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Thank you!

I read Heidegger in college as a philosophy major. As you suggest, much of it percolated through my being in ways not easily accessible to instrumental thought. But that, I take it, is what you say: his work provokes awareness not confinable to 'ideas'.

Two recent dreams: In one, a medicine man (is all i can say about him) insists on a single word: 'annealing', which I study upon waking... and begin to grasp as a message to open myself to sun and earth, allowing my heart and mind to become more ductile, less hard.

The second dream (last night!): A single German word emerges — 'abwehr' — which sets my mind in motion about the direction of force: Is it 'away from' or 'toward'? In the morning, I look it up and find (aside from the "Abwehr") an etymology that, with further pondering of the dream, leads me to "ward off" or "parry", which I ponder further until I understand: It is a teaching of the proper way to direct the 'force' of my being. it says ward off what is harmful, rather than try to attack it. More specifically, I take it as an encouragement to ward off anxiety — anxiety produced by the dislocations and obfuscations of technological dominating 'civilization'. It is at bottom, perhaps, a teaching to 'fear not'.

With thanks again for your essay...

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