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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 161 (Nov 12, 2023) — Quitting Caffeine, Mental Prison, Me-Crisis, & 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 & Deeper Development
What’s between a question and an answer?
This new short post features excerpts from Francis Lucille and Rupert Spira on something most of us take for granted: the process of asking a question and answering it.
- “Understanding doesn’t happen in the mind. We may ponder a question and at some point the question vanishes and we have a flash of understanding, of insight. When the question is present, the answer, the understanding, is absent. Likewise, when the answer appears, the question has by definition disappeared. Then we say, ‘Now I have the answer.’ However, between asking the question and formulating the answer, the mind is not present, because the mind is simply the questioning and formulating process. It is at precisely this timeless moment when the mind is not present, between the question and the formulation of the answer, that understanding takes place. Therefore, if neither the question nor the formulation of the answer is present when understanding actually takes place, it cannot be said that we understand a thought.” — Francis Lucille
Explore more: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development (Sloww Stage Support)
🌎 Lighter Living
Have you tried quitting caffeine?
Last week I mentioned I’ve already done a no-buy year for clothing, just crossed the 6-month mark in a 🔒no-alcohol year, and am now getting started on a no-social year by deleting all social media apps from my phone (will still use them on my computer, just not my phone). Why not add one more challenge? A no-caffeine year.
Someone asked if I just do this stuff for fun. I wish! I don’t do anything just for the challenge; that’s not motivating enough for me to stick with something. There needs to be a deeper personal reason that provides sufficient motivational fuel for me to change.
For instance, I quit alcohol 6 months ago after getting fed up with headaches and bad sleep from even just 1-2 drinks. Even a small amount of alcohol became a net negative in my life that outweighed any positives from drinking—which made it an easy decision to quit cold turkey after socially drinking for ~23 years. Pain > Positives = Change.
For caffeine, I got a late start on coffee and didn’t even start drinking it until my mid-20s (~13 years now). A couple months ago I went a few days without coffee and had caffeine withdrawal headaches for days. Last weekend the headaches happened again. And, similar to alcohol, I don’t even drink that much coffee (1-2/day). Once again, I’m sick of the headaches, so it’s another easy decision. Pain > Positives = Change.
Explore more: 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Higher Purpose
Is the meta-crisis a me-crisis?
This is a new Premium post, but I’m making it public due to the importance and urgency: Is the Meta-Crisis a Me-Crisis?
Here’s the gist of my thinking:
Our #1, ultimate challenge, root cause, generator function, most urgent and important problem is: ourselves, or our “selves” (in other words, who we think we are; we are our minds; our present and predominant subject-object relationship).
The solution to the me-crisis: awareness of our “selves” (in other words, more people realizing they are not who they think they are; more people realizing they are aware of their minds; more people questioning, investigating, witnessing, and transcending their socialized minds; more people changing/developing their subject-object relationship).
- “Despite all the concrete problems faced by society, the most pressing problems are actually ‘in our heads’ (i.e., in our minds and souls, we are in a crisis of the psyche) … The meta-crisis—the crisis that contains all of the other crises—is something like a crisis of the human mind … There are a large number of crises drawing increasing amounts of public attention, such as the ecological, economic, immigration, geopolitical, and energy crises. But there is also an invisible crisis unfolding within our own minds and cultures that is getting much less attention. This is the meta-crisis, which has to do with how humans understand themselves and the world … It is the psyche—the human dimension—that is in the direst of straits.” — Zak Stein
Explore more: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Mental Mastery
How do you break out of mental prison?
This new post is a collection of 50+ quotes on breaking your brain chains and freeing your mind from psychological prison.
Luckily, we have Anthony de Mello to help us:
1. “First, realize that you are surrounded by prison walls, that your mind has gone to sleep. It does not even occur to most people to see this, so they live and die as prison inmates. Most people end up being conformists; they adapt to prison life. A few become reformers; they fight for better living conditions in the prison, better lighting, better ventilation. Hardly anyone becomes a rebel, a revolutionary who breaks down the prison walls. You can only be a revolutionary when you see the prison walls in the first place.”
2. “Second, contemplate the walls, spend hours just observing your ideas, your habits, your attachments and your fears without any judgment and condemnation. Look at them and they will crumble.”
3. “Third, spend some time observing the things and people around you. Look, but really look, as if for the very first time, at the face of a friend, a leaf, a tree, a bird in flight, the behavior and mannerisms of the people around you. Really see them and hopefully you will see them afresh as they are in themselves without the dulling, stupefying effect of your ideas and habits.”
4. “The fourth and most important step: Sit down quietly and observe how your mind functions. There is a steady flow of thoughts and feelings and reactions there. Watch the whole of it for long stretches of time the way you watch a river or a movie. You will soon find it so much more absorbing than any river or movie. And so much more life-giving and liberating. After all can you even be said to be alive if you are not even conscious of your own thoughts and reactions? The unaware life, it is said, is not worth living. It cannot even be called life; it is a mechanical, robot existence; a sleep, an unconsciousness, a death; and yet this is what people call human life!”
- “So watch, observe, question, explore and your mind will come alive and shed its fat and become keen and alert and active. Your prison walls will come tumbling down till not one stone of the Temple will be left upon another, and you will be blessed with the unimpeded vision of things as they are, the direct experience of Reality.” — Anthony de Mello
Pair with another new post: The Ultimate Free Will Guide for Open Minds & Sincere Seekers
Explore more: 75+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Spiritual Seeing
Who am I?
Last week I mentioned that Rupert Spira sent me down the Bernardo Kastrup rabbit hole. Well, now both Spira and Kastrup have connected me to Swami Sarvapriyananda. The first 20 minutes of this are a must-watch intro.
This week I also read the short book Who Am I? by Swami Sarvapriyananda (Book Summary).
- “Swami Vivekananda has said that he who runs away from the world to meditate and die in a Himalayan cave searching for God has missed the way. He who plunges headlong into the vanities of the world—he too has missed the way. Then what is the way? The way is to spiritualize your everyday life … We should realize ourselves as pure consciousness—Turiya—and everyone and everything as none other than the same Turiya, and live life in peace and fullness and joy. Realize the divinity within yourself and the spiritual oneness of the whole universe. Manifest that divinity in daily life through peace, love, and service to all beings. That is the spiritualization of everyday life.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Explore more: 50+ posts on Spiritual Seeing (Sloww Stage 4)
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
