Words are needed on the Inner Journey - or are they?
Words all come from the mind - so how helpful are they on our Inner Journey?
The mind is an incredible thing. But essentially it is just an ever-changing collection of impulses and responses to sensory impressions and experiences - almost all of which is going on in the unconscious. The only part of mind we really know is what arises in our conscious awareness as thoughts and feelings.
Nevertheless, despite our limited understanding of how it works, and why it is so easily led off into wrong ideas and beliefs, we tend to rely on it as our principal form of guidance as we navigate our way through life. And we also use it when we seek a deeper understanding of the mysteries of existence.
What is therefore always good to remember is that words come from a mind - and the mind is highly fallible, prone to flights of imagination and fantasy. So particularly when it comes to attempting to define things like Spirit, Soul, Consciousness, Absolute, God - it seems to me that words should never be taken to have a correct and specific meaning - and be regarded as simply pointers.
On our Inner Journey, when we think we know something, we may do well to consider if in fact we have come to believe in what we have heard or read but actually really do not know. Perhaps this is what the Buddha meant when he is believed to have said (not literally this of course) that one should not accept anything as true said by anyone else, even when he himself was the speaker, unless it had been verified as true in one's own direct experience.
John