Saturday, August 25, 2007

A few weeks ago, I had an idea...


I wondered how hard it would be to take all the negative words (or negative languaging) out of my novel Angel On Board.


I’ve been studying the spiritual masters and most disciplines agree that The Universe (God/Spirit/Christ/Higher Power) or whatever label you choose to put on your expression of the supreme being only works for good and the absence of that good is what creates the negative situations in our lives.


So, to say, “I do not want this result.” Translates in the mind of God to “I do want this result.” And as you ask, it is given, so the result is yours.


What I think is really happening is that God communicates with us all and we communicate back most effectively with images, pictures, visions. This is truly the universal language. We use words to conjure up the pictures that actually communicate with supreme being.


I will do separate blogs on some of the reasons I think this – such base words as rejection and safety have so many differing meanings to differing people and even to ourselves, that using words alone to communicate is tough. When we use negative communication, we have to draw the picture, then negate it. But if the picture is what communicates, then the communication will be of the situation, we haven’t replaced it with what we really want.


My problem with negative words stems back to my career as a computer programmer. Computer code was really easy to write using negative logic. So, for the most part, as a strategy for what I wanted, I had to filter out all the negative conditions by naming them specifically. It was the quickest way to do my job, but in retrospect, it was not the best.


I also am dyslexic – which means I think in pictures and before the advent of the international “no” symbol, when ‘no’ finally became a picture, I never saw it in my reading. So I’d always create the image of what was being written about in my head, then skip the word ‘not’ and totally mis-read the book.


Dyslexia, simply put, is visual thinking – most people think verbally – until recently. (The Gift of Dyslexia - by Dr. Ronald Davis) There’s a whole new generation of people who have more visual stimulation early in life, and their brains are developing visually before verbally – and people are labeling them ‘dyslexic’ like that is some kind of problem. It is very literally a huge advantage, because a visual mind can think much faster than a verbal mind.


So, using this definition, I claim that God is dyslexic. That’s a good thing, because no matter what language we speak, we can communicate effectively using visualizations, images and pictures.


Back to my book, what I wanted to do was to write every sentence in the affirmative. I changed all the ‘Don’t worry’ sentences to ‘Relax’ – which actually is a stronger statement. I took out all the no, not, didn’t, wasn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, etc. words by rephrasing the sentences they were in.


I learned many amazing things about English language as I did. That’s why I created this blog. First to create awareness of the use of negative languaging, Second to share these epiphanies when I experienced them, Thirdly to challenge everyone to start speaking in the affirmative more often – especially when praying – so that what was communicated to your higher power was more effective.


I hope you enjoy...


And as with all of things I say, you’ll agree with some, disagree with others, so I hope that you can ‘take what you like – and leave the rest.’


EJ – author of Angel On Board, the most positive book on the planet




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