The Words We Choose — And Why They Matter
Why The Sovereign Self speaks about Return, greater Being and the still point
Have you ever noticed how the words we use can change the way we understand something?
Two people can be describing almost exactly the same experience, yet the language they use can leave us with two very different impressions. One explanation might feel familiar and make immediate sense. The other might sound mysterious, complicated or even a little intimidating.
This happens quite often when we begin talking about spirituality, consciousness, the nature of Being and our relationship with the Divine.
Over the years, I've become increasingly aware of how important our choice of words really is. Not simply because we want people to understand what we're saying, but because language can influence how people think about themselves, what they believe is possible, and where they look for answers.
When we began developing The Sovereign Self, we made some deliberate choices about the language we would use. We didn't want to introduce another collection of spiritual terms that people would have to learn before they could participate in a conversation about their own existence.
We wanted something more natural. Something that would allow us to explore the deepest questions about life and consciousness while still sounding like two human beings having a conversation.
That decision has shaped much of what The Sovereign Self has become.
Why we speak about Return
One of the words you'll encounter frequently in The Sovereign Self is Return.
You might reasonably ask, Return to what? And why do I need to return anywhere?
It's a good question, and it gets to the heart of our understanding.
In many spiritual traditions, the journey is described as an ascent towards something greater. We hear about awakening, enlightenment, ascension, higher states of consciousness and spiritual advancement.
These expressions have their own histories and meanings, and I don't dismiss them. But they can also create the impression that we are somehow incomplete, that there's a better version of ourselves waiting somewhere above or beyond our present existence.
Our understanding begins somewhere else.
What if the essence of who you are is already present? What if it has always been present, even during those times when you've felt completely disconnected from yourself?
Think about how much of our identity is built over a lifetime. We acquire beliefs, habits, expectations and ideas about who we should be. We learn how to protect ourselves, how to gain approval, how to fit in and how to avoid being hurt.
Eventually, we can become so identified with this constructed version of ourselves that we seldom question whether it represents the fullness of who we are.
Return is the movement back into conscious awareness of our essential nature, beneath those accumulated layers.
And there is a deeper metaphysical dimension to this.
When we return to awareness, we begin to inhabit consciousness directly rather than experience everything exclusively through the thoughts and stories of the mind. We become aware of our relationship with the greater source of our existence. We begin to recognise ourselves as living expressions of that source.
We haven't travelled somewhere. We haven't become a different Being.
We've become conscious of something that was already present.
That's why we call it Return.
Our greater Being rather than our Higher Self
Another expression you'll hear us use is greater Being.
You may be more familiar with the term Higher Self, which is widely used in spiritual conversations.
My difficulty with that expression is not necessarily what people mean by it, but what the words themselves can suggest.
If there's a Higher Self, does that mean there's also a lower self? Are there two versions of me, one spiritually superior to the other? Is my everyday experience somehow less worthy because I haven't yet reached this higher version?
I don't find that division particularly helpful.
In The Sovereign Self, we understand our everyday personality, with all its thoughts, emotions, memories and experiences, as an individual expression of something far greater.
Our greater Being refers to that more complete reality of our existence. It includes our essential nature and our relationship with the Divine source from which our life arises.
It is not another personality living somewhere beyond our reach, waiting for us to become sufficiently spiritual before making an appearance.
Nor does it require us to reject our human experience.
Our humanity is part of the expression of our Being.
This distinction matters because it changes the relationship we have with ourselves. Instead of spending our lives trying to become worthy of a supposedly superior identity, we can begin to recognise the deeper reality already expressing itself through our ordinary human lives.
For me, this is one of the most important insights of metaphysical theology: we are not separate from the source of our existence, trying desperately to find our way back to it. We exist in relationship with that source, and our lives are expressions of it.
The work is to become conscious of that relationship and learn to live from it.
The still point rather than the zero point
We also use the expression still point.
You may have encountered the term zero point, particularly in conversations involving energy, quantum physics or spiritual transformation.
Zero point has specific meanings in physics, but it has also been adopted into spiritual language in ways that don't always make clear where established science ends and metaphysical interpretation begins.
I prefer to be careful about those distinctions.
When we speak about the still point, we're describing something much more immediate and recognisable.
Think about a moment when something happens that really upsets you. Perhaps someone says something hurtful, an unexpected problem arises, or you find yourself caught in an argument.
Before you know it, your mind is racing. Your emotions have taken over, and you're reacting almost automatically.
Now imagine becoming aware of what's happening before you respond.
The circumstances haven't necessarily changed. The thoughts may still be there. The emotions may still be strong.
But there is an awareness of them.
That moment of conscious presence is what we are pointing towards when we speak about the still point.
It isn't an empty mind. It isn't a mysterious dimension. And it doesn't require us to become detached from life.
It is the recognition of the quiet presence beneath the activity of thought.
From this presence, we can observe rather than simply react. We can recognise what is happening within us and respond more consciously.
And once again, there is a deeper dimension.
The still point is more than a useful psychological pause. It is an opportunity to recognise awareness itself, to experience the conscious presence through which our thoughts, emotions and experiences are known.
In our metaphysical understanding, this is where the relationship between our everyday experience and our essential Being becomes directly available to us.
The experience is far more important than what we decide to call it.
Why we don't make grand spiritual claims
There is something else we've been very deliberate about.
We don't promise enlightenment. We don't claim that our work will activate hidden powers, raise someone's vibration to a particular frequency, or transport them into a higher dimension of existence.
We don't offer guaranteed spiritual transformations or suggest that following a particular practice will produce extraordinary experiences.
This doesn't mean we're dismissing the extraordinary.
Quite the opposite.
I believe existence is far more profound and mysterious than our everyday understanding can begin to explain. There is much about consciousness, Being and our relationship with the Divine that remains open to exploration.
But there's an important difference between something we believe, something we've personally experienced, something we interpret metaphysically and something that has been established as fact.
Those distinctions matter to me.
A deeply meaningful personal experience deserves to be taken seriously. But we should also recognise that our interpretation of that experience may not be the only possible explanation.
Similarly, a metaphysical understanding can provide a profound way of making sense of existence without needing to be presented as a scientific discovery.
We don't have to dress our convictions in the language of science to give them value.
And we don't have to promise extraordinary outcomes to make the exploration worthwhile.
I've also come to appreciate that dramatic spiritual promises can create expectations that are difficult to live with. People may begin to believe that they are failing because they haven't experienced the revelations, transformations or heightened states they've been encouraged to expect.
That's not a burden I want The Sovereign Self to place on anyone.
We can explore extraordinary possibilities with curiosity and an open mind while remaining honest about what we know, what we believe and what we have yet to understand.
There's something deeply respectful about allowing mystery to remain mystery.
Why we've developed our own voice
If you've spent some time reading our reflections, listening to our conversations or participating in our work, you'll probably have noticed that we speak in a fairly ordinary way.
That's intentional.
We don't believe that profound ideas need to be wrapped in complicated language to make them meaningful.
You won't often hear us talking about activating cosmic frequencies, ascending into higher dimensions, or unlocking secret spiritual codes.
Those expressions may hold genuine meaning for others. They simply aren't how we've chosen to communicate our understanding.
When we speak about consciousness, I'd rather explore what it means to be consciously present in your own life.
When we speak about personal transformation, I'd rather discuss what happens when you stop allowing old fears and familiar patterns to govern your decisions.
When we speak about the Divine, I'd rather explore our living relationship with the source of our existence than make impressive declarations about realities I cannot fully explain.
This is also why we prefer conversation to proclamation.
I'm not interested in positioning myself as someone who possesses answers that others must accept. My role is to share what I've come to understand, explain why it matters to me, and invite others to examine it in the light of their own lives.
That doesn't mean I have no convictions. I have very strong ones. But having a conviction and demanding that another person adopt it are two very different things.
There is also a matter of personal sovereignty here.
Language can create distance between a teacher and the people listening. Unfamiliar terminology, mysterious explanations and claims of special knowledge can make people feel that they need someone else to interpret their own spiritual experience.
Sometimes this happens unintentionally.
But our intention is different.
We want people to become more confident in their own awareness, discernment and understanding. We want them to ask questions, challenge ideas and discover what rings true through their own experience.
The language we use should support that independence, not quietly take it away.
And yes, I think there's room for warmth, laughter and everyday conversation when discussing even the most profound aspects of existence.
Perhaps especially then.
Simple language doesn't mean a shallow understanding
I want to be particularly clear about something.
Our decision to use ordinary language doesn't mean we've set aside the deeper metaphysical and theological foundations of this work.
Far from it.
The Sovereign Self is grounded in an exploration of consciousness, the nature of Being, our relationship with the Divine and what it means to exist as an individual expression of a greater source.
These are profound questions. Humanity has explored them for thousands of years through philosophy, theology, contemplation and personal spiritual experience.
We are not suggesting that we've resolved them all.
But we do have a particular understanding that guides our work.
We see the human experience as more than a collection of thoughts, emotions and biological processes. We understand ourselves as conscious Beings whose essential nature is intimately related to the source of life itself.
From this perspective, the way we live matters enormously.
If we remain entirely identified with our thoughts, fears, conditioning and constructed identities, much of our experience is governed by patterns we may scarcely recognise.
When we return to awareness, something changes.
We begin to recognise the difference between the activity of the mind and the deeper presence in which that activity occurs. We discover that we can engage with life more consciously, rather than remain captive to our habitual reactions.
And as this awareness becomes embodied in our everyday lives, our responses can begin to arise more naturally from our authentic nature.
This is what lies behind one of our central expressions:
From mind-led life to heart-governed being.
We're not suggesting that the mind is an enemy or that thinking is somehow inferior.
The mind is an extraordinary part of our human experience.
But it need not be the sole authority governing how we live.
The heart-governed life, as we understand it, is one in which awareness, authentic Being and our relationship with the Divine increasingly inform the choices we make.
It's a way of living, not a spiritual title or an achievement we can display.
And it's something we explore in the midst of ordinary life, with all its challenges, uncertainties, relationships and responsibilities.
The words themselves are not sacred
There's a final point I'd like to make.
Although we've given considerable thought to the language of The Sovereign Self, I don't believe our chosen words are the only correct words.
They are simply the expressions we've found most helpful in communicating our understanding.
Someone else may use awakening where we use Return. Another person may speak about their Higher Self while describing an experience very similar to what we mean by greater Being.
That doesn't automatically make one person right and the other wrong.
What matters is whether we understand what we're actually talking about.
Words can help us recognise something, but they are not the experience itself.
We can speak endlessly about presence without ever being truly present. We can study consciousness, debate the nature of Being and develop elaborate explanations of our relationship with the Divine, yet remain largely unaware of how we're actually living.
At some point, understanding must become experience, and experience must find its expression in everyday life.
Otherwise, we may have acquired an impressive vocabulary without having changed very much at all.
A final thought
The words we choose reflect the relationship we want people to have with themselves, with life and with the Divine.
We don't want our language to place us above anyone else as the holders of knowledge they cannot access. We don't want to create another idealised version of themselves that people feel compelled to pursue. And we don't want to turn the mystery of existence into a collection of attractive promises.
We want our words to respect people's intelligence, their experiences and their ability to discover and understand for themselves.
That is why we speak about Return, greater Being, the still point and a heart-governed life.
Not because those words possess some special power, but because they help us speak about profound matters in ways that remain human, understandable and open to personal exploration.
And perhaps that is the most important thing I can say about the language of The Sovereign Self.
We're not trying to give people a new language to believe in. We're trying to help them recognise something within themselves that no words can fully describe.
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About Brian
Read more about the lived experience and journey from which this work emerged.
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