Mike Gee:
"do what you do, the rest will follow"
I disagree with this strongly, it's the worst approach in my opinion. First you need to be acutely aware of what you're doing and what you're doing it for, to know it as well as humanly possible. Otherwise expectations and vague hopes will make you experience fake realizations that have no real bearing in the course of practice, and the whole of your practice will ultimately be a lie.
You follow Theravada, I prefer Mahayana, and as an example I can put out my own misinterpretation of emptiness. Until I started studying the philosophy behind it (actual writings of people who propagated Mahayana with its different branches of philosophy) I couldn't see that it was wrong. Maybe it wasn't *all* wrong, but the emphasis was so different that it ultimately distorted the whole notion of emptiness. That taught me a lot, and now I would advise anybody to do the same, to study the philosophy of their buddhist branch in depth. Otherwise it's a blind approach, and whatever you realize will be an expression of your own vague desires. We're ruled by our minds, and if your mind tells you that X is this or that, then this will be what you will be "realizing" eventually, not the real thing. To avoid being duped by your own self you need to study what the real thing is, first. And no matter if your mind cannot really grasp it, it should grasp it as well as humanly possible first, so that you'd be moving in the right direction in the course of practice instead of leaping aside whenever you encounter something that your mind finds vaguely resembling your own desired results.
What I would like to ask, techniquewise is if there is another way of seeing them?
Maybe, I can't see why not. But who cares, you already have a technique that's supposed to work, inventing something new that could prove to be disfunctional is a dubious idea.
But I am not interested in content analysis, nor pali words, I am interested in moving forward, so this is the place!
That's great but in your shoes I would define for myself what "moving forward" is, because it could be very different from how your buddhist branch defines it ;). Like, there are many unhappy people everywhere that come to spirituality in hope to get rid of negative emotions and in case of buddhism they start to treat it like something that can give you a permanent emotional drug or change your emotions. I'm sure that whatever they achieve, it won't be enlightenment matching the notion of enlightenment in any branch of buddhism, unfortunately, it's more like psychotherapy by a placebo effect. We're pretty much limited to what we consider to be progress, and if we want one thing, then all other possibilities will remain hidden from our view, and I don't believe that they can automatically reveal themselves to those who don't care for them. If you're focused on something specific you're blind to anything that is beyond it! And there's way too much room for all kind of misinterpretation, I'm sure that lots of people would eagerly interprete normal bad mood as "dark night" and such, you can't afford to do it if you care for results.
I guess that the meaning is somehow that staying in this flow of the present moment will ultimately reveal (not intellectually) that everything IS impermanent, etc...
My guess is that it can reveal this, or it can reveal anything else that you will misinterprete as it. Not that it's good to dwell on it all the time, you can say that it's a matter of luck \ karma, but in order to minimize the risk you have to know as well as possible what it is that you're looking for and be cruelly honest with yourself afterwards. And for that studying old texts is helpful, blind action or anybody's advise won't make any difference. My opinion.