WHAT DO I HAVE TO SAY TO OTHERS? WHERE DOES THE NEED TO WRITE OR SPEAK COME FROM?
A challenging reflection for those of us who speak in public and write for many readers.
We humans communicate with one another in many ways at an individual level, we maintain dialogues and written or voice messages, but there is a form that is worth observing: when someone talks or writes for many people. Speech and writing are tools that manage great power over others, and over oneself.
Being heard or read is one of the most important causes of the ego’s inflation, because the ego is exactly what others think. In this sense my ego is very much what my listeners and readers think about me, so I have to be very careful with what I say or write because with the perception that comes to me from you, I will be strengthening or weakening my ego. That is why I affirm that my ego is not mine but yours, because it is in your hands, you have the power to make my ego enlarge or diminish, depending on what is being produced in you by what I am writing.
When people write to congratulate me or thank me, my ego reacts very satisfactorily, when it is to criticize or disqualify me my ego feels hurt. The most interesting thing about this is to have understood that I am not my ego. Beyond my ego I have discovered something much deeper and more powerful that lives in me and that transcends external stimuli; I mean my consciousness. That part of me that allows me to objectively observe what I am, what I am not, and the process in which I realize what I am not until I reach the moment when I realize what I am. To be able to observe is pure power.
THE ABSURD HISTORY OF SPEAKING AND WRITING
I´ve been giving lectures and writing for decades. Communication has become the most notorious activity in my life. In my blog I have written more than 500 articles in the last 3 years, but most of what I have written has not yet been published; I have given more than 200 lectures in the last 10 years; currently, every week I am in contact with people who write to me, and with people who come to retreats or conventions to whom I give talks about different topics related to the inner evolution. If I have such a communicative activity, I am supposed to have something to say, share or deliver, or else I have a huge need to have a leading role. Maybe both of these things. Both come from the same root: my self. The lower self and the higher self.
When I tell you this, the first thing that comes to me is a big laugh, because I can see the infinite neurosis that I have of wanting to communicate to others. From which self do I do this? What is the sense in this? To me it is very clear, and for a long time I realized that if I do not express what I feel and what I understand, I can blow up like a bomb. Maybe this ‘verboscopic’ reflex is saving my life, but if this act is also contributing something to someone, I think it´s marvelous. In fact, when I see and hear the videos in which I am filmed, I can see how liberating it is for me to speak and write for others, and in the process verify that what I am emitting is content that can be useful for others. Sometimes I see myself as ridiculous, sometimes I’m ashamed to see myself, other times I see myself and listen as if the one in the video were someone else and I manage to learn things from myself. Anyway, the communicative task has many aspects both neurotic and psychotic, it is as if the human self is intermingled with the spiritual self in the same act; I feel that by addressing others I am playing a game of exploring potentiality and limitation, both my own and everybody’s. It is a highly evolutionary task, especially if it can be observed from the objectivity of consciousness.
“By communicating I am inside an evolutionary act that goes beyond what I can understand”
That is why I dedicate this writing to myself, to reflect on myself, and perhaps in the meantime I am passing on a material that can inspire others, whether to write, to speak in public, to be silent forever or to stop writing until entering into the awareness of the responsibility that communication has.
Being in front of a captive audience of the words that I am going to express is a moment of tremendous responsibility. For many years I have become aware, little by little, of what it means to speak to others, especially when those others are many and they are all together in silence listening to me. At that moment I ask myself: Who am I to be here talking to others about things that I supposedly know and they do not know? Or what moves me to transmit, encourage, motivate or clarify issues of their lives? There are several answers and they all come from the same point: the dialogue between what I am and what I am not.
THE NEUROSIS OF LECTURING, THE WEALTH OF EXCHANGING IDEAS
Addressing ourselves to groups of people is an act of courage and daring, but it also has implicit thoughts that we have of ourselves and of others. In general we can see in ourselves, those who do it, a certain arrogance, as if the others were ignorant, unhappy or unconscious; it is a very camouflaged neurosis and is hidden behind an act so common and current within the spiritual, therapeutic and human development scope; it seems as if anyone – even professionals, scientists, scholars or teachers – could say anything to help others, to teach them, to inform them or to advise them; but who is really qualified to write or speak to others when it comes to human, psychological, philosophical, spiritual, sociological or mystical aspects? Is it enough to know how to speak in public or know how to write? This is something that is discovered in the same process in which there are those who speak and those who listen, those who write and those who read. That’s when you can appreciate the intention of transmitters and receivers and the sense of communication they maintain, when they meet and recognize each other. When there is connection between the parties, a communicative link is created, this is a bridge across which many things that make sense for both will pass. We are witnessing a practice whose origin comes from human history and which has produced a high impact in the transmission of knowledge and which has served as a tool for healing.
There are so many people who need to listen, understand and learn that there is a large global market of people willing to introduce information into their brain, with the fantasy that the more knowledge they accumulate the more possibilities they will have or the more certain they will feel. Others have the belief that the more they listen or read, the more they will know or that they will become better people; and others do it so then later they can repeat it like parrots to others.
In many cases it is practiced seeking to attract, seduce, convince, in order to fatten the ego or satisfy it. Those who succeed the most are those who manage an important level of charisma, grace, charm and, finally, a little content. The depth and originality also draws the attention of many people who are seeking to be deeply touched when listening or reading. This is a growing group, a new type of listener and reader; those who are very clear that if they do not feel something inside is moved it is because they have not received anything or they have wasted their time. It’s something that happens to me; I look for depth in communication, I see it even in me when I hear or read myself, if I do not surprise myself and do not caress myself inside with my own words it is impossible for me to achieve it in others.
For the last year we have begun to record the Conscious School classes that I dictate almost every week in different countries. Therefore it is inevitable that at some point I pause to looke inside myself; what I am doing, from where I am doing it, and what is the purpose of everything I do in the field of communication with others. Self-analysis, self-knowledge or observation?
Maybe I have written all this, with the appearance of self-reflection to say just that; that the most exquisite delicacy of this life is to look inside ourselves without any identification, to be able to see what we do, to be able to take a look at our activities without any sign of rejection or self-criticism but only observing.
To recover the innocence in looking at oneself is to reach the most powerful medicine for the soul.
It is remarkable how words serve to lead us to reflections that can inspire us, motivate us, uncover us and even heal us, I call them ENTHEOGENIC WORDS, because they can expand the consciousness of those who use them as well as those who consume them. Human communication handles a tremendous power, either to evolve or to de-evolve, to liberate or to dominate.
WHAT DO I HAVE TO SAY TO OTHERS?
Absolutely nothing, unless the situation asks me or they ask me. So why did I write all this? Because there is a circumstance that allowed me to observe myself and in which I have had the luxury of asking myself many things. I am now admitted to a medical clinic for several days because of a health problem. What better opportunity to take a look inside myself?
And in this act use words to express it and express myself, to show myself and show you that there are times and circumstances that have hidden inside them the great secret of self-knowledge, and are those moments in which suddenly loneliness, pain, or a certain environment, put us face to face with ourselves.
When the pain in my gallbladder and pancreas came on I had just received the news that a friend I love was in a complicated situation. Last night when I was admitted I had a pain so intense that the only thing that occurred to me was to say YES. Then I breathed deeply, I went inside myself and I observed.
That’s why my favorite phrase is: “The human being evolves when it looks inside itself”
As far as I’m concerned, I’m observing myself and under medical observation.
Now you are the one inside… of you. It is time to observe yourself.
Alberto José Varela
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