I’m sitting at my big kitchen window, watching the activity in the back yard. A flock of blackbirds have gathered in one of the larger trees. Although I can’t hear them, I intuitively know they are communicating amongst themselves. I ponder to myself, “I wonder what they are thinking right now…” and, “What secret signals might they be communicating to me?”
I, too, have secret signals. My body, for example, speaks to me all the time – perhaps mostly in vain attempts to get my conscious attention. It speaks in the language of sensation – interpreting electromagnetic waves to which my senses are attuned and my brain make sense to present me with a picture of my world, including my body.
That doesn’t seem so secret to me – when I feel pain, it’s no secret, I can assure you! I’m quite aware that my body is speaking. I listen, though often with the intent to fix rather than to understand.
Pain is a secret signal. Secret in that I don’t understand it. I think it means, “Pay attention!” and “Avoid or escape this sensation right now!” And yet, all too often, after paying attention and initiating an escape strategy, the pain persists. I’ve not sought understanding as much as I’ve sought relief. I may as well be listening to the blackbirds in the tree while thinking, “How can I get rid of these damned birds?!” Probably not going to understand bird talk thinking that, huh?
Communicating Pain
And then there is the secret signals given by the body language of others. When that rather large fellow over there gets up out of his chair, fists clenched, jaw fixed, eyes ablaze, I sense I’m in trouble. I know that because of his body language.
Ah, and yet, is it his body language or is it my interpretation that holds the secret key to understanding the situation – and maybe more importantly, his intentions, which may affect my actions?
How I interpret my world is how my world IS for me. Though I acknowledge that you, too, have an interpretation that may vary greatly from mine, I believe the world is as I sense it. I assume you sense and interpret as I do – and feel emotion and discomfort when you don’t. And yet, in a very real sense, your body language is, to me, a communication of what I believe – a secret signal to myself.
Communicating Compassion
That rather large and, to me, threatening fellow may be saying, “I’m hurt! Won’t someone help me?” and I’m so busy judging the threat his pain presents to me that I am unable to decipher his secret signal.
If you haven’t guessed yet, the key to secret signals is compassion. When I’m vibrating at the frequency of compassion, I sense and interpret everything more accurately. I am “in touch” with a fundamental reality beyond that which my physical senses are capable of detecting and my fear-based mind of accurately interpreting.
Now, I’m sitting in a tree with my family. We’re looking at the house with the large window. There is a human sitting on a tree stump doing something with a little black box on top of a larger flat tree stump. He appears to be gazing in my direction.
“I wonder what he is thinking right now…”
