14 Comments

A touching post. I was wondering if the ultraspeaking is changing your writing style. It felt slightly warmer than usual. Which I thought was great.

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Yes! Well noticed, thank you... It's quite different. But maybe only for this post.

I was going to deliver this as voice: to demonstrate that I had learned something in the six hours; because I want to switch more broadly from text to voice for explaining many things; and because the inherently personal nature of the story seems better suited for voice.

So the text started out as a series of bullet points for organizing the talk. Unfortunately, I was both sick and short of time when I was aiming to record it, and found it much more difficult than I had anticipated. (Maybe six hours training isn't the whole thing :) I made the notes more and more detailed, and then ran out of time and decided to post it as text instead.

So the tone of the piece is more informal and conversational than my usual writing. But also that seems appropriate for explaining emotions I rarely talk about publicly.

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Ah, that’s very interesting. Thank you for sharing that background.

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What stands out most to me is the pedagogy. It seems like Ultraspeaking is one of the few places that understands that you learn what you do.

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Thanks a lot for this. I have long suspected I am autistic but recently I actually started considering it as a real possibility, what that would entail (seems like it shuts most doors). But hey, if you think you're autistic and this helped you be a better conversationalist, this is right up my alley. We'll see, I'll try some games.

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I haven't been formally diagnosed as autistic, but seem to fit the description for "high-functioning autism." For what it's worth, that hasn't shut most doors for me! It has made some things more difficult, and perhaps some impossible, but I don't regret it overall.

However, autism is a spectrum and everyone's experience is different. Perhaps it doesn't matter whether or not one "is" autistic... it may be more important to explore what is easy and what is difficult, and ways that the difficulties may be managed or overcome.

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Do you think it'd be of much use to someone who has no problem speaking without thinking, suffers no speaking anxiety (unless you count slight fear about speaking too much) and who thinks by talking, but whose main issue is thus speaking too much in free form context instead of quickly/effectively distilling (prioritising) the key things into more acceptable wordcounts?

I have signed up and did the free rapid fire games, which are fun indeed. Thank you for sharing!

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I didn't know the answer to this, so I asked Charlie, who said that yes, it could be helpful. Some of the exercises do train you in distillation, and also in awareness of how you are being in interaction, so that accidentally going on too much is less likely. Charlie recommends the "Snowglobe" game particularly for this (I think that's one of the free ones). Forced pauses cause you to momentarily reconsider what you are saying and how, and that helps prioritize on-the-fly.

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Thank you!

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It sounds like a great experience. Maybe this is similar to the flow that musicians cultivate when learning to improvise? When playing music, timing is critical.

I think my main objection is: what if I don't *want* to speak without thinking? When put that way, it sounds kind of bad? Maybe it usually turns out well. Maybe it even sounds better to your audience. But I still rather like pausing to think things through, as a general habit?

I suppose you don't have to do it all the time.

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Yes; I don't know what the official response would be (since I've had six total hours training). However, it would seem that this trains a capability that may be useful or not depending on circumstances. That is: it's not that one should *always* speak before thinking, but that in many situations it is valuable to be able to. Not only for social reasons, but because spontaneous speech may have its own wisdom that could be obscured by thought.

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Thanks for the interesting post!

Coincidentally, I'd meant to look around for something like this, because I read your writing about tantra on vividness a while ago, decided that it sounded great, but also that the impression of it I'd formed in my head was probably completely inaccurate and actually described a public speaking class (or maybe exposure therapy), and so I should try that instead.

Although from your conclusion, I'm assuming this is somewhat close to your point too.

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That's funny!

Charlie and I are planning a follow-up podcast discussion about the Vajrayana/Ultraspeaking connections.

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Thanks! This puts Ultraspeaking firmly back on my to-explore list, for myself and for the tool belt of Intentional Society practices.

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