As someone who actually practices medieval fighting arts I have to take objection to this:
Miyamoto Musashi said:
“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means.”
This is of course a generalization. The reality is more complex. Never forget that the real primary goal of yours is to stay alive and unharmed(at least that’s my goal), so sometimes a parry makes sense, even if you can’t cut the enemy in the same movement. You could cut or kill the enemy a lot of times if you simply ignore his blade and go straight for the attack/counter-attack, but that would also mean that you would be killed or injured.
Btw you don’t want to always cut the enemy. Sometimes your objective will be to disarm him and take him captive without seriously injuring him.
But in GENERAL his advice is correct: defend and attack(cut) in the same movement, that’s a good guideline although it’s not always possible to do that depending on the actual situation.
Btw generating the entire art from withhin yourself would be kinda hard like trying to generate physics from yourself, you better have a good teacher. Of course you probably mean that you should be able to understand the idea behind each move so if the teacher doesn’t explain it you better think about it and try to figure it out for yourself.
Consider two identical flywheels made of iron:
a) starts in room temperature, you apply force and make it spin. b) stands still but you heat it uniformily with several flames.
Suppose that in both cases the same amount of energy has been put into the flywheels.
In both cases the atoms are moving in high speed. Now if you look at the flywheels with an infrared camera would they look the same? This is not a rethorical question.