regurgitating

Over the past week I've been detaching from my relentless consumption and slowly shifting my attention more to life and extracting the lessons therein. Each day is actually rife with opportunities to learn and truly assimilate through direct experience. When I'm constantly consuming and processing written/spoken knowledge I end up removed from all this juicy data. Removed from my feelings and the wisdom they provide, removed from those around me and the feedback they're providing. The contents of my mind grow and grow, while in my life and interpersonal dealings I remain immature and underdeveloped.

I think this is why I can sometimes sound wiser than I feel. Wise words are available in my mind in the form of collated thought that I can draw upon but which remain undigested in my being. Still separate things - unpracticed, unlived, unfelt, unmoving.

I'm not going to say that it's completely without value. There is some degree of transformative potential in the written and spoken word, but not in regurgitating it and believing oneself to be wise or to know something. All of this is a collection of words, the essence of which has either already been extracted and absorbed or has yet to be processed and tapped. When reached it is felt in the body and assimilated. It is known. And if regurgitated later onto others as a retelling, it's really just a husk. Like coughing up the dusty ashes of a long dead corpse. It should be seen as such.

Only that which is transformed and arises as something original and appropriate to a given context is truly alive. A response that blossoms from deep within, not pulled from the mind like a cheap object for display. You can feel the difference. So many smart people in the world with vast storehouses of knowledge and impressive things to say, yet we find our minds wandering while listening to them. Why? It's because their words are dead. They're being pulled from the mind, not flowing from their core, not an appropriate response to the situation at hand but a detached display of acquired knowledge. They're like albino peacocks flashing transparent feathers. I'm like that too sometimes.

Anyways, I'm getting carried away. It's fun to get a little poetic sometimes, kind of masturbatory too. Look at me, using my pretty words to cast judgement. Whee!