How Language Creates Reality

If you ever feel: 
anxious, sad, discontent, frustrated, confused,
helpless, hopeless, or powerless,
that is a sign that you are living out of alignment 
with the way things are.

In understanding how language creates reality, we must first examine the constant and unalterable laws that make up the fabric of reality.

1: Life is in a constant state of flux, perpetual change. Nothing is fixed or solid no matter how it appears.

2: The belief that anything is fixed including a “you”
is the cause of discontent.

3: Misunderstanding
this truth, we do what is called “reify” reality, or impute what isn’t there. We treat it as if it is solid
and unchanging, as if it “is”
in any way that is permanent.

4: This causes us to respond
to reality with various coping mechanisms; grasping, rejecting and ignoring that promises
to ease the discomfort when
in fact they are the cause.


5: The solution is to draw all projections of “out there” back into here, to oneself and see that 
one is the maker of joy as much as they are the maker of misery—that is our great freedom and task. 

We aim to practice “semantic sanity” to align our thinking with reality.
Although language can trick us—making things sound solid and unchanging—it’s essential to keep our language as dynamic as reality itself.

Have you ever thought about ditching “to be” from your everyday language?
 


It might sound radical, but consider this:
every time you use a form of “to be,” whether it’s

“is,”

“are,”

“was,”

or even “there is,”

you’re not really capturing any action.

Instead, you’re just attaching a label to a noun. And labels, by nature, tend to freeze things in place.
Why does this matter? Because static sentences lead to static thoughts.

When you say something like, “He is a thief,” you’re reducing a person to a fixed label.

On the other hand,
saying “He steals” shows what he does, keeping the description alive and active.
Our language should flow like a moving picture, not sit frozen like a photograph. 

“You are very well spoken,” vs
”You spoke very well.”
It’s a subtle shift, but it makes your words more vivid and your
ideas more flexible.  

One of the most powerful advances we could make in today’s culture exclusively through our language would be to do away with many of our labels. We make reality fixed through the labels we use.

Language has the power to take something fluid—someone’s actions, beliefs, or circumstances—and freeze it into a static identity. 

The moment we call someone a narcissist, a criminal, or a genius, we stop seeing them as a dynamic, evolving being and instead reduce them to a single, unchanging concept.

More powerful than labeling someone is describing the effect they had on you. Saying “I felt hurt by them” is tenfold more in alignment with reality than
“they are manipulative.”
It keeps the power with you. 

Look at the labels 
you use and see how
they are sleights of hand,
words laid over a whole complex of activities made to seem like something is fixed and unchanging and how this alienates ourselves and others. 

Labels reduce human beings to single dimensions, flattening them into objects that serve the speaker’s purpose. All other dimensions must be ignored. The connections that unite get discarded to prove a point. 

Consider a few of these:

At-risk youth 


Libtard


Billionaire 


Criminal 


Narcissist


Racist


Anti-abortionist 


Fringe 


Nutcase

Fascist


Conspiracy-theorist


Bitch


Deplorable


Redneck 


Idiot


Victim 


Zionist


Sexist 


“Karen” 


White Privilege 

Immigrant

Each of these words is an act.

They don’t just describe—

they define,

they dictate,

they divide.

They shape the lens through which we see, relieving us of the work of maintaining our attention on an ever-changing reality. 

If language creates reality, then the words we choose are not just semantics—they are power. To speak with precision is to cut through illusion. To name with care is to unmake cages.

It is the practice of liberating the mind.