Words and their emptiness

An excerpt from new audiobook I am listening to "A New Earth". Worth some deep contemplation.

"Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don't know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.

"The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality, the miracle of life that continuously unfolds within and around you. [...] Of course we have to use words and thoughts. THey have their own beauty - but do we need to become imprisoned in them? Words reduce reality to something the human mind can gras, which isn't very much. Language consists of five basic sounds produced byu the vocal cords [...]. Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe?" -Eckhart Tolle

After hearing this I had to pause the CD and really think about its meaning. It seems that writting about it is contradictory to the message so I will keep it short.

How limiting it is to describe ourselves with words... can words ever define who we are? and just by using words, are we limiting our real selves? Yes, it sounds a little esoteric but think about it... when we say we are happy or sad or hurt or disappointed.. are we really? or do we create those feelings within us by simply defining our emotions with those words?

If this is true, it really is mind opening how limiting words can be, and what a prison they can create.

pree