What a fascinating discussion! Reading about Richard’s time as an artist I can’t help but think back to my days of doing Parkour as a teenager.
It was only when ‘I’ got out of the way and the painting painted itself, so to speak, or the drawing drew itself/ the sculpture sculpted itself/ the pottery formed itself (and so on) that craft – all the painstakingly acquired skills – became art.
Indeed this was precisely my experience and in my case it was the jumps doing themselves, and it was simply incredible to experience what the body was capable of. Those days of doing Parkour were in such sharp contrast to what would happen when I was back at school. Weekends would be spent naively enjoying what this body is capable of and then the week would be a painful return to reality, to the world of responsibilities and obligations and plans and schemes and the rest of it.
Back then I did consider this possibility, that what if I could live like this all the time. But the closest I found was this self-help author by the name of Dan Millman who pioneered what he called the peaceful warrior’s way. He was an ex-gymnast who (I assume) also wanted to experience life in this manner, of life living itself, just like the moments he would have experienced as an athlete.
The “peaceful warrior’s way” called for moment by moment attention to what is happening right now, however without the awareness of the existence of the third alternative it was of course inspired by the morals and ethics which came from spirituality. I simply didn’t know any better so that is what I did, but deep down what I always wanted was for life to live itself, not for ‘me’ to have to be continually mindful of applying various morals and ethics. How incredible that Richard was naive enough to “crack the code”, that having experienced actual perfection and purity he set out to affectively imitate that very perfection and purity rather than falling back to any of the ‘human wisdom’.
But what that teenage boy called Kuba wanted back then is what I can live now, that just as the jumps jumped themselves, life lives itself, and just like ‘I’ would get out of the way just before a big jump being done ‘I’ can get out of the way and allow this moment to happen of it’s own accord.
I can see that the whole thrust of the conditioning that one is subjected to during their acculturation demands the opposite of one, that ‘I’ learn to be proud (and humble), that ‘I’ learn to take responsibility and obligation, that ‘I’ learn to attempt to fit life into ‘my’ schemes and plans, that ‘I’ learn to “worry about the future” etc.
Whereas this direction of life living itself, to contemplate proceeding there it requires naivete, it is 180 degrees opposite. It is seeing that ‘I’ am not required at all, whereas in the ‘real world’ to consider such a thing is seen as utter foolishness, it is a dog eat dog world out there after all 
Where life lives itself there is no longer any possibility for obligation or responsibility, then 'I’ am freed from this task of living 'my’ life. Just like ‘Richard’ could not take credit for the art which painted itself 'I’ can neither be proud nor humble where life lives itself, which means 'I’ can finally rest from the task of maintaining 'myself’ and 'my’ life.
That’s not such a big ask is it, to finally have a rest from all that 
What I observe in ‘myself’ is that each time ‘I’ dare to proceed in this direction, of ‘my’ progressive retirement and eventually ‘my’ complete departure is that both the ‘human wisdom’ and ‘my’ instinctual nature will initially resist this.
From the eyes of ‘human wisdom’ it seems utterly foolish and from the eyes of ‘my’ passionate instinctual nature it feels dangerous. Yet looking back each time ‘I’ dared to release the controls and to step back a little more things only got better, and things have only been getting better, in every way going.
