The Language of the
Birds
Coming Into
Resonance with Mother Earth as We Speak (and Write)
By Laurel Airica
Speak
a new language so the world will be a new world.” — Rumi
A
concept that has gone in and out of fashion among linguists for
decades is that words affect perceptions. This would seem obvious to
most of us. But now cognitive science has proven beyond doubt that
this is true.
So,
what would you do if you knew that the words in your mind-mouth-ears
— and throughout the at-most-fear
— were literally ‘bugged?’
What if you discovered that the food-for-thought packed into letters
and words contained cultural biases -— akin to computer viruses
— that infected the thinking of long-dead people and have
profoundly affected your own worldview? Would you want to spit them
out in a hurry — or at least clean up your speech?
As one
who has spent a lifetime playing in the magical undercurrent of word
symbols and sounds, I have come to the conclusion that English is
largely a fear-based language of limitation and persuasion toward
conformity and mediocrity. And I think we need to do something about
it.
Betrayed
By Our Own Tongue
“The
Women say the language you speak poisons your glottis tongue palate
lips. They say, the language you speak is made up of words that are
killing you.”
Consider
the sad ring of ‘mourning’ that greets us each new day as
we come ‘a wake’ from our nightly immersion in our
personal Life’s Dream. Hear how the ‘week days’
sounds like the ‘weak daze’ and how ‘weekend’
is hardly different from ‘weakened’ — which is
precisely how so many of us feel after being pulverized in the ‘daily
grind’ through which we endeavor to ‘urn’ our
living at various jobs
and ‘undertakings’.
What a
somber vision of a fallen life such words conjure together when shown
in trance-lation. It’s little wonder, then, that our most
common salutation to each other is ‘HELL-o’. Ten years of
such mind-numbing living is termed a ‘decade,’ which the
British so wisely pronounce ‘decayed.’
We are
almost as unconscious to words (and their subliminal inferences) as
fish are to water. Yet according to Scriptures, “Life and death
are in the power of the tongue.”
This means that just as we alter what
we see through our acts of observation, so what we say helps define
our life experiences. For not only is it ‘done onto you as you
believe’
but ‘decree a thing thus and it
shall be established onto you.’
We are
constantly decreeing what we are not even hearing or seeing —
through unheard words that cohabit the vibrations we give voice to
every day. By assuming that anagrams, puns and the ‘cymbals’
of the alphabet have little if any significance or impact, we have
virtually ex-communicated ourselves from knowledge of the power of
The Word to reflect and shape our world — and from our
response-ability to take command of the language and make profound
‘See Changes’ in the polluted Ocean of Human
Consciousness. But where does this pollution come from?
In The
Language of the Birds,
the author/mythologist William Henry
explains that —“Our brains are primarily for-matted by
the commercial Ro-man alphabet and worldview instituted by force in
the early 400’s. The Roman worldview has nearly completely
separated us from nature, from the world of interpenetrating
patterns, the web of life in which our lives are intricately weaved.
[sic] As a result, our civilization is more interested in churning
out kids with master’s degrees in business than it is in
allowing true spiritual mastery to gently emerge. Fortunately,
however, if we can speak English we all have access to the Language
of the Birds and access to our true selves.”
Through
commerce and conquest, we have ‘put a lot of English’ on
the globe. And the spin this has placed on humanity’s
whirled-view has left many too dizzy to decipher the Actual from the
factual, the Real from the reel, the Cosmic from the comic.
We are caught in a web of illusions —
many of which have been spun by our words.
The
late plant-based consciousness explorer and wisdom teacher Terrence
McKenna intuited that, “We are inside some kind of linguistic
construct that springs from out of the collective unconscious of all
of us.” He concluded that, “all possibilities exist but
we have to deconstruct the cultural tyrannies of language.”
What
are these ‘cultural tyrannies?’ How are we to deconstruct
them? And what can we do to upgrade our language so that it can
support the fullest cultivation and expression of our authentic
Selves? It is fortunate that wordplay holds some real answers to this
question, for “Wordplay is one of the most beloved practices of
human beings the world over and throughout recorded time.”
Wordplay also offers entrée
into the Language of the Birds.
The
Language of the Birds
“….
Solomon … said, “O people, we have been taught the
language of birds, and we have been given from all things. Indeed,
this is evident bounty.”
Imagine
speaking a language that is as sonically nourishing to Nature as
birdsong (which has been proven to enhance the growth of plants).
According to ancient legends, humans did once speak such a language
that was so vibrantly resonant with all of Creation that all we had
to do was ask and we received — without lag time and personal
frequency adjustments currently required to become magnetically
attractive to that which we desire.
This
was the condition we refer to as Paradise. And ironically —
… the
fact that all needs were met may even be the reason Need
and Eden
share the same three letters of the
Alphabet.
According
to Mr. Henry, this original language was called ‘The Green
Language’ and ‘The Language of the Birds’ —
possibly because of its compatibility with natural harmonies and
because birds are associated in mythology with angels. The Language
of the Birds is a language of puns. He explains.
Because
it uses phonetic resonance the Language of the Birds is called a
‘phonetic cabala’, a phonetic language code. ... This
code equates words that sound alike in different languages,
connecting word concepts by sound in English. These language
connections reveal astonishing literary and historical
synchronicities or meaningful coincidences that point to the
interconnectedness of all creation.
What
are our chances of ever recovering and reviving this mystic, holistic
linguistic sound system of Human-Nature interpenetration (or what we
could call ‘communification’) which was said to confer
enlightenment, re-open the gates to Paradise, and “bio-physically
reprogram the human body to a higher (or lighter) being capable of
entering this gateway”?
Our chances are probably not very good.
However,
William Henry identifies English as the Language of Birds.
And documentarian Ken Burns calls
English ‘the most powerful force on Earth. So, given that
English is rebuilding Babel’s tower — in the sense that
it is the language that facilitates global communication — we
could actually create the Language of the Birds anew by putting wings
on our words to empower our global ascension.
Toward
a New Word Ardor
“What
cannot be said cannot be created by the community. So what we need
then is the forced evolution of language.”
When
we speak, it’s like casting our prayers to the wind. As we
wRite, we are conjuring energies to configure along the lines we have
inscribed upon the page. So, how much more effective might we be if
we evolved our language concurrently with our consciousness to
support our more enlightened explorations and expressions?
Those of us who chant sacred
syllables regularly to attune ourselves to universal harmonies —
enjoy an extraordinary flow of favorable synchronicities among many
other beneficial consequences. So, imagine what could happen if
globally, creatively and progressively we endeavored together to
‘tune-up’ the English language to convey a higher
frequency of consciousness in our communications and inspire a
greater frequency of kindness in our interactions?
Since
we possess the awesome ‘power to name,’ it is clearly up
to us to evolve English into a language of the Heart. The fact that
Heart and Earth are practically the same word — differing only
in the placement of the Letter H — to my mind underscores the
appropriateness of such an undertaking. How else could we possibly
talk our way back into accord with each other and with the systems
and the cycles of our Mother Earth?
With
the recognition of Divine Mind as our ‘heart drive,’ we
can start downloading and sharing heartening new symbols, sounds,
words, metaphors and phrases that give voice to the exquisite octaves
of Love-Beauty many of us are now accessing in consciousness but
which are currently beyond expression primarily because of the
limitations of our language.
In The
Language Crystal, author Lawrence William Lyons writes that, “A
force foretold as the Second Coming is ‘the Word’
itself.” By reversing the linguistic curse that was put upon
our consciousness long ago, we may more readily learn the simple
truths that have been hidden in plain view in the mirroring dogma
of our everyday language.
Once
we re-cognize that we are each an eye/I of the Creator,
and can say with conviction that I
Am God, we will need no
dogma to guide our way. Our mind will be guided by the wisdom of our
heart. Thus, compass-ion
will be our natural direction.
So
here are three questions worth asking ourselves and considering
together: Could a global movement for linguistic improvement help to
create a Global Warming of the Heart? Could we generate a high enough
degree of warmth to precipitate our evolutionary transformation from
HumanKind to HumanKindness? And wouldn’t this be a good time to
put our ‘articles of faith’ in the Power of the Word to
the Ultimate Test?
“Come
my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world.”
Laurel
Airica is a Santa Monica-based freelance writer and an English
Language linguist who has spent a lifetime exploring the means by
which the World is fashioned from the Word. She shares her
discoveries through articles, books, workshops and
performance/presentations of WordMagic: An Enchanted Literary
Entertainment (www.laurelairica.com).
Join Laurel at The Great Spirits Ranch (www.greatspiritsranch.com)
in Malibu on July 21st and at the Mystic Journey Bookstore in Venice
on August 2nd and become part of a linguistic reVOLTage – in
which we elevate the amperage on the English.
SOURCES:
1 See
Dr. Lera Boroditsky on How Language Shapes Thought
2
Atmosphere
3
Monique Wittig from Les Guerilleres; quoted by Jane Caputi in
Gossips, Gorgons & Crones: the Fates of the Earth
4 Job
is a Hebrew word for persecuted.
5
Proverbs 18:21
6
Matthew 9:29
7 Job
22:28
8
2001, Scala DEI, Nashville Tenn
9
Ibid.
10 “It
is the exact and literal-minded who live in a fictitious world.”
Neville, The Power of Awareness, DeVorrs & Co., 1952
11
Walter Redfern, author of Puns, Basil Blackwell, 1984.
12
Qur’an (27:16), quoted by William Henry in The Language of the
Birds
13
http://www.newphysis.com/dawnchorus.html
14 ©
1996 Laurel Airica – excerpt from Love’s Letters
15
op.cit., Wm Henry
16 Why
is English the Language of the Birds: “England is s small
island that was constantly invaded throughout history. Because of
these incursions by other cultures the English language accumulated
many words and expressions from other languages.” (pg. 123) …
“The answer is, the language in which these words have meaning
to the mythologist is not exactly English either. In the Language of
the Birds (or Bards) English becomes L’Ang(l)ish or
L’Angel-ish, the Language of the Angels. (pg. 121)
17
Terrence McKenna
18 “In
these times it is important to communicate, to put our best foot
forward, to put our best metaphors on the table because we can move
no faster than the evolution of our language.” Breck Costin
19
“...in terms of the anthropic principle ... the human is seen
as a mode of being of the universe as well as a distinctive being in
the universe. ... The human is that being in whom the universe comes
to itself in a special mode of conscious reflection. That some form
of intelligent reflection on itself was implicit in the universe from
the beginning is now granted by many scientists.” Thomas Berry,
The Dream of the Earth
20
Alfred Lord Tennyson
