the power of words

I have been thinking (and learning) about how language creates our truth. How words affect how we think, and how we think creates our life.
There is such a huge gap between a powerful dragon and a harmless dragonfly, yet it is only three letters change between those two things.
The way we think about things affects our interaction with the world, and the way we think about things is often in words.
I think one reason art is so powerful is that images can transcend the meaning we give to everything and get right to the heart of the matter.
I know that if I am learning something and I take notes and add images the meaning stays much clearer to me, than if I were to just use words alone.
It is too easy to hide behind the label of things to not really get the meaning - if we think of the whole mass of grinding poverty in the world, we aren't as likely to want to help than if we think of the one individual whose life would be made hugely better by a small act of kindness on our part.
Propagandists have known how to manipulate words to get us to be on their side, just look at the "war on terror" which really was a war on a small middle eastern country with no direct threat to us in any way.
but I digress and I am focusing on things I don't want to think about right now -- words, keep the right ones in your head and the right ideas and right patterns will emerge in your day . . . .



"One who is caught in thought loses one's original nature. All he knows are words and descriptions. When he sees the actual thing, he fails to perceive it." --Dalai Lama