Spirituality Dictionary

All Words Are Just Signposts

As Eckhart Tolle says, Universe, God, and Allah all refer to the same thing.

About a year and a half ago, my friend went through a horrible, nasty breakup with his first love.

Back when it happened, we spent many long nights on the phone together while he tried to make sense of what went wrong. They were together for five years, and they went through the bulk of their adolescence together.

Things were great between them. The relationship died quickly. Five years of love turned to hatred in less than three months.

It was a lot to process.

About three months ago, the topic of this breakup came up again. He said to me,

“I don’t want to view them as just a lesson.”

This reminded me of something Eckhart Tolle wrote in The Power of Now.*

All words are just signposts for a larger concept.

To quote Tolle,

“Don’t get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It’s an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself. The word honey isn’t honey. You can study and talk about honey for as long as you like, but you won’t really know it until you taste it. After you have tasted it, the word becomes less important to you. You won’t be attached to it anymore.”

Tolle goes on to point out groups of synonyms that ultimately refer to the same concept.

What one person calls the Universe, another will call God, another Spirit, and another still, Allah. All of these words point to the same concept: a behind-the-scenes creator of life.

Yet, to each person, each of these words carries a different significance.

He goes on to say:

“So, if a word doesn’t work for you anymore, then drop it and replace it with one that does work.”

When my friend told me they didn’t want to think of this long-term relationship as just another lesson, I told them to think of lesson as a signpost.

The significance of their relationship goes far beyond what one tiny little word can signify, anyways.

I asked them; what is the deeper truth that lesson is referring to?

Their relationship meant a lot to him.

It helped him through adolescence, and when it ended, it showed him many parts of himself that needed healing. Most importantly, it showed him that he is capable of being loved, and he is capable of loving another person, too.

He told me his relationship felt like a fulfillment of some sort of soul contract.

Once we identified the deeper concept, I asked him; what other words can refer to that same concept?

We played around with synonyms for lesson for a beat, but ultimately we decided on fated.

What started as “I don’t want to think of them as just another lesson,” became

“This experience was fated.”

Both sentences refer to the same larger concept, but one statement originates from pain. The other originates from acceptance.

The words we use when we craft our internal narratives carry a lot of weight, but oftentimes, the concepts we are attempting to describe are much more neutral than the words we choose.

If you find yourself hurting because of a word, look beyond that word into the concept behind it.

If you don’t like a word, pick a new one.

If God, to you, is an evil creature that created all pain on Earth, maybe Universe is an acceptable synonym. If lesson carries too much negativity, pick a synonym that feels more neutral.

The stories we tell ourselves about our life events change the way we feel about them. The signposts you pick have power.

It’s okay to take that power back. Pick another signpost.

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