The Label Is Not The Thing

I've written ad nauseum about self-labeling. Take your Tums y'all, 'cause here comes some more.

I'm currently reading and working through The Complete Idiot's Guide to Toltec Wisdom, and today's chapter was all about self-sabotage. One of the exercises is to (again) write out and think about agreements we've made with ourselves now and in the past that have impacted us. I extended it a little and made two columns in my journal, one headed "Agreement Made" and the other, "New Choice". I started off writing about the agreements I made with myself that centered around my first relationship and why I agreed to the treatment I received, both at my partner's hands and at my own.

The answers all centered around the way I label(ed) myself. And I was shocked to realize and understand that I actually believed the labels I have applied to myself. I agreed to believe that "label is reality", "label confers content" and "label creates the container it describes".

This is classic magic: the word creates the thing, or rather the belief in the word's reality/power creates the thing.

The moment I agreed to the self-label of "I need/must have/cannot live without another person to show me how life works, to show me the way" and "other people know better than I do; their ways of doing and be-ing are better than mine" I conjured up the walls of that container and made them real for me. I literally magicked them out of nothing and into place in my mind. Walls of steel, mind you. It's the classic "abracadabra", which has this interesting bit on wikipedia:

Etymology

Theories about the source of the word are:

"I create as I speak"

A possible source is Aramaic: אברא כדברא avra kedabra which means "Creating as speaking" which is thought to be in reference to God creating the universe (in some belief systems, ex nihilo), by speaking (see also Fiat Lux). An alternative spelling is avda K'Davarah. One may also view it as "I transgress as I speak" in the Aramaic עבריה כדבריה which is phonetically closer.

"I create as I speak."

"I transgress as I speak."

Words are "spells", indeed, creating realities in our minds. And because it's in mind, the word-spell spills out into physical manifestation and plays out in our temporal lives just as if we had twinkled our noses and made it so.

Ah, but here's the tricky bit: the word is only magic if we believe it to be so, if we agree to the agreement that it is.

What I realized as I wrote my "antidote" to the agreements I had forged in earlier life was that the very nature of labels is to attempt to confine, to simplify, reduce, encompass, encapsulate, distill, group, pack up, organize. How do you confine the infinite, the unconfinable? How do you distill to an essence that which is vast and ever-changing? Namely, me?

It dawned on me that sometimes my files are mis-labeled, and also sometimes I group un-like things together in a file drawer just so I'll have them handy. In those cases, the label has nothing to do with the content, though it might be a convenient signpost for a little while, and as long as I fully understand what's actually there. Even with something as innocuous as this, I've fooled myself and lost valuable papers for a time until I start opening the folders, ignoring the label that is on the outside. Hmm ... if I can do that to bits of paper, I can do that with bits of myself, as well.

What of my essence, what parts of my self have I mis-filed and lost for a time? Maybe it's time to re-file, to let go of some outdated labels and take a full inventory of what's actually here. Maybe it's time to remember that I dictate the label; the label does not define or magically create the content. Just like paper files, some of my personal soul-content is hard to file, hard to categorize and I tend to file it away, hide it in with other things just to make the filing system itself look neat and orderly.

But honestly, the vast infiniteness that is my soul is not neat and orderly; it's wild and curly and eclectic and has fractal edges, an infinite length of border that may, though indefinable itself, encompass the finite portion of me.

I defy categorization.

Labels do not apply.

Before this, I saw each label as a "spell of binding", as a "spell of compulsion", as a "spell of definition", a "spell of limitation". What was intended to be a convenience has become a shackle, a confinement.

None of those walls, shackles, bindings, confinements, limitations has ever been real. Or rather, they were real when I made the agreement with myself that they were.

Realizing this brought me face to face with a much bigger vision of the idea of labels, and suddenly all of that confinement and limitation popped like a soap bubble. And I'm suddenly realizing that if changing my agreement about a limitation can remove the limitation, changing my agreements about revealing joy and wealth and love can be equally as powerful. (Don't worry: I've already made a vow to only use my powers for good :-)

Be impeccable with your word: be very careful what agreements you make with yourself. Change the world - change your world.

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