A bit on learning fast · The Consciousness Path

A bit on learning fast

Context: I'm at a dance intensive in Paris right now. It's fun. Nothing Cheng Hsin or consciousness work related. Just a freestyle dance workshop with a world-class teacher.

Here's what I've been doing and it's producing great results. Every time the teacher explains some concept or framework that they have going on in the world of hip-hop, I simply try and unpack it and figure out what is the experience that they are trying to communicate is and get it for myself.

For example today they were talking about "dancing IN the music and dancing ON the music". Which, as you can imagine kind of melted my used-to-Ralston ears. What the heck do they actually mean?!

Well... Instead of just sitting there and silently demanding that a Ralston-like teacher shows up and communicates it in a language that I understand better - I asked myself "okay, figure out their experience of what they are talking about".

Then I just sat and watched the demonstration as openly as I could manage. The teacher danced and was demonstrating "IN the music" first. What is he relating to now? What is his experience like? Where is his attention? How does his body feel? How does he perceive himself in relationship to the music? I got something.

Then he showed "dancing ON the music". Similar process. Then noticed I was making up answers. Dropped those and kept listening, observing and questioning. And then I actually got it.

Fast contemplation.

When he's talking about "IN the music", he meant that his primary relationship is to the music itself. He is expressing the music.

When he was dancing ON the music, he was just taking a hint from the music on what the experience that the artist who was creating the music was actually pointing to.

And his primary relationship there was with the 'experience' sitting "ON TOP" of the music. The one that the music is an expression of. So he wasn't expressing the music, but was expressing what the music itself is expressing.

(Excuse my less-than ideal framing of the insight, I'm sure there are better ways to articulate it)

Pretty neat. And I could do it immediately. Obviously not to a very high level technically and switching between the two takes some adjustment, but the distinction in my experience is very clear. All through applying the Principles of Listening and Questioning.

And then what surprised me the most was when the questions started coming in. Turns out some people have struggled with that subject FOR YEARS. Mind you, the room is largely filled with professional dancers.

Jazz dancers who were used to being ON the music and can't go IN. Hip-hop dancers who are used to being IN the music and don't get "ON". Ballet dancers who are used to relating more to the form of their dance and cleanness of the lines and not to being IN or ON the music at all.

And it was a hit-or-miss for many of them. So naturally, I started doubting it a bit. It made sense and it worked for me, but people have struggled with this topic for years, and that was the first time I've actually really heard the concept. So it can't be that a couple of minutes of fast contemplation during the short demonstration got me that far.

I didn't doubt my insight it was obviously true, I knew I had gotten something real here but wasn't sure if that's the thing that the teacher was actually pointing at.

So i went to him and asked him "Hey, can I explain to you what I got and you tell me if I'm just making shit up." He said let's go, and I did.

His response: "Yep, you've got it. It's exactly that."

And then we discussed it for about 10 more minutes and he pointed out some finer distinctions speeding up my process even more.

Well, looks like being able to contemplate on my feet saved me some time and struggles.

Now back to practice.

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A bit on learning fast