Verbal Communication Quotes

Conversation often becomes mere verbal performance and oral horseplay rather than fair-minded communication. (“Juicy rumours “)

Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your spouse's perspective. We must first learn what is important to our spouse. Only then can we give encouragement. With verbal encouragement, we are trying to communicate, "I know. I care. I am with you. How can I help?" We are trying to show that we believe in him and in his abilities. We are giving credit and praise.

Kylie bit down on her lip. Burnett took a step forward. He squared his shoulders, empathy filling his eyes. He took a deep, apparent heartfelt breath and looked at Kylie. She nodded at him as if giving him the lead. He looked back at Holiday and, in a deep voice, said, "Kylie has something to tell you." Kylie's mouth fell open and right then she knew it was official. Men sucked at verbal communication especially where anything emotional was concerned.

Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through you. Always be kinder than necessary.

We no longer plow the land together; today we talk. We have come to glorify verbal communication. I speak; therefore I am. We naively believe that the essence of who we are is most accurately conveyed through words.

The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom. The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .

When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

All people cross the line from childhood to adulthood with a secondhand opinion of who they are. Without any questioning, we take as truth whatever our parents and other influentials have said about us during our childhood, whether these messages are communicated verbally, physically, or silently.

Most women are all too familiar with men like Calvin Smith. Men whose sense of prerogative renders them deaf when women say, "No thanks," "Not interested," or even "Fuck off, creep.

Introverted seekers need introverted evangelists. It's not that extroverts can't communicate the gospel, either verbally or nonverbally, in ways that introverts find appealing, it's that introverted seekers need to know and see that it's possible to lead the Christian life as themselves. It's imperative for them to understand that becoming a Christian is not tantamount with becoming an extrovert.

As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians. (Earth (The Book), p. 36)

I think one can tell a lot about a person from the way he chooses to let the stub of his cigarette burn out...

Verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love.

Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with the verbal communication.

It is cognition that is the fantasy.... Everything I tell you now is mere words. Arrange them and rearrange them as I might, I will never be able to explain to you the form of Will... My explanation would only show the correlation between myself and that Will by means of a correlation on the verbal level. The negation of cognition thus correlates to the negation of language. For when those two pillars of Western humanism, individual cognition and evolutionary continuity, lose their meaning, language loses meaning. Existence ceases for the individuum as we know it, and all becomes chaos. You cease to be a unique entity unto yourself, but exist simply as chaos. And not just the chaos that is you; your chaos is also my chaos. To wit, existence is communication, and communication, existence.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication; after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.

How you carry yourself speaks volumes about how you feel about yourself.

Truly effective negotiators are conscious of the verbal, paraverbal (how it’s said), and nonverbal communications that pervade negotiations and group dynamics. And they know how to employ those subtleties to their benefit. Even changing a single word when you present options—like using “not lose” instead of “keep”—can unconsciously influence the conscious choices your counterpart makes.

I believe that one is more successful in expressing oneself through written words rather than speaking. While speaking, one misses the details. But writing? Writing is different altogether. It gives us ample time to contemplate what we wish to communicate. As a result, the flow of our thoughts seems much more coherent.

Effective communication is key to building consensus, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. The board chair must be able to communicate clearly and concisely, both verbally and in writing.

Verbal communication is much easier than written communication, because words act on the feelings in a mysterious way and easily establish a current of sympathy between people; it is for this reason that an orator is able to produce conviction by arguments which do not seem very comprehensible to any one reading the speech later.

The art of communicating is to speak with a non judging sensitivity and mean it rather than impulsively verbalizing whatever feelings arise; there's no better way to make a point.

A strong confident person can rule the room with knowledge, personal style, attitude and great posture.

Proper posture sends a positive message since 90% of all communication occures through body language and how you carry yourself.

Reading is a source of liberation. Children who are taught to read early on, are commonly taught to communicate in other significant verbal and nonverbal ways.

Pretend those around you are deaf to your words. Let your actions speak and communicate your feelings and intentions. This way of living ensures the potency of your message is delivered and serves as a gauge against our verbal nonsense.

But in today’s world, being seen as intellectually, cognitively, or developmentally disabled is dangerous because intelligence and verbal communication are entrenched markers of personhood.

If you could do one thing to improve yourself today, it would be this: Rid yourself of bias. If you can do this, you can learn to listen. If you learn to listen, then you can learn to communicate. If you can communicate, then you can begin to verbalize your feelings. When you verbalize your feelings, then you can release stress and frustrations. When you free yourself of what bothers you, then you can fully give yourself to others. When you come this far, then you have learned to grow spiritually.

Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it. It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication.

How can I shut down If you don't open up??

Neither sex is wrong in their communication; both sexes need to learn how to understand each other.

Religious experiences are meaningless unless they are accompanied by verbal communication that carry intelligible content.

Other children communicate with actions, such as tantrums, yelling, name-calling, and running away. The trick is to disallow this form of expression and encourage verbal communication. “I want to know what you are feeling, but I want to hear you tell me instead of show me.

Earlier fundamental work of Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Whorf, etc., as well as my own attempt to use this earlier thinking as an epistemological base for psychiatric theory, led to a series of generalizations: That human verbal communication can operate and always does operate at many contrasting levels of abstraction. These range in two directions from the seemingly simple denotative level (“The cat is on the mat”). One range or set of these more abstract levels includes those explicit or implicit messages where the subject of discourse is the language. We will call these metalinguistic (for example, “The verbal sound ‘cat’ stands for any member of such and such class of objects”, or “The word, ‘cat’ has no fur and cannot scratch”). The other set of levels of abstraction we will call metacommunicative (e.g., “My telling you where to find the cat was friendly”, or “This is play”). In these, the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers. It will be noted that the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit; and also that, especially in the psychiatric interview, there occurs a further class of implicit messages about how metacommunicative messages of friendship and hostility are to be interpreted.

Children don’t ‘mis’behave. They behave, either positively or negatively, to communicate. Small children communicate through their behavior because that is the only method of communication they have. Even when they become verbal, though, they still aren’t able to articulate big feelings and subtle problems well verbally, so as parents it’s our role to ‘listen between the lines’ of our children’s behavior to discern the need being communicated. Setting boundaries is not about ‘mis’behavior. It’s about guiding behavior, and guidance is something we provide through everyday interactions with our children.

it's hard to fool an ape. One reason for that is the absence of distraction by the spoken word. We attach such importance to verbal communication that we lose track of what our bodies say about us.

Women have less direct relationship to anger...When a woman "bites" her tongue to avoid expressing anger, its not at all socialization. A lot of it is brain circuitry. Even if a woman wanted to express her anger right away, often her brain circuits would attempt to hijack this response, to reflect on it first out of fear and anticipation of retaliation. Also, the female brain has a tremendous aversion to conflict, which is set up by fear of angering the other person and losing the relationship. Instead of triggering a quick action response in the brain, as it does in males, anger in girls and women moves through the brain's gut feeling, conflict-pain anticipation, and verbal circuits. Scientists speculate that though a woman is slower to act out of anger, once her faster verbal circuits get going, they can cause her to unleash a barrage of angry words that a man cant match. Typical men speak fewer words and have less verbal fluency than women, so they may be handicapped in angry exchanges with women. Often when I see a couple who are not communicating well, the problem I see is that the man's brain's circuits push him frequently and quickly to an angry, aggressive reaction, and the woman feels frightened and shuts down.

Together we watched Jake and Gabriel do the guy head-nod thing. That weird communication gesture that is only understood by those born with a cock. I have no idea why guys do that instead of actually verbalizing, but it seems to work for them. I put it down to one of those men-are-from-Mars things.

Our nonverbal behavior (including posture) gives away our inner personality and reflects our inner attitude.

If you hesitate before you criticise, complain or quarrel, you are a better communicator.

not responding verbally isn't necessarily being passive. we are communicating on many levels simultaneously

When you listen to your spouse, you are communicating non verbally that they are important to you.

be sure your communication goes beyond words. How can you do that? By connecting on four levels: visually, intellectually, emotionally, and verbally.

Here is the bottom line of all communication: Empathy absorbs tension. It works every time. I have seen it even save a life.

We could probably go days without talking and still feel verbally satisfied, communicating in ways only two souls destined to be together can.

There was nothing to be done. From then on, there were flowers waiting for me every time we met, and in the end I gave in, because I was disarmed by the spontaneity of giving and understood tha Lucie cared for it; perhaps her tongue-tied state, her lack of verbal eloquence, made her think of flowers as a form of speech; not in the sense of heavy-handed conventional flower symbolism, but in a sense still more archaic, more nebulous, more instinctive, prelinguistic; perhaps, having always been sparing of words, she longed for that mute stage of evolution when there were no words and people communicated by simple gestures

Your ability to communicate at a deep level is very crucial. You cannot love more, bigger or better than you can communicate. Most people’s ability to get to the next level in their relationships is hindered by their inability to communicate at a non-verbal or deep level. PEOPLE ALWAYS WANT TO TALK INSTEAD OF COMMUNICATE

If you want too much explaining from him, you're probably not tuned enough into your own sensuality. 90% of your communication with your man isn't supposed to be verbal, it's supposed to be sensual.

Fairy-tales are as old as language itself. Indeed, many linguistic scholars believe that language was invented simply so that humans could tell each other stories. Non-verbal communication is surprisingly effective, as anyone who has observed chimpanzees at the zoo can confirm. However, for humans to express more sophisticated ideas they needed a more subtle and complex form of communication. And so, about sixty thousand years ago, humans began telling each other stories. The purpose of these stories was manifold. On the one hand, they amused and entertained and brought comfort and consolation. On the other, they warned and enlightened and taught what was needed to be known.

I didn't speak macho alpha, therefore could not communicate telepathically , via chin lifts or through actions to other macho alphas, so I felt it prudent to agree verbally. I did this by mumbling, "Okeydokey." Ally Nightingale

Because feelings, emotional and physical, are so foregrounded in sexual encounters, the orgy is soon the most social of human interchanges, where awareness and communication, whether verbal or no, hold all together or sunder it.

This matter of the “love” of pets is of immense import because many, many people are capable of “loving” only pets and incapable of genuinely loving other human beings. Large numbers of American soldiers had idyllic marriages to German, Italian or Japanese “war brides” with whom they could not verbally communicate. But when their brides learned English, the marriages began to fall apart. The servicemen could then no longer project upon their wives their own thoughts, feelings, desires and goals and feel the same sense of closeness one feels with a pet. Instead, as their wives learned English, the men began to realize that these women had ideas, opinions and aims different from their own. As this happened, love began to grow for some; for most, perhaps, it ceased. The liberated woman is right to beware of the man who affectionately calls her his “pet.

Listen with an open mind, gather all the incoming information, both verbal and non-verbal and be careful not to ignore things you don’t wish to hear. Don’t make assumptions or jump to conclusions. The punchline usually comes at the end!

When we are truly present in a challenging moment, our verbal and nonverbal communication flows. We are no longer occupying a discombobulated mental state — as I was on that ill-fated elevator ride — simultaneously analyzing what we think others think of us, what we said a minute earlier, and what we think they will think of us after we leave, all while frantically trying to adjust what we’re saying and doing to create the impression we think they want to see. Usually our words are relatively easy to

Communication can be sent or received through verbal or nonverbal cues.

Autism is just the surface. What is inside each of us is what matters, autistic or not.

Domestic violence is never an acceptable form of communication.

I think 90 percent of what/who we are is never really verbally communicated....

The fact that I’m using words doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m saying anything.

If you lose them with your words, win them back with your actions.

Listening is an act of love. When you listen to people, you are communicating non-verbally that they are important to you.

I like dancing for dancing's sake. It's a break from having to participate in verbal communication, which always seems to be about explaining shit, and proving shit, and clarifying shit, and arguing about shit, and criticizing shit, and showing off about shit, and avoiding shit, and dramatizing shit, and cracking jokes about shit, and brushing shit off, and defending shit, and attacking shit, and lying about shit, and insisting that shit will be "ok," when truly empathizing and connecting with people involves feeling everything, and saying nothing.

Every kind of language is... specialized form of bodily gesture, and in this sense it may be said that the dance is the mother of all languages... an original language of total bodily gesture. This "original" language of total bodily gesture is thus the one and only real language, which everybody who is in any way expressing himself is using all the time. What we call speech and the other kinds of language are only parts of it which have undergone specialized development.

Mek sat in the cab, doing some self-maintenance work. Instead of a verbal reply, I got a text message: SYLVATRONICS INDUSTRIAL UNIT A023 PROCESSING AN REINTEGRATION WILL BE COMPLETE IN 57 SECONDS. VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS WILL BE POSSIBLE IN ABOUT 65 SECONDS. Oh well, I've caught rookie driving partners in the middle of all sorts of things. At least with robots you don't have to guess.

A child's readiness for school depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn. The report lists the seven key ingredients of this crucial capacity—all related to emotional intelligence:6 1. Confidence. A sense of control and mastery of one's body, behavior, and world; the child's sense that he is more likely than not to succeed at what he undertakes, and that adults will be helpful. 2. Curiosity. The sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure. 3. Intentionality. The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective. 4. Self-control. The ability to modulate and control one's own actions in age-appropriate ways; a sense of inner control. 5. Relatedness. The ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understanding others. 6. Capacity to communicate. The wish and ability to verbally exchange ideas, feelings, and concepts with others. This is related to a sense of trust in others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults. 7. Cooperativeness. The ability to balance one's own needs with those of others in group activity. Whether or not a child arrives at school on the first day of kindergarten with these capabilities depends greatly on how much her parents—and preschool teachers—have given her the kind of care that amounts to a "Heart Start," the emotional equivalent of the Head Start programs.

If the mystery can be reduced to one solution, it lies in a simple coincidence: Rimbaud's interest in his own work had survived the realization that the world would not be changed by verbal innovation. It did not survive the failure of all his adult relationships. He had always treated poems as a form of private communication. He gave his songs to chansonniers, his satires to satirists. Without a constant companion, he was writing in a void.

Eye Contact Can Reveal if a Person is . . . • Shy or gregarious • Honest or deceitful • Confident or terrified • Interested or bored • Patient or irritated • Sincere or inauthentic • Organized or Unprepared • Attentive or distracted

In real life women often complain about the reluctance of their male partners to engage in meaningful dialogue, but in the world of romantic fantasy heroes willingly participate in verbal discussions. They fence, they flirt, they express their anger, they talk out the confounding details of their relationships with the heroine. No hero of romance will ever respond to the eternal feminine query, "What's wrong?" with the word, "Nothing." He will tell her what's wrong; they will argue about it, perhaps, but they will be communicating, and eventually, as they resolve their various conflicts, the war of words will end. One of the most significant victories the heroine achieves at the close of the novel is that the hero is able to express his love for her not only physically but also verbally.

My rule is: Treat everyone the same (with REspect and dignity), but don’t talk to everyone the same way. You don’t talk to each of your children the same way, do you? Since each responds differently, based on his or her makeup and character, you instinctively learn to communicate uniquely to each one.

Do I choose to experience Peace of Mind or do I choose to experience Conflict? Do I choose to experience Love or Fear? Do I choose to be a Love Finder or a Fault Finder? Do I choose to be a Love Giver or a Love Sender? Is this communication (verbal or nonverbal) Loving to the other person and is it Loving to me?

After Babel postulates that translation is formally and pragmatically implicit in every act of communication, in the emission and reception of each and every mode of meaning, be it in the widest semiotic sense or in more specifically verbal exchanges. To understand is to decipher. To hear significance is to translate.

In addition to being a life-sustaining and sanity-maintaining way of managing inner states, cutting is a primitive yet powerful form of communication for people unable to adequately verbalize their feelings. Self-mutilation provides concrete expression for the pain they feel inside—a language written on the body, through blood, wounds, and scars.

When you speak, you are a mouthpiece, a representative. You do not represent your own ego. Remember, the more ego you show, the less power you have over people. Egotists only create conflict. The great communicators put their egos behind them and put the purpose and goal of communication before them. Nobody likes people whose personalities intrude.

Attuned communication. The ability for attuned communication, indispensable for establishing secure attachment between parent and child (or therapist and patient), rests on our capacity to accurately sense someone else’s state and communicate, nonverbally (most important) and verbally (less important), our felt understanding of their emotional experience.

Your posture is the key to your personal and professional foundation.

Always walk with style and finesse.

You project a confident image through good body posture.

Like money, approval from others is a form of extrinsic reward. Our culture has educated us to hunger for reward. We attended schools that used extrinsic means to motivate us to study; we grew up in homes where we were rewarded for being good little boys and girls, and were punished when our caretakers judged us to be otherwise. Thus, as adults, we easily trick ourselves into believing that life consists of doing things for reward; we are addicted to getting a smile, a pat on the back, and people’s verbal judgments that we are a “good person,” “good parent,” “good citizen,” “good worker,” “good friend,” and so forth. We do things to get people to like us and avoid things that may lead people to dislike or punish us.

For those who have sex, these ideas—breaking the binary of yes and no, norms that encourage discussion—must be combined with always checking in. Checking in doesn’t mean stopping for a five-minute discussion in legalese. It requires paying attention to—and wanting to pay attention to—all forms of information. Nonverbal communication in particular is important because social pressures can make it hard for some to speak up and verbally say no. “I’m autistic and people are always telling me that 95 percent of communication is nonverbal and tell me it’s important to make efforts to understand that,” says Lola Phoenix, a writer in London. “And then when it comes to consent it’s suddenly like, ‘Why didn’t they say something? No one is a mind reader!’ That’s really hypocritical.

One simple glance can convey to your recipient that you are . . . • Present • Interested • Paying attention • Being respectful • Listening • Confident • Engaged • Caring • Dedicated • Appreciative • Empathetic • Focused • Supportive • Trustworthy • Acknowledging • Excited This list barely scratches the surface; however, it opens the conversation about how vital your eye contact is for making positive first impressions.

When not through external events, spirit communicates “internally” via symbols and signs. Symbolic language, like music, is universal and crosses beyond the limitations of verbal and written languages. It is a divine communication. Essentially, the Spirit is using All means necessary to inspire us and to get our attention – not an easy task in the material world of sights, sounds, online messages, TV and movies - and commercialism!

There are times when eye contact can move to the dark side and become creepy, hostile, rude, or condescending. When it is overused or made for the wrong reasons, eye contact can make others feel uncomfortable and leave a terrible impression . . . • obsessive staring • mocking • too much intensity • inappropriate focus • averting eyes • obvious contempt • gawking, ogling • casting the "evil eye" • over-watching • intimidating • unwelcome looks • rolling the eyes

Verbal facility with smells and flavors doesn’t come naturally. As babies, we learn to talk by naming what we see. “Baby points to a lamp, mother says, ‘Yes, a lamp,’” says Johan Lundström, a biological psychologist with the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “Baby smells an odor, mother says nothing.” All our lives, we communicate through visuals. No one, with a possible exception made for Sue Langstaff, would say, “Go left at the smell of simmering hotdogs.

As Dobrograev says, "Language is the means of man's adaption to his environment." We could rephrase that statement in this way: man's need for communication with his fellow men interferes with his relation to the outside world, because language and speech itself the verbal tools we use are variable and not objective.... In a simpler way we may say: he who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind.

Approachable people . . . 1. Use body language to their advantage. 2. Are open-minded to new people and new experiences. 3. Encourage others to feel better about themselves. 4. Are willing to be told not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear. 5. Provide an inviting aura that is warm and comforting. 6. Realize that authenticity and transparency earn trust. 7. Intuitively tune into the feelings and needs of others. 8. Are emotionally steady and respond appropriately when they sense awkwardness or discomfort in others. 9. Radiate happiness and curbs cynicism. 10. Provide a safe environment for others to express themselves. 11. Make others feel valued and appreciated. 12. Listen and consider other people’s viewpoints and opinions.

Verbal ventilation is the key way that people make friends. It parallels the way tender touch, soothing voice, and welcoming facial expressions helps infants and toddlers establish bonding and attachment. When we practice the emotionally based communication of verbal ventilation in a safe environment, we repair the damage of not having had this need met in childhood. This in turn opens up the possibility of finally attaining the verbal-emotional intimacy that is an essential lifelong need for all human beings.

it’s natural that we associate language with such verbal intercourse. Unfortunately, this association has led many to assume that language is an exclusive attribute of our species—we, after all, are the only creatures that use words—and to conclude that all other organisms are entirely bereft of meaningful speech. It is an exceedingly self-serving assumption. Other animals, commonly possessed of senses far more acute than ours, may have much less need for a purely conventional set of signs to communicate with others of their species, or even to glean precise information from members of other species.

Among people who have autism and speech challenges, I think there will always be individuals whose “verbal blocks” come from the same place as mine. They too, I believe, can unlock language by referencing common points between memory scenes and the moment they’re in. This might take a great deal of practice, but their family, helpers and teachers mustn’t give up on them. The person with special needs will sense that resignation, lose their motivation and stop trying to speak. This can erode even their will to live. Believe me. Communication is the person, to a major degree. Please don’t be the first to walk away.

Ninthly, only verbally is it possible to deny infinite space, as is done by pertinacious fellows. For the rest of space where the universe is not, which is called void, where indeed it is pretended that nothing doth exist, cannot be conceived as without the capacity to contain no less a magnitude than that which it doth contain. Tenthly, since it is well that this world doth exist, no less good is the existence of each one of the infinity of other worlds. Eleventhly, the virtue of this world is not communicable to any other world soever, just as my being cannot be communicated to the being of this or of that man.

Any movement that seeks to end police violence has no choice but to work to undo the racism and ableism and audism which, together, make Black Disabled/Deaf people prime targets for police violence. For instance, Darnell T. Wicker, a Black deaf veteran, was killed by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, on August 8, 2016 (note that the lowercase d indicates that Darnell Wicker was deaf, not culturally Deaf). Body camera footage shows officers shooting Darnell Wicker multiple times within one to two seconds of issuing verbal orders on a dark night. However, Darnell Wicker relied on speech-reading to communicate.

When we imagine Jesus’ teaching in his own time and place, W ca we cannot use profiles of teachers from our own world to understand the nature of his work. Our culture is heir to the Greek tradition, where abstract reasoning and verbal prowess are the measure of the teacher. Jesus’ world was different. He communicated through word pictures, dramatic actions, metaphors, and stories. Rather than lecture about religious corruption, Jesus refers to the Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs.” Rather than outline the failings of the temple, he curses a fig tree. This means that we should think of Jesus as a “metaphorical theologian” for whom drama, humor, and storytelling were all a part of his method.

When engaging in simple everyday banter and communications, this rule of thumb can really help suppress a lot of our negative word ‘vomit’ since we often mindlessly chat about the things we don’t like. If we refrain from expressing our negative opinions about things unless they’re directly asked for, we can train ourselves to respond rather than react the second we see or hear something and then feel we must verbalize our views about it. Remember, even if we don’t agree with someone or something, we can still speak about the subject at hand in a positive light to encourage growth rather than guilty motivation. I like to say I express more “inspirations” than “opinions” with each passing day.

Nor does it matter from the standpoint of a comparative study of symbolic forms whether Christ or the Buddha ever actually lived and performed the miracles associated with their teachings. The religious literatures of the world abound in counterparts of those two great lives. And what one may learn from them all, finally, is that the savior, the hero, the redeemed one, is the one who has learned to penetrate the protective wall of those fears within, which exclude the rest of us, generally, in our daylight and even our dreamnight thoughts, from all experience of our own and the world’s divine ground. The mythologized biographies of such saviors communicate the messages of their world-transcending wisdom in world-transcending symbols - which, ironically, are then generally translated back into such verbalized thoughts as built the interior walls in the first place.

Does the sacred quest end with cultivating our own gardens and dwelling within our private and incommunicable experiences? Because we human beings are verbal and communal animals, we cannot remain wonder-struck and dumb. We need to say something. We are a species given to storytelling and philosophizing to explain our world. Ergo, it is pure folly to suppose we can avoid speaking about the ultimate context and meaning of our existence. We cannot simply be content with the private experience of elementary emotions and the great encompassing mystery. Our feelings demand expression. How are we to understand this perennial need to speak to G-d and about G-d even when what we say involves contradictions, paradoxes, and sacred nonsense? To communicate is to come back into the community. The hero must return from the inner journey to the common life of dialogue and engagement.

Our internal boundaries define and contain the unique personal characteristics of our thoughts, feelings, opinions, behaviors, beliefs, and spirituality. Boundaries help us recognize, honor, and respect our individual wants, needs, and desires. They help us define our separateness and give us safety in our intimate communications with others. If someone verbally attacks us, we maintain our internal boundary and practice self-containment by moderately expressing our thoughts and feelings about their behavior using “I” statements. Or, we may choose not to respond and silently remind ourselves that how another person acts is about that person, not about us. If someone confronts us about our behavior, we use our internal boundary to listen to what they say. We do not internalize what is said before deciding if any of it rings true for us. If we have wronged the other person, we make amends. In either situation our self-worth is not diminished because we have maintained our internal boundaries. 110:2 We use internal boundaries in various ways. An example is deciding how much personal information, such as personal history or financial information, to share with others. Conversely, we refrain from delving into others’ personal business. We might really want to ask a question or say something to someone, yet we do not because we know that person’s private life is none of our business. 111:1 When we have healthy internal boundary systems, we recognize that each individual is responsible for his or her emotional, mental, and spiritual boundaries. We allow ourselves and others to have their own thoughts, feelings, opinions, behaviors, beliefs, and spirituality. With functional boundaries we are able to meet our needs without infringing on others’ abilities to meet their needs. Our internal boundaries can be flexible and we decide what is safe and comfortable for ourselves.

In the track of love, you are giving more than taking. And of course, you love yourself so much that you don’t allow selfish people to take advantage of you. You are not going for revenge, but you are clear in your communication. You can say, “I don’t like it when you try to take advantage of me, when you disrespect me, when you are unkind to me. I don’t need someone to abuse me verbally, emotionally, physically. I don’t need to hear you cursing all the time. It’s not that I am better than you; it’s because I love beauty. I love to laugh; I love to have fun; I love to love. It’s not that I am selfish, I just don’t need a big victim near me. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, but I cannot take responsibility for your dream. If you are in a relationship with me, it will be so hard for your Parasite, because I will not react to your garbage at all.” This is not selfishness; this is self-love. Selfishness, control, and fear will break almost any relationship. Generosity, freedom, and love will create the most beautiful relationship: an ongoing romance.

Imagine you live on a planet where the dominant species is far more intellectually sophisticated than human beings but often keeps humans as companion animals. They are called the Gorns. They communicate with each other via a complex combination of telepathy, eye movements & high-pitched squeaks, all completely unintelligible & unlearnable by humans, whose brains are prepared for verbal language acquisition only. Humans sometimes learn the meaning of individual sounds by repeated association with things of relevance to them. The Gorns & humans bond strongly but there are many Gorn rules that humans must try to assimilate with limited information & usually high stakes. You are one of the lucky humans who lives with the Gorns in their dwelling. Many other humans are chained to small cabanas in the yard or kept in outdoor pens of varying size. They are so socially starved they cannot control their emotions when a Gorn goes near them. The Gorns agree that they could never be House-Humans. The dwelling you share with your Gorn family is filled with water-filled porcelain bowls.Every time you try to urinate in one,nearby Gorn attack you. You learn to only use the toilet when there are no Gorns present. Sometimes they come home & stuff your head down the toilet for no apparent reason. You hate this & start sucking up to the Gorns when they come home to try & stave this off but they view this as evidence of your guilt. You are also punished for watching videos, reading books, talking to other human beings, eating pizza or cheesecake, & writing letters. These are all considered behavior problems by the Gorns. To avoid going crazy, once again you wait until they are not around to try doing anything you wish to do. While they are around, you sit quietly, staring straight ahead. Because they witness this good behavior you are so obviously capable of, they attribute to “spite” the video watching & other transgressions that occur when you are alone. Obviously you resent being left alone, they figure. You are walked several times a day and left crossword puzzle books to do. You have never used them because you hate crosswords; the Gorns think you’re ignoring them out of revenge. Worst of all, you like them. They are, after all, often nice to you. But when you smile at them, they punish you, likewise for shaking hands. If you apologize they punish you again. You have not seen another human since you were a small child. When you see one you are curious, excited & afraid. You really don’t know how to act. So, the Gorn you live with keeps you away from other humans. Your social skills never develop. Finally, you are brought to “training” school. A large part of the training consists of having your air briefly cut off by a metal chain around your neck. They are sure you understand every squeak & telepathic communication they make because sometimes you get it right. You are guessing & hate the training. You feel pretty stressed out a lot of the time. One day, you see a Gorn approaching with the training collar in hand. You have PMS, a sore neck & you just don’t feel up to the baffling coercion about to ensue. You tell them in your sternest voice to please leave you alone & go away. The Gorns are shocked by this unprovoked aggressive behavior. They thought you had a good temperament. They put you in one of their vehicles & take you for a drive. You watch the attractive planetary landscape going by & wonder where you are going. You are led into a building filled with the smell of human sweat & excrement. Humans are everywhere in small cages. Some are nervous, some depressed, most watch the goings on on from their prisons. Your Gorns, with whom you have lived your entire life, hand you over to strangers who drag you to a small room. You are terrified & yell for your Gorn family to help you. They turn & walk away.You are held down & given a lethal injection. It is, after all, the humane way to do it.

The group is a concept of uncommunicable shared suffering, a concept that ultimately rejects the agency of words. For shared suffering, more than anything else, is the ultimate opponent of verbal expression. Not even the mightiest Weltschmerz in the heart of the solitary writer, billowing upwards to the starry heavens like some great circus tent, can create a community of shared suffering. For though verbal expression may convey pleasure or grief, it cannot convey shared pain; though pleasure may be readily fired by ideas, only bodies, placed under the same circumstances, can experience a common suffering. Only through the group, I realised—through sharing the suffering of the group—could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of the individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary—the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it on to ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death, which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors… . In the dim light of early morning I was running, one of a group. A cotton towel with the symbol of a red sun on it was tied about my forehead, and I was stripped to the waist in the freezing air. Through the common suffering, the shared cries of encouragement, the shared pace, and the chorus of voices, I felt the slow emergence, like the sweat that gradually beaded my skin, of that “tragic” quality that is the affirmation of identity. It was a flame of the flesh, flickering up faintly beneath the biting breeze—a flame, one might almost say, of nobility. The sense of surrendering one’s body to a cause gave new life to the muscles. We were united in seeking death and glory; it was not merely my personal quest. The pounding of the heart communicated itself to the group; we shared the same swift pulse. Self-awareness by now was as remote as the distant rumour of the town. I belonged to them, they belonged to me; the two formed an unmistakable “us.” To belong—what more intense form of existence could there be? Our small circle of oneness was a means to a vision of that vast, dimly gleaming circle of oneness. And—all the while foreseeing that this imitation of tragedy was, in the same way as my own narrow happiness, condemned to vanish with the wind, to resolve itself into nothing more than muscles that simply existed—I had a vision where something that, if I were alone, would have resolved back into muscles and words, was held fast by the power of the group and led me away to a far land, whence there would be no return. It was, perhaps, the beginning of my placing reliance on others, a reliance that was mutual; and each of us, by committing himself to this immeasurable power, belonged to the whole.

Like stress, emotion is a concept we often invoke without a precise sense of its meaning. And, like stress, emotions have several components. The psychologist Ross Buck distinguishes between three levels of emotional responses, which he calls Emotion I, Emotion II and Emotion III, classified according to the degree we are conscious of them. Emotion III is the subjective experience, from within oneself. It is how we feel. In the experience of Emotion III there is conscious awareness of an emotional state, such as anger or joy or fear, and its accompanying bodily sensations. Emotion II comprises our emotional displays as seen by others, with or without our awareness. It is signalled through body language — “non-verbal signals, mannerisms, tones of voices, gestures, facial expressions, brief touches, and even the timing of events and pauses between words. [They] may have physiologic consequences — often outside the awareness of the participants.” It is quite common for a person to be oblivious to the emotions he is communicating, even though they are clearly read by those around him. Our expressions of Emotion II are what most affect other people, regardless of our intentions. A child’s displays of Emotion II are also what parents are least able to tolerate if the feelings being manifested trigger too much anxiety in them. As Dr. Buck points out, a child whose parents punish or inhibit this acting-out of emotion will be conditioned to respond to similar emotions in the future by repression. The self-shutdown serves to prevent shame and rejection. Under such conditions, Buck writes, “emotional competence will be compromised…. The individual will not in the future know how to effectively handle the feelings and desires involved. The result would be a kind of helplessness.” The stress literature amply documents that helplessness, real or perceived, is a potent trigger for biological stress responses. Learned helplessness is a psychological state in which subjects do not extricate themselves from stressful situations even when they have the physical opportunity to do so. People often find themselves in situations of learned helplessness — for example, someone who feels stuck in a dysfunctional or even abusive relationship, in a stressful job or in a lifestyle that robs him or her of true freedom. Emotion I comprises the physiological changes triggered by emotional stimuli, such as the nervous system discharges, hormonal output and immune changes that make up the flight-or-fight reaction in response to threat. These responses are not under conscious control, and they cannot be directly observed from the outside. They just happen. They may occur in the absence of subjective awareness or of emotional expression. Adaptive in the acute threat situation, these same stress responses are harmful when they are triggered chronically without the individual’s being able to act in any way to defeat the perceived threat or to avoid it. Self-regulation, writes Ross Buck, “involves in part the attainment of emotional competence, which is defined as the ability to deal in an appropriate and satisfactory way with one’s own feelings and desires.” Emotional competence presupposes capacities often lacking in our society, where “cool” — the absence of emotion — is the prevailing ethic, where “don’t be so emotional” and “don’t be so sensitive” are what children often hear, and where rationality is generally considered to be the preferred antithesis of emotionality. The idealized cultural symbol of rationality is Mr. Spock, the emotionally crippled Vulcan character on Star Trek.