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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 190 (Jun 9, 2024) — Luck, Same Team, Three Deep Questions, & More
Sloww exists to share the art of living with students of life. The Sloww Sunday newsletter delivers my latest and greatest creations and curations to 10,000+ lifelong learners every week. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding this newsletter to others.
🆕 New News
🎙️ New Podcast Video:
The audio of my Curious Humans podcast with Jonny Miller originally aired last year, but I just posted the video version. You may recognize Jonny as the founder of Nervous System Mastery—here were my takeaways from his NSM course (🔒).
🧠 Synthesizer Course Updates:
All my secrets about synthesizing are finally shared in the new Synthesizer course. There are now 75 synthesizers signed up—that means only 25 spots are left for free live calls for life ($500 value)! When they’re gone, they’re gone forever—so join today before the first live call this week on Fri, June 14th.
After that, there will be a higher price plan for the live calls:
· First 100 students: Course + Community + Calls = $495
· Students #101 & beyond: Course + Community + Calls = $995
Learn more about the course or Join Synthesizer
PS: Want a couple free lessons? If you’re interested in the course, spend 15 minutes watching these three videos in order: Synthesizer Manifesto (5 mins), The Challenge (4 mins), & The Vision (6 mins). Both The Challenge and The Vision are 2 of the 75 course lessons—I’m giving them away as a free preview so you can get the gist and see if they resonate.
📚 Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development
Three Deep Developmental Questions
- Question #1: “What is it like to be you?” This has to be one of the most interesting questions you could ever ask someone (pair with the thought experiment on conscious experience in Sloww Sunday #186). How would you answer this for yourself?
- Question #2: “Can you only meet others as deeply as you’ve met yourself?” This seems like a “yes” in my experience. Someone who is more mature in later psychologically developed stages can meet someone at less mature, earlier stages—but not vice versa. You can only “see” what you’ve seen—you can’t yet see what you can’t yet see. Pair with: horizontal and vertical development 101 and the subject-object relationship (🔒).
- Question #3: “Do all of humanity’s problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room alone?” This one comes from the famous Blaise Pascal quote, and it also seems like a “yes” in my experience. Why? Because humanity’s problems come from those who think they are their mind. Sitting quietly in a room alone reveals you are aware of your mind. Ultimately, you can call it awareness, awakening, metacognition, psychological development, or anything else—let’s just all be aware of our minds! Pair with: is the meta-crisis a me-crisis?
🔒 Sloww Premium deep dive:
- How Many Perspectives Can You Take?
- What is the Subject-Object Relationship?
- Ego Development Theory Self-Assessment
Explore more: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development (Sloww Stage Support)
🌎 Lighter Living
Transformation without the To-Dos
Don’t listen to what I call ‘transformation to-dos’. I’ve experienced incredible transformation over the last 10 years, but people are often surprised to hear I didn’t do any of these:
- travel the world
- go on retreats
- have a coach
- psychedelics
- meditate
To be clear, I’m not opposed to any of those things in the least. Life just hasn’t called me to them. My main point is that you don’t have to do them to experience transformation. Many people seem to approach transformation as a checklist of to-dos, and I rarely see that work. So, what did I do that worked? Questioning that led to learning that led to development … which led to deeper questioning to deeper learning to deeper development … which led to ever-deeper questioning to (you get the picture)…
All in all, learning (horizontal development) can be a catalyst for development (vertical development):
- “Vertical development is a good outcome of healthy horizontal development, so those two are a polarity—they are interdependent and interconnected.” — Beena Sharma
- “Thinking about and learning new distinctions (horizontal development) is one of the levers in ongoing (vertical) development. Its power must not be underestimated … Being exposed to people and meaning-making beyond one’s own does seem to stimulate and support growth.” — Susanne Cook-Greuter
Explore more: 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Higher Purpose
Will humanity ever realize we’re all on the same team?
I took a poll on Twitter. It was a small sample size, but I can’t say I’m surprised (although I voted “Yes”):
Human against human (aka “us vs them”) has been a recurring theme in humanity’s history:
It also goes beyond just human vs human drama, and reminds me of this quote and image:
- “God against man. Man against God. Man against nature. Nature against man. Nature against God. God against nature. Very funny religion!” — D.T. Suzuki
Explore more: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Mental Mastery
Is life all luck?
Is it luck all the way down? It seems like in order to think clearly we should be constantly acknowledging the role of luck in absolutely everything. Personally, my luck in life has been top of mind ever since I dissected my birth lottery ticket (🔒).
Philosopher Galen Strawson has some good stuff on luck including his essay “Luck Swallows Everything”—also featured in his book Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, etc (which I read and enjoyed but haven’t summarized yet).
“The way you are is, in every last detail, a matter of luck—good or bad … In the end, luck swallows everything: this is one way of conveying the fundamental respect in which there can be no ultimate responsibility.” — Galen Strawson
More from Strawson:
- The Basic Argument against Ultimate Moral Responsibility (Galen Strawson Summary)
- Condemned to Choose: Cake vs Oxfam Thought Experiment (Galen Strawson Excerpts)
🔒 Sloww Premium deep dive:
- Do You Control Your Life Path?
- Is Ultimate Moral Responsibility a Myth?
- What’s our Problem with (Mis)Attribution of Agency?
Explore more: 75+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Spiritual Seeing
Vedanta with Pravrajika Divyanandaprana
This was such a pleasant surprise. Last week’s Wise Walk was focused on the teachings of Pravrajika Divyanandaprana. It was probably in my top 5 favorites of 20+ teachers so far. Pair with the teachings of Swami Sarvapriyananda which was also one of my favorites.
Almost all of Advaita Vedanta makes perfect, practical sense to me in my direct, lived experience. Spirituality is simple: it’s seeing who you are beyond mind/self in your direct experience (1st-person / internal / subjective).
🔒 Sloww Premium deep dive:
Explore more: 75+ posts on Spiritual Seeing (Sloww Stage 4)
💬 Wise Words
“In loving the spiritual, you cannot despise the earthly.” — Joseph Campbell
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
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