“Representational thought produces tokens. This process is dangerous for the uninformed, and, inexplicably, this population apparently comprises most of humanity. The problems are deep. The most basic, however, is that the description comes to stand ‘in place of’ experience (or the world). That is, once we have a description, we focus upon it to such a degree so as to actively divorce us from what it refers to. As if reality has been replaced by a sketch or… well, a description.

The mind is peculiarly organized to find dangerous clumsiness both compelling and instinctive, and the aspects of our minds that are most confused are most enthralled by descriptions in general, and our own descriptions in particular.

In our fascination with names, narratives, categories, descriptions and sequencing… we do not notice that we consistently turning down the bandwidth of our intimacy and presence in our bodies and experience.

When, having done this, we find, with terror, that we have abstracted ourselves almost out of existence, we still do not realize that the cause was our own compulsion to believe in words and models, rather than the vastly broader options which are everywhere accessible to the sensorial nonverbal aspects of our minds and awareness. It is a slope whose slipperiness recurses by virtue of its effect upon (itself — which is to say) our minds.”

— an anonymous informant