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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 153 (Aug 13, 2023) — Mindful Inquiry, No Alcohol, Simple Choice, & More
Sloww Sunday shares my latest and greatest creations and curations to 10,000+ students of life. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this newsletter to other lifelong learners.
📚 Lifelong Learning
Inquiry & Mindfulness are One and the Same
These quotes on inquiry come from Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn:
Inquiry is living mindfully:
- “The spirit of inquiry is fundamental to living mindfully. Inquiry is not just a way to solve problems. It is a way to make sure you are staying in touch with the basic mystery of life itself and of our presence here … You don’t have to be still to inquire. Inquiry and mindfulness can occur simultaneously in the unfolding of your daily life. In fact, inquiry and mindfulness are one and the same thing, come to from different directions.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Inquiry is questioning, questioning, questioning:
- “Inquiry means asking questions, over and over again. Do we have the courage to look at something, whatever it is, and to inquire, what is this? What is going on? It involves looking deeply for a sustained period, questioning, questioning, what is this? What is wrong? What is at the root of the problem? What is the evidence? What are the connections? What would a happy solution look like? Questioning, questioning, continually questioning.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Inquiry is asking without answering:
- “Inquiry doesn’t mean looking for answers, especially quick answers which come out of superficial thinking. It means asking without expecting answers, just pondering the question, carrying the wondering with you, letting it percolate, bubble, cook, ripen, come in and out of awareness, just as everything else comes in and out of awareness.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Inquiry is listening more than thinking:
- “Inquiry is not so much thinking about answers, although the questioning will produce a lot of thoughts that look like answers. It really involves just listening to the thinking that your questioning evokes, as if you were sitting by the side of the stream of your own thoughts, listening to the water flow over and around the rocks, listening, listening, and watching an occasional leaf or twig as it is carried along.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
Inquiry ends up doing you, vs you doing it:
- “Inquiry itself leads to openings, to new understandings and visions and actions. Inquiry takes on a life of its own after a while. It permeates the pores of your being and breathes new vitality, vibrancy, and grace into the bland, the humdrum, the routine. Inquiry will wind up ‘doing you’ rather than you doing it. This is a good way to find the path that lies closest to your heart. After all, the journey is one of heroic proportions, but so much more so if enlivened by wakefulness and a commitment to adventurous inquiry.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
🌎 Lighter Living
100 days without alcohol!
I’ve successfully made it through a wedding, wine tastings (where everyone was tasting except me), dinners, and nights out with no alcohol and no issues. We also still have plenty of alcohol in the house, but it hasn’t been tempting. I think quitting has been relatively smooth sailing because it finally reached a net negative where the cons far outweighed the pros. It’s like my mind automatically thinks about the repercussions now (e.g. hangover and bad sleep from even a small amount of alcohol).
Prior to this 100 days, I quit for 45 days last year. Prior to that, I never took an intentional break from alcohol in 20+ years. For those interested in easing into a no-alcohol year, non-alcoholic drink replacements can be a nice placebo to partake in the ritual here and there (it’s been eye-opening to see how many non-alcoholic options exist now). Here’s to the next 265 days!
Pair with:
- Alcohol & Health: What Drinking does to the Brain & Body (Andrew Huberman Podcast Summary)
- 🔒 Behind the Scenes: Why I’m Quitting Alcohol
Explore more: 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Deeper Purpose
Wrapping up the Birth Lottery & Free Will (for now)
Sorry if you’re sick of hearing me talk about the birth lottery and free will. If it’s not completely obvious by now, they are some of the biggest realizations I’ve had so far in the ~8 years since my existential crisis. That being said, I’m wrapping up these topics for a bit (at least until Robert Sapolsky’s new book comes out in October).
In the last year, I’ve explored Galen Strawson’s “basic argument” against moral responsibility, John Rawls’ “original position” or “veil of ignorance” thought experiment (and also outlined 🆕 my own thought experiment), Douglas Harding’s “headless way” exercises, and just wrapped up another deep dive into the birth lottery with 10 videos, 25+ implications, and 50+ quotes.
Needless to say, the realizations of the 🔒subject-object relationship, 🔒the strangest thing, 🔒my holy shit moment, and 🔒my birth lottery ticket have continued to sink in more deeply over the last year with new understandings of the 🔒myth of ultimate moral responsibility and the 🔒(mis)attribution of agency. Here’s the latest on 🔒how I live with all these realizations.
Here are all 30+ posts available.
Explore more: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Better Mind
Is there an example of someone living through the Ego Development Theory stages?
I’m so glad you asked!
First, what is Ego Development Theory? Here’s a visual summary in a nutshell:
In the above image, see the dotted line in the middle? That’s “the watershed” where one develops beyond the conventional stages into the postconventional stages.
The entire Sloww website is essentially 500+ posts detailing my personal development journey from conventional stages through the watershed into postconventional stages (all sparked by an existential crisis ~8 years ago in late 2015):
A couple years ago, I gave myself an 🔒EDT self-assessment. I also tracked 🔒how my personal journey (what I call “Sloww stages”) maps to the EDT stages. Here’s a visual overview of what that looks like (the notes on the top of the arc below outline my personal journey):
So, what is Sloww? Sloww is a deepening inquiry into myself (aka ‘my self’). I was sparked into inquiry by an existential crisis (25+ posts on Lifelong Learning | Sloww Stage Support). I then inquired into my lifestyle: (100+ posts on Intentional Living | Sloww Stage 1). I then inquired into my life purpose (50+ posts on Life Purpose | Sloww Stage 2). I then inquired into my mind (75+ posts on Mental Mastery | Sloww Stage 3). Now, the inquiry is beyond mind (50+ posts on Spiritual Realization | Sloww Stage 4). Here’s what the entire journey looks like in a single visual:
Explore more: 75+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Beyond Mind
Tea or Coffee?
🆕 Tea or Coffee: Who is the Chooser of a Choice? (Rupert Spira Short Excerpt)
This is a short excerpt from Rupert Spira about a seemingly simple choice between tea or coffee. But, who is the chooser of the choice? It also includes a memorable analogy:
- “Jean Klein likened the separate self to the clown that comes onstage after the curtain has fallen to receive the applause. It’s a very nice analogy of the separate self … That chooser is not there. The notion of a chooser is simply itself a thought which appears retrospectively. The thought says, ‘I was there in between each thought choosing it’. It’s the clown that takes the bow. It wasn’t actually present, but it claims responsibility afterwards.” — Rupert Spira
- “My teacher (Jean Klein) used to say the mind is like a clown taking the bow after the ballerina’s performance to claim the applause … In fact, the clown didn’t dance. The thinker thought didn’t think … There is no local chooser. Obviously, things get decided somehow or happen. So, in a poetic way, we could say that the universe makes a decision.” — Francis Lucille
Explore more: 50+ posts on Spiritual Realization (Sloww Stage 4)
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Go with the Sloww,
Kyle Kowalski
Synthesizer & Solopreneur
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