READING, WRITING AND SPEAKING: THE LEARNING PROCESS.
The secret of wisdom is in the three phases of the evolution of human language.
When I read, listen and investigate, I am the ‘I’, a construction of interests directed at knowing and learning. It is precisely in these moments, when I open myself to obtaining information, that I am more superficial. Wanting to know more reinforces the idea of what I am supposed to be. The entry of information and data drives me away from the truth.
Something very different happens when I write, because I start to leave acquired knowledge. I start to stop being the ‘I’ that is a seeker or a passionate discoverer, and then unwittingly I become an energy that expresses what I comprehend, transforming through writing what I learned into something original, fresh and with its own stamp. All writing can be an automatism of what has been learned or a reformulation and reworking of what is comprehended.
But when I speak and communicate with others, a phenomenon of complex explanation occurs, because I stop being myself completely, it is when I am most authentic because I forget myself; in that moment what is read, heard and written remains behind; I lose all interest in delivering data or transmitting information. That’s when I have the language that wants to express something that is not even elaborated by me, because it belongs to the mystery. In those moments the unconscious is implacable because I enter in consonance with those who hear me as if I were talking to myself. Interaction with others is the double entry door of human wisdom.
Learning is the discovery of the things we already know. By expressing them we are demonstrating and confirming that we already knew it. In communication with each other, this magical phenomenon of access to common spaces of wisdom arises that nourishes us and announces that we are connected and that we are a treasure of infinite comprehension.
That’s why I affirm that words are finite and limited, because they work over time. They can travel through a greater or lesser stretch of time. They give you the feeling of security and stability because you can keep them, read or listen to them. They have the ability to accompany you. But presence belongs to space, you can not take it home. You can capture it and enjoy it or not. You have the opportunity when you are there looking, feeling, connecting with what transcends the appearances of what we think we are, because it belongs to eternity. Presence is pure consciousness of the divinity of oneself and of others.
Being aware of presence is the field in which language expands freely and spontaneously.
Every time I show up to speak in public I can only guarantee my presence in space. Time stops in my mind and the present becomes eternity. Perhaps this is why I never know what I am going to say, although I always verify that what I transmit is essentially unknown to my mind. I recognise that it comes from the process of reading and writing, but it goes beyond the rational limits of what can be explained or understood, because its aim is to enter into the nucleus of what the voice of consciousness wants to express.
In what I say, and in what you say, is the secret of depth. When we are in presence, there is an encounter with the infinite of me and with the eternal of you. In that moment, silence takes all the power and speaks for itself, saying what words cannot express.
When I am with others in presence is when I am profound, I become depth, because I surrender to my loneliness, I enter inside of myself, I hear my voice as if it were yours and yours as if it were mine. Then my mind gets confused because I am fused.
I dedicate this writing to Nico, a Swiss-Argentine talent hunter, who invited me to come to Israel to do a retreat in the desert and who now accompanies me on these days during a tour of conferences and meetings with people, and who inspired me to share this self-reflection last night, having dinner in Tel Aviv.
Alverto José Varela
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