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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 164 (Dec 3, 2023) — Living Life as Inquiry, Best of Munger, Witness Consciousness, & 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 does it mean to live life as inquiry?
Discovering the idea of “living life as inquiry” or “living inquiry” is one of the biggest epiphanies I’ve had this year aside from discovering “transformative learning theory.” Check out the book summary of First Person Action Research by Judi Marshall, 10 characteristics of living life as inquiry, and the synthesis of all 20 characteristics (🔒).
Why is it such a big idea? Living life as inquiry is exactly what I’ve been doing the last decade! Deep questions about life lead to ever-deeper questions, and eventually you end up questioning what’s been right under your nose the entire time (aka yourself or your self). All in all, questioning leads to learning leads to development leads to questioning leads to learning leads to development leads to… (you get the point). In other words, the seemingly simple act of curiously inquiring leads to perspective transformation and new ways of seeing yourself and the world.
- “I have come to term this approach ‘living life as inquiry,’ cautiously expressing my tacit knowing of the processes involved as: a range of beliefs, strategies and ways of behaving which encourage me to treat little as fixed, finished, clear-cut. Rather I have an image of living continually in process, adjusting, seeing what emerges, bringing things into question … attempting to open to continual question what I know, feel, do and want, and finding ways to engage actively in this questioning and process its stages.” — Judi Marshall
Explore more: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development (Sloww Stage Support)
🌎 Lighter Living
Are you taking your daily MEDS?
Healthy living doesn’t have to be hard. Just focus on the basics: MEDS (Meditation, Exercise, Diet, Sleep)
Explore more: 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Higher Purpose
The Best of Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger passed away on Tuesday at the age of 99. A year or two ago, I ventured down the Munger rabbit hole. I even dedicated an entire monthly module of Mini Mind to the 25 psychological tendencies from his “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment” speech.
Also check out his 25+ best quotes to live a wise and wealthy life, 10 guiding principles from his investing principles checklist, and his wit and wisdom in “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” (Book Summary).
Bonus: A newly updated version of “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” comes out in a couple days.
Explore more: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Mental Mastery
Latest Thinking on Brain Hemispheres
Iain McGilchrist is back with some new presentation/lecture videos this week (here and here). The first thing to understand is how the brain hemispheres differ; the second thing to understand is how the hemispheres shape the world.
Brain Hemisphere Overview:
This infographic is synthesized from McGilchrist’s book The Master & His Emissary (Book Summary):
The Hemisphere Hypothesis:
In a nutshell, McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis is that the problems in the modern world are a reflection of left hemisphere (“the emissary”) dominance over the right hemisphere (“the master”)—whereas the golden ages of history have been the right relationship of right hemisphere over the left hemisphere.
- “I don’t think that we have just run into a lot of accidental problems that have come out of nowhere and thwarted our progress. I think the problems we face are of one piece, and they depend on a particular—ultimately malignant—view of who we are, what the world is, and how we relate. And, that way of thinking is associated particularly as it happens with the left brain hemisphere.” — Iain McGilchrist
The image below comes from McGilchrist’s book The Matter With Things and shows a hierarchy of values according to philosopher Max Scheler. McGilchrist says “we live in an upside-down world” where we’ve inverted the hierarchy according to the left hemisphere and only currently respect the very bottom values of utility and pleasure. Instead, we need to reprioritize the right hemisphere where the lower values are in service of the higher values.
Explore more: 75+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Spiritual Seeing
What is witness consciousness?
I just read Nisargadatta Maharaj’s late-life teachings in Beyond Freedom and decided to synthesize everything he said about the ‘witness’ (or ‘watcher’) in that book as well as his classic I Am That. The result is this new synthesis + infographic (🔒) which turned out even better than expected.
To go a step further, I also curated everything about witness consciousness (🔒) from not just Nisargadatta Maharaj, but also Anthony de Mello, Michael Singer, Swami Sarvapriyananda, Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Douglas Harding, Francis Lucille, and Rupert Spira. Compare and contrast teachers/teachings, and most importantly, put it all into practice!
“Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind. That is enough.” — Nisargadatta Maharaj
Explore more: 50+ posts on Spiritual Seeing (Sloww Stage 4)
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
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