I will hand you a key worth more cash than you could amass or throw at me. And you should have to pay for it. And dearly, because otherwise you will overlook it. It is this. Its powers are endless, the depths to which they can be explored have no bound.

Animals, children, some sages, and extremely intelligent nonhumans relate with the concept of identity differently than we are trained to. The difference is that they -incompletely specify identity to themselves-. Thus they cannot be -certain- what something is, does, may be or become, or even if it will remain the same over the next few moments. They cannot tell if it is another, a part of themselves, or something inexplicable. They do not know. They are actively sensing. They use shorthand for identity, like we do, but they do not believe it, and they do never complete its specification. The active sensing that results is the key to something more like intelligence than most of what most humans are almost always doing.

Dreaming not only incompletely specifies identity, it often presents -liquid identity- to direct experience, something that is rare in our common waking lives unless we are enraptured or intoxicated.

Artists and art often depend upon what is -not shown- what is -made fuzzy or less distinct- and this has a variety of effects that can redefine your intelligence and creativity by catalyzing an experience of seeing in new ways-. And so do comedians, teachers, authors, dreamers, magicians, hypnotists, and, unfortunately, certain kinds of predators.

That’s the little key. Incompletely specify identity (and all of its characteristics) to yourself. Use the shorthand of language and tokens, but never believe or complete their application… remain engaged in active sensing so that your model doesn’t replace your intimacy with reality, the moment, and intelligence itself…