The Power of Words
- Pathways of Possibility
- Jul 24
- 10 min read
Words are an essential part of our lives—but is there more to them than simply tools of communication? In this article, Jerry Pike explores how words affect us more than we often realize; and offers a practical, 5-step exercise to help us tune into the power of words so that they may enhance our lives.
The Power of Words
Including a 5-Step Exercise to help generate energies in your life using the connective possibility of words
Each word acts like a World!
Have you thought that behind every word there might be a world?
One of the ways to explore these ‘worlds’ involves a 5-Step Process.
In following the process it helps bring the influences of that world into your life, including some of its ways, strengths and intelligences.
Why are Words Important?
Since the information age began around 1970 we have been increasingly avalanched by words.
Newspapers, television, websites and emails all run on words. Now we even have artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to generate pages of intelligent words from a simple request. Words are in danger of becoming so bountiful that they become like confetti at a wedding - enhancing the occasion temporarily, but quickly forgotten as we move on to the next thing.
However, we also know that words can be critical. When the bride and groom say “I do” they cement their marriage vows in a way that is intended to be binding upon them for life.
Then there are the great words that have inspired people over the centuries, like Socrates’ “Know thyself”, or “Carpe Diem (Seize the day)” and Ghandi’s “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
But is there more to words than communication? Could there be a hidden side to words that we are still discovering? From the spiritual perspective, words provide a link to the energies that are associated with that word, and these energies, if we tune to them, can affect and assist our lives.
It begins by considering that words are not just a label, but also a link to a world; and that world has connective possibilities.
By exploring a ‘word’ that relates to something you need, it can induct the energies and essence of that ‘word’ into your life and enhance you.
Are Words Really Worlds?
A world can be seen as a complete collection of related parts, such as the animal world, or Disney World, or the underworld. Whilst ‘word’ and ‘world’ are similar, it might sound far-fetched to think that every word is also a world.
It can be seen more readily when the word describes something physical like a ‘car’, or ‘elephant’, a ‘brain’ or even a ‘snowflake, as these are clearly physical worlds in their own way. So much so that some people devote their entire life to studying one word, or world, as their vocation; like ‘fossils’, ‘glass’, ‘bees’ or the ‘eye’. Even trivial words like ‘bubbles’ or ‘traffic cones’ have had books written about them.
To some people words are nothing more than labels or tools of convenience to get a message across. But they have an energy and a frequency that provides an inroad to something far more than information alone.
It is especially pronounced in nature where the tiniest particle, an ‘atom’, can be compared to a solar system with a nucleus at its heart, like the sun, and electrons spinning around it, like planets. Or a single ‘cell’ in our body is likened to a city because it has so much parts at play inside of it.
So words describing something physical do suggest a world of whatever kind that is. But is it true of that which is not physical? This is not referring to electricity and light, but living properties like hope, belief, love, gratitude, versatility and a thousand others, including the negative aspects such as hate, jealousy, anger or blame.
For example ‘curiosity’ expresses itself in a hundred different ways depending on the circumstance and the person. It’s as if curiosity has its own built-in computer that instructs us how to go on, and we oblige. It feels like something inside of us has unconsciously plugged into that world without us knowing it. For example, when a person is curious they do things like tilt their head, peer intently, gently poke at the object of their interest, or stare at it for long periods of time. Then there is the more obvious behaviour like asking questions, or moving closer to what they’re caught by. If someone is curious, we recognise it immediately, or when the cat is curious it’s obvious. It’s a world we know very well.
‘Hope’ is another word that causes multiple though similar behaviors. The eyes open a bit wider, there might be a small intake of breath, the pressing problems of a minute ago are temporarily forgotten, a shot of energy is released into the systems, or suddenly there is a feeling of willingness as if from nowhere. We have probably all read at some point something similar to, “Inside that blank, emotionless face, a small glimmer of hope began to appear in her eyes”. This is saying that at times hope is even detectable as a property in the eyes. Then there are thousands of books written about hope implying that, like a character in a play, hope contributes to the story just as much as a person can.
The full range of what curiosity and hope can be, seem to act like worlds.
Minor Words
Taking it a step further, this concept of worlds can be extended to lesser words, ones that seem throwaway, of no value other than to make the main words easier to understand. For example, the word ‘the’ - is that a world? “Surely not”, you say, but consider this:
How would you feel if someone said to you, “Marry me, you are the love of my life”; compared to, “Marry me, you are a love of my life”? Most people will feel warmly towards the first and probably suspicious of the second. When our mind hears ‘the’, it subconsciously brings an intelligence and emphasis about the word it relates to. ‘The’ implies uniqueness and importance, like ‘the president’ feels more significant than ‘a president’. It suggests that something is more intimate and known, and there is a shared understanding with other people about it, like ‘the cat’ compared to ‘a cat’. ‘The’ is the most common word in the English language and it too acts like a world.
Then there is a group of words called prepositions that define relationships between things, like: in, from, to, of, with, for, by and so on. Slight as they might seem, each one indicates a different world of universal infrastructure that radically alters the nature of the relationship. For example:
I am from America
I am in America
I am of America
I am for America
I am with America
I am off America
During an interview at a border crossing the choice of preposition might influence whether that person gains entry into the country or not - because of the world that that word is attached to.
This suggests that words connect us to something greater than merely identification. At a more esoteric level words seem to link our minds to unseen force and intelligence that the human system knows how to respond to and interpret.
What about the same word in other languages?
There are about 1,000 different words for ‘water’ in other languages, and in some countries there is no word for ‘the’, so does this negate what is being said? All this is saying is that each language represents a different toolbox. Chair is the same world in any language, but silleta is a small chair that can be carried on your back in Spanish. So Spanish has an extra tool in its toolbox that other languages won’t have. That’s all.
How Can Words Assist Our Lives?
In what way does this appreciation about words help us?
It starts by considering that we may need to stop thinking about words as solely information for our mind, but also as influences upon our human systems.
Our bodies are incredibly intelligent. When something makes you happy there are probably one hundred different parts of your mind and body that co-ordinate together to cause you to appear happy. The smile, the tensions of the face, the lightness of step, the readiness to laugh, and the thoughts that now occur in your head that are happy thoughts that you weren’t having before. You don’t even have to think about a single one of those hundred or so indicators to effectively express happiness, it is all done for you by your systems.
Now the power of words shows itself by comparing that to the situation where you are, for example, having a cup of coffee with someone who keeps being rude to you. Then, accidentally, they spill coffee down their lap. Inside you may feel pleased - they have got their just deserts perhaps - but you cover that up by thinking, “This is unfortunate, I will help them”. Those thoughts or words, suppress the orchestration of those hundred parts of you that would otherwise show that you are pleased and, instead, orchestrate another hundred parts of you to show that you wish to help. This affects not only what you do and say but also the thoughts that occur to you that you would not otherwise have had.
This is how brilliant our systems and psychologies are in response to words.
Vitaminize Your Life
Therefore it is worth considering, What words do you want more of in your life? Knowing that it is not the word, but the world behind it that you are after.
Here are a few examples: Motivation, Creativity, Strength, Independence, Versatility, Freedom, Peace, Determination, Honesty, Adventure, Balance, Confidence, Discipline, Gratitude, Forgiveness, Integrity, Optimism, Leadership, Vitality, Stability, Safety, Protection, Passion, and Humour.
Take the word Confidence - when you feel confident it guides and influences how you think and feel. It keeps orchestrating those ‘hundred parts of you’ to act in a confident manner, even as your situation changes. It not only guides your behaviour, sometimes for hours, but also feeds you the thoughts and ideas that belong with a confident person.
You can look up the meaning of confidence in the dictionary and put on a confident act, but it isn’t the same as having the feeling of confidence alive in you. Nor will it bring the intelligence at the point that confidence naturally provides.
So how can we take the word confidence and cause it to be felt inside of us? Or to put that another way, how can the essence of confidence be energetically created so that it becomes a property in your systems and is thereby available to you?
In short, what you need to do is start an affair with the world of the word that you want more of in your life, and a way to do that is through the following 5 Step Process. Please click the link below to engage in this active meditation-like exercise and see if you can start to feel how chosen energies can be evoked in your systems. You need to chose a word that is something you want more of in your life and then follow the 5 steps. To help you, the exercise uses the word ‘Confidence’ as the example to show you the kind of responses you might come to.
After the Exercise
Now that you have a measure of the task, you might like to do more or do less with it, to help incorporate this aspect of the power of words into your life.
Do More
The more you do the exercise, the more it grows. It’s good to re-heat it by returning to it, each time looking for more examples or trying to remember what you came up with last time – and in particular, practicing Step 5, the imagery of you using that word.
Ultimately you are trying to print yourself, and the way that occurs readily in the human systems is a combination of repetitions and how much you generate into it - where one way to understand generate is to ‘put your heart into it’, not just your head.
In doing so you are starting to build the universal infrastructure of that quality or attribute into your body, feelings and mind and, in so doing, it can grow.
Do Less
You don’t always have to follow the 5 Step exercise to usefully explore a word. You can also do it in a light way in your head.
Obviously some words are better for this than others, so you will need to be selective, but here are a couple of examples to inspire you to try it.
Take the word ‘Switch’. That might seem to have no place in your spiritual journey. It’s found on walls to switch on the electric light, so how is that of interest? Yet explore the word, explore the feeling of it in you. Have you thought that your mind can switch. One minute you’re daydreaming, the next minute your boss appears and you suddenly look like you’re working. So ‘Switch’ is a marvellous ability of our systems. The technology by which it works inside of us may be too hard to understand but, when employed, it can transform a person. Develop a small love affair exploring how it manifests in your life and you could find yourself using it more readily.
Or take the word ‘in’. What is it like to be ‘in’ something? It’s so different to being ‘on’ something or ‘under’ something. To be ‘in’ something is to be surrounded by it, and it generally feels benign (although there are examples when it is not, but the feeling of the word generally implies something that is welcomed). Could you evoke the state of ‘in’ to alter how you feel about something? “I am not ‘in’ with that group of people.” Then taking your exploration of the world of ‘in’ see how it might cause you to think or feel differently and perhaps understand better what it means if you were ’in’ with them.
Words are Tuning Forks
Put in simple terms, the exercise is about filling yourself up with more of what that word means in reality and from various standpoints that incorporate more of the spiritual view. In so doing, you are ‘generating’ its energy, frequency and nature in your systems.
You have, in a way, become a tuning fork to what the word connects to, so that it can better resonate in you and influence your life.
Finally, a thought about words...
The whole of life formed up on this planet over billions of years without a single word apparently ever being spoken.
Then later, the human race arrived and, by some unknown urge that propels us, we have assigned words to almost everything.
Why are words so important to us - and could we use the essence of some of these words to help progress the greater possibilities of our human affair?
If you enjoyed this article, you may also wish to read Jerry's article "Is Your Ego Ruining Your Life? 3 Ways to Escape Your Ego."
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