Moving beyond words.

“Liberation happens each time we become conscious of the contents of the soul.” ― Michael Meade

Words used to be my prism and my prison.

I was obsessed with capturing everything. Every experience had to be translated into language.

My old notebooks show how stuck I was, frozen between hope and despair. Pages covered with paper-thin plans and weightless affirmations. I found a thousand ways to ask why am I here, what do I want, and why does this feel so impossible?

I looked for answers in books and podcasts. Always . . . more words.

Writing was my way of moving through life, pen on the page, one page at a time.

It was useful. It was movement.

I can see how the strands of struggle began to weave together, how they formed a checkered shape, a quilt of becoming.

But writing was not enough.

The answers I was looking for were behind doors I could not see.

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. . . words that point to the Tao
seem monotonous and without flavor.
When you look for it, there is nothing to see.
When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear.
When you use it, it is inexhaustible.

Tao Te Ching, 35

Time capsules.

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The things I love look pretty boring.

Close your eyes, repeat a mantra.

Walk in silence.

Sit with a tree.

Lie down and listen to a magician playing an instrument.

Dance your way through a wave of emotions.

Tune into your voice to the sound of a drone.

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The things I love point in the same direction: toward the maze, the center, where all things are born.

They direct me away from reading, toward doing.

And they opened doors to the wordless space of the soul.

There, in the formless dark, my mind again forms the big questions.

Why am I here?

What is my lesson to learn?

What is the next step on my journey?

What gifts am I not sharing? Why?

Where am I blocked? How do I hold myself back?

What vision is so bright, I don’t dare look at it?

What is possible in this life?

I don’t reach for the pen. I try to remain with inner stillness. If I am in motion, I ask to let myself be moved. I ground myself in the present, in the weight of the body, in the sounds around me. I wait. I listen.

I look for answers in shapes and sounds, in metaphors and sensations.

What would that sound like?

What would that look like?

What would that feel like?

It feels like an ancient process, like I am discovering a lost birthright.

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The word psychotherapy consists of two Greek words: psyche (soul) and therapy (care). By definition, psychotherapy is care of the soul. When you serve your soul, you are being therapeutic in this deep, Platonic sense. — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

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My days have taken on a new rhythm. Slower, quieter. Intense movement embedded in stillness.

It’s not all fun and games and bliss. Far from it. In fact, I am exhausted. My bedroom is filled with boxes and my mind occupied with storage facilities and used cars. I sleep on a simple tri-fold mat, the mattress about to go to the curb.

My experience of time has changed dramatically. Days used to fly by, the hours blurring together. Now they stretch out like songs, an ebb and flow of melodies.

Everything feels both more alive and more . . . mundane.

But boring, I’ve noticed, is fine.

It’s like turning the phone to grayscale. I’ve done it. It works. It works because the phone gets very, very dull. Turn the colors back on and it’s like stepping into Candyland on acid. Way too intense.

Once the artificial stimulus is gone, the ordinary becomes vibrant.

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I would love to say that the wordless space has been the best thing to ever happen to me and my writing. But it’s not that simple. There is a price to be paid.

I’m not talking about money. Generally, I’ve found the spaces of caring for the soul not that expensive (though they are often taught in expensive locations, a kind of spiritual White Lotus). No, they asked for a different kind of investment, one I was reluctant to make.

The things I love tend to be embodied and intimate.

They require time, time to explore, discover, and practice.

They ask for undivided attention, for openness, and for active participation.

Am I fully present? Can I face my truth, what is underneath the mask? Can I stay with discomfort? Am I willing to be witnessed?

This feels incompatible with a busy, plugged-in life. Why learn how to swirl like a Sufi when you could be on the couch and catch up on The Last of Us?

And my writing has changed, slowed down.

I used to pick up the scent of a story and follow the trail down a rabbit hole. I could not wait to piece the puzzle together. That’s a valuable skill for an analyst or journalist. It made writing financially rewarding.

Now, deep dive research can feel like an interruption. I read a few pages before bed, a substack post here and there. When people ask for recommendations, I notice how out of the loop I am. I’m the last one to get the news, the one at risk of panicking at the bottom, right before the market turns.

Surrender to the path and maybe the only thing left to write about is that.

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Connecticut. Spring. While the trade wars rage, I sink into the darkness.

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It’s not that I’ve turned anti-writing or anti-books. I still love gripping stories and magnificent prose. I know the power of words, see how they ripple through time and shape our world. But I am skeptical that they hold the answers.

I am skeptical that what waits at the center can be put into words.

“Words, symbols, signs, and thoughts and ideas are merely maps of reality,” as Ken Wilber put it. “The word ‘water’ won’t satisfy your thirst.” And I thirst.

What do you do with that thirst when “work” — money, economic activity — has moved behind a wall of screens? I don’t know. Not yet.

But I am learning that the world beyond the map is filled with hidden wells. The water of life is everywhere, like a subtle current within and behind all things.

But the stream runs in secret. It resists being squeezed into words and nailed to the page.

It feels like watching cherry blossoms. An extravagant, abundant explosion of life right now.

Faded by tomorrow.

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Wholeness, I think,
Draws its life somewhere where the breathing
Stops,

Somewhere where the mind cradles light,
Where the only senses that remain

Blush and stumble
If they try to speak with our language so new
It is still trying to
Invent,

Still shaping
Its first intelligible sound,
Still sculpting its first true image of
God.

— Hafiz

The wordless space feels like the ocean.

One moment calm and gentle, then forceful and wild. Always evocative and mysterious. Always beautiful. Far deeper and stranger than I could have imagined.

I step into the rhythm running through trees and concrete alike.

Afterwards, I watch orange candlelight flicker across the walls of my emptying apartment. The city has sunk into a deep quiet, as if a vast forest was shielding me. Behind closed eyelids I carry fading images and echoes of destiny.

A song rises in flow, fades through the open window.

What appears in motion cannot be held.

Words appear. I know my attempts to translate are hopeless. And yet I write.

I write not because I have answers but in the hope that words are like pebbles, stepping stones for the next person crossing the stream. Stones hinting at what is possible, guiding to the door, to the wordless space.

There, on the threshold of change, we face questions nobody can answer for us.

Do we want to step into the unknown?

Are we going to follow what feels true but cannot be put into words?

Follow the path, climb the stairs, enter the tunnel, plunge into the depths . . . or remain standing, observing, contemplating, analyzing. Be entertained, then move on to another door, another spectacle, another cloud of words.

Walk or watch?

For better or worse, I’ve made my choice. I paid the price. There is no turning back.

I don’t understand what is happening or why. Perhaps it is not meant to be understood. Or maybe I just don’t care anymore. I know something is happening. I try to move with it, swirl at the center of the vortex. That’s plenty already.

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The things I love are simple but vast. They have more depth than I could explore in a lifetime.

Walk. Rest against a tree. Close your eyes. Listen. Feel the rhythm. Let yourself be moved.

Move, beloved, move. Trust your feet. They know the next step.

Enter the dance without end.

This is your birthright.

— Frederik

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