  In this paper, we study the behavior of categorical actions of a Lie algebra
$\mathfrak{g}$ under the deformation of their spectra. We give conditions under
which the general point of a family of categorical actions of $\mathfrak{g}$
carry an action of a larger Lie algebra $\mathfrak{\tilde{g}}$, which we call
an {\bf unfurling} of $\mathfrak{g}$. This is closely related to the folding of
Dynkin diagrams, but to avoid confusion, we think it is better to use a
different term.
  Our motivation for studying this topic is the difficulty of proving that
explicitly presented algebras and categories in the theory of higher
representation theory have the "expected size." Deformation is a powerful
technique for showing this because of the upper semicontinuity of dimension
under deformation. In particular, we'll use this to show the non-degeneracy (in
the sense of Khovanov-Lauda) of the 2-quantum group $\mathcal U$ for an
arbitrary Cartan datum and any homogeneous choice of parameters.
