Michael's story about a Death Watch, Southern-Style really inspired me this morning. It "reached me." It got me interested in the characters and the scenario and how things were gonna turn out...even though that was a little telegraphed by the title. :-)
Being me, I started thinking about this in terms of some recent posts that have discussed the writing of stories about spiritual experience. Some of the tales of power I've read from seekers on many paths "reached me," and some didn't. In some cases there was too much "Look at me" in the tales I didn't like, too much attention-seeking on the part of the storyteller, and that -- for me -- is a bit of a turnoff. But more often in the tales I didn't like, the issue was language, and in particular the overuse of spiritual jargon. Jargon has its uses. If you're dealing with a concept that really doesn't much exist for most of the people in your audience, it's fine IMO to give it a name. The first time a spiritual teacher does this, he or she also gives a talk about what that name or term *means*. If it's a term that comes up in his or her teaching often, over time the students no longer need the explanations or definitions every time they hear the term. They hear "karma" and *don't* hear in their heads "Huh?" They begin to hear "karma" and immediately associate the term with everything they've been told about it by their teacher. Nothing wrong with this so far, IMO. It's when the students go out and try to talk to non-students that the issue of Jargon As A Second Language comes up. If these same students try to give a lecture or write a story that is peppered with the jargon they've come to be so familiar with that they don't even *notice* when they're using it, then they often "lose their audience." If every other word is "karma" this, or "dosa" that, or "purusha somethingorother," all interjected with no definitions of the terms, IMO the storyteller is *limiting* his audience. And in most cases, "losing them." They've been *excluded*, because they don't know the jargon the writer is using. Michael's tale wasn't exclusionary; it was inclusive. He used ordinary language, the way he heard it spoken around him at the time, and he used it well to weave a story that said "Ya'll come on in, now. Sit yerselves down while I make us some icetea." One of the things I'm most grateful to the Fred Lenz - Rama guy for is for his command of the English language and how to use it. He taught that skill explicitly in his talks to his students, and he demonstrated it in his own public talks. Some of Rama's students liked the talks he'd give where he got into really esoteric or occult shit, subjects that really did require some jargon and were obviously "only for my students." I liked his "intro lectures." The esoteric talks, given to students who all knew Jargon As A Second Language, were great because he could skip the definitions and use just the jargon as "shorthand," and as a time-saver. He could get into some really, really interesting subjects in these "just for students" talks. But it was the "intro lectures" that were High Art. There, he'd get into the *same* interesting subjects, only this time using metaphors like going to the movies and going to work and stuff like that, things that people knew and identified with. His "intros" were in almost all cases jargon-free, and that's what's so interesting in retrospect. He didn't *need* the jargon to discuss these same interesting subjects -- he found a way to do it *without jargon*, and in language that actually "reached" the people he was talking to. There are legitimate uses for spiritual jargon. But if you use them in your writing, you're limiting your audience. I guess that's all I'm saying. By relying on jargon that they don't explain, some writers are IMO being more than a little elitist in their approach. They are expecting their audience to know all these jargon words and buzzphrases, and respecting them so little that they don't even bother to translate them back into English as they go. I think that's rude. When I encounter seekers and teachers from spiritual traditions I haven't encountered before and they start talking in non-stop jargon, I have a little trick that I sometimes do. After a particularly long jargonfest, I stop them and ask them politely, "Could you repeat that in English, without using any jargon or buzzwords this time?" You'd be amazed at how many actually CAN'T. Some actually get angry, and accuse me of asking them to (a literal quote I've heard several times) "Speak down to the level of my audience." What made them think they were "above" them in the first place? If you're talkin' neuroscience to a bunch of neuroscientists, you can get away with using a lot of neuroscience jargon. No one in the audience feels "left out," because they understand it all. But if you talk to the same audience and start peppering your talk with, say, Jyotish jargon buzzwords that they don't understand, they're going to start fidgeting in their seats and looking at you like you're crazy. That's what being in the listening or reading audience of a person using too much jargon *feels* like. The speaker or writer has *excluded* them. If you're a neuroscientist purposefully trying to communicate to *only* neuroscientists, that exclusion is cool. But if you're a writer or speaker trying to convey some spiritual experience to your audience, theoretically to inspire them, is excluding a certain percentage of them really what you want to do?
