Then it occurred to me that, while I have long called myself a “thought worker”, that the term “perception worker” might be more apt for my aspirations.
When you spend an hour living at the level of sensation and subtle affect, you are not thinking. There are no words. This is the point: you get beyond thoughts by focusing on the body.
Within the Greek tradition most of our intellectuals live in, there is little room for this sort of activity. We think of intellectuals as the sorts of people who privilege ideas roughly the way Socrates and Plato did. But there is so much more, so much that can be perceived, but not spoken. One can speak of the “unspeakable”, and one can incorporate the “unspeakable” into a philosophical system, but one cannot LIVE it without living it; and having lived it, one can justifiably wonder about the relative importance of ideas for a life well lived, compared to everything that is beyond, outside the fence.
You have to have room for “that”. “That” has to suffice for some statements, some communications, some understandings, conveyed personally and face to face.