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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 112 (Jul 31, 2022) — Balancing Life, Subject-Object Theory, A Brief History of Everything, & More
Happy Sunday!
Here’s the latest from Sloww along with the most interesting things I discovered last week.
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🌀 Sloww Stuff
🆕 Book Summary: “A Brief History of Everything” by Ken Wilber (Book Summary)
I just wrapped up my third Ken Wilber book (the other two were “A Theory of Everything” and “The Integral Vision”). I’ve also skimmed “Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion” by Frank Visser, and I’m about to skim “Integral Life Practice.” I have other Wilber books on my reading list, but I may pause on reading them until he releases his new book in 2023 called “Making Room for Everything”—aiming to be the latest and greatest intro / overview / summary of Integral Theory. I’ll eventually publish a full synthesis of Integral Theory, but in the meantime, this additional new post has some good highlights: 20 Tenets of Integral Theory: An Intro to the Philosophical Principles of Ken Wilber.
“‘Integrative’ simply means that this approach attempts to include as many important truths from as many disciplines as possible—from the East as well as the West, from premodern and modern and postmodern, from the hard sciences of physics to the tender sciences of spirituality.” — Ken Wilber
🔒 Sloww Society Exclusive: What’s wrong with nondual spirituality?
Last week’s newsletter featured a video series from Tim Freke and Jessica Nathanson about the possible pitfalls of nonduality. I watched the series and summarized it exclusively for the Sloww Society community. Highlights include: Reductionist Spirituality, Nondual vs Unidual, Unividualism & Unividuals, Both/And, Oneness vs Unity, Paralogical Thinking, and more!
🧠 Modern Knowledge
Subject-Object Theory of Human Development
I originally highlighted Robert Kegan’s Theory of Adult Development in 🔒Sloww Sunday #101. But, somehow one of Kegan’s biggest insights didn’t fully sink in for me until I read Ken Wilber’s book “A Brief History of Everything.”
The big epiphany is that the subject of one stage of development becomes the object of the subject at the next stage of development. This isn’t exactly easy to explain, so here’s a visual (specifically check out the two middle columns and arrows):
Ken Wilber talks about reaching a higher level of development where one starts to “dis-identify with the mind itself, which is precisely why it can witness the mind, see the mind, experience the mind. The mind is no longer merely a subject; it is starting to become an object. An object of the observing Self, the Witness.” (Note: This is exactly why I felt it was necessary to distinguish between Sloww Stage 3 & Sloww Stage 4).
Can we go further? At the deepest levels of development, Wilber says, “Awareness is no longer split into a seeing subject in here and a seen object out there. There is just pure seeing. Consciousness and its display are not-two … There is no separation between subject and object, between you and the entire natural world ‘out there.’ Inside and outside—they don’t have any meaning anymore.”
“In the gap between the Subject and the Object lies the entire misery of humankind.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
☯️ Timeless Wisdom
The Five Balls of Life
1 min read | Sloww
A classic short story about balance:
“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit — and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.” — Brian Dyson (1991 Georgia Tech commencement speech)
🤯 Mind Expanding
Is matter to space what thought is to consciousness?
3 min read | Sloww
Still thinking about this from David Bohm’s “Thought as a System” (Book Summary).
“The idea is that space is mostly full, and that matter is a small ripple on it … Similarly, we could say that whatever is behind the mind—the consciousness—is a vast stream and on the surface are ripples which are thought.” — David Bohm
💭 Deep Thought
Waking up for the world:
“To become more conscious is the greatest gift anyone can give to the world.” — David Hawkins
“Self-realisation is the best help that you can possibly render to others.” — Ramana Maharishi
💬 Wise Words
It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.
— Wendell Berry
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Have an alive week!
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
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