Awakening to
the Two Truths

The way in which people talk about and describe things is a window into the depths of their world. Not only the words that people use, but the way that people use those words is incredibly telling. An understanding of how people talk about things is a good place to notice the underlying way that people hold the ideas they are talking about.

I wanted to describe some ways of relating to language in spiritual practice that are empowering and clarifying for both students and teachers.

Abstract Nouns and Concrete Nouns

First, let’s clarify the difference between abstract nouns and concrete nouns and how this is revealing one of the most fundamental underlying truths of the Universe.

A lot of the states, objectives, and goals of spirituality are abstract nouns and not concrete nouns.

The difference between the two is that concrete nouns are words used for physical things that can be measured. Things that can be touched, seen, felt, and heard. For example, a table, a body, a sound.

Abstract nouns describe something more ineffable – a quality, a concept or an idea – love, beauty, or cosiness, for example. They are real, can be experienced together, and there is some collective agreement on what they mean, but they are harder to pin down. They don’t have a physical manifestation that can be objectively measured in the same way as concrete nouns.

Abstract nouns are sensed and created through a more intuitive understanding of the world.

When it relates to language, concrete nouns are describing shared physical reality, and abstract nouns are describing the more immaterial dimension of experience.

If you are connecting to wholeness and coming from the foundation where there is no single source of truth, it becomes apparent that experience and reality are always being created from a dance between these two aspects.

One of the ways I like to describe this is that all experience is a conversation between body and metaphor or substance and the formless.

Reification

A common issue that arises with talking about spiritual experiences is that abstract nouns are made concrete. This reifies experience and stops people from being able to be in touch with the underlying felt experience of it.

To illustrate this, here are some abstract nouns of spiritual experiences that are often reified and talked about as if they are concrete:

• The inconceivable
• The unfabricated
• Pure consciousness or awareness
• Enlightenment
• Unity consciousness
• Non-duality
• Emptiness
• God
• Mindfulness

None of these can be objectively measured in the same way that concrete nouns can be.

To help understand this more deeply, here are some examples of some other abstract nouns:

• Sadness
• Embodiment
• Soulfulness
• Gracefulness
• Love

None of these are fixed states that are expected to be the same thing amongst everyone. Each of these things will be experienced subtly differently by every person, and that is part of their abstract nature.

For example, everyone experiences things like love, sadness, and soulfulness, and there are things you can do to cultivate more of them in life, but the actual experience is unique and different in each person.

It’s not that these abstract nouns don’t exist – they are as real as concrete reality – it’s that they operate on a different level to the more physical and objective world.

The level of nebulosity and intuitiveness to how abstract nouns are experienced is an innate part of their nature. When teachers describe spiritual experiences like, for example, ‘the unfabricated’ or ‘enlightenment’ as if they are fixed qualities or concrete nouns, it can make it harder for people to access them because it loses touch with this intuitive element.

Words Are Helpful

Words are incredibly helpful for helping people feel and experience things with more sensitivity, clarity, and depth. Having detailed and precise descriptive words is incredibly important for helping people make sense of their experience.

The opposite direction to overly reifying spiritual experiences is insisting that it is impossible to put it into words. There is some truth in this – many spiritual experiences go beyond what language or symbols are able to fully capture or transmit; however, increasing the clarity around how you describe and relate to things can open up new aspects of experience for yourself and other people.

By putting words on things, you can be forced to deepen your sense of clarity and sensitivity to an experience.

Example

An example of how language helps people understand their experience better is the word ‘hangry’.

I think that the word hangry is one of the best inventions to come out of the last couple of decades because it describes so clearly an experience that everyone can relate to. Before that word was invented, people who were hangry would mostly be stuck in unhelpful reactivity and stress. Since that word became popular, people became more able to recognise the experience of hanger more easily and communicate it with more skill. By making a noun, it objectifies the situation more and makes it less personal.

This demonstrates how words can help people better understand and connect with their experience and each other.

It feels like there is plenty of opportunity for spirituality to embrace this attitude more and normalise new ways of relating to experience. A good outcome is if people are able to connect more precisely and sensitively to aspects of their experience.

Concrete Spirituality

The area in which experiences become more concrete is when there is a scientifically validated way of testing and proving that a truth exists. Ideally across multiple people in the same way.

Some examples of things that will probably be able to be proven to be concrete experiences in spirituality are cessations, jhanas, and heart states.

There’s still an element of care involved in how this is held; some states are bodily processes that can be understood and tested, but they still fit within a wider eco-system of beliefs, experiences, wisdom, love, beauty, and other more abstract qualities.

In this way, I like to compare spiritual experiences to orgasms.

If you asked 1,000 people to describe an orgasm, there would be common themes, but everyone would describe it slightly differently. In theory, it’s the body doing roughly the same thing, but even every orgasm that each person has is slightly different.

The idea that a cessation, a jhana, or a heart state is one thing that everyone experiences exactly the same can be overly reified. Studying these contemplative states has the possibility to be incredibly helpful and insightful, but it needs to be held with some care.

To me, the science of sexuality is a good model for this. There’s been lots of studies done on sexuality and orgasms, and it has helped inform a cultural understanding of sex. For example, I believe at some points in history it was considered general common knowledge that women can’t orgasm. It feels important for the basic truths to be known and shared.

It’s important to recognise that gaining a scientific understanding of orgasms or sexual reproductive systems isn’t necessarily going to give people the answer to enjoying loving, erotic relationships, but a bit more knowledge about sex can help people move in that direction.

When it comes to spirituality, creating an understanding of what certain states actually are in the body and how they manifest could be helpful in the same way.

If the brain or body has changed its processes, either permanently or temporarily, due to a way that people practice, then that is worth studying and understanding.

The science is not going to hold the answers to meaningful spirituality, in the same way that studying orgasms doesn’t hold the answer to happy sex lives, but it could point towards some helpful information that can reveal a deeper understanding and inform better decisions about practice.

The concrete reality and how people experience this is an important aspect of true nature, and embracing working with it feels vital, meaningful, and alive.

Conclusion

Awakening is about connecting with true nature. If you can connect to the underlying nature in a direct way, then you create more space, freedom, and optionality in experience.

An aspect of true nature is more ineffable and intuitive, and an aspect of it is more concrete and objective.

Using clear and specific words for describing experiences without overly reifying them can help people connect with their experience better. Studying with more rigour and clarity how these things manifest in the physical world can help inform what is present.

Between these things, it’s possible to see the patterns of the way that true nature dances through the more ineffable and the more concrete.

One of the most beautiful things about this is the way in which people make sense of experience in very similar and wildly unique ways at the same time. Creating shared languages, stories, and meaning structures that people can connect to is intrinsically human and part of our spirituality and natural spiritual growth.

Ideally, the meaning structures that are created can hold a balance between validating and empowering people and holding claims and ideas to a high degree of both intellectual rigour and emotional maturity.