Episode 130

Awakening Practices from PRACTICAL WORK ON SELF, "Thinking by Form", Part Two

In the episode, THE THREE-HEADED MAN explores the psychological challenge of becoming an intentional illiterate to break the habit of automatic reading and decoding.

They discuss their struggles to view written words and icons as pure shapes or squiggles rather than immediate sources of meaning. They distinguish between machine attention, which instinctively categorizes sensory input for survival, and being attention, which allows for a more expansive, unmediated experience of reality. By referencing the teachings of EJ Gold, THE THREE-HEADED MAN examines how to disallow automatic associations and emotional labeling of impressions.

Ultimately, they suggest that bypassing these mental categories can lead to a sense of expansion and wonder, similar to seeing the world with fresh eyes for the first time.

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The Three-Headed Man
Talking To Ourselves For Over 25 Years

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About your host

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Fred M Schill

I like to do. I like to make things. And, I like telling stories. I tell stories to myself and to others.

First, a short biography, which is, of course, is a story. I was born in Cleveland, played sports, and attended university. Later, after a few years in the radio business, I returned to university to study education and literature.

With a teaching certificate in my file folder, I began working in high schools, first as a strike-breaking scab substitute teacher in Cleveland's far suburbs, and then in Chicago, mostly in private high schools.

Cleveland and Chicago. My two main towns, and I escaped them both. Presently, I live in a tiny, isolated, mountain village in Spain. I am reluctant to write the name of the town because I don't like tourists. When the tourists arrive, they look at me as if I am an animal in a zoo.