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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 198 (Sep 8, 2024) — Perennial Problem, Consciousness Landscape, Nondual Metaphors, & More
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📚 Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development
The Perennial Problem of Technology outpacing Wisdom
Here’s how integral theorist Ken Wilber describes humanity’s most primordial nightmare (minimally paraphrased):
- The classic case of explosive growth in exterior technology not being met with equivalent growth in interior wisdom: The lack of a similar degree of interior development that can keep up with technological development and offer some sort of balance, wisdom, and sane judgment to oversee the technology and compassionate use of that technology.
- The techno-economic base takes the lead first, fashioning the societies within which individuals develop: The technology usually spreads very rapidly, and then that technology slowly, over many generations, remakes the cultures arising within it.
- Once external technologies have been produced, they can be used by individuals who are at virtually any level of interior development: Much lower—and much less caring, less compassionate, less loving, and more domineering, more oppressive, and more exploitive—drives and values end up inhabiting and using the technologies.
- The tech-wise imbalance may kill us all: Because of this enormous imbalance between our exterior science, technology, and artifacts and our interior levels of consciousness, culture, and wisdom, our problems become globally suicidal.
- So, what do we need in order to solve the perennial problem? More here: 🔒Ken Wilber Synthesis: Everything about Integral Theory (10+ Visuals)
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive:
- Integral Psychology & Spirituality Synthesis: How to Develop Holistically with Ken Wilber (10+ Visuals)
- How to Wake Up with The Witness & One Taste from Ken Wilber (+ Infographic)
0️⃣ Explore More: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development (Sloww Stage Support)
🌎 Intentional Living
New Habit Building with Visual Cues
With an infant, I’ve been finding it nearly impossible to find time to exercise. So, I’m implementing some tips from Atomic Habits by James Clear (Book Summary | 🔒Premium Summary).
First and foremost, I moved my free weights from upstairs to downstairs so I walk by them multiple times throughout the day. This creates a visual “cue” to use them. A cue is an obvious trigger, and it’s the first step in habit building. Instead of thinking about exercise as an event where I need to go upstairs for a dedicated amount of time, I’m going to try to do mini workouts downstairs throughout the day.
- “Some experts estimate that half of the brain’s resources are used on vision. Given that we are more dependent on vision than on any other sense, it should come as no surprise that visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behavior. For this reason, a small change in what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.” — James Clear
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive:
- How to Build Effective Habits with “Atomic Habits” by James Clear (+ Infographics)
- “Essentialism” + “Atomic Habits” Synthesis: How to Pick a Path & Make Progress (+ Infographic)
- “Golden Circle” + “Three Layers of Behavior Change” Synthesis: How to Better Understand Your Brain with Simon Sinek & James Clear (+ Infographic)
1️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Life Purpose
Conscious Parenting Books & Thoughts
I’m going to be skimming a ton of parenting books (see second tab on my reading list) and sharing shorter summaries exclusively in the new “Conscious Parenting” space in the Sloww Society community (🔒). This week I’ll also be sharing an overview of everything I wish I knew about birth and babies (with bonus thoughts from my wife).
If you’d like to go on the conscious parenting journey together, please join Sloww Premium for community access.
2️⃣ Explore More: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Mental Mastery
A Landscape of Consciousness
This is a mind-boggling new paper from Robert Lawrence Kuhn: A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications
Lately, I’ve found myself most interested in exploring the idealisms: Kastrup, Spira, Hoffman, McGilchrist, Advaita Vedanta, etc.
3️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Spiritual Seeing
Master of Metaphors
Direct path spiritual teacher Rupert Spira is a master at using metaphors/analogies to express the nondual understanding. I’ve compiled a bunch of them below:
- The Screen (full detail and infographic in 🔒How to See with the Screen Analogy)
- The Dream (full detail in The Dream Metaphor of Mary & Jane)
- The Actor (more detail in Sloww Sunday #159): Just as an actor dresses up, assumes the thoughts and feelings of a character in a play, and seems to become that character without ever actually ceasing to be an actor, so our essential being clothes itself in the qualities of experience and seems to become a temporary, finite self without ever actually ceasing to be eternal, infinite awareness.
- Clothing & Body (more detail in 🔒Rupert Spira Synthesis: Everything about Nonduality): Just as we take our naked body with us wherever we go even though it is usually covered by clothes, so we take our naked being with us whatever we do even though it is usually obscured by experience.
- The Space (more detail in 🔒Rupert Spira Synthesis: Everything about Nonduality): Just as the space of a room cannot be agitated by anything that takes place within it, so awareness cannot be disturbed by anything that occurs in experience.
- The Sky (more detail in 🔒How to Be with “Being Myself”): Just as the blue sky is never agitated by the weather, so the continuous background of awareness is never disturbed by changing experience.
- The Sun (more detail in 🔒Rupert Spira Synthesis: Everything about Nonduality): Just as the sun does not have to make any effort to illuminate itself and is always shining with the same brightness, our essential being always shines with the same luminosity.
- Stained Glass (more detail in 🔒Rupert Spira Synthesis: Everything about Nonduality): The same sunlight flows through each stained glass window, but what emerges is a unique expression of the one sunlight conditioned by a particular window. Your mind is like a window that has its own particular form, shape, conditioning, and qualities—and the one light of consciousness flows through it and is expressed uniquely according to your mind.
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive:
4️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Spiritual Seeing (Sloww Stage 4)
💬 Final Thought
To understand all, is to forgive all
Jesus makes so much sense in the context of developmental psychology and awakening/enlightenment. Jesus (at the unitive/transcendent stage of development) literally would have seen life completely differently than almost everyone else:
- “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” — Jesus
- “There is a difference between knowledge and awareness, between information and awareness. One cannot do evil in awareness. But one can do evil in knowledge or information, when you know something is bad. ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ I would translate that as ‘They’re not aware of what they are doing.’” — Anthony de Mello
- “Do you think that when Christ is lying there and they’re nailing the nails in, He’s saying, ‘Oh man, does that hurt!’? He’s probably looking at the guy who’s nailing him with absolute compassion. He digs why the cat’s doing it. What he’s stuck in. How much dust covers his eyes. Why he’s got to be doing it. That’s the way it is.” — Ram Dass
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
