What you are doing versus how to do it:

[Anonymous]

There is a big difference between someone telling you what they are doing and telling you how they are doing it. Take something as simple as opening and closing the joints. What you are doing is increasing and decreasing the space between the bones, but how you actually do that for real in a relaxed way is a whole different matter.

Intellectually you can understand the goal immediately, but try to do it and you’re completely lost. Where do you even start?

Neigung is even more difficult because you can’t usually get to the goal without multiple intermediary steps. So, I could tell you exactly what I’m doing and you could try for the rest of your life and never “get it”. Or, at best, you might get a close, but ultimately flawed, approximation of the actual thing.

Bruce has described students, disciplies, and lineage disciples in China. I think there is a direct parallel here.

I suspect that a student gets bit and pieces, and would have to piece together the disparate information over a long period of time. If they were lucky they might get the how, but the how is always flawed because it will be a detailed account of only one aspect not all of the pieces that are required to perform it well. The student is always missing something. The lineage disciple gets what, why, and how including the entire progression of learning that makes it all possible in the end. The disciple is somewhere in between.

Next time you are learning something, ask yourself whether you are being told what to do or how to do?

[Author]

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