There’s only so much time in the day. The time can be mentally visualized as an environmental space; different possible actions fill up that space like things comprising an environment. Here’s a problem: sometimes the space feels too big to explore comfortably, and sometimes the space feels too small to even breathe in.
Here’s the question I would approach this problem with: what am I that is inhabiting this environment?
In my experience, habituating certain actions is like growing in this space, literally expanding to take up more of it. Before I illustrate that, let me say that ‘growing’ in this sense can be uncomfortable because our sense of the space itself may not also be growing to accommodate our own growth.
This is because new possibilities, new things in the temporal environment, don’t necessarily appear immediately when we habituate the possibilities we first encountered while ‘exploring’ our new environment. New things would expand the space, and more space would reveal more things because time and space are inextricably bound like that.
So, for example, let’s say I’m learning a skill that can be improvised, but whose basic logic and movements are taught in forms. This could be any martial art, and for this example I’ll be imagining tai chi.
The temporal space of possibility that we can visualize is a feature of improvisation, and improvisation exists everywhere, all the time, including during the execution of fixed forms like tai chi Yang-style short form.
When learning tai chi from a teacher conveying the form, I’m inhabiting a space of possibility which is created by many micro-actions. In other words, in any given moment of the form, I’m exploring the outcomes (and interactions) among many possible decisions that I’m making, such as where I place my foot during a transition and how I place it[1]. The space is naturally limited by the fact that I’m always performing the same moves, the ones making up the form, but it’s expansive in that the same moves are never performed in the same way. Because it’s expansive, I can explore it. Exploring means choosing one possibility, noticing what possibilities that leads to (and which ones it doesn’t), and choosing the very next possibility. Over time, I grow to know the environment of this form, and I know the best[2] ways to get from any arbitrary beginning to any arbitrary end.
However, the ‘real’ application of martial arts isn’t the execution of fixed forms. There is the space of possibility within the form, which has a horizon, the natural limitation of its fixed moves; growing to habituate its possibilities, I find myself constrained, and I have two options: I can go ‘inside’, getting smaller to go deeper into the possibility space of the form, and I can go ‘outside’, getting bigger to discover and inhabit a larger space.
What is this constrainment? When I have learned the form and have developed my knowledge of its terrain, I know how to use the whole body to move the whole body. I know how to use the sky and the earth to feel my whole body. I know how to use gravity to feel the manner of my movements, and how to use the manner of movement to support movement.
What is constraining about this? As soon as I am done executing the form, something feels off: when I walk, it’s not tai chi; when I pick up the broom and sweep, it’s not tai chi. My body and mind that feel so calm and smooth during tai chi suddenly feel achy, stilted, clumsy.
Moreover, when this is happening I go back to the form, and suddenly my tai chi feels achy, restless, stiff. I get bored during the movement, and I wonder, when will my teacher show me Yang-style long form? because maybe I just need something new to do.
What I am constrained by is my inability to yet expand into the wider improvisational space of formless tai chi. I feel frustrated by this inability, and so I experience boredom, listlessness and procrastination, and even flights of fantasy about where next I could go in my learning. However, there is no better place to go than where I am, and where I am is at the edge of the horizon.
Tai chi, and martial arts generally, ride a line between form and formlessness. The ‘real’ application of the art is in a martial encounter, which is inherently formless. Anything could happen (appearing suddenly, subversively, from the formlessness)—and what does happen is typically the novel execution of some well-practiced form.
A form is just a ‘thing’ in the ‘environment’ of temporal space. In the limited space of the Yang-style short form, the formlessness is the space among the forms that are the fixed moves; in other words, the fixed moves of the form make up the ‘walls’, or horizon, of the space, and within those walls there’s space filled up by many possibilities, many potential forms.
When the space expands, the available potential forms for the tai chi practitioner within the new horizon are the many fixed moves, the many forms, that comprised the Yang-style short form—as well as the micro-forms that were habituated while practicing short form.
The implication here is that any given move from the short form is available to the practitioner during a martial encounter, but so are the deeper principles of movement practiced through the micro-forms that make any given move effective. Since the micro-forms, and thus the principles of effective movement, are habituated, the practitioner actually has the potential to make any spontaneous movement work toward their goal in the martial encounter, regardless of whether it ‘looks like’ a move from Yang-style short form.
However, this isn’t an article about tai chi. I’m only using tai chi as an analogical example with which to view a problem in life: feeling constrained or overwhelmed within possibility space.
Toward that end, it may be helpful to look at the example a little closer one more time.
The practitioner is getting used to the form, habituating its possibilities. They, inhabiting the temporal space, are ‘growing’ to meet its walls until they are standing at the edge of the horizon. At this point, in order to become more effective they must continue growing to discover the wider horizon—the stage of real improvisation, formless tai chi.
The problem is that at this point, there are two possibilities: the wider space of formless tai chi is overwhelming due to its vastness (teeming with possibilities), but the walls before that space feel suffocating and repressive.
Really, these two possibilities, in the case of tai chi, are solved in the same way. The practitioner must get both smaller and bigger.
Getting smaller means unhabituating the possibilities of short form to discover the vast space and teeming possibilities among its fixed forms. In doing so, it becomes possible to more deeply know the principles of effective movement. Knowing these principles, it’s possible to play around in formless tai chi without resorting to rote application of form[3], because the principles form a foundation from which any possibility can be tried. When any possibility can be tried, it’s possible to experiment—it’s possible to explore the expanded temporal space, discovering which possibilities lead to which outcomes, and how outcomes interact.
Other martial arts (labelled ‘external’) differ from tai chi in the sense that the direction of development begins with sparring, which is the expanded space of formless application. The practiced forms of ‘external’ arts are chosen for their clear effectiveness in the formlessness of sparring. This means that a muay thai practitioner practices the kicks that work, and can perform a rote application of form when sparring without feeling overwhelmed or ineffective.
Tai chi, on the other hand, chooses forms to practice for their effectiveness in practicing the formlessness of form; in other words, their purpose is to provoke the practitioner into going deeper into the principles of effective movement (the use of the body and mind) before sparring[4], so the art is labelled ‘internal’ because going deeper means going ‘inside’[5].
Martial arts converge upon the point where effective movement and effective improvisation make an art that combines form and formlessness to make an effective practitioner. There’s not really a difference between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ arts besides the differing intentions of either path in getting to that point.
…
Okay—so now, the problem and its manifestation in life. In the beginning, I said I would approach this problem with a question: what am I that is inhabiting this temporal space?
Hopefully, the example has demonstrated that there really exist different sets of possible actions which are perceived at different scales. It’s clear that in daily life, one can consciously perform an action like ‘opening the door’ without additionally, consciously performing the micro-actions which create that action. However, it’s always possible to include those micro-actions in conscious movement, as well as that it’s possible to open a door ‘unconsciously’.
Since this exists, I’d like to ‘open the door’ to the strangeness of its reality. What we are thinking about here is temporal space, since these actions exist as possibilities we can explore in any given moment. Micro-actions exist between actions, and actions can even create ‘macro’-actions, such as that of an involved process like moving to a different country. The move itself is a distinct action, but its unquestionably made of smaller actions performed at such a broad scale of time that it can seem like it’s ‘not really happening’ until it’s already happened.
The different scales of possible actions are differently sized swathes of time—what I’ve been pointing out is that ‘we’ can occupy, fill out, those swathes of time to discover totally different potential actions and outcomes.
This could seem totally mundane. I’m basically describing the ability to recognize a trajectory and predict an according outcome, as well as the ability to recognize subtler or grosser contributing factors that would affect the initially perceived trajectory and its outcome. Humans have had this ability for as long as we could throw spears and tell stories.
Despite the mundanity of this ability, there exists a danger in taking it for granted: in taking it for granted, we might get lazy in exercising it skillfully or artfully, or we might even forget it’s an ability we have in the first place.
It’s like our sense of smell—we all know about it, but some of us (me) have intentionally and unintentionally dulled this sense over time for whatever reasons, and are left with an extraordinarily narrow range of ‘smell perception’. This means I’m astounded when my friend Max can detect just-opened leftovers from across the house, or the flavor of sprite I’m drinking from across the room, without looking. I can’t do that at all! But, crucially, I can, because our perception(s), our senses, are something we can train with practice.
Our sense of time, or, really, our sense of inhabiting time, is inextricably linked with our sense of and facility with possibilities of action. I reiterate that it’s weird that ‘I’ that ‘inhabit’ temporal space can ‘shrink’ and ‘grow’ to see different possibilities; and when I do this, becoming more sensitive at different scales to the actions that produce greater actions, I become more effective at doing or not-doing whatever I intend.
Thus, like dulling my sense of smell, I might dull my sense of possibility and effectiveness in the world by closing myself off to different scales, different layers, of sensory atmosphere. Thus, I might come to inhabit a repressively narrow world, or an overwhelmingly vast world. When I do this, I’ve essentially decided that I’m ‘this’ or ‘that’ size, shape, or form; in other words, by deciding ‘what I am’, I’m locking myself into a belief such as ‘I am my mind’, and thus I might lose access to the reality that I am my body, and that I am my environment—as well as to the reality that I am neither my mind, nor my body, nor my environment[6].
Since all of those are true at the same time, if I can recognize all of them in the realm of sensory experience, then I can regain certain abilities and sensory capacities. I can recognize them by asking myself what am I that is inhabiting this temporal space? And I can ask that question more effectively by recognizing the temporal space I’m inhabiting—which includes recognizing whichever one I’m not inhabiting—and beginning to explore its ‘unknown spaces’.
…
So what does this mean in life?
Let’s say I’m applying for a job, and I’m struggling. I’m struggling to get myself to the laptop to open Indeed, and if I even do that then I’m struggling to write a new cover letter or adjust my resume, let alone finish an application and follow up after a few days.
There exist multiple different sets of possibilities, which define different scales. We could call them ‘inner’, ‘outer’, and ‘broader’. The scale of ‘outer’ temporal space has actions like ‘go to the laptop, open it, get to Indeed, work on the resume, submit an application’. These are discrete actions that are similarly-sized, even if they happen to need to occur in sequence—so they’re all ‘outer’.
Outer space might also include ‘calling friends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances to ask for (paid) odd-jobs’, or ‘making and posting flyers advertising my services for gigs or 1-on-1s’, or ‘creating and refining art-objects, and then marketing those art-objects for exhibition or performance’; and so on.
These are each discrete actions occurring in sequence. Some fuss could be made about the precise size of the ‘scale’ I’m pointing to, since ‘posting flyers’ can be an action which is much more daunting than ‘go to the laptop’. If convenient, the reader can imagine 4 scales instead: inner, outer, longer, and broader.[7]
My problem, my struggle, lies in the uncomfortability of getting myself to the laptop—or perhaps moreso in completing subsequent actions of similar ‘weight’. What do I do about this problem?
Now, ‘inner’ space does not necessarily mean ‘mental’, or any similarly subtle space; I’m referring to an ‘inner’ temporal environment, meaning the micro-actions and micro-outcomes that are constitutive of larger possibilities like ‘submit a job application’. I can explore this space mentally, but whatever meaningfully occurs in inner temporal space is something that happens as effectively as an ‘outer’ action like posting a flyer. In other words, something is really happening, and it is not made-up or less impactful than a more obvious action.
Moreover, the ‘larger’ space of outer action is not actually larger than the inner space. Space continually appears between forms, and forms continually appear within space. The world ‘inside of’ discrete actions is as vast and teeming as the world ‘made up by’ discrete actions, and it’s a matter of my perceptual faculties that I can see this or not.
What possibilities of action constitute ‘inner space’? I might well ask ‘what constitutes submitting a job application—and not its previous steps, but rather, what steps constitute those steps?’
When I adjust my resume, I’m making small changes to formatting and word choice. I’m doing this after reviewing the job description of a given opening. What’s occurring in this process of interpretation and response is a set of subtler actions than the complete action of ‘adjusting the resume’. After all, when reviewing the job description, I am in that moment inhabiting the temporal environment, made of many possibilities. These possibilities include how I interpret the listed responsibilities or qualifications—how I choose to understand what’s being described.
The outcome of the choice of interpretation is the next choice—how I act following my own interpretation is not a foregone conclusion, but rather its own choice of how I interpret my interpretation. Thus, exploring possibility space does not necessarily mean choosing a branch among paths, and then following that path to its conclusion... the paths are all always branching.[8]
However, this also does not necessarily mean that there isn’t a best choice; the feeling of there being a best choice is the perception that one choice leads, logically, to a single next action. This can be true at the same time as one choice leads, logically, to another set of branching paths. The misperception is in seeing only the single path following the choice out of many paths.
There being a ‘best choice’ is important for what I call support, which is a feeling of surety that’s coincident with the experience of ease and flow, rather than effort and trial. However, support is something that also can exist at multiple levels; if we’re supported by an action occurring at the ‘broad’ scale of possibility, then it can feel possible to freely explore the many branching, interacting paths of ‘inner’ or ‘outer’ space.
It’s important that it’s possible to explore the many available paths (and not misperceive that a choice necessarily leads to a single next possibility) because it’s possible that certain ‘optimal’ paths among the branching possibilities could lead to a dead-end. The desired outcome might actually exist only after taking strange paths that don’t feel to us like they’re ‘the best’.
I’ll illustrate this by returning to the example of struggling to search for a job.
The outer possibility I’m orienting myself toward is ‘going to my job’, an action that exists at a similar scale to ‘submitting an application’ or ‘posting a flyer’. This action, in the temporal environment, is like a certain clearing in a dark forest, or a depot on a frightening mountain. It really exists and is there to be found. I only need to explore the environment to discover the paths that take me there.
I can be told by well-meaning fellow-travelers that the way to the depot is the marked way up the mountain. Realistically, what this means is following an attested strategy of escalating steps that are supposed to grant me skills, experience, and according qualification with which I could get any job that has a matching set of responsibilities. That means working part-time in high school so I can get a job during college, which I’m attending for a certificate of qualification, and then out of college I can leverage both my certificate and my college work experience to either get a better job or a similar job someplace else. In the mountain analogy, this is a bit like hiking a reasonable amount up the base of the mountain to then reach the sherpa who I pay to carry me to the next hikeable slope.[9]
Due to a complex set of reasons, I was unable to work in high school or during college (unable to hike up the mountain, thus unable to hike up the mountain’s hikeable slopes). How do I get up the mountain?
I can’t use this analogy forever, so let me also say that it’s a pretty dire job-market situation out here (in the US) for many people with a wide variety of backgrounds. The strategy of attested-escalation has worked for some people, for some time, but it seems out of the realm of possibility for me right now. If I were to do that, in terms of pathways, it would mean this current moment is the set of possibilities immediately before ‘hiring the sherpa’ and going back to school. In any case, what I’m pretty much qualified for is entry-level labor that could be performed by highschoolers or middle-age working class strugglers (sorry). Critically, ‘going up the mountain’ is an aspirational path, one in which I’m seeking an ‘improved’ station in life by virtue of the material comfort that a job requiring ‘better’ qualifications would provide.
Is there a more roundabout way up the mountain? For some strivers, it’s been possible to create something really special, be discovered, and be propelled to a still-precarious position of fame and potential fortune. This would be like building a helicopter to fly up to the mountain-depot. It’s also possible to be promoted from some obscure entry-level position to a more elevated position—such as in the case of interning and, through a combination of luck and harmony with the environment, landing some corporate desk-job. These things have been known to happen.
These possibilities all exist in the space between and amidst ‘outer’, ‘wider’, and ‘broader’. Right now, I’m exploring this space mentally. It’s possible to find new paths, new possibilities, new interpretations by exploring mentally—it’s only possible to advance, discovering outcomes and interactions among actions, by actually acting the possibilities out.
If I’m misperceiving by making a choice out of many, and then assuming that there’s only one subsequent path forward which I can keep taking, it might help me to assess the possibility space mentally or intuitively.[10]
Now, crucially, mental space is subtle enough that it could be considered ‘inner’ temporal space, but I can use that space to explore ‘outer’ and ‘broader’ temporal spaces. Since the possible outcome of that exploration is that I eventually feel more supported to carry out ‘outer space’ actions, it could be said that I was exploring ‘inner’ space, carrying out the actions within that inner temporal space, to constitute an ‘outer’ action. Thus, what ends up being ‘inner action’ has the appearance of being exploration of ‘broader’ and ‘outer’ space by mental means—likewise it could be said that what ends up being exploration of ‘broader’ and ‘outer’ space has the appearance of being ‘inner action’.
Like in tai chi, there’s no separating the moves from their constituents. When I do single whip from Yang-style short form, I’m making use of my whole body and all of its parts—and if I’m not, it’s not an effective movement. Making use of the whole body is something that occurs in inner space, after exploring the inner temporal environment, but the manner of this exploration is such that it produces the moves which make up Yang-style short form. The outer moves make the inner moves, and the inner moves make the outer moves—they are not disconnected, they occur simultaneously, they are the same thing at the same time as they are different things.
…
In the analogy, the way up the mountain is not the only way, since there’s also the clearing somewhere in the dark forest (which encircles the mountain). I can basically always see the mountain through the forest, because it’s so big; it’s always there to remind me that I could just make my way over and see about finding a way up.
However, I’ve heard certain things about the clearing in the dark forest. I’ve heard that other people are gathering there, people like me—the mad, the broken, the left-behind and forgotten. (The ones who are choosing to refuse the call of the mountain.) I’ve heard they want to do something special, something that can only be done together.
It’s scary in the forest! There are bandits, and worse; I have a feeling that to make a living in there is to become something of a bandit myself, but I know after long afternoons considering it that it’s the cruelty and violence of the mountain-climb, the extortion of its gatekeepers, and the numbness of a life with only one path set out which all compel people to do what they do in the forest. Besides, bandits can have good hearts, and good hearts can compel cold minds to open up in solidarity of the common plight. There is not only one path forward, for anyone, in arriving at the clearing in the forest.
Postlude
There’s a lot of emotion when I’m struggling to work on the job search: despair, shame, guilt, hopelessness, listlessness.
As described in the tai chi analogy, this is really the feeling of struggling with uncomfortability at the edge of the horizon.
The job search, or any moment that feels like it in the way I described, is really the moment where growth can occur because it compels an inner and a broader search.
It’s like, I don’t have to feel those feelings when I’m doing the outer actions—I can feel a different way, right now, because other paths are there. Really, I can choose where in the process I am (beginnings and endings are arbitrary, because the beginning and end of the form isn’t the beginning and end of tai chi).
Much of what we consider life occurs in the outer actions, so much of the struggle for which I’m painting a picture of passing-through is involved with not-doing or over-doing/unskillfully/ineffectively doing certain outer actions.
The picture I’m painting is a mental image, a helpful companion, which I and the reader can hopefully relate and converse with to find new possibilities; finding new possibilities, discovering the interactions among actions, expanding awareness through our sense of possibility, is the means of doing-what-we’re-not-doing and not-doing-what-we’re-doing-ineffectively.
In a sense, the picture I’ve painted is less ‘the thing that it is’ and more an expression of a possibility within a possibility space. There are ways, forms and paths, other than ‘possibility space’, ‘temporal environment’, and ‘exploring’ that can be used to carry out the same form, different means to paint a picture of the same thing.
Right now, what I’m telling you is that it’s as if I’m showing you single whip from Yang-style short form, and I’ve placed my foot in a certain way and I’m using myself in a certain way to show you ‘this is how to do it, this is what it is, but also try different things with your feet; explore what makes this movement happen; this move is not the move, but the move is.’ The thing is, and it’s big, and it’s magical.
So, what do you call the thing I’m talking about? What does it ‘look like’ or ‘feel like’ to you? How would you talk about it to someone else? How would you try to teach someone else what it is, or point out that it’s there?
Like our sense of smell, you can trust that they probably ‘already have it’. What you’re trying to point out is less the sense itself than it is the mysterious object revealed when you begin to explore what it means to ‘explore with the sense’. The thing being described can’t be described separately from the process of exploring it/with it. In my experience, I feel like I sound crazy if I’m just pointing out ‘there’s a sense of smell!!’
What’s really crazy is the implications of ‘I can use my sense of smell to literally better my life’. Realistically, what I’m talking about here isn’t the sense of smell, but sensing itself.
However, there’s a problem.
In short, everything is new and different all the time. (Don’t they also say ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’? Other side of the same thing.)
While describing tai chi, I was pretty insistent upon describing the formlessness of its ‘outer’ space, the martial encounter, as a stage for improvisation. One could fool themselves by thinking that some facility with specific forms is enough to pattern-match one’s way through life—maybe, but everything is new and different all the time.
Nothing is what it seems; things can appear as one thing while being another. This is primarily true in the case of human perception, as the human being is a chaotic (perceptual) system. Historically, our utilization of form and formlessness in the way I’ve described has been to deal with such chaotic systems as the weather, chance accidents, vulnerable cultivation systems, and other people.
This is the actual crux of struggling to work on the job search: struggling with despair, shame, guilt, hopelessness, listlessness, and so on, all constituting ‘depression’. Aren’t a lot of people depressed or anxious these days? To reiterate, the struggle here is typically not with any inability to literally perform a given ‘outer’ task; the struggle is with the nature of change as it occurs in the ‘broad’ and ‘inner’ scales of possibility. It is necessary, constantly, to keep ‘exploring’—to keep improvising.
Everything is new all the time. Nothing is happening as it’s ever happened before. The imperative, then, is to look closely, constantly, at the space of possibility; overreliance on fixed forms is assumption that one path forward is sufficient; overreliance on prior exploration’s knowledge of the temporal environment is assumption that the environment hasn’t changed.
So perhaps, rather than saying that the struggle is uncomfortability at the horizon, it’s clearer to say that it’s uncomfortability with improvising which is the struggle.
How, then, to become comfortable with it? I’ll ask again—this thing I’ve been writing about, how would you put it? I’m asking you to reflect: what’s happening? What are you doing? How are you perceiving? How is it happening? How is this happening?
What breaks us out of the constricting haze of emotions? How do we deal with the ‘inner stuff’ that makes living the ‘outer stuff’ so hard?
When I feel good, calm, doing tai chi is easy (even if it eventually brings up emotionally difficult thoughts); when I feel turmoil, doing tai chi is uncomfortable, almost painful. What’s the solution? Usually, it’s to pause—if I keep going, really slow down—really pay attention to how the movement is occurring, without letting attention be drawn to any ‘loud’ sensations or thoughts (thereby constricting my awareness)—be really diligent in that regard, so as to not forget what I’m practicing and why—if I’m successful, with awareness expanded, I can tell how the movement is happening, what’s supporting what, what’s holding and what’s free—with awareness expanded, accepting what is about what’s happening, changes can be allowed to occur, and I can adjust consciously or let adjustment just happen—things can let go, and the movement can become easy and flowing. By then I’m probably calm, or with my wider perspective I can at least watch my feelings and thoughts with a sense of detachment, without honing in on them to lose my sense of my body and environment. By just watching, without reacting (with subtle movements, subtle actions), they can be allowed to come and go, and eventually they stop coming, and what remains is peace and contentment.[11]
Tai chi is one way to do this same thing of exploring possibility-space. There are so many ways. This thing, whatever it is that I’ve been talking about, works. Typically, the hard part is convincing myself that I can, should, or want to do the thing. According to The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa, which I’m still reading through, this is a problem of motivation: strengthen the motivations and intentions, and you will naturally make the time to do the thing. This means remembering the positive qualities and beneficial effects that ‘this thing’ cultivates.
Apparently, by growing comfortable with improvisation as it occurs in ‘the thing’, that comfortability will bleed into everyday life. Practicing with ‘the thing’ becomes second-nature. Comfortability with improvisation is facility with possibility space on multiple levels—this comfortability is the overturning of the struggle of growth, the struggle with uncertainty. It does not eliminate intensity; it’s more like mastering the deeper principles of effective movement so that any given action in a martial encounter can be effective, and thus there’s no depression or anxiety about having to experience martial encounters.
Read Vagabond.
Which is really what I use to place it↩︎
Easiest, most effective according to my goals↩︎
‘Posturing’ in this way creates and is created by the feeling of overwhelm due to vastness.↩︎
However, this also depends on the local culture and teacher; in some places, with some people, internal practitioners get right into sparring alongside the practice of form, just like how some external practitioners practice form extensively before beginning sparring.↩︎
And ‘going inside’ means ‘inside’ the possibility space of the form, as well as ‘inside’ the body through the kinaesthetic sense.↩︎
And so on for ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ if these words are pointing to perceptual systems of and for forms/formlessness.↩︎
Realistically, enough skill with the temporal sense can render the differences between scales a non-issue. This is because it can become possible to inhabit and operate within multiple scales simultaneously, rather than switching between them as needed. However, I wonder what this looks like from the outside...↩︎
This is what makes possibility space feel so vast and teeming as to be overwhelming; on the contrary, not-feeling this vast possibility is to feel claustrophobic, repressed by foregone conclusions and no-choice.↩︎
While it’s true that higher education can afford a meaningful difference of experience and training that can’t be found outside those institutions, and thus could be more like ‘training to climb in a gym’, it’s also true that that’s not always the case.↩︎
By intuitively, I mean introducing an element of heart-feeling and allowing-spontaneous-action (maybe called ‘gut-feeling’), such that subtle impulses can initiate actions that aren’t fully-mentally-thought-out, as well as that we can surprise ourselves by just-doing-things—or, by witnessing things-just-happening.↩︎
Sometimes a hangup still lingers—I’ll be sore in my back, even though the rest of how I use myself has changed. Something deeper, or bigger, about how I use myself is on the verge of changing, and I have no idea yet what it is.↩︎
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