Free Conversations with a Soul by Tom McArthur Page A

marriage proposal!
    All of a sudden we discover that some words have almost boundless power . Words we’ve used a dozen times in as many contexts come alive and engage us at a deep level. The word is seen to be less of a piece of written or spoken code, which can easily be replaced by any of a dozen synonyms, now it is unique in and of itself.
    All my life I’ve signed cards and letters, with love, but now the words take on a completely different meaning. More than a mere social convention, they suddenly stand at the confluence of some potentially life changing decisions.
    ' Do I really love so and so and how do I know if I love them sufficiently to commit myself for my entire life? To what extent can we be different, each our own person, and still love one another or do I have to surrender myself to your needs?'
    Now the word, love, so often used in a casual manner, demands closer examination. Is it just a feeling that will eventually fade or are there other components to loving someone that will grow through time? Beyond the obvious physical attraction is there something deeper that could bind us together or will our love die once the novelty is over? What does it mean to love someone and what kinds of behavior are appropriate to love?
    Now this word demands thought and reflection and has enormous consequences depending upon how I answer my own questions. Now the word has the power to change a life, for in many ways the word has a life of its own.
    If there is anything our secret conversations have to teach us, it is that words are not merely sounds or hieroglyphics scrawled on a page, for words have access to the heart and they nudge us towards liberation or imprisonment.
    Time past and time present and time yet to be are all present in the word.
    Words are like tiny but immensely powerful beings . They are persons with a history rather than mere sounds. Words have a life of their own. The ancient Greeks thought of words as emissaries who set out to accomplish the will of the one who spoke them. The idea may be novel but most of us have had the experience of wishing we could take back a word, which in a careless moment we chose to send forth to assassinate, to hurt and destroy, and the word did our bidding! Conversely, we regret the passing of a moment when we could have spoken a word to heal and encourage but we stayed silent and now it’s too late.
    We can never explore and understand a word, any word, until we invite its images to be present, thereby releasing it from a page of print and allowing it to stand before us in whatever form it would. Thus word and image have a symbiotic relationship.
    Words encapsulate time and they have the power to affect all manner of changes. Words share the same complexity as human beings and demand the same care and nurture. When we choose a particular word in a given context the mere act of choosing the word brings about change, some of which we never fully anticipate.
    Furthermore, we understand ourselves to be complex beings, for we are all surrounded and influenced by a living context, and so it is with words. Sometimes the real power of a word resides in the context, attached to the word. For example, pompous individuals who chose to ignore the power of context have been heard to defend themselves by protesting their innocence; I don’t understand why she got so upset, I merely commented. . . . .
    One of the results of our secret conversations is that we learn to rely less on the sound of a word and instead we learn about the potency of a word. Many men and women have lived a life tinged by despair simply because someone planted a destructive word into their self-understanding, and from an unassailable position of authority, managed to reinforce their verdict, until the contorted information ate its way into every opportunity and continued to influence them. Frequently the healing that comes from a Soul conversation flows from the discovery of new, powerful words with which to