If you try to judge how much day is left by the angle of the shadows on the ground, you actually can get really good at it. You begin to instinctively wake without an alarm, eat more often than three times a day, realize that your mind can work faster and absorb information and analyze it at an exhilarating pace when you allow it. When I am in this mode, I find that I am a better listener. I can focus less on what people are saying and more on the subconscious thoughts in their mind which are prompting them to say it. I can usually formulate a more comforting (or controlling) response and build a stronger bond with (or get a desired reaction from) that person. Of course, I have appointments to keep and flights to catch, but I find that I’m usually better prepared and procrastinate less when I live and think at a pace untethered from and uninterrupted by the clock on the wall.

Regarding suchness, my mind tends to automatically equate suchness with the ability to assign an English word to a thing. It’s such a limiting framework for thought, and I think the only way out of it for me is to invent my own names for things for which I don’t know an English word. I think of it as expanding my mental vocabulary to include new or intangible things I perceive. Matt, you’re right, it employs your creative subconscious in a way that is almost illogical to an educated mind. I find that learning how to form thoughts outside of the constructs of language is like heavy lifting for the mind. I think it’s possible to perceive more, to be more alert or aware or intuitive, but you have to train your mind to categorize a thing for which you don’t have a word. The skill is similar to making up variable names for things in a computer program. You have a concept that doesn’t exist in reality, but you can represent it in the memory of a computer and you have to call it by a consistent reference name. I wish I knew Latin. . . and Greek and Hebrew and Chinese.