language fail

so many problems (or reason) arise from the way I use language. That is to say, when I press a concept or usage, I realize that it does not convey a meaning that makes sense to me. Here is one such usage: “I learned X from Y”

Does it happen that I come to know or realize or remember something that I did not previously know or realize or remember? yes. I experience this. This makes sense.

Could it happen that someone else knew or remembered or realized the same thing and then he or she told me (in words or otherwise)? Yes this happens.

Does it happen that I realized something after someone told me that thing? yes.

Did i therefore learn from them? did their telling me made realize and know or remember? not at all! not to me! it doesn’t make sense to me! their telling me is made up of sounds or patterns on a page that carry meanings that are not the property of those sounds or patterns and not the posessions of the speaker/writer or their minds! Not even the realizations and understandings someone may have are the creations of their own minds? How can mind create? It finds itself with meanings that appear to it and are not its own creations. I do not experience the mind as the source of meaning but as the consciousness that becomes aware of meanings, finds meaning, recognizes meaning. It does not create it by some power or will of its own. If it were the mind’s power to will to know something, it could instantly will to know everythind and find itself knowing everything. this is far from my experience of my mind or consciousness.

To me, it is reasonable to say that the mind receives meanings from something or someone who must be the source of those meanings and must possess them and that grants/gives them to all the minds. One can therefore say that one mind can convey any meaning it receives to other minds but whether those minds could perceive or grasp or realize or learn those meanings is not in the power of the conveyer and not in any power that the words themselves have! words just words! there is then the source of meanings who is the power that makes possible the learning and conveyance of those meanings to all minds and it only makes sense to say that anyone who learns anything learns it from that One. In terms of the that infiniate store of meanings that minds are seemingly made to realize, there are all sorts of meaning (hence the truth of seeking refuge with God from the ‘harm/evil of what is created’), what one learns from that source is left to each person’s choice.

If i were to use language truthfully and rationally, I should say that what I learn, I only learn from the only one who has the power to cause a mind to realize or know a meaning or meanings. It is true when i say i learned something ‘on my own’ or ‘from life’ or ‘from experience’ or ‘from a friend or teacher’ or ‘from X Y Z’. It is true of the meanings that are good and it is also true of the meanings/understandings that are bad.

In truth, I learned nothing (and could never learn anything), not one iota of meaning’ from anyone other than the source of meaning and the power that causes mind and consciousness and realization and knowledge to exist. I call this one God, the One to whom belongs everything (including the power of realization/learning).

It is a travesty to attribute to powerless, created consciousnesses and minds, sustained by the power and will of another (God), any praise for what one has ‘learned from them’. It is a lie. It is a failure of language. No one has learned anything from anyone unless everything is the source of its own existence and knowledge. For me, every mind has learned from the one who creates and sutains it and sustains all understanding in all minds at all times in the measure and for the period that He wills. For such learning or understanding, I can only reasonably then thank Him and no one else.

There is a terrible competition out there – who learned what from whom and who is properly honoring their ‘teachers’ and who is being ‘egotistical’ in not acknowledging their ‘debt’ to some other creature/mind. This is all a confusion born of unreflective use of language (or, of a worldview where things are sources of their minds and knowledge and deserve some credit for conveying/sharing ‘their’ ideas with others).

In a different blog, I have spoken about the truth about ‘riba’ vs. trade/zakat so I won’t repeat it here but that, for me, is relevant here. The enemies of the source of all understanding and knowldege are bent upon going beyond an exchange of another’s goods (put into our hands at all moments in various degrees by Him) and demanding an oppressive ‘extra’ (indebtednbess/gratitude/deference etc etc) on top of what is exchanged.