Making an exercise
converting this felt-sense into clean language
In the last couple of days I’ve been thinking particularly in a issue that I’m personally facing, I’ve been leaning a lot in the last six months (mediation, Buddhism, philosophy general) but only the day before yesterday I realised that I was facing a problem of “deep internal understanding into clear external expression” cause of a friend’s question saying “what’s enlightenment”, I answered him but I didn’t felt it was a very coherent and direct answer. I talked with a psychologist about it (friend) and she said that this “philosophical journey” was making me my thoughts more circular (basically just get a lot of time to get where I wanted) and that I was filtering a lot my answers (that I was thinking a lot about the “perfect answer” and she could see in my eyes how I didn’t stopped going around and couldn’t follow my reasoning line). Then I asked a cousin that has a very deep understanding of life itself (related with meditation for sure, stream entry):
He said:
“following someone else's reasoning and conjuring up our own reasoning are different things: one is how far you can see, the other is how far you can walk. Alone, you have to strengthen your legs, that is, in the same way that you practice reading (by reading), practice explaining (by explaining) and use these difficulties to see where you have gaps in your knowledge and thus re-study and re-review.”
This amazing insight that he wrote it’s very important because sometimes when we’re learning at a quite fast pace we *forget* to question someone’s opinion and immediately assume it as true, this is probably something I really need to unlearn, I have to go down the mountain and go back up. Something I’ve also struggling while learning is the part when my cousin says “conjuring up our own reasoning”, I still think I should after a reading session/ podcast episode/ interesting deep conversation reflect on what was said/ written and try to kind of summarise with my own words, it’s very easy to kind of lose our critical thinking during the journey and accept everything as facts.
I described this problem to Chat, and he gave a pretty straightforward and great tip:
Journaling your understanding of key concepts (e.g. “What is suffering?” or “What is ‘no-self’?”)
• Recording yourself explaining something in 1–2 minutes
• Pretending you’re explaining it to a curious 10-year-old (forces clarity)
• Writing one-paragraph answers to big questions in your own wordsH
Pick one deep concept
Example: “What is enlightenment?” or “What does no-self mean?”
2. Explain it out loud—in your own words—for 1–2 minutes
• Pretend you’re talking to a smart friend who’s never heard of it.
• Use analogies, stories, anything real.
• Don’t try to be perfect—just get it out.
3. Record it. Then listen back.
• Notice where you got stuck.
• Next time, try again—tighter, simpler.
I already tried to do this today and yesterday (defining enlightenment, the self and why I think Buddhism is great) and it went pretty smoothly. This is a good exercise because it forces me to summarise all that I learned about a concept and be straightforward and simple. I’m sure that talking is the best way to reduce this “articulation gap” but writing is definitely also very helpful to make me “convert this felt-sense into clean language”. All this to say that I’m really down for a chill friendly conversation about whatever topics ahahahah. But for real, feel free to Dm me on Twitter and just randomly start introducing a topic!
“The primary language of the body is sensation - not words or thoughts”
Here’s some nice images about this “clean language” topics:
