One way of moving beyond words in meditative journaling is by becoming attentive to the silence before, beneath, and between our words, both as we write and as we read back to ourselves what we have written. This allows us to become more attentive to the silence into which our silence sometimes leads us. Where we feel our writing taking us into the Silence, we simply go there and allow ourselves to be in the Silence, "letting the words flow to silence... "As we become aware of something stirring in the silence, we record it, "letting the silence speak to the word..."
Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool streams gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word "Water," first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly, I felt a misty caress as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!