non-Amsterdam
this article is from the “Words Matter” series, which explores y(our) relationship to words and language
‘physica’ - things relating to nature, natural non (prefix) - not
It’s morning the easiest time for me to feed the urge to merge with something greater than myself to bask in vastness I lie in bed replaying my dreams, hoping to stay tethered to the ephemeral position
between sleep and waking. The edges of my skin blend with a surrounding spaciousness. Their overlap tingles.
Awareness is still effortless. As I retrieve the images their borders fade, the distinction of the day coming into focus. I am a different kind of a wake.
Mourning Headlines of war - there go last night’s dreams. Unanswered texts reflexively added to morning have-to’s, carried over from yesterday’s not dones, newness squashed by manufactured duty. So much for feeling the alive stillness. My husband on the phone with his sister, me feeling what’s underneath his words and double listening and just like that no more listening to my own thoughts and impressions and sensations. Pop goes the liminal bubble, evaporating somewhere between earth and sky, aka the nebulous ‘nonphysical.’ So how do I get back there? Especially when here is inside there. How do I return to the invisible yet palpably feelable place known only by its non-ness? That exquisite space with a felt sense of beingness being accompanied, of being unalone, presently sensing Presence and its vibratory vibrance. So much of aliveness is fed in the realm referred to as ‘not any thing’ or ‘something else,’ generic placeholders for mystical realness.
Would I ever describe a space I love - Paris, for example- as non-Amsterdam? I went to non-Amsterdam last summer and loved it! Non scrambles the senses. It disentitles the realness that other words dictate, and unreal often equals default fake, woo woo, delusional, or for those convinced of their right(eous)ness, evil.
No wonder ‘nonphysical’ space becomes nonexistent for so many people, even as ‘nonlocal’, its sister-in-vagueness term, secures scientific status. Yet sensing what we cannot touch but what touches us is vital to accessing the fullness of what it is to be human. We have more than six senses and they extend beyond the self. We are wired for reciprocity.
We need words, then, that help us name and claim this intangible terrain where we can sense our cosmic contours, astronomy caressing autonomy
words that point to the infinite, even if our capacity to comprehend vastness is limited; words that entitle us to know there is more than we can ever know. Without words to express the visceral overlap of me and We, we become spiritually dissociated. Rationality has become our nationality at the expense of our multidimensionality. Words are keys, portals, permission slips to lived realities. Words open access.
They can also deflect it. As long as we keep referring to what we un-understand as ‘not natural,’ we negate the innate receptivity of our body, our ‘physica.’
As is, ‘nonphysical’ is a word that effaces space as a place of grace. It is a negation of the elation possible when we avail ourselves to the extraordinary ordinariness of being alive.
If we instead give language to our body’s immense capacity to feel what is invisible to our eyes, we can ponder beyond the non. We can notice Life pulsating interdependently with our bodies. This alone could help dissolve our me vs you and us vs them trauma templates, opening up a collective recollection of love.
Nons con-volute. Even a noble term like nonviolence conjures images oppositional to peace. Violations must be imagined before they can be replaced; first by invoking fighting, killing, barbaric (domestic) abuse, war, or screaming, before corralling the images alongside a new one where none of that is happening. Whenever we define presence by what’s absent, we render it less accessible.
Yet reality exists even if we haven’t currently invited its currents to enter our vocabulary. Considering the prohibitive gap, imagine if we took the next lexical, not logical, step; creating bio lexical language that sparks our sensings and orients our awareness to what, besides not-anything, exists.
Enough non-sensing! Time to define it forward, beyond a scenario where not only is something vile not happening, but something viable and desirable is. Time to compile terms that ignite out integral connection to all that all ways is. Our sense of Unity depends on it!
For example, in lieu of nonviolent communication-oddly redundant, as violation is never communal-we could instead seek reverential exchange, defined as ‘respectful communication predicated on reverent recognition of our mutual right to exist in peace.’
Pointing to possibilities inaugurates a more potent springboard for communion, even love.
We are not ‘nonphysical,’ we are megametaphysical. Naturally. Our bodies are holographic coordiantes of god’s body.
We are bullets of Life force. Be-ing. I am and I be. If I let myself feel We, I am ever home and unalone. Each body is a boundary for Unity. And so is a Word. May we choose those that corroborate our godness for god is not at any where.