As always, much enjoyed Robert. And something occurred to me, and I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts. I believe you do not consider yourself falling into, strictly speaking, non duality. Some of the exchanges here lead me to see why, though I could be completely wrong: each of us is an organism seeking stability. This appears to me to say “separate”, which is not non-dual. The part of non-dual that overlaps is seeing no agent, no doer. Close? No cigar?
The confusion is treating “organism seeking stability” as a claim about metaphysical separation. It isn’t. It’s a functional description, not a statement about ultimate reality. An organism is a bounded, self-maintaining process. That doesn’t imply a separate self in the non-dual sense, only operational boundaries.
Where there is overlap with non-duality is exactly where you point: no agent, no inner doer, no controller standing apart from experience. On that, we agree.
Where it diverges is this: I don’t take the absence of an agent to imply an undifferentiated oneness, nor do I treat functional distinctions as illusions that need correcting. Bodies regulate. Systems stabilize. Those facts don’t disappear because no self is found.
So:
– Yes to no doer.
– Yes to no inner agent.
– No to collapsing everything into a single metaphysical claim.
Thank You! After I asked, it occurred to me that your response may go where you did: going past regulating and stabilizing is already moving into the metaphysical. Understood.
Once you move past describing regulation and stabilization, you’ve already stepped into metaphysics. That’s the line I’m careful not to cross. Staying with how systems operate doesn’t require an ultimate claim about what reality is, only attention to what’s observable and functional.
So yes—your follow-up lands exactly where the distinction sits. The clarification didn’t add anything new; it just made the boundary visible.
Points well taken, Robert. That said, just from my own experience, it feels almost like a denial of what is very real to me. To me it feels almost dishonest to not express fully all of my experience. Why hide it? Why keep it limited to what may feel protective of those who may not be able to handle it... if that is what you are saying. I am not saying anything metaphysical here. This is raw experience. I understand that you do not want to put out carrots to attract people. We've all seen those guru types who seem more interested in self aggrandizing. It is obvious that you are not in that category. Lastly do you really feel you need to control your expression... to limit it? We both know no one is in control here. Do you really think you know what will happen if you do not limit your self expressions? I know I don't. The zeitgeist has dramatically changed in the last even few years. Who really knows what will happen? All that said... I honor your sense of things. I honor it because at my core I know that I don't really know intellectually. But I do know my direct experience of life and I am grateful for it all.
Absolutely brilliant, Robert and Kate. The only thing I might add is that when this is recognized the sense of a fixed self drops way. The result of this is a relaxing and an ease to life. This is felt. The impact of this can be quite dramatic. There is a before and an after. Before is tension, stress, a certain kind of depression, and sometimes a sense of hopelessness. After is an almost stress free existence. I say this out of my own experience. And, yes, at times the loop tightens again around the sense of a fixed self... but this seems to dissolve pretty swiftly now. Suffering still comes... but since this fixed sense of self has mostly dropped away there is nothing for it to attach to and persist. Lastly, Robert, even though your words and concepts are brilliant, and I do not want to minimize that, there is a certain lack of heart. Your words seem technical and dry. I know your heart is there... big time. I just don't see it revealed in your analysis.
I don’t dispute the phenomenology you’re describing. Many people report an easing, sometimes dramatic, when the sense of a fixed self loosens. Less strain, less self-referential tension, sometimes a clear before and after. That happens, and it’s part of how some systems reorganize.
Where I’m careful is here: I don’t treat that shift as the point, the proof, or the destination. Relief is an effect, not a criterion. It varies by system, by history, by temperament. For some, things soften. For others, they don’t, or they do only intermittently. I don’t want to imply that a particular felt outcome is what makes an understanding valid.
As for the “lack of heart”: that’s mostly a difference in emphasis, not an absence. I don’t foreground awe, wonder, or relief because the moment I do, those experiences start to function as endorsements or as carrots. They become part of a story about how things should feel, or where this is meant to lead.
I’m not uninterested in those experiences. I’m uninterested in recruiting them.
The aim is to describe the mechanics as clearly as I can without asking for any experience, including the warm ones, to prove that the description is accurate or worthwhile.
Keeping the language mechanical isn’t a denial of feeling. It’s a way of not turning feeling into evidence or promise. Wonder, ease, grief, joy, absurdity, they all occur. None of them needs a metaphysical explanation, and none of them needs to be protected by theory.
Points well taken, Robert. That said, just from my own experience, it feels almost like a denial of what is very real to me. To me it feels almost dishonest to not express fully all of my experience. Why hide it? Why keep it limited to what may feel protective of those who may not be able to handle it... if that is what you are saying. I am not saying anything metaphysical here. This is raw experience. I understand that you do not want to put out carrots to attract people. We've all seen those guru types who seem more interested in self aggrandizing. It is obvious that you are not in that category. Lastly do you really feel you need to control your expression... to limit it? We both know no one is in control here. Do you really think you know what will happen if you do not limit your self expressions? I know I don't. The zeitgeist has dramatically changed in the last even few years. Who really knows what will happen? All that said... I honor your sense of things. I honor it because at my core I know that I don't really know intellectually. But I do know my direct experience of life and I am grateful for it all.
I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t take it as opposition.
What I’m doing here isn’t hiding experience, and it isn’t the protection of others. It’s restraint about where experience fits into the conversation, not a denial of experience.
I don’t doubt the reality of what you describe. I don’t doubt the felt relief, warmth, gratitude, or the sense of before and after. Those are real experiences, and I’ve written about them elsewhere—for example, in The Ten Thousand Things (2017).
For my purposes here, in this series of essays, maximum clarity comes from describing what I’ve been calling regressive looping—the bare mechanics by which a self-sense stabilizes—without discussing its felt consequences. That is simply a different project than writing about powerful, beautiful, or relaxing experiences, a genre that already exists in abundance.
The systems-analysis approach I began in Understanding Claude (2025), continued in The 21st Century Self (2025), and am continuing here is not commonplace. This work stays with description at that level and stops there.
This makes sense, Robert. Thank you. Only thing I would say is that separating your brilliant intellectual project from felt experience is not enough of the story for me. I tend to conceive in more holistic ways. Just my nature. Sure there is so much out there about the felt experience side of this. And, yes, your project is unique and I feel very accurate. I just don't sense that separating the two is necessary. I think they very much go together. No need to dialogue further. We just have a difference in seeing that is perfectly okay in this life. Multiple perspectives add to the dynamic flow. I love what you are bringing into this world!
"...but since this fixed sense of self has mostly dropped away there is nothing for it to attach to and persist." Stan, you just answered a question for me with that statement. Thank you!
I find the idea that Robert's approach lacks heart curious, probably because I can't relate to that finding, but also because I want to understand what that means to the one who makes the comment.
I find the technical language so freeing because there aren't any emotional minefields to get caught in. I find nothing lacking, but this just leads me to wonder about how each of us hears language.
I want to mention another groundbreaking book that has helped me to understand and then embody a more holistic engagement with life. It is "Presence" by Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge of MIT. They flesh out this sense of embodied intelligence I speak of. If you just focused on the introduction to the book and chapter 7 you'd understand more of my thoughts. Science is coming around to a deeper understanding of holistic intelligence. Many in the quantum physics field have begun to confirm this. Kate, if you ever wanted to dialogue with me about this, I would love that. Would you be interested in setting up a zoom session? No doubt we would learn from each other... awakening never ends!
Love your inquiry, Kate. And I understand. I think I've been exactly where it feels like you are. I love the intellectual side of this dialogue. Robert's expressions, especially in 4T and Don'T, have helped to free me. But as Robert states, in the past, "awakening never ends." There is an intelligence in somatic awareness that remains hidden, but still there, in a purely intellectual dialogue. Growing up in the Western world, most of us have a bias toward logic, analysis, and strategy. Most of our forms of knowledge disciplines move toward splitting "reality" into the tiniest parts. PhD experts reflect this, gaining competence in the tiniest aspect of life. What gets lost is the way life is one interdependent whole. I don't have space here to flesh it out but many authors, scientists, and psychologists have to one degree or another. One such person is Eleanor Rosch who was once the head of Berkeley psychology and who co wrote the book, The Embodied Mind. There is a different kind of intelligence found in the rest of the body. To leave this out seems to me to fall into the trap and distortion of isolation. Everything in life - everything - is interdependent.
Stan, thanks for the thoughtful response. What I love about the space that exists here is we all get to put forward, keep, update, probe, and challenge the perspectives that we are. It's always refreshing to get a little peek into the interests of fellow 4T readers. On that note, I'll check out your book recommendations and your blog and look forward to seeing you there and in the 4T comments section. :)
Agree with everything you are saying here, including the last few sentences. I often say to Robert something like, “it feels too mechanical”…and I feel too much wonder and awe at times which is not mechanical. And I know he feels wonder and awe, and sees no problem with this…just don’t go further into the metaphysics of why (maybe).
Nothing ever steps outside the process to do the seeing...fascinating exchange - kudos to Robert and Kate. It feels recurrently, of course, as though there IS a seer. We all experience this...nothing to fix, as you both say so clearly. 🈚️🫶
Is "impermanence" a given? First principle? If so, aren't all attempts to concretize the flow "category errors"? In that sense, it's just how long a process coheres before it is classified as an object. So time is introduced just like a self to facilitate the creation of the amusement park.
Impermanence isn’t a first principle. It’s an observation. When you look closely, what you find are processes, not things.
From that starting point, treating flow as an object is a category error, but a functional one. Stability over time invites naming. The longer a pattern holds, the more likely it is to be treated as a thing. That’s not a philosophical mistake; it’s how coordination works.
Time enters the same way the self does. It’s introduced to manage change, comparison, memory, and anticipation. It’s a tool, not a discovery of something standing on its own.
The problem only appears when these conveniences are taken as ontology, when temporary stabilizations are mistaken for what fundamentally exists.
So helpful to map that in real time, thank you. I'm wondering about the following two statements from your final response. I suspect they are closely related.
"Nothing about that [activity] requires a subject." Does it create the sense of there being a subject though? If yes, what are your thoughts about why? If no, why is the sense of a separate subject so easily mistaken? Of all things, why would it seem so apparent there's a subject that can watch the activity?
"Perception happens within the same dynamics it perceives." This seems to be the answer to my above questions, but I'm muddy as to how.
Nothing about the activity requires a subject, but some of the activity produces a subject-sense. That sense isn’t added from outside, and it isn’t a mistake layered on top of experience. It’s one of the patterns the system generates as it coordinates perception, memory, action, and language. In particular, self-reference, narration, and prediction tend to cluster. When they do, the system produces a stable point of orientation. That point feels like a subject.
It feels apparent because it functions. A centered perspective simplifies coordination. It allows the system to track “this body,” “this history,” “this point of view.” None of that requires a watcher, but the pattern that performs those functions has the shape of one. The sense of a subject is the feel of that shape from the inside.
That’s why it’s so easily mistaken. The system doesn’t just represent the world; it represents itself as being involved in the world. When language enters, that representation gets a name, “I,” and grammar quietly turns a process into a thing. The apparent subject arises from self-referential activity becoming stable enough to feel like a point of view.
This is where the second sentence matters.
Perception happens within the same dynamics it perceives. There isn’t perception on one side and activity on the other. Seeing, hearing, noticing, thinking are not vantage points above the flow; they are events in the flow. When the system perceives its own activity, it does so using the same mechanisms it uses to perceive anything else. I see no privileged layer where observation is taking place from the outside.
So when it feels like “I am watching this,” what’s actually happening is that the system is generating perception, and part of what’s perceived is the system’s own activity. The feeling of a watcher is the system encountering its own self-referential output, not evidence of a subject behind it.
It's striking to me how a response to this level of description ultimately simplifies. I'm realizing how rare it is, as someone who loves words, reading, writing, to intake a large, detailed response and be left with so little (meant in the best possible way).
Which brings me back to this. In our initial exchange, near the end, you pointed out how I had stated "a process that can see itself" invited trouble. You were pointing to a potential category error, and once I could see the error I could see that the "observer" doesn't stand separately. It was simple and matter-of-fact. But a conceptual layer had to drop.
I think I've come full-circle in understanding, from experience, a category error. I'm left a little stunned by how language obscures/distances and/or helps clarify/remove distance. Ironically, I don't think I have words to do justice to what I'm trying to express. :)
As always, much enjoyed Robert. And something occurred to me, and I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts. I believe you do not consider yourself falling into, strictly speaking, non duality. Some of the exchanges here lead me to see why, though I could be completely wrong: each of us is an organism seeking stability. This appears to me to say “separate”, which is not non-dual. The part of non-dual that overlaps is seeing no agent, no doer. Close? No cigar?
Close, but not quite.
The confusion is treating “organism seeking stability” as a claim about metaphysical separation. It isn’t. It’s a functional description, not a statement about ultimate reality. An organism is a bounded, self-maintaining process. That doesn’t imply a separate self in the non-dual sense, only operational boundaries.
Where there is overlap with non-duality is exactly where you point: no agent, no inner doer, no controller standing apart from experience. On that, we agree.
Where it diverges is this: I don’t take the absence of an agent to imply an undifferentiated oneness, nor do I treat functional distinctions as illusions that need correcting. Bodies regulate. Systems stabilize. Those facts don’t disappear because no self is found.
So:
– Yes to no doer.
– Yes to no inner agent.
– No to collapsing everything into a single metaphysical claim.
Close. No cigar.
Thank You! After I asked, it occurred to me that your response may go where you did: going past regulating and stabilizing is already moving into the metaphysical. Understood.
You’re tracking it correctly.
Once you move past describing regulation and stabilization, you’ve already stepped into metaphysics. That’s the line I’m careful not to cross. Staying with how systems operate doesn’t require an ultimate claim about what reality is, only attention to what’s observable and functional.
So yes—your follow-up lands exactly where the distinction sits. The clarification didn’t add anything new; it just made the boundary visible.
Stan Cross
Synergistic Intelligence
2m
Points well taken, Robert. That said, just from my own experience, it feels almost like a denial of what is very real to me. To me it feels almost dishonest to not express fully all of my experience. Why hide it? Why keep it limited to what may feel protective of those who may not be able to handle it... if that is what you are saying. I am not saying anything metaphysical here. This is raw experience. I understand that you do not want to put out carrots to attract people. We've all seen those guru types who seem more interested in self aggrandizing. It is obvious that you are not in that category. Lastly do you really feel you need to control your expression... to limit it? We both know no one is in control here. Do you really think you know what will happen if you do not limit your self expressions? I know I don't. The zeitgeist has dramatically changed in the last even few years. Who really knows what will happen? All that said... I honor your sense of things. I honor it because at my core I know that I don't really know intellectually. But I do know my direct experience of life and I am grateful for it all.
Absolutely brilliant, Robert and Kate. The only thing I might add is that when this is recognized the sense of a fixed self drops way. The result of this is a relaxing and an ease to life. This is felt. The impact of this can be quite dramatic. There is a before and an after. Before is tension, stress, a certain kind of depression, and sometimes a sense of hopelessness. After is an almost stress free existence. I say this out of my own experience. And, yes, at times the loop tightens again around the sense of a fixed self... but this seems to dissolve pretty swiftly now. Suffering still comes... but since this fixed sense of self has mostly dropped away there is nothing for it to attach to and persist. Lastly, Robert, even though your words and concepts are brilliant, and I do not want to minimize that, there is a certain lack of heart. Your words seem technical and dry. I know your heart is there... big time. I just don't see it revealed in your analysis.
Stan--
I don’t dispute the phenomenology you’re describing. Many people report an easing, sometimes dramatic, when the sense of a fixed self loosens. Less strain, less self-referential tension, sometimes a clear before and after. That happens, and it’s part of how some systems reorganize.
Where I’m careful is here: I don’t treat that shift as the point, the proof, or the destination. Relief is an effect, not a criterion. It varies by system, by history, by temperament. For some, things soften. For others, they don’t, or they do only intermittently. I don’t want to imply that a particular felt outcome is what makes an understanding valid.
As for the “lack of heart”: that’s mostly a difference in emphasis, not an absence. I don’t foreground awe, wonder, or relief because the moment I do, those experiences start to function as endorsements or as carrots. They become part of a story about how things should feel, or where this is meant to lead.
I’m not uninterested in those experiences. I’m uninterested in recruiting them.
The aim is to describe the mechanics as clearly as I can without asking for any experience, including the warm ones, to prove that the description is accurate or worthwhile.
Keeping the language mechanical isn’t a denial of feeling. It’s a way of not turning feeling into evidence or promise. Wonder, ease, grief, joy, absurdity, they all occur. None of them needs a metaphysical explanation, and none of them needs to be protected by theory.
Nothing is being argued against.
Nothing is being withheld.
It’s just description, kept close to the ground.
Points well taken, Robert. That said, just from my own experience, it feels almost like a denial of what is very real to me. To me it feels almost dishonest to not express fully all of my experience. Why hide it? Why keep it limited to what may feel protective of those who may not be able to handle it... if that is what you are saying. I am not saying anything metaphysical here. This is raw experience. I understand that you do not want to put out carrots to attract people. We've all seen those guru types who seem more interested in self aggrandizing. It is obvious that you are not in that category. Lastly do you really feel you need to control your expression... to limit it? We both know no one is in control here. Do you really think you know what will happen if you do not limit your self expressions? I know I don't. The zeitgeist has dramatically changed in the last even few years. Who really knows what will happen? All that said... I honor your sense of things. I honor it because at my core I know that I don't really know intellectually. But I do know my direct experience of life and I am grateful for it all.
Stan,
I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t take it as opposition.
What I’m doing here isn’t hiding experience, and it isn’t the protection of others. It’s restraint about where experience fits into the conversation, not a denial of experience.
I don’t doubt the reality of what you describe. I don’t doubt the felt relief, warmth, gratitude, or the sense of before and after. Those are real experiences, and I’ve written about them elsewhere—for example, in The Ten Thousand Things (2017).
For my purposes here, in this series of essays, maximum clarity comes from describing what I’ve been calling regressive looping—the bare mechanics by which a self-sense stabilizes—without discussing its felt consequences. That is simply a different project than writing about powerful, beautiful, or relaxing experiences, a genre that already exists in abundance.
The systems-analysis approach I began in Understanding Claude (2025), continued in The 21st Century Self (2025), and am continuing here is not commonplace. This work stays with description at that level and stops there.
This makes sense, Robert. Thank you. Only thing I would say is that separating your brilliant intellectual project from felt experience is not enough of the story for me. I tend to conceive in more holistic ways. Just my nature. Sure there is so much out there about the felt experience side of this. And, yes, your project is unique and I feel very accurate. I just don't sense that separating the two is necessary. I think they very much go together. No need to dialogue further. We just have a difference in seeing that is perfectly okay in this life. Multiple perspectives add to the dynamic flow. I love what you are bringing into this world!
"...but since this fixed sense of self has mostly dropped away there is nothing for it to attach to and persist." Stan, you just answered a question for me with that statement. Thank you!
I find the idea that Robert's approach lacks heart curious, probably because I can't relate to that finding, but also because I want to understand what that means to the one who makes the comment.
I find the technical language so freeing because there aren't any emotional minefields to get caught in. I find nothing lacking, but this just leads me to wonder about how each of us hears language.
I want to mention another groundbreaking book that has helped me to understand and then embody a more holistic engagement with life. It is "Presence" by Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge of MIT. They flesh out this sense of embodied intelligence I speak of. If you just focused on the introduction to the book and chapter 7 you'd understand more of my thoughts. Science is coming around to a deeper understanding of holistic intelligence. Many in the quantum physics field have begun to confirm this. Kate, if you ever wanted to dialogue with me about this, I would love that. Would you be interested in setting up a zoom session? No doubt we would learn from each other... awakening never ends!
Love your inquiry, Kate. And I understand. I think I've been exactly where it feels like you are. I love the intellectual side of this dialogue. Robert's expressions, especially in 4T and Don'T, have helped to free me. But as Robert states, in the past, "awakening never ends." There is an intelligence in somatic awareness that remains hidden, but still there, in a purely intellectual dialogue. Growing up in the Western world, most of us have a bias toward logic, analysis, and strategy. Most of our forms of knowledge disciplines move toward splitting "reality" into the tiniest parts. PhD experts reflect this, gaining competence in the tiniest aspect of life. What gets lost is the way life is one interdependent whole. I don't have space here to flesh it out but many authors, scientists, and psychologists have to one degree or another. One such person is Eleanor Rosch who was once the head of Berkeley psychology and who co wrote the book, The Embodied Mind. There is a different kind of intelligence found in the rest of the body. To leave this out seems to me to fall into the trap and distortion of isolation. Everything in life - everything - is interdependent.
Stan, thanks for the thoughtful response. What I love about the space that exists here is we all get to put forward, keep, update, probe, and challenge the perspectives that we are. It's always refreshing to get a little peek into the interests of fellow 4T readers. On that note, I'll check out your book recommendations and your blog and look forward to seeing you there and in the 4T comments section. :)
Agree with everything you are saying here, including the last few sentences. I often say to Robert something like, “it feels too mechanical”…and I feel too much wonder and awe at times which is not mechanical. And I know he feels wonder and awe, and sees no problem with this…just don’t go further into the metaphysics of why (maybe).
Again, beautifully clear. Thank you Kate & Robert.
Nothing ever steps outside the process to do the seeing...fascinating exchange - kudos to Robert and Kate. It feels recurrently, of course, as though there IS a seer. We all experience this...nothing to fix, as you both say so clearly. 🈚️🫶
Is Kate an AI?
No, and Kate just laughed out loud at the question. :)
Massive release after reading this, my favourite sentence was “A watcher is smuggled in by grammar”, Im going to set fire to a dictionary today
"There is only the stream, sometimes including descriptions of itself" As a no-someone I find it difficult devising no-descriptions of no-self.
Open, relaxed, relieved—grateful.
Is "impermanence" a given? First principle? If so, aren't all attempts to concretize the flow "category errors"? In that sense, it's just how long a process coheres before it is classified as an object. So time is introduced just like a self to facilitate the creation of the amusement park.
Andrew—
Impermanence isn’t a first principle. It’s an observation. When you look closely, what you find are processes, not things.
From that starting point, treating flow as an object is a category error, but a functional one. Stability over time invites naming. The longer a pattern holds, the more likely it is to be treated as a thing. That’s not a philosophical mistake; it’s how coordination works.
Time enters the same way the self does. It’s introduced to manage change, comparison, memory, and anticipation. It’s a tool, not a discovery of something standing on its own.
The problem only appears when these conveniences are taken as ontology, when temporary stabilizations are mistaken for what fundamentally exists.
Flow doesn’t need protecting.
And the amusement park doesn’t need tearing down.
Understood.
Do "you" have any first principles? If so, please share.
How about “No one knows what any of this is.”?
Great!!!
So helpful to map that in real time, thank you. I'm wondering about the following two statements from your final response. I suspect they are closely related.
"Nothing about that [activity] requires a subject." Does it create the sense of there being a subject though? If yes, what are your thoughts about why? If no, why is the sense of a separate subject so easily mistaken? Of all things, why would it seem so apparent there's a subject that can watch the activity?
"Perception happens within the same dynamics it perceives." This seems to be the answer to my above questions, but I'm muddy as to how.
Kate—
These questions do belong together.
Nothing about the activity requires a subject, but some of the activity produces a subject-sense. That sense isn’t added from outside, and it isn’t a mistake layered on top of experience. It’s one of the patterns the system generates as it coordinates perception, memory, action, and language. In particular, self-reference, narration, and prediction tend to cluster. When they do, the system produces a stable point of orientation. That point feels like a subject.
It feels apparent because it functions. A centered perspective simplifies coordination. It allows the system to track “this body,” “this history,” “this point of view.” None of that requires a watcher, but the pattern that performs those functions has the shape of one. The sense of a subject is the feel of that shape from the inside.
That’s why it’s so easily mistaken. The system doesn’t just represent the world; it represents itself as being involved in the world. When language enters, that representation gets a name, “I,” and grammar quietly turns a process into a thing. The apparent subject arises from self-referential activity becoming stable enough to feel like a point of view.
This is where the second sentence matters.
Perception happens within the same dynamics it perceives. There isn’t perception on one side and activity on the other. Seeing, hearing, noticing, thinking are not vantage points above the flow; they are events in the flow. When the system perceives its own activity, it does so using the same mechanisms it uses to perceive anything else. I see no privileged layer where observation is taking place from the outside.
So when it feels like “I am watching this,” what’s actually happening is that the system is generating perception, and part of what’s perceived is the system’s own activity. The feeling of a watcher is the system encountering its own self-referential output, not evidence of a subject behind it.
I see no subject watching the activity.
The activity sometimes includes a subject sense.
It's striking to me how a response to this level of description ultimately simplifies. I'm realizing how rare it is, as someone who loves words, reading, writing, to intake a large, detailed response and be left with so little (meant in the best possible way).
Which brings me back to this. In our initial exchange, near the end, you pointed out how I had stated "a process that can see itself" invited trouble. You were pointing to a potential category error, and once I could see the error I could see that the "observer" doesn't stand separately. It was simple and matter-of-fact. But a conceptual layer had to drop.
I think I've come full-circle in understanding, from experience, a category error. I'm left a little stunned by how language obscures/distances and/or helps clarify/remove distance. Ironically, I don't think I have words to do justice to what I'm trying to express. :)
I think I got the vibe, Kate.