Cosmoxenial Classification

There are three primary needs for successful language acquisition: resources to engage with, time to process them, and a relational framework. That last element, the framework, can be otherwise described as the metanarrative, relational structure, the ontology, or the metaphysics through which the fragmented resources we engage with can eventually be united and clarified into a lens for revealing the underlying sociocultural meaning we are after. Religious conviction can supply that relational framework. But here I've suggested that the underlying metanarrative for this classification is that of cosmoxenia, a framework I derived from McGilchrist's neurophilosophy. (Though to be fair, this actually serves to integrate the mythic intuitions of many religious traditions.) Everett Bleiler was on the right path. While a language doesn't provide us with these metanarratives, whose origins are better understood to lie in our embodied pre-linguistic experience, it does shape how they unfold or are enacted, and subsequently communicated to others. 

After reviewing several different approaches to language learning, from people who claim to have successfully implemented them, at least in their own personal experience, the idiosyncratic nature of this process is becoming more clear. What, if anything, unites these diverse methods? I've noted the importance of having quality input, utilizing mnemonic devices for storage, and producing regular output. Importantly, the arts of memorization can be helpful, but they can also be become too explicit. Nonetheless, I do still suspect that I will need to build an elaborate "memory palace." But this will be a very organic process. I harbor no preconceptions concerning what it may look like. As I look back, I think I've done this several times before without realizing it. Those instances involved various other skills or areas that I've demonstrated some level of competence within. For example, I have memorized, unintentionally, considerable knowledge concerning biology, taxonomy, and other natural sciences. I didn't plan any of that. How much different is studying the taxonomic structures within a language, classified according to, or with specific attention paid to, its xenic, or rather, xenial features? Such an approach might build a "house with many rooms." But in keeping with more organic metaphors, we could also say it would develop a "stream with many braids" finding its course toward the sea, or grow a "tree with many branches" straining ever upward for all that "heavenly glory," even as its roots stay firmly planted in the loamy soil of embodiment. 

When I built those memory palaces for the natural sciences, I did it because I really enjoyed the process of wonder, discovery, and appreciative reflection. The unfolding of a cosmoxenial gestalt is likewise an inquisitive process of re-cognizing meaning: How does this "thing" under analysis fit into a puzzle-like "framework" to re-veal a gestalt, now only dimly seen? The more salient the associations, the better the integration, the better the retention and the more clearly the gestalt comes into view. This process is notoriously difficult to describe, but it is those processes of inquiry into the unfolding narrative of xenia, a sort of rhythmic "call and response" that advances understanding. Heisig recommended taking an incremental, emergent approach. One that leverages useful associations that help to bring that gestalt into view, but avoids superfluous associations that only serve to fragment or distract our view of the whole.