The Path to Devotion

[nyuanshin]

Someone asked me recently what my experience at university has taught me. My first answer was "patience", but the word immediately felt wrong and hollow. Correcting myself, I said that what it had actually taught me was just how much strain I could handle -- like many other experiences, it has taught me how to be miserable. Other lessons it's

Comments

[nancylebov]

Thanks for posting this.

I think I'm up against a different set of problems mostly related to low/damaged drive, but it's reassuring to see that it's possible to address internal mismatches on a high level.

Possibly of interest: Open Minds, about the how people process different sorts of sensory input, to the point where they can look as though they're learning disabled when it's actually just that they aren't compatible with standard procedures.

Two about getting moved back into your body: Mindful Sponteneity, a Feldenkrais book (gentle movements to increase kinesthesia and efficient, enjoyable movement which is oriented towards getting you back to your sense of good movment. (Most Feldenkrais use repeated movement to an extent which makes working with them a challenge of enduring boredom, though they can still be quite useful.)

Zen Body Being, a slightly more theoretical approach by someone who's gone deep into the roots of what's going on when people move.

[nyuanshin]

Thanks for the links. I was reading about the Alexander principle and had been aware of Fedenkrais; will have to explore that further.

[smandal]

If college fails to blow your mind -- either because your instructors lack talent, or you do -- then it's just finishing school.

May not be worth it if you don't like the cut of the finished product.

[colinmarshall]

My three favorite things here:

• "all social barriers are in some sense illusory, and 80% of getting through a door is just acting as if you obviously belong on the other side of it"
  
• "I'm willing to turn my life into an experiment, documented publicly"
  
• "nobody can think their way out of a wet paper bag -- knowing is about doing, and your body knows more than your rational faculties can fathom"

I vow to test out the third proposition more frequently, starting now. I happen also to be willing to do the second, and have been listing slightly in that direction for the last few days. The third is one I've been trying to hammer into my mind, hard, for YHWH knows how long.

[soulchanger]

I've begun to think of human endeavors as consisting of two phases: one in which you set yourself a task and the second in which you do the task. The first involves thinking in an abstract way - what are the parameters you are setting, conditions for success, failure, what sorts of methods might be available/acceptable, etc. The second involves a state that's closer to zen - in a sense, you know what to do and how to do it, and it's automatic. This works for everything from a very simple, one-step action, to a long iterated process

Whether it's worth the candle

[queueball]

Thanks for this. It gave me the opposite sort of clarification to the one you achieved: to figure out (know vs. grok) why I'm persistently considering going back to school despite having a dirt-low opinion of the institution, being maladapted to it, having hated it in the past, and knowing going in that the institution is peripheral to the important stuff like actual learning and experience. And it's that if I am to serve (loaded term that works here for the moment) my People 1) in the way I want to, 2) a way that will allow me to get paid, and 3) without being imprisoned or shot by cops, Treasury agents, or both at some point in my life, I'm required to go through the idiotic institution and subsequent boards of licensure, etc., in a straightforward way for which there are no workarounds (they set laws up that way usually). The gradual realization that "it's that simple" has been something of a relief: making "big decisions" isn't hard, it's figuring out the parameters that's stressful