I went to your homepage, you lead a very inspirational and accomplished life. It was awesome posting with you, you should join us more often, in conversation. Thanks, WesYes, I observed this in my father. Even though I wasn't born yet in my father's early training, he did "speak from a different time period" at certain points in his life.
In the 70s and 80s, his dojo was very much wrapped up in competition, and so I think his personal purpose changed. But there were times, especially when he would talk with friends from the "old school", when his early experience and training seemed to come over him like -- for lack of a better word -- a trance.
I think it a very provocative and intensely interesting subject, to explore how martial artists "straddled" two very different eras of training. I acknowledge my father's experience may not have been the common experience, or the exception to the rule, but I know there are/were others like him. Culture and distance from his training hombu probably played a lot into his development and the change in his purpose; for others, there may have been entirely different factors. But it still intrigues me.