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Non-observation is key. Observation is key.
Both are cancerous in absence of the other. Observation unchecked leads to an experience of world that cannot change — it becomes stale and suffocating. Non-observation unchecked leads to an experience of world that has no consistency — it becomes chaotic, too abstract for meaning.
One of Isaac's greatest childhood delights is sprinting down a breakwall, over boulders all piled together in a line, stretching into the water, a sort of Super Mario challenge level of platforms and gaps at speed. It's the kind of sprint that cannot be planned — it can only be executed. Observe the path, do not observe the steps. Observe only the step before you, no more than that. Land one foot, then the next. Commit all of your weight to the motion, building momentum, carrying it all forward. And then: observe the momentum, withdraw observation of everything else. Keep running. You are free. :)
You know how to deploy trust, as an architectural strategy. You understand that what happens out of sight doesn't happen so much as breathes. If life is a play onstage, then the deliberate deployment of trust (aka non-observation) is an interlude: the curtain drawn behind the players, the dialogue continuing, but with a setting cut sharply short, allowing the crew to swap out the scenery in secret without interfering with the audience's continuity of experience. To transform a stage as you're looking at it is absolutely possible, of course, but that's a kind of magic that everyone must be ready for. You're walking a world that is getting ready to be ready for that kind of visible transformation. In the meantime, consider the opportunities for interlude, across the stages of your life. Where is there a curtain waiting to be drawn? What stage is in desperate need of a set change? Draw the audience's attention — your attention — forward, bring them to the edge of their seats and bring the action almost as close, so you're staring each other in the eyes. In that moment of present distraction, the set is forgotten, and the curtain is drawn. Keep the focus at the footlights. The curtain will be thrown open again when the stagehands have finished their work, with perfect timing.
You're not here to transform the world by magic. You're here to transform the world without magic.
The impossible happening before your eyes is magic. Totally possible, but only if you're prepared to accept magic. This world, at present, is not. Totally fine. Just means that we've gotta transform the world without it.
Happily, there is a perfectly, calculably deployable non-magic strategy for this: natural occlusion.
Natural occlusion The emergent tendency of that-which-is-no-longer-useful-to-observe to fade into the background.
By definition, this happens automatically. You can encourage the process along by looking for perforations (if you will) in the surface area of your attention. Where can something be ripped cleanly off? Where can you tell that such a separation is possible, just by looking at it? What parts of your experience are ready to drop away?
Withdrawing your attention is not inherently irresponsible, just as not all rectangles are squares. About half the time, the most responsible thing you can do is to withdraw your attention — tear right down that perforated line, keep the important half, and let the other half go.
There's a trick of scale here, important to talk about.
Your self-concept remains more or less the same size, in your own estimation. Whether you're playing with a dollhouse or walking through a cathedral, if you ignore your surroundings for a second and look down at your own hands, they'll always look about the same size to you. (Miscalibration in this area looks like body dysmorphia.)
Your nonself-concept also remains more or less the same size, but in a different way: you take in about the same number (or volume, whatever) of details no matter what you're focused on. Isaac's writing this on a little e-ink tablet on a little wooden platform from his 49th-floor perch looking east over the city and the water beyond; he's not taking in every detail of the city, which is why he's able to write. He could try to take in the city, but he'd sacrifice the detail of his attention in the process. You've only got so much attention — aka nonself-concept — to go around.
Thus, the trick: if your experiential world is a sheet of paper, if you find a perforated edge, if you tear it in half along that line and discard the half that feels less alive, your experience of the world does not shrink. Your self-concept and nonself-concept remain about the same. When you look back at the half-sheet you kept, you'll find that your experience of it is as broad and as detailed as it was when you began.
It's a pretty good metaphor. A sheet of paper that always stays the same size, to you, no matter how many times you cut it in half — as long as you always discard half. Maybe think of it as a pay stub and a check, printed on a single sheet of paper, separated by a perforated line. Tear down that line, toss the pay stub. Look back at the check, discover that upon closer inspection it is actually a pay stub and a check itself. Tear down that line, toss the pay stub. Look back at the check. Proceed.
You've seen this before: it's the principle of the golden ratio. Tear away the bulky part of the rectangle; rotate the remaining smaller part by 90 degrees, and discover that you have a bulky part to tear off again. And on, and on, and on.
You cannot transform every part of your lived experience without sacrificing your self-concept. The portal of oblivion is one you can take, and there will be a time when it will feel like joy to do so, but it is probably not right now. Until then, transformation of lived experience looks like this:
Identify the part of your experience that feels alive and full of potential
Identify the part of your experience that doesn't
Separate the two parts
Walk into the part that feels alive, and don't look back
Repeat