I drink filtered water. If I leave a glass of it on the table overnight, it absorbs … what we would call flavors or scents … but actually, essences. From the room. And I can taste the change. This is osmotic… and we metaphy this in English as one of the non-technical senses of the word osmosis.

And I notice that, in groups (even simulated groups like facebook) there is something like ‘osmotic pressure’. There’s this entire dimension of negotiation, reception, compliance, transformation, negation, assertion… an invisible conversation that is always at play and is evident in language but… comes long before it… and thrives beneath and beyond it…

So I listen to people’s voices, and those I have affinity with, come to dwell within me (in a manner of speaking). I suspect we are all this way, as there are common reflections upon, for example, the ‘echo’ of important voices or things someone said in our minds.

And lately, at a practice circle, I noticed the difference in the voices of the elders. It’s a small circle. 3-6 people. A couple of the older males are advanced in skill, and they talk to the others as we practice. The two primary males… both have extremely gentle, encouraging, insightful, playful… ways of speaking. They are voices that are both safe and nourishing to ‘bring inside me’ — to include in my inner community. This is very rare, for me. To encounter males whose voices… in what they say »and their music… are fundamentally encouraging, refreshing, reassuring… and playful.

It is a great blessing, this.

But I notice that the general contexts in which we are subject to osmotic pressure from voices in the context… and not like this at all. In fact, many of these voices are disembodied and abstracted from meaningful relationships and roles.

These voices are toxic if we bring them within.

And they find fertile ground for replication in our social networks… actual… and fictional…