Noise with Good Typography

I was walking down the street when I saw a sign in a shop window. “Quantum-conscious therapy for the inner reconnection of the ancestral self.”

I stop. I read it twice.

Conscious therapy. Is there such a thing as unconscious therapy? For the reconnection of the inner ancestral self. Right, so I must have Yoda inside me and he’s gone and loosened a cable using “the force”.

My brain starts spinning. And from the pressure, I almost lose a filling.

It’s not an isolated case. It’s more common than you’d think.

They talk to you about their process, their essence, how they’re integrating their shadow, the quantum expansion they’re experiencing, how the universe is sending signals to their soul to awaken their inner child. And when you snap out of it, you have no idea how to process that jumble of vague concepts, but you do know exactly which tribe the person using them belongs to.

It has two legs. The first is the undefined word as bait. The second is the ready-made phrase as a shield. And both work together.

* * *

The words circulating out there have one thing in common: they can’t be verified. Essence. Transcendence. The Self. Expansion. Consciousness. Soul. If you ask someone what exactly the essence is, or what they mean when they talk about The Self, chances are they’ll start spinning. They’ll give you more words of the same kind. They’ll say it’s something you feel, something you have to live, something the mind can’t reach on its own. And they’ll never arrive anywhere concrete.

There’s a paradox there that few people point out. There are things that can’t be explained through rational thought alone, true, but they can be made concrete and understandable. Karma, in the traditions where it originates, is not a romantic idea. It operates. It has a mechanics. It can be explained with precision. Same with the soul, with consciousness, with any concept that comes from a real practice. The problem isn’t the word. It’s that they’ve ripped out the root and kept the shell, which sounds the same but weighs nothing. When someone can’t get concrete, it’s not because the subject is too elevated. It’s because they don’t know enough to bring it down to earth, and vagueness covers that up. Vagueness is not a sign of depth. It’s a sign that there’s nothing behind the word to hold its weight.

And speaking of depth. That’s another big one. Deep is now used as a synonym for “talks about things people don’t usually talk about,” as if strangeness or boldness were a guarantee that something valuable lies beneath. It isn’t. You can speak Sanskrit for an hour and say nothing deep. Depth has nothing to do with vocabulary. It’s about whether there’s something real behind what’s being said.

But vagueness has one enormous advantage for whoever uses it: it can’t be countered. You can’t attack something that has no shape. And that, in a world where everyone wants to appear to know things, is a very valuable asset. The most revealing thing isn’t what they say. It’s what happens when you ask them to be specific.

* * *

The second thing this vocabulary does is subtler. It doesn’t just communicate ideas, it communicates belonging. If you say soul, karma, ancestral, consciousness, expansion in the same sentence, you’re saying something very clear even if you don’t know it: I belong to this group. I know the language. I’m one of those who understands.

It’s a membership card. And like every membership card, they give it to you when you pay the fee. In this case the fee is an online course, a weekend with a temazcal included, or simply enough time on social media to absorb the vocabulary without the knowledge that should come with it.

The problem isn’t that the words are false. Soul exists. Karma exists. The Self exists, though that’s probably the most abused of them all, because people use it as if they knew what they were talking about and almost no one who uses it could explain what it is in two coherent sentences. The problem is they’ve worn them out so much, put them in so many carousels and biographies, that they say nothing anymore even when they’re true. Whoever uses them with rigor sounds exactly like whoever uses them to sell enlightenment in Ibiza.

Two deserve special mention because their fall has been particularly long. Empowerment started in the corporate world, moved through feminism, and ended up at the retreat with temazcal included. Somewhere along that journey it lost everything it meant. Now it empowers cacao, empowers breathing, empowers belly dancing. It empowers everything, which is another way of saying it empowers nothing.

And then there’s resonate. “This resonates with me.” Translation: I agree. But said like that it sounds as if some inner frequency has vibrated in tune with something greater. It’s the most elegant way that exists to validate an idea without having to argue why.

And there’s a technical trick that accelerates all of this. Take any of these texts and read it in lowercase. “The body knows. The essence wants to emerge. Pain is a portal.” In lowercase it’s a Zumba class with pretensions. Now put it in CAPITALS. “THE BODY KNOWS. THE ESSENCE WANTS TO EMERGE. PAIN IS A PORTAL.” Suddenly there’s something there. The word hasn’t changed. The effect has. That’s not depth. That’s typography.

* * *

And the shield has also grown. Because if the bait attracts, the shield protects. These are the phrases that seem open and tolerant but whose real function is to shut down any conversation before it reaches somewhere uncomfortable.

“Everyone’s on their own path.” “Your truth and mine.” “Staying in the presence.” “There’s no place for judgment.” “It all adds up.” “It all contributes.” “The answer is always within you.”

Try to respond with something concrete after hearing any of those phrases. You can’t. The phrase has already absorbed everything. If you say something isn’t working, you’re judging. If you point out an error, you’re not respecting the other person’s path. If you question an idea, you’re imposing your truth. The shield has no cracks because it has no shape. It’s fog.

And there’s another family worth its own paragraph: the words of movement without destination. Flow, release, traverse, return to the body, hold the space. It’s like the person who goes out at night all excited, keys in hand and the look of someone with a plan, and at some point along the way discovers they have no idea where they’re going or why they left. These are verbs without direction. Activity without a map.

Trauma. Programmed. Biore-programming. Quantum. Managing your emotions. Leading your process. The human being as a corporate project with viruses that need to be reset and updated to version 3.0. Friends of the byte… Welcome to spirituality!

Today’s coach mixes yoga with NLP with Gestalt with secular Buddhism with power animal work with transpersonal therapy. All in the same weekend. All compatible. All adding up. It’s not the integration of knowledge. It’s a cocktail with no defined shape, and without shape there are no visible holes. You can’t counter what you can’t grab hold of.

* * *

In practice, this is what it sounds like:

“From the understanding of the soul on its journey, what we call karma transcends the linear vision of cause and effect to become a living principle that unfolds according to the level of consciousness of each being. Traditions offer valuable maps, but the territory is always wider than any map. Each individual is in direct contact with that force, with more or less tools, with more or less clarity, and what emerges in each case is unique even though it forms part of the same great process. Everything, in the end, is part of the path.”

Read it twice. There are serious words. There’s sentence structure. It looks like it’s saying something. It’s saying nothing. There’s not a single concrete claim that can be verified, checked or countered. It’s the perfect mechanism: respond without responding, using the vocabulary of whoever just spoke, adding more layers of the same, and finishing with “it’s part of the path,” which is the most efficient way to close without having opened anything.

* * *

The vocabulary you use tells people what you know before you even open your mouth.

And also what you don’t.

If at any point while reading this you thought “interesting reflection, everyone integrating their truth from their own center”…

…there you go.