beyond confinement

A name should never trap a thing.  In the Jewish tradition, for instance, if you knew the name of a thing, you had a inkling of its secret and mystery.  The name was a doorway of reverence.  When you name a dimension of your experience, one of your qualities or difficulties, or some presence within you, you give it an identity.  It then responds to you according to the tone of its name.  We need to exercise great care and respect when we come to name something,  We always need to find a name that is worthy and spacious.

When we name things in a small way, we cripple them.  Often our way of naming things is driven by our addiction to what is obviously visible...  The visible is only the shoreline of the magnificent ocean of the invisible.  The invisible is not empty, but is textured and tense with presences.  These presences cannot be named; they can only be sensed, not seen.  

We have put wrong names on many of our most important experiences.  We have often caricatured and shown disrespect to some of our most faithful desires.  We have kept some of our most beautiful longings as prisoners in our hearts, falsely imprisoned simply because of mistaken identity.

The wildness of the invisible world is nameless.  It has no name. A first step towards reawakening respect for your inner life may be to become aware of the private collage of dead names you have for your inner life.  Often, the experiences of wilderness can return us to the nameless wildness within.  Sometime, go away to a wild place on your own.  Leave your name and the grid of intentions and projects and images which mark you out as citizen Z.  Leave it all, and let yourself just slip back into the rhythms of your intimate wildness. You will be surprised at the lost terrains, wells, and mountains that you will rediscover, territories which have been buried under well-meant but dead names.   To go beyond confinement is to rediscover yourself.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes