Category: Experiment and Experience

When the reading of a sign bestows a feeling of insight into the deeper process of living, i call that a turning sign.

— Only a feeling? What about real insight?

Only practice guided by the insight, and reflection on that practice, will decide whether the insight is real; but practice does not happen without feeling.

A turning sign triggers the guidance system to restructure itself. The guidance emerging can only be evaluated recursively.

The range of experience tapped in a turning sign is always greater than any number of readings will reveal.

Reading is recognition of experience as symbolized by the text in its context; meaning is experiencing prompted by the text. The recognition can always become more fine-grained (subtle, articulate, ….. ) as the reading proceeds, because experiencing is never complete as long as it lives. Habits on the other hand must simplify (reducing or eliminating subtleties) in order to actualize guidance.

The text is the instrument; the body is the player; meaning is the music. Practice is the dance.

Wisdom does not accumulate; it flows in continuous current through any open channel. However, the effects of the flow can accumulate (like sediment) as instructions, constructions, obstructions, records and habits. Of course the longest-lasting effect of the flow is the channel itself. ‘The stream of water that wears a bed for itself is forming a habit’ (Peirce, EP2:418).