making one’s own language

Correspondence, energy, and how to gain self-awareness through making your language, your way.

This practice came about because of my frustration with folks not understanding each other. Mostly people not seeming to understand me. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Trying to convey a full-bodied experience of life with a few black lines on a white background can be a little bit like trying to shove a tornado into a soda can.

And this makes sense, because we are all full, complicated, often contradictory selves. Sprinkle in needing to relate to each other – often remotely – with limited communication tools and occasionally things go sideways. One way to approach this disconnection in meaning, is to first focus on self-understanding, materialize it in some way, then the ability to communicate better with others may come along in time.

And it does not matter what medium you use. You may find parts of your garden are passages that carry a vibe, or your sew, or weave, or cook your way into comfort and understanding.

What’s important is the making, and the insight you can gain while you do so.

We live in world that seemingly runs on communication, and I believe we all do the best we can with this limited medium called words. But they can also fall short, and do, routinely. That’s why I include visual images and occasional snippets of poetry into what I call SymbolWorks^TM1.

The process of making your own symbolic language is a satisfying way to gain insight into your felt experience, the veiled edges of archetypal understanding, emotional and historic energy, and environmental context.

meaning making: an inside job

When I was little, I had a direct realization that words were unreliable as a tool of conveyance. I came to know that what I perceive as a “chair,” may be completely different than “chair” to you. Even with a shared term and corresponding agreed-upon descriptions of “chair” like “has legs and a seat,” the full emotional and even visual depiction that happens inside different people can be vastly different. If you are on a committee, the term “chair” may also waft of feelings about leadership. If you build things, the term may include your planning brain designing the quintessential seat.

And, if you need to sit down right now, well then, the term chair may also feel ‘good,’ and a gentle judgement was just made right there inside of you…

Maybe this is because energy, a felt thing, is perhaps the most relatable part of our lived experience. I’ve been realizing more each day that energy is perhaps the most important aspect of conveyance of meaning. The ocean of interpretation is vast and people can be looking at the same bridge from different shores, one calling it good and the other calling it bad. The judgement comes from individual experience and is not inherent to the thing itself.

In Buddhism, they’d say the bridge is empty. But on either side (depending if you want anyone crossing it),t he bridge may be loaded with meaning.

As complicated beings, most of us are directly in touch with our ties to ancient beliefs (like religion and ancestral lore). We are also in touch with our personal associations (things like disliking clowns because of a scary circus, PTSD response from trauma, or sunsets because your first ones were experienced with awe). And we are in touch with our embodied experiences in any given moment (physical phenomena, emotions, and bodily sensations). And, to make things more mysterious, some of us HSPs² may also feel cultural or societal vibes too.

This complicated matrix of connections help us to create meaning, and if we are cognizant of our symbol sets, can also help us to communicate well with others.

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A Process

I draw nearly every day. I draw based on what I see in nature, what I feel in nature, and then while my fingers wipe across the screen with phone markup crayons, I usually work out some troubles in my mind. At some point “a finished thing” emerges. And that thing, becomes a symbol in my new language.

I know it is “complete” because it feels complete to me.

The symbols at their core, include an ENERGY. Energies I understand but can’t always put into words (because if I could, I would have).

Moments of insight and emotion that show up in my little personal life, while simultaneously flowing through our culture, through nature, and even through our cosmos feel like they also hold some kind of correspondence.³

Some people may see astrology, or a teacher, or religion, or a practice to access clues as to the nature of their current energy. And these methodologies definitely help. But at the end of the day, anyone’s path to understanding is theirs alone. Because understanding is an inside job.

Opening Question: what medium do you find yourself enjoying working with the most?

Tip: The medium is usually something you LOVE doing, or feel COMPELLED to do. For instance, if you love gardening, then little passages of your garden can become symbol sets, and your work caring for it is your correspondence work with the related energies. When you feel satisfied with that bit of gardening, that’s the time to step back and enjoy your work, even if you know the true fruition happens much later when things bloom.

If you love reading and/or consuming the arts, then it may be a deeper, relatable understanding of life that you enjoy.

Can you make a physical representation of that understanding? Even drawing in the sand, or rearranging your countertops is a valuable out-picturing of your symbolic language as writing a symphony. Don’t let the medium hold you up. All that is important is that it includes action of some kind. Your body is a part of the process.

Are your SymbolWorks sharable in some way? Would you like to make them so?

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FOOTNOTES & SUB-SUBTEXT 😉

1. Since I am offering paid coaching around this, I am putting up a prudent trademark to indicate my clear use of this term in trade. I believe symbol-making is an ancient art-form, and typically not a paid commodity, but I like to pay my bills, and buy stuff for my kids, so I need to protect my livelihood so I can continue to do my work. Thank you for respecting this simple request and contact me if you’d like support around this. ↩︎
2. HSP= Highly Sensitive Person. This term originally coined by Elaine Aron. Her excellent book is a comforting explanation of why some people find it difficult to tolerate sensory and energetic input, and how they can protect and gain appreciation for their extra-creative nature. ↩︎
3. There are lots of seemingly woo woo writings on The Law of Correspondence, but I’m wary to add them here for not wanting to lead anyone into a murky ideology, and also for the sake of credibility.
   
   Correspondence simply put is ‘what is within is also without,’ and the reason things like astrology seem helpful in understanding ourselves. If you know you are an Aries, for example, and you read about what this means in a book (reading something in a book about the cosmos: two things “outside” of you), you can gain insight (literally sight in) as to your inner characteristics and drives.
   
   Another way to gain the same knowledge is to look inside first. Meditation and creative dialog with yourself are great ways to do this. ↩︎