Thought for the Week: Beyond words

Dorothy Searle considers whether we need to learn to listen more and react less

by Dorothy Searle 12th July 2013

For me, spiritual experience is that which reaches me from ‘beyond’ – beyond the physical, the intellectual and the emotional, and beyond words. If I am to communicate what I know, I have to use words, but I’m limited to the words that I, and any listener, will understand. This poses a huge problem: all words have unspoken connotations and we don’t all share the same connotations. We can’t communicate without words, but we do need to recognise their limitations. When talking of ‘the beyond’ we have to use the language of metaphor and must be prepared to follow other people’s metaphors too.