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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 149 (Jul 2, 2023) — Living Inquiry, Self-Discovery Myths, Dancer and Dance, & More
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📚 Lifelong Learning
Live the Questions
I recently stumbled upon a concept that’s been the biggest epiphany I’ve had since discovering “transformative learning theory” (Book Summary | 🔒Premium Synthesis).
What is it? It’s called “living inquiry” or “living life as inquiry.” I immediately realized this is essentially what I’ve been doing for the last 8 years since my existential crisis: asking deep questions about myself and life itself, learning the art of living as a student of life, realizing life is both the training ground and playing field…
I binged Judi Marshall’s book: First Person Action Research: Living Life as Inquiry (book summary and Premium synthesis coming soon). In the meantime, I also read a couple research papers and summarized them in this new post: 10 Deep Characteristics of Living Life as Inquiry
Life also decided to show me a little synchronicity with this new On Being video published yesterday: Living the Questions
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
Explore more: How do I learn for life? 25+ posts on Lifelong Learning (Sloww Stage Support)
🌎 Lighter Living
Sunsets & Stargazing
When was the last time you watched the sunset and stargazed?
My wife, our dogs, and I spent the evening on our deck watching the sunset. I lost track of time and how long we were out there, but we made it beyond last light and could see the stars start shining one by one.
Staring at the stars each night (some call it “star therapy”) is perhaps the cheapest, easiest, quickest, most accessible and awe-inspiring thing you can do to reset perspective. For me, there’s no better reminder to take life less seriously.
“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” — Alan Watts
Explore more: How do I design a lighter lifestyle? 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Deeper Purpose
2 Big Myths about Finding Yourself
Myth #1: “I need to leave my life behind to find myself—quit my job, travel the world, live in caves/woods, become a monk, meditate all day, etc.”
The reality is that wherever you go, there you are. If you can’t find yourself here and now, you won’t find yourself anywhere. In my personal experience, I did all my initial self-questioning and self-discovery in my free time at home while still employed (for a full 2.5 years after my existential crisis)—no travel or caves/woods necessary.
- “To think that working on oneself requires ‘dropping-out’ of society is to miss the point. Certainly you must drop out, but the drop-out is internal, not external … No reason to not know your zip code.” — Ram Dass
- “Spirituality doesn’t sit there and say, ‘Renounce the world. Don’t deal with it. Go live in a cave somewhere.’ No. Spirituality says, ‘Don’t live in what your mind is making up because it takes you out of harmony with reality.'” — Michael Singer
- “When young people get excited about Zen they often give up schooling and go to some mountain or forest in order to sit. That kind of interest is not true interest.” — Shunryu Suzuki
- “The one obstacle is the mind, and it must be overcome whether in the home or in the forest.” — Ramana Maharshi
Myth #2: “Not only do I need to leave my life behind to find myself, but I need to be alone in solitude for the rest of my life.”
The reality is that contemplation and reflection in solitude are valuable parts and phases of the process. But, if the journey doesn’t lead you back to others and society, you haven’t gone far enough. For instance, Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” comes full circle and ends with a return to humanity. Jack Mezirow’s “transformative learning” journey (Book Summary | 🔒Premium Synthesis) also ends with a perspective transformation and reintegration with society. Ultimately, both culminate in giving yourself back to the world beyond yourself.
- “The adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom…back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet … The return and reintegration with society, which is indispensable to the continuous circulation of spiritual energy into the world, and which, from the standpoint of the community, is the justification of the long retreat, the hero himself may find the most difficult requirement of all.” — Joseph Campbell
Explore more: How do I find deeper purpose? 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Mental Mastery
Is “enlightenment” an evolutionary bug?
This continues to be a fascinating argument to explore: is “enlightenment” a bug in evolution that doesn’t aid survival?
Definition: First of all, I’m referring to “enlightenment” (🔒What is Enlightenment?) as subject and object merging (🔒What is the Subject-Object Relationship?) in nondual awareness, therefore dissolving the sense of separate self.
Argument #1: There are countless cases of people attempting “ego death” only to end up with spiritual bypassing, spiritual materialism/narcissism, depersonalization, dehumanization, derealization, dissociation, psychosis, etc. My guess here is that you have to actually develop a healthy ego before you can transcend it.
Argument #2: As a case of involuntary “enlightenment,” Jill Bolte Taylor had a left-hemisphere brain stroke which gave her the experience of being one with everything but at the expense of being completely nonfunctional in the world. When Shunryu Suzuki was asked, “How much ego do you need?” he answered, “Just enough so that you don’t step in front of a bus.” So, retaining some amount of subject-object differentiation seems important for survival.
Argument #3: One of the most actually “enlightened” humans I’ve investigated so far is Ramana Maharshi. He was apparently so unaware of his body and surroundings that he would walk somewhere and not know how his body got there, food had to be placed in his mouth to keep him from starving, insects/rodents would bite him without him noticing/caring, and he ultimately died because of a tumor in his arm that he didn’t take care of (asking/telling people, “Why are you so attached to this body? Let it go”). Subject and object merging this much don’t seem to help survival.
All in all, I don’t know the answer to this question. And, I’m not enlightened. But, still fun to think about!
Explore more: How do I master the mind? 75+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Beyond Mind
The Dancer & The Dance
1. First, you think you are the dancer dancing the dance. This is when you think you are your mind. You are the thinker, chooser, doer.
2. Then, you realize the dance is dancing the dancer. This is when you realize you are not your mind—when you are able to self-question and observe your mind as an object.
- “You suddenly realize that you are something other than what you thought you were. You thought you were at the center; now you experience yourself as satellite. You thought you were the dancer; you now experience yourself as the dance.” — Anthony de Mello
- “You realize that you don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.” — Eckhart Tolle
3. Ultimately, the dance and dancer are one. This is when your mind dissolves in being (in other words, when subject and object merge in abiding nondual awareness).
- “The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can’t tell the dancer from the dance.” — Stephen Mitchell (Tao Te Ching)
Explore more: How do I see beyond mind? 50+ posts on Spiritual Realization (Sloww Stage 4)
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Go with the Sloww,
Kyle Kowalski
Synthesizer & Solopreneur
