a person’s a) biological parents b) time and place of birth (including the time period) c) birth order d) gender at birth e) bone structure f) a life-altering experience outside of a person’s control or perception of control.
Kundalini: Life force often expressed as a union of soul and spirit energies in the subtle body.
Love: The right thought, word, or action in the right moment to bring renewed health, healing, and wholeness.
Soul Alignment: A body-mind-conscious connection to your life force and authentic essence.
Heart’s Desire: A part of a person that longs for the ineffable. Beyond logic or linear thinking. Attraction to Soul. Part of the Soul’s journey that holds a key to expanded meaning, new consciousness, and life.
Pain: The moment of infliction or separation in body-mind or soul. The epicenter or root of suffering.
Sacred: That which is respected, revered, and honoured as whole.
Soul: The personal and transpersonal divine energy expressed through the feminine (body, earth, liberating current).
Spirit: The personal and transpersonal divine energy expressed through the masculine (between, sky, manifesting current).
Spirituality: The belief in conscious energy moving through matter.
Spiritual Manifesting: A profound or meaningful state of inner and outer alignment where time and space dissolve and the act of personal “doing” is replaced by what seems coincidental, magical or impossible.
Story: The personal and archetypal shape a person lives.
Self Story: The “I” statements a person uses to define themselves.
Subtle body: The energy that precedes our neurology i.e. chakras, meridians, nadis, resonance.
Suffering: The human experience of loss.
Transpersonal: Beyond the individual.
Transformation: A profound change in mind-body-soul or spirit. Change in one area affects all areas.
Unconscious: The energy that is not conscious.
Value: Something that is subjectively or collectively worthy. An extension of belief.
I expect this list will grow but for now, these are the words that you may read on my website, in my memoir Orchid of Fate, and are frequently used in my vocabulary. Should we work together they may come up in our conversations. I hope they are helpful and aligned with your understanding or at least enhance your understanding. If you are on a spiritual journey I encourage you to develop your own spiritual definitions.
Our inner software runs on vibration and the tonal vibration of language coupled with meaning is how we share our inner worlds. Going back to my blog “Heart-Centered is”, without a word for hunger there would only be the sensation of hunger pangs, coupled with bending over, holding one’s stomach, or gesturing. Perhaps a more honest way of expressing one’s self, but also less nuanced and more childlike.
Our personal definitions help us define ourselves to others but more importantly, they help us define ourselves to ourselves. As all great spiritual masters have said, now is the greatest time to “know thyself.”
