Sheila Winter Wallace BodyGateways

The Power of Nominalizations to Filter the Truth of Our Experience

The Power of Nominalizations to Filter the Truth of Our Experience by sheilawinterwallace

As energy is matrix for creation of matter in physical space and time, thought is medium for development of language. Words carry potential to filter and shape our individual worlds. Nominalizations, as linguistic abstractions, can and do mean different things from person to person, according to the unique resonance of distinct life experience. In terms of communicating information throughout the central nervous system of each human being, the finer distinctions of these abstractions are the difference that make the difference for each one of us. Asleep to the capacity of these distinctions to filter the truth of separate experience, we will continue to presuppose that what is true for one is true for all. Unless, we wake up to the power of words to vibrationally key our uniquely individual response within our nervous systems, we will continue to entrench history, habit and habituation – all of it irrelevant to what we want to create for our lives and for our continuously emerging world.

A nominalization is a process word that has been turned into a noun. Examples of this are relating to relationship, connecting to connection, working to work, educating to education, selling to sales, feeding to food. And, there are so many others, such as abundance, business, health, illness, disease, music, art, love, respect, integrity and generosity… the list is endless.

I cannot put a pound of any one of the above into the trunk of my car. I can almost hear the impending retort, ‘Hey, wait a minute… what do you mean? I can put a pound of food into the trunk of my car!’ However, think about it for a second. What is food… to you? What does it mean? If it is what nourishes me… as tangibles that support life force in my physical body, then, certainly, I can put carrots and bread, as examples of food’s physical manifestation (another nominalization), into the trunk of my car… but what about the unseen and the intangible that is food to nourish my soul?

It all gets down to unique meaning and vibration as intention of Self. Respect, as a nominalization, will carry a distinct resonance that is unique to me. For each person it will be different. To believe that the word, itself, means the same thing to each person would presuppose that one’s experience of respect is the same as that of others. Not so.

Take the nominalization, love, as an example. There have been more atrocities perpetrated in the name of love over the history of human kind than we can mindfully fathom. Mindlessly, it is still happening today. If you love me, then you’ll do this. I am doing this because I love you. What the intellect can accept as a collective truth (another nominalization) about love – pure, kind, generous, empathetic, compassionate, as some of the ‘acceptable’ descriptors of how love ‘should’ be – very often, the genius of the body, cannot. The body knows its own truth – the stuff that nightmares are made of – the stuff that has been perpetrated in the name of love. The body knows safe and it knows dangerous; it knows that its prime directive is to preserve its own life so that the essence of whom we are, as not the body, can know the joy of its own expression. If, for example, a smile is indicative of love, then there can be no love present when we force a smile to mask the pain that we are enduring – because to not do so would further increase the intensity of the danger our bodies already know of not going into those places that know not that.

What a double bind! I am already hurting, yet, if I don’t smile in the face of it, I will most certainly be caused to hurt some more… so I silently comply and choose to tell mySelf that my body can take it, in order to stay safe, when the truth, for me, is that it can’t. Undeniable craziness! Enough already! Collectively, hasn’t a smile, always been indicative of all that is considered right, comfortable and good? A smile anchored to notions of dangerous as safe in the face of intensifying jeopardy could be the worst bind of all. Think that it does not happen? Think again. If I cannot awaken to and own the vibration of my own words within my own body, I’ll remain asleep to my own intrinsic power to consciously shape my world in my own design. Coma becomes the default.

We have become a society that is so mindlessly entrenched to danger (yet another nominalization!) as the means to move through our worlds, that, mindfully choosing to wake up and to stay awake to the power of our own words as the sieves though which we shape our individual lives, demands great courage… knowing that we can stand ground, alone, yet are never alone.

So, I encourage you to sit with every word that you hear roll off your tongue – and to consider what each one means to you… what each one is for you… and how it feels in your body. If you are willing to engage yourSelf – and others – in this exercise, you might uncover a deep respect for the difference that makes the difference. At the very least, it will make for a potent conversation! A word may be a word, yet its resonance, its vibration, will impact each body differently and uniquely.

Mindfully choosing to consider my experience of words as potential to fine-tuning the resonance of whom I AM, expressing through the genius of my body, will transform my world from dangerous to safe. I will come to fully trust mySelf, first and foremost, before all else. All it takes is the choice to consciously breathe and to mindfully consider the power of nominalizations to shape my experience.

For women only, consider Women Gathering. Complimentary. 3 hours of conversation – relative to the decisions that women make for themSelves in collective and to the triggers that drive those decisions. Free of the notions of good, bad, right, or wrong, you’ll have the opportunity to listen to yourSelf and to others in discovery of what conclusions, presupposed by nominalizations, continue to ‘work’ for you in your life and which ones no longer serve you. Women Gathering is held in Kanata once monthly. The next dates are: November 7 and December 5 from 10 AM to 1 PM. Advance registration is required with Sheila at 613-292-4562 or sheila@actandinspire.com.