Is Agile the finger or the moon?

On the Gemba Academy podcast, Michael Balle mentioned something that car designers have learned:

The feel of silence is not the absence of noise

In other words, although the formal definition of silence is the absence of noise, "silence" as a human experience is something different.

This reminds me of a similar phenomena with religions, for example, nominally Theravada Buddhism emphasises original, formal expression of scripture while nominally Mahayana Buddhism emphasises empirical validation and the experience of Buddhism.

In other words, instead of the formal definition of Buddhism as described in scripture, one might emphasise "Buddhism" as a human experience.  The feel of Buddhism is not found in the scripture.

A relatively well-known analogy is that of a finger pointing to the moon.  The point is to see and experience the moon, not the finger.

How might this apply to this thing we call Agile?  Is the feel of Agile found in the Manifesto?

What is the feel of Agile as opposed to the formal definition? What is the Agile moon versus the Agile finger?

I touched on something similar when exploring Agile doctrine but in this case, let's approach things from the perspective of "feeling".

This is what I think captures the essence of the experience and feel of Agile.  My attempt at a better "finger" if you will:

1. Empathy and insight created by problem solvers being close to the people and situations that have the problems they're trying to solve.
2. A sense of safety and confidence created by breaking down larger problems into smaller steps and validating each step.
3. A general feeling of dissatisfaction leading to and reinforced by a habit of continuous improvement.