Re: The Limits of Language
Searles

Wed Dec 23 17:14:25 1998
My own take on this matter is that a Druid's education would have included a disciplining of th emind regarding memory first and logic secondly. Beyond this early conditioning there would have been languages that were constructed based upon an ordering of information and a relationship betyween sound and function.  I am referring to the Ogham and the "Secret Language of the Poets."  All of this study and discipline would have produced a student who was eventually ready to experience heightened states of awareness through meditation and focusing techniques. One of these techniques was called the "Bed of the Poets."  Such techniques led to the heightened states of awareness known as imbas among the Draoi/ and Filidh.*p*The knowledge and wisdom that one could achieve using imbas, built upon the base of traditional knowledge and a keen sens of truth and heightened powers of observation and discernment would have allowed one to achieve new knowledge in "flashes" and "leaps" that advanced the wisdom of the tribe beyond the horizons of the ordinary.  Such knowledge was divinely inspired, yet ithad to be translated into practical, applicable techniques.  This is where the study and the training paid off.*p*The techniques and the experiences come under the heading of *doing* and cannot be written or spoken.  They can only be shown and done.  Making and creation are states of being which defy language's ability to fully describe them.  In a sense, words fail at the attempt and one must journey on spirit wings to btaing the heights of such awareness.*p*Searles*p*Beirdd wrote,*br*: Although it's probably long obvious to most of you who post *br*: to this board, it just occured to me that the Druidic *br*: prohibition against writing may not have been so much for *br*: protecting secrets amd knowledge as it was an *br*: acknowledgement that language can never do justice to the *br*: mystical and that such attempts easily confuse the *br*: uninitiated, let alone those whose role it is to understand *br*: and to teach.*br*:*br*: --Beirdd*br*
The Limits of Language
Beirdd
295
Tue Dec 22 22:10:57 1998