Zones of Ambiguity

Ever wonder if angels are dakinis by another name? if a dopplelganger is identical to a shadow person? are ascension and rapture the same thing? are soul and spirit interchangeable? is it correct to call the etheric template an aura?

If you've questioned along these lines, you're familiar with zones of ambiguity. Zones manifest when definitions overlap. It's organic ... words morph and terms adapt. Change is a function of living language.

Of course, a lot of words are deliberately skewed … marketing gurus do a lot of it. As a sales device, wordplay is a biggie. Morphing is spin in politics and it's used to dehumanize opponents in combat. Beyond insidious manipulation, however, natural morphing serves consciousness.

The universe is ceaselessly creative. After it propels a volley of seed ideas into the collective, receptive resonant minds in labor grab handy terms ~ concretely parallel or conceptually correspondent ~ and use them to communicate their newborn insights.

It's a logical enough thing to do and re-definitions make sense, of course, to word-parents anxious to share their infant epiphanies with humanity at large. Re-directed meanings, however, don't necessarily mean squat to new ears … assimilation can be messy and take time.

In academic, religious, scientific and philosophical arenas ~ systems where ideas are held in place by formalized rings-pass-not ~ it's not unusual for morphed terminology to be ridiculed. People paying it the smallest attention are denigrated. Reactions from this front tend to be low key, in keeping with the rules of etiquette. Make no mistake, though ... subtlety can be an effective weapon.

Google "New Age Definitions" and you'll get a ton of bona fide hits … you'll also get servings of objection. Some schools of indoctrination simply don't take kindly to what they consider the external hijacking of their proprietary glossaries! For seekers who are not hidebound, navigating these designated zones can be treacherous.

Disruptive zones ~ some directly definition related and some using terms as fulcrums for agendas ~ arise inside movements as well. In the early decades of Wicca, in the days before the internet, there were published debates concerning valid use of the word priestess … basically the dispute was over whether or not the term could apply to an independent, even solitary, practitioner or if the role, the word, rightfully ~ a la the diving right of kings ~ belonged solely to a chosen member of an accepted tradition.

In the same general timeframe, a similar dirty laundry tussle took place in Reiki circles … there was more controversy than you could shake a stick at about the necessity of proper lineage. Obtaining Master status was quite pricey then ~ so the money issue wasn't moot, either. Although her take veered from officially sanctioned lines, Diane Stein helped end the hoopla by granting public access to guarded attunements and symbols when she published Essential Reiki.

Both of these internal struggles were very much aligned with the hierarchal models of power and authority prevalent in the collective mind of the time. Even though separated by millennia, the modern day zones echoed the ancient Lao Tzu pattern: … in the same way the Old Master didn't emerge from a thought vacuum, neither did Wicca and Reiki. They, too, held forward visions … likewise, they contained constructs of their predecessors.

The smaller point is: … when we're in a zone of verbal ambiguity, there's wisdom in knowing what definition we're examining and who's claiming ownership.

The larger point is: … what happens in a verbal zone is not different from what happens in the overall field … you know: ~ as above, so below ~