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Kat (Katrijn) Van Oudheusden's avatar

Uhm, shit, what if a book is nothing more than a series of exercises?

Matt Cardin's avatar

Maybe that's the best kind of book! I mean, seriously. All the more food for experimenting with, first, trying to apply the exercises deliberately, and then forgetting them and letting them sink into the soil of the unconscious to work whatever magic is transmitted with them.

Kat (Katrijn) Van Oudheusden's avatar

Okay, I like it. ☺️

toolate's avatar

And even this advice should be disreegarded i think. <;

I have been sruck too how the drive to hardwire beautiful insights into the nature of things in relgion, or the healing arts even If it made sense in the first place releis on the teacher being able to find the right disciples and the nature of their relationship. And it is there that so often things seem to go south.

Matt Cardin's avatar

Yes, indeed. Even the "advice" in this post should be forgotten.

Luka Bönisch's avatar

Now that you mention it, I know what you mean. It's always the exercises I have seemingly devised myself (but which were of course ramshackle versions of exercises I had read about) that have had the deepest impact.

Matt Cardin's avatar

It's such an interesting phenomenon, isn't it? As if, yeah, of course it’s valuable, a real blessing, to come across some smartly conceived exercise that was devised by someone else, someone with real insight. But the real effect only comes through, only comes true for you personally, when you've appropriated the thing so thoroughly that it comes to you as your own idea.

Mat Colegate's avatar

I love this. There are similarities here to the way artistic influences work as well. I find that there's very little point in trying to imitate the work of musicians or writers that I admire when if I leave it long enough I'll end up imitating them anyway!

Matt Cardin's avatar

Yes and exactly! The parallels with the workings of artistic influence are palpable.