Sign up to get the Sloww Sunday newsletter via email for free:👇
Sloww Sunday Newsletter 078 (Sept 26, 2021) — How to Live, Brain Waves, I Am, & More
Happy Sunday!
Here’s the latest from Sloww along with the most interesting things I discovered last week.
To respect your time and attention, every newsletter can be read in under 5 minutes. If you enjoy it, please take 5 seconds to share it with some friends and family. 🙏
New News
💬 All Premium members have now been officially invited to the new “Sloww Society” community, and almost 300 members have already accepted their invites! If you haven’t seen an invite email, please check your spam/junk folder. If you still don’t see one, please let me know and I’ll resend the invite. Looking forward to connecting with everyone!
For those already in the community: What was your win this week?
Sloww Stuff
🆕 A Modern Dose of Timeless Perspective: “How to Live” by Derek Sivers (Book Summary)
Wow! I loved this book so much more than I expected I would. I highly recommend reading it in full because it’s a short and easy read—and one of those books where a summary doesn’t really do it justice. I feel like it should be required reading for humanity at this moment in history. Each chapter gives a different answer to the question of how to live your life:
“Each chapter disagrees with the rest. But in this case, they’re all true, so how can you reconcile it? You’ll see.” — Derek Sivers
🔒 How to Design a Life & Live It with “How to Live” by Derek Sivers (+ Infographic)
How to Live is one of my surprise favorite books of the year. But, how do we interpret it? And, what do we do with it after reading it? This Premium post explores how to integrate the book into your life—including how I turned “How to Live” into a “How I Live” perspective manifesto.
Modern Knowledge
🧠 Changing Your Brain Waves on Demand — Ken Wilber
(10 mins | YouTube)
In this video, Ken Wilber (Founder of Integral Theory) uses a portable EEG machine to measure his brain wave activity. Wilber enters different meditative states—each showing a different brain wave pattern of beta, alpha, theta, and delta waves. It appears that changing subjective states of consciousness are correlated with changes in brain wave patterns.
“If you want to know God, you’ve got to get your brain out of the way first.” — Ken Wilber
Timeless Wisdom
🧘♀️ ‘I am’ — Rupert Spira
(12 mins | YouTube)
This is one of the best Rupert Spira clips I’ve ever seen. I’ll just leave it at that.
Key takeaways:
- ‘I am’ is the portal/door between true nature & separate self.
- Each of us are a localization of awareness.
- Awareness is prior to mind.
- No mind, no time.
“The knowledge ‘I am’ is the last experience the separate self has on its way back to its true nature. But it is the first experience consciousness has leaving its true nature on its way to becoming a finite mind.” — Rupert Spira
Mind Expanding
🤯 The Universe — Hubble Space Images
(NASA)
I found myself back on this site recently—just scrolling and contemplating the vastness of life. There are so many good images that it’s hard to pick favorites. I downloaded about a dozen of them as posters.
“The universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.” — J. B. S. Haldane
🤔 Deep Thought
It’s often said that the ultimate fear is fear of death. But, what if it’s actually fear to live?
- “The fear of death follows from the fear of life.” — Attributed to Mark Twain
- “Has it ever struck you that those who most fear to die are the ones who most fear to live? That in running away from death we are running away from life?” — Anthony de Mello
- “To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans.” — Don Miguel Ruiz
- “People living deeply have no fear of death.” — Anaïs Nin
Pair with:
💭 Wise Words
“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit — and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.” — Brian Dyson
Source: The Five Balls of Life: A Very Short Story about Balance
Sharing: If you enjoyed this issue, please help grow Sloww by sending this post to some friends and family or by sharing it on social media. It’s free and easy for anyone to subscribe here.
Support: Sloww is a one-human labor of love. If you’re interested in supporting me, there are several financial and non-financial ways to support.
Feedback: Have something you want to say, or just want to say hi? It’s always much appreciated. Just send me an email or reach out socially.
Have a balanced week!
Kyle Kowalski
Synthesizer & Solopreneur, Sloww
Leave a Reply