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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 106 (May 15, 2022) — Non-Judgment, Meta-Perspective, Thought as a System, & 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 forward the email version to some friends and family. 🙏
🌀 Sloww Stuff
🔒 Stream of Consciousness: How Many Perspectives Can You Take?
I’ve wanted to synthesize a “meta-perspective” (aka “a perspective on perspectives”) for a long time. This is my initial attempt to get everything in one place, including: theory of mind, brain hemispheres, Integral Theory (AQAL), perspectival yoga, Ego Development Theory, nonduality, and more.
In case you missed them, here are other recent Premium posts:
- 🔒Stream of Consciousness: Is this the Strangest Thing in Life?
- 🔒Behind the Scenes: How my Personal Development Journey maps to Ego Development Theory (Sloww Stages vs EDT Stages)
🧠 Modern Knowledge
Thought as a System
Variety of Lengths | YouTube
I’m currently reading David Bohm’s “Thought as a System.” It doesn’t look like you can get a Kindle version, but there are some free PDFs online. The book is a transcript from a series of seminars Bohm gave in 1990. He passed away in 1992, so this was some of his final thinking. Lucky for us, we can watch/listen to all of these seminars years later:
“Thought has produced tremendous effects outwardly. And, it produces tremendous effects inwardly in each person. Yet the general tacit assumption in thought is that it’s just telling you the way things are and that it’s not doing anything—that ‘you’ are inside there, deciding what to do with the information. But I want to say that you don’t decide what to do with the information. The information takes over. It runs you. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives the false information that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought, whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us. Until thought is understood—better yet, more than understood, perceived—it will actually control us; but it will create the impression that it is our servant, that it is just doing what we want it to do. That’s the difficulty. Thought is participating and then saying it’s not participating. But it is taking part in everything.” — David Bohm
☯️ Timeless Wisdom
”Maybe” Parable of Non-Judgment
2 mins | Sustainable Human (YouTube)
This short story seems to be commonly attributed to Alan Watts, but it’s actually 2000+ years old. Here’s the potential origin and more about it (Wikipedia). Eckhart Tolle also includes a modified version in his book “A New Earth.”
“The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity. And, it is really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad because you never know what will be the consequences of the misfortune … or the consequences of good fortune.” — Alan Watts
“Instead of judging what is, accept it and enter into conscious alignment with the higher order. It is impossible for the mind to understand what place or purpose a seemingly random event has in the tapestry of the whole.” — Eckhart Tolle
🤯 Mind Expanding
Look at the wings on this fly!
Twitter
On each wing, you can see the detailed image of an ant—complete with six legs, two antennae, a head, thorax and tapered abdomen.
Pair with:
- The buff-tip moth that looks like a broken twig from 🔒Sloww Sunday #101
💭 Deep Thought
Here’s what to do when you get upset (via Anthony de Mello):
1. “This thing upset me.”
2. “No, it wasn’t this thing that upset me. It was my programming that upset me.”
3. “So, I don’t have to deploy all of my emotional energy fighting that outside thing.”
4. “Funny, this upset gets depleted and keeps going down.”
5. “As long as I have an enemy ‘out there’ who is upsetting me, I’m demanding that change (I’m refusing to give up my upset until that thing changes).”
Pair with:
- A Tough Love Approach to Spirituality: “Awareness” by Anthony de Mello (Book Summary)
- Seeing through your Programming: “The Way to Love” by Anthony de Mello (Book Summary)
- 🔒 How to Wake Up with “Awareness” by Anthony de Mello (+ 3 Infographics)
- 🔒 Anthony de Mello Spirituality Study on Sloww Society
💬 Wise Words
Give up defining yourself—to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life.
— Eckhart Tolle
🧠 Mental Wealth
“Multiplying by Zero” is 1 of 365 cognitive concepts included in Mini Mind‘s daily emails of bite-size brain food.
Every single day for a year, I’ll introduce you to a new concept including all the top: mental models, cognitive biases, and more! As far as I can tell, you will not find anything else out there as comprehensive and concise as Mini Mind. As they say, “An applied learning a day keeps the deluded thinking away!”
Start your year-long learning journey with 75+ lifelong learners:
🧠 “The price is actually quite low when compared to other learning resources.” — Amit T.
🧠 “Congratulations on launching Mini Mind! I’ve subscribed.” — Jim O.
🧠 “Let’s dive into this Mini Mind journey!” — Elien T.
🧠 “Really cool product idea!” — Jakob G.
🧠 “I’m in!” — Steve D.
Sharing: If you enjoyed this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this issue to some friends and family. It’s free for them to subscribe here.
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Feedback: Have something you want to say, or just want to say hi? It’s always greatly appreciated. Just send me an email or reach out socially.
Have an alive week!
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
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