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a somewhat daoist practical principle:

Only do what you know how to do.

(If you don’t know how, then don’t try to do it – & therefore instead simply relax and let your intuition/instinct/body take control/act/be – i.e. acting without doing, without deciding/willing/forcing/planning)

to understand this principle,

a) consider what it means to know how to do something. E.g. taken radically/strictly it implies complete confidence in acting/performing the task exactly correctly/fittingly/suitably.

&

b) consider what happens when one stops, relaxes and trusts in ones unconscious/body to guide ones behaviour/movement

So this prescribes a radically un-compromising duality: If one doesn’t know exactly how to do something, one simply doesn’t do it. But in practise this just means that ones waits until one finds an easier/simpler thing to do – one which ones knows how to do – before maybe again rationally considering the harder task…

So I don’t think this excludes learning, in fact i think this is an idea about learning: until one knows something, in other words until one has learnt it, one doesn’t DO it in the strict/rational/willful sense, instead one just plays at it, without pretending that one has the exact model, plan and ability for it – without premature discipline.


Don’t push if you don’t know what you’re pushing towards – if you don’t know where you’re going…. We don’t know where we’re going.