I think the fact that it feels silly to you is telling. I remember having this reaction before I went to CFAR and actually tried circling. In my (brief) experience circling, the point is that there’s an emotional dimension to “what it’s like to be you” that is somewhat orthogonal to our everyday experience, and that interacting via that dimension is important (in part for the reasons Selquist mentions).
Perhaps you’re pattern-matching circling onto “things weird people do”, maybe it feels weird because you’re actually uncomfortable making yourself vulnerable, or maybe it’s something else. I think the best thing to do here would be to try things—circling isn’t an expensive or dangerous exploration move.
This reaction is why I’m pretty happy that I had my first experience with it before I knew what it was at all. That way I got to have those concerns with built-in context.
Maybe, but doubt. I think I did express myself poorly—I’m generally pretty tolerant of weirdness and even awkwardness. I think what it evokes me is more like pointless meeting where I have to try very hard not to roll my eyes at how silly what we are doing is, and how pointless, and how obvious it would be to an external observer.
But like I said, I would try circling with an open mind any chance I got. I’ve only got a sense of what it looks like from the outside and that’s very different from what it is on the inside, for many many things (creative work, yoga, playing video games, …).
I think the fact that it feels silly to you is telling. I remember having this reaction before I went to CFAR and actually tried circling. In my (brief) experience circling, the point is that there’s an emotional dimension to “what it’s like to be you” that is somewhat orthogonal to our everyday experience, and that interacting via that dimension is important (in part for the reasons Selquist mentions).
Perhaps you’re pattern-matching circling onto “things weird people do”, maybe it feels weird because you’re actually uncomfortable making yourself vulnerable, or maybe it’s something else. I think the best thing to do here would be to try things—circling isn’t an expensive or dangerous exploration move.
This reaction is why I’m pretty happy that I had my first experience with it before I knew what it was at all. That way I got to have those concerns with built-in context.
Maybe, but doubt. I think I did express myself poorly—I’m generally pretty tolerant of weirdness and even awkwardness. I think what it evokes me is more like pointless meeting where I have to try very hard not to roll my eyes at how silly what we are doing is, and how pointless, and how obvious it would be to an external observer.
But like I said, I would try circling with an open mind any chance I got. I’ve only got a sense of what it looks like from the outside and that’s very different from what it is on the inside, for many many things (creative work, yoga, playing video games, …).