Language is an amazing phenomenon, a fantastic vehicle of
conveyance – and it can take many, many forms. The vehicle has a whole variety
of component parts comprising a huge and wide-ranging inner language and an
outer language of bodily expression.

Part of that bodily expression is represented by sounds
formed by the different shapes of our lips, mouths, throats and lungs. And we
learn the ability to refine those sounds using a coded set of meaning and
expression – verbal language.

Now extensive and diverse as verbal language can be, it is
like the visible part of an iceberg. And as with the iceberg, there is a much
greater part of language below the surface. The bit we can see (or hear) is
only a small part of the entire structure of this amazing vehicle.

We need to remember that non-verbal and sensory languages
make up a much greater part of the iceberg.

The Iceberg of
Language

Now an entire iceberg is suspended in two mediums – air and
water, and where those two mediums meet, connect, interface, is the surface of
the water.

Spoken and written Verbal Language is almost exclusively
above the surface.

Also, it is – in chronological terms – the newest and
youngest part of our iceberg of language.

We are born with the other languages
already in situ – and we have to
learn our Verbal language. As we learn it and once we learn it, we then find
ourselves increasingly capable of translating our Sensory Language, the
Language of Time and our own unique Inner Language into words in order to
convey meaning. That meaning we are either conveying to other living things outside
of us, or back to ourselves on the inside.

Our Verbal language is like a particular of a specific
gravity, or perhaps more of a currency.
And the ways we spend that currency
can work both in our overall favour and also very much against us.

When we use the gravity, or currency, of Non-verbal language,
the meaning we wish to convey is NOT translated into words. Non-verbal language
comes direct from the source – be it Sensory, Time, or Inner Language. When
Non-verbal language is used then, since
words are not in evidence, there is nothing lost in translation.

Sometimes our bodies can say one thing and we can speak
another – yet the REAL meaning is always what the body says.
We can tell
untruths and our bodies will give us away. We will get a “gut” feeling about
someone, although our verbalised understanding of them might be quite
different.
When we blush, our bodies have expressed some meaning, a sensory
response to certain stimuli. 

We “know” if something doesn’t look right, sound right, feel
right, taste or smell right – yet how do we know? It’s an innate
“knowing”, evidenced to us through Sensory language. Yes, we’ll perhaps
verbalise it afterwards, but that’s merely a translation into words after the
event.

Some of our general Worldview has moved on in the 400 or so years
since Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum led
to the view that Body and Mind are separate entities – and yet there is a lot
of vestigial thought and language
that maintains that paradigm.
I happen to hold firm to the view that we are
each unique beings with integrated bodies and minds.

However, what seems to make it feel to us that perhaps Descartes was right is
that although we might recognise the thoughts that drive our experience
in the Mind, we then go and interpret the experience in the Body.
This almost
constant and regular occurrence is already giving the impression to us that
Mind and Body are separate.


I think in the Mind and I experience in
The Body.

And – because it is OUR body we make the assumption that the
experience must be REAL, ignoring what has actually driven that experience.

The next stage in this illusion happens when we start to
think about our experience and allow those
thoughts to expand through more interpretation into further experience. And so the loops and the cycle continue!

And all the while Language is conveying information and
meaning, although at this stage how aware are we as to which part of the
Iceberg it is from?

What seems to make it feel on occasions
that there are some parts of us in conflict with other parts?  The familiarity of certain phrases like –
“I can’t seem to stop myself”
“Another part of me seemed to take over”
“I need to explore my inner child”
“I looked at myself in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw“
– would seem to bear this out.

However this is still all down to the nature of thought, and
our interpretations of thought conveyed via the diversity of language. The pivotal point to remember is that any interpretation
involves language of one kind or another.
This is crucial.

Part of the nature of all living things is the phenomenon of
transmitting interpretations of the power of thought. The vehicle by which
thinking is transported is Language.

Our language expresses the gravity of our thoughts.

(The Iceberg of Language is taken from my recent book “Navigating The Ship of You.”)