How Language Affects the Way We See the World
Dear friends,
What not many people know is that within me, there is also a nerdy, magna cum laude linguist who delights in deep, in-depth grammatical analysis and the intricate structures of language. That’s my head.
What more people know is that I explore how we can be free from our layer of separation and remember our true nature—something I, like the mystics, love to call Love. That’s my heart.
Head and heart. I believe that now more than ever, our world needs us to bring them together. I feel deeply grateful to be able to do this—to unite the two fields that continue to inspire me: language and the nature of reality—in The Language Mode Project. By doing so, I step into an unexplored field of research. I don’t know exactly what I am stepping into, and I sense that this research might hold a potential too vast for me to process alone. But as always, I trust that all I need to do is remain available. I did not come up with this research—this research found me. And if it grows beyond what I can carry alone, I trust it will also find the right partners to help carry it—people who understand that this work requires sharp minds as well as open hearts, knowledge as well as intuition.
In mainstream academic linguistics, there is no space for research that bridges head and heart. "It leans too much towards the realm of art and meditation," my former professor told me—though with personal sympathy and encouragement.
Of course, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I want this research to align with art and meditation. One of my greatest inspirations in this project is quantum physicist David Bohm. He believed that the division between science, art, and spirituality is a contingency we must overcome in order to move humanity forward. I would love to contribute to that.
If you’d like to help make this possible, you can become both a patron and a participant in this research. This is not the kind of research that governments fund, yet it is happening—thanks to people who wish to contribute to a world with less separation and more clarity.
With Rose Meuse and Shalan Joudry in the Mi’kmaw community of Bear River
I’m writing this letter to you from Nova Scotia, where I’m speaking with Mi’kmaw speakers—one of the many inspiring Indigenous languages still enriching our world. From here, I will return to Amiglia, the perfect place to deepen in art, meditation, and research. You are warmly welcome there to join me in work or meditation.
And whether or not you wish to engage as a patron-participant in the Language Mode Project, I would love to share more with you—about David Bohm’s insights, what we can learn from languages like Mi’kmaw, and how we might put that into practice. Sign up here for a free webinar. I look forward to taking you on this journey!
Much love,
Zoe
