Language of Being

Special guest writer : Kristin

https://www.therevelationlab.com/kristin

Chef Cynthia and I met a few years ago at a dinner with mutual friends, but it wasn’t until more than a year later that I shared with her what I was up to. I study Being (Ontology) and consult on communication & dynamics in social relationships. I teach a body of work called Language of Being™. Weeks later, I was sitting at Cynthia’s house with her and Daina, listening to them talk about a recent happening in their community. It was something that sounded like it needed resolution. I noticed the ways of talking about it weren’t conducive to bringing resolution to the issue. With permission, I interjected with some thoughts, speaking into the situation, applying my language distinctions, which opened possibilities for resolution. This got their attention. I was illustrating the communication structures from Language of Being™ into their circumstance to create the thinking that would lead to the resolution they were after. This one conversation led to a group one-day together to dive into the whole communication system known as Language of Being™. I shared the seven communication structures that give us a set of distinctions to think and speak differently with ourselves and others. Throughout that day, there were several revelations, and in the weeks following, I was told how these teachings brought about great effectiveness and flow to their lives. 

To become aware of your thoughts is to become clear on how you’re experiencing your life. Your thoughts are not necessarily a reflection of what is happening in your life; rather, they are a reflection of how you’re perceiving it. Firstly, did you choose that perception, or was it habitual? What if your perception is inaccurate? What if what you see and what you tell yourself are causing more harm than harmony in your life? Would you know? Have you observed your thinking lately? This is a critical aspect of cleansing. Our thinking is our narration of life, an internal conversation. Our inner conversations are with us constantly. They shape our lives. To examine our conversations, we need to look at our words, our language. How we choose to make sense of our lives with our words makes all the difference. Changing our words changes our thinking. In our endeavor to cleanse and distill our thinking, we must look at what we tell ourselves and how that story is told on the inside (before it even hits our lips or page for the outside world). 

Years ago, I was given an exercise by a coach I was working with. I’d been on a quest to address the shadow aspects of my behavior and relating. I had recently had a challenging meeting riddled with disagreements with some business partners who were also friends. It was unpleasant. I couldn’t see a way forward from where we were or what was said at the time. The assignment the coach gave was to write the story of what happened with all the emotion I had about it, including all the assumptions, the judgments, and the opinions I had about the people in the meeting. I was even asked to write what I thought they were thinking about me. It wasn’t pretty. It was a sticky mess of emotions, exaggerations, expectations, and assumptions. It was a dramatic story of victimhood and self-righteousness. This wasn’t a productive perspective to create solutions from. In the next part of the assignment, I was told to write only the facts from the experience of the meeting when the breakdown happened. How do I determine the facts? They are the observable actions, what can be seen from a video camera, objective and unhindered by my opinion. Wow, did my story change. This second (factual) version was probably a third or less of the original story. Writing only the facts was humbling to my very hurt ego, which was looking to make them wrong. Writing the facts gave me space to look at the situation as an observer, with a neutral perspective. I was looking at what happened. Only what happened. Not my story about what happened. Can you feel what that does? Do you sense this in your body? This takes us from a reactive, ego-driven state to a non-reactive state of being with what is, as it is. I was freed from the toxicity of how I was thinking about the experience. I got grounded in reality, calmness came, and solutions arose. I was opened to greater possibilities that could create more flow between us.

The change was possible because I was willing to look at it through the lens of what actually happened. I gave my ego the expression it so desperately needed and wanted. Once that part was fed, I then had the ability to look at what happened again. I was willing to challenge my assumptions of my story and loosen my grasp on my perspective. In doing so, I was given the reality as it was rather than how I wanted it to be. 

I was liberated from making them wrong, making myself right, and therefore liberated from perpetuating opposition. When we mire ourselves in the good/bad, right/wrong conversations, we feed our egoic desires rather than being with what is. We want what is real. What is real is grounded in reality as it is. Being in Being naturally allows for this. So how do we be in Being? An accessible way to clean up our thinking and gain access to Being is by using the communication structures of Language of Being ™ in how we converse with ourselves. How are we languaging the happenings of our lives? How have we worded our experience? What have we told ourselves about what is happening vs. what actually happened? In Language of Being ™ we distinguish our reality by coming back to some fundamentals of how to use language. The structures include the 15 Permanent Domains, The Scale of Competency, Well-Grounded Assessments, Requests, Promises, Offers, and Declarations. These structures are used to guide us in becoming more effective in our conversations internally and externally. In other words, we learn how to communicate better.

There are a number of entry points to begin redesigning your language. My favorite easy way to enter into the conversation of Being is to ask myself: is what I’m thinking grounded? Groundedness can mean many things to many people. In this case, a well-grounded assessment is a statement based in fact, i.e., there are multiple pieces of observable evidence for what’s said to oneself and to others. 

Let’s illustrate the difference between grounded thinking and ungrounded thinking with another example. You’re driving along and someone swerves into your lane, you think “this guy is trying to kill me!” If there is no evidence to show that this person is in fact making an attempt to purposely take your life, this is an ungrounded assessment of what happened. Swerving into your lane is only swerving into your lane. Did he hit you? Did he tell you he was trying to kill you? If none of these things happened, you’ve exaggerated your experience as well as made assumptions about this other driver. How could this thinking be cleaned up? Get grounded. If you’re watching the video of the event, what actually happened? What are the facts that can be seen & heard from the objective observer’s lens?

Once you start working with this you will notice it all around you. If you begin to practice grounded speaking, you’ll likely speak less; similar to the story of my challenging meeting going from one page of story to one-third of a page of observable facts. You’ll be leaving out the exaggerations, assumptions, polarized opinions, and expectations. This is a very accessible way to clean up thoughts, speech, and actions. In doing so we make space for more flow, more peace, and greater possibilities for ourselves, similar to when we cleanse our bodies of toxicity and excess. Without the toxicity, there is more functionality and therefore more wellness. The same is true for our thinking. Grounding our internal narratives and communication with others is integral to cleansing and opening new possibilities and flow. Once we’ve established that we’re grounded, then we can see what action is next. Using Language of Being ™ structures, we would check if we need to make a request, if a promise is needed, if an offer is suitable, or if a declaration is the proper action. Each structure fundamentally opens our communication to gain greater effectiveness in our actions. With clean communication comes clarity and flow with ourselves and others.

Being grounded requires being honest with ourselves, which can be a challenge sometimes, but being honest is what brings us into knowing ourselves. We want to see how our lives actually work. As you can see, thinking and speaking from ego can easily create ungroundedness, which is full of drama, pain, battles, and closes possibilities in our lives. On the other hand, thinking and acting from Being, brings us into reality as it is, cleansing us of our mire, and opening possibilities for us. Know yourself by getting grounded in reality. Once grounded in reality, you can approach life with a clean mind, distinct language, and clear communication. Life will work better.