Pondering paradox

Am rereading Martha Beck's life-upending Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, loving it even more than my first time, over a year ago.  

Just finished up the chapter on Wordlessness.  Martha believes that tapping into Wordlessness (accessing the intelligence of our nonverbal mind) is "like logging on to some sort of Energy Internet, a connection that gives access not only to (our) own entire intelligence but to something much bigger," the collective unconscious, what Jung described as consisting of pre-existing forms, archetypes.  Or, as Martha likes to describe it, using a term translated from Australian Aborigonal tribes, the EVERYWHEN.

 

Would the concept of Wordlessness, of the Everywhen, have hit so deeply in my younger years, or am I more open to it because of being being at the deep end of middle age?  What I know for sure is that the first time I read Martha's book, my entire body responded with a resounding YES!

Loving all over again how she regards truth.  I grew up in a faith that taught the importance of a written revelation, while using as source material teachings that shouted to the rooftops the power of the unspoken, the importance of the experienced, the impotence of words to express felt sensed known reality.  If that's not a strange paradox, I sure don't know what is! 

We're told "the truth can set us free," but words don't constitute truth.  Words are rigid; truth flows.  Martha points out that Western minds see TRUTH as a mental or verbal story, a construct of facts laid out end to end.  An explanation of truth, but NOT truth itself.  

Eastern thought is more open & understanding of words as tools for describing what's experienced as truth, not not THE truth.  No one confuses a map of Manhattan for walking through the actual Big Apple.

"Truth is something you live, you think."  TALKING about truth - or anything - can become a barrier to seeing experiencing understanding what IT actually is. They can lead us to believe we know something really & truly when reality is that we only know it verbally.  As Martha says in illustration, we can read about honey, we can even write extensively about it, but that is not the same as tasting it.  

I found the final part of the chapter, on paradox, almost supernaturally gripping.  

Paradox is helpful in becoming open to Wordlessness.  Even before Martha brought it up, found myself thinking about the koans used by Buddhist masters, that twist the mind inside out, making it more receptive to the sort of nonverbal experiencing.  

Which got me into flipping a lifelong sadness into a potential paradox.

For what feels like forever, my one & only, considerably older sister made a point of letting me know my UNness in her eyes, which naturally led me to (verbally) thinking that she disliked, even despised me.  Yet, even from my youngest years, in the back of my mind there was always an unspoken yet present,  "But maybe not..."

What if Mim DID like me, even love me?  What if instead of feeling she wanted to emotionally abuse me, she felt a deep sense of protectiveness toward me?  

Imagine the fear, the utter terror that could be inspired in a deeply protective heart by the personal knowledge that even the best parents in the world aren't always able to protect they young from unspeakable horrors, so that subsequent actions could come out screwed around.  

It could explain why, in our family's weirdly perverse way, how she might have treated me as she did, IF she knew from her own experience the damage that can be done to an innocent child, beyond a parent's knowledge or help.  Better that SHE be the one to inflict abuse rather than leave me vulnerable to whatever it was she seemed to have suffered from more brutal hands.  

That is every bit as plausible a story as the ones I've come up with over the years.  A paradox, it's true, but one that could make sense to a damaged mind heart spirit.  

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