Have you heard of ‘sub-sub-communication’?

This will do the rounds this winter, and I don’t want you left behind!

Part of me, of course, is taking the piss. But the phenomenon is real.

So join me, and take a dive:

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From Mind to Intuition

Let’s say that ‘communication’, in a general sense, consists of all the concrete messages sent between people that we can agree upon, and see. The words you speak, her general body posture, the gestures he does that he intends to be seen, the lines she sends in a text. Objective stuff recordable and measurable—verifiable in a court of law.

If you’re a man that knows no other layer, this is all you think there is to life. And your power to connect will be small.

Zan’s great contribution (or one of them) to our understanding of attraction is the phenomenon of sub-communication. Subtle shades of voice tone, a flicker of the hair, a two-degree acquiescence in her shoulders—or the erection of her defences as she feels her attraction too soon. There’s the urban legend version of sub-communication (she wears black nail polish—she must be dtf!). But there’s the real version of sub-communication, the bankable one: your well-honed connection to animal instinct.

Sub-communication’s a deep ocean, though. And I wonder how far down you can swim:

In the shallows, you pick up on those give-away clues—the gestures she didn’t intend to be seen (or that she only wanted to be seen by you). This might be a flicker, a pinging of eyes across the room. Women communicate interest in a variety of different ways, and some communicate interest through provocation or extra-strong walls. But this is still communication clear to the ear and eye.

The real sub-communication is the flow of energy you learn to tune into beneath. If you are fishing in a river, you learn—through sixth sense—where the water currents most profitably coalesce. In a wedding reception with a hundred available girls, why does your gut tingle for her? Do you notice when your heart flutters and your breath quickens, and can you feel when it happens for her? When that bubble of connection builds around a new couple—when they become oblivious to all time, to their friends’ efforts to pull them away—trust me: it’s not the conversation that draws them in. The bubbles are firing off within: to feel the gears of connection as they drop ever-deeper, you need body awareness; empathy.

But let’s take this even further: quantum entanglement. When I pick up the phone and I tell her I dreamed of you last night, and she says me too, and we both gasp and say oh fuck!, we see how something’s been sub-communicated through space-time… particles of you rattle around in her, own own grace swirls around in and enlivens you; you’re conjoined amidst the web of all beings—neighbours in non-locational space. The lover is always in awe of such things.

We could say the sub-communication of a text message is the emoji, but that’s right at the surface. The sub-communication is the feeling she feels as she writes to you (can you feel it?); the sub-communication is the very longing in you both to reach out.

Is there a right time to text? you may have asked. Well yes—the universe has its sense of right time: the Greeks called it Kairos, God’s time. You know this to be true, and you intuitively know when you’ve missed your window.

But this is still all merely sub-communication…

Sub-sub-communication… what’s that?

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The Gods Are Always Communicating

In that Manhattan bar, Brandon and Elizabeth make eyes at each other across the dancefloor, and nobody else seems to notice. But that’s just sub-communication. When Brandon comes home, he sees that Sissy has entered his apartment and is taking a bath. She has the music up loud. It’s Chic, I want your love. No human is that clever to speak in code: I bet Spotify chose the playlist. The lyrics are the message her wounded heart feels, but that her mouth isn’t ready to speak.

In the first movie in our Masterclass, our protagonist—the male half of a celebrity power-couple—is humiliated by his high-energy wife. In the next shot, a gust of wind blows down an advertising billboard: her face remains, while his is taken from view.

Having a tense fight as you walk through the park, just as the two of you start letting go of your issue, you reach a small lake, over which a small rainbow appears. Nature reflects what’s happening inside you, and as you place your attention on what the park wants to say, the triggers inside you soften and dissolve, too.

It’s that time you made up the name of your destination because you wanted to lure some woman there… you find yourself praying, at all angles, for support… and then arriving, to find out the location is real.

Gods are often tricksters, though, and the joke is often sick:

A number of years ago, I fell in love with a girl. We had an amazing time—flirtatious, erotic, and, as our days wound to their end, sweetly melancholic. You know when you’re done making love, and you bring your youtube onto the bed: hey, what sort of music are you into? Such a graceful moment. Anyway, in those days, there was a video of this band of five people, all crowded around each other, playing a single guitar. We marvelled at the coordination and the technique. We vibed with the song, and would sing it, stepping naked into and out of the shower. It was Gotye: now you’re just somebody that I used to know. 

At the time, we were far too innocent to register that the song would be about us.

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Approach Life as Art

What I’m calling sub-sub-communication is a technique novelists use all the time. Filmmakers too. It’s that there’s an extra layer of meaning added to our narratives from the greater context that surrounds us, whispering clues to a vaster truth we mostly fail to see. But when you notice it, when you point your finger to the greater message that ironically commentates on you both, you steer your and her attention beyond yourselves. You escape yourselves: you’re wrapped up in something more vast.

At the touch of love, even supermarket pop music has messages divine. Point out what song is playing—it’s talking about us!—and she’ll take note of those bigger symbols. It must be love we’re feeling if even the radio celebrates us! Not to burst your bubble, but when you’re fresh in love, you also forget that half of all music ever created are love songs.

Women are a bit more primed to pick up the sub-sub-communication. But many get stuck in a cycle of superstition that kills the felt-sense of the mystery. Ideally, you will not try to figure out why these symbols are there, but simply behold the synchronicity of what is. Overthinking the string of causation stops you participating directly in the magic, in the direct chemistry you feel. What you want is to simply pause on the humour of the symbol, the coincidence, and revel in the awe, the Truth of how it resonates with what’s around. Who cares about the planets, whose effects are actually unknown? The goosebumps on your necks are what is irrefutable.

Here’s the lesson: all around you, right now, are signals and signs that, through the vast effect of the trickster God, reveal deeper meanings (and feelings) than you’re usually able to see.

As you go into your week, notice what is sub-sub-communicated all around you: the invisible messages orchestrating your life. Feel free to write back, and tell me what you see.

More importantly, playfully point out the signs you notice to her. And see what it does to your connection.

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I heard it said that love is simply paying attention.

I guess this is All There Is.

~ Jordan

What’s your level of attention?

Come with us, and train in the Hidden Sides of communication.

T-5 days: The Mastery Course, Season #2

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