Sign up to get the Sloww Sunday newsletter via email for free:👇
Sloww Sunday Newsletter 120 (Oct 9, 2022) — Simple Life Quest, Talent Stacking, Spiritual Materialism, & More
Hi friend!
Sloww Sunday shares creations from Sloww and curations of fascinating finds from around the web to 10,000+ students of life. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this newsletter to others.
🌎 Lighter Living
“The Quest of the Simple Life” by W. J. Dawson
This short book is a pure joy to read, and one of the most thoughtful and reflective books I’ve read about simple living. It’s hard to believe it was published 100+ years ago in 1907 because so much is still applicable today. Author W. J. (William James) Dawson’s writing is incredibly descriptive—it captures your attention and keeps it. The story covers Dawson’s thoughts, insights, and reflections as he transitions from a life as a clerk in London to a life in the country. He covers a little bit of everything: downshifting, voluntary simplicity, simple living, and much more.
Book Summary: Downshifting from City to Country: “The Quest of the Simple Life” by W. J. Dawson
Explore more: How do I design a lighter life (Sloww Stage 1)?
🧭 Higher Purpose
Find Your Talent Stack
The talent stack is a simple way to start finding purpose:
“It frequently takes half a lifetime for the creatively talented individual to come to terms with one’s own talent, to accept it fully, and to unleash oneself…” — Abraham Maslow
Read the post: What is a Talent Stack? (& How I’m Thinking about My Unique Stack)
Get the eBook: Ikigai 2.0: A Step-by-Step Guidebook to Finding Life Purpose & Making Money Meaningfully (+ Bonus Workbook)
Explore more: How do I find higher purpose (Sloww Stage 2)?
🧠 Mental Mastery
Build Your “Mental Immune System”
Where did all your ideas come from? Are you able to notice and analyze new ideas that enter your mind before accepting them? The idea of a “mental immune system” is one of the top 10 most life-changing ideas I’ve discovered to date—so much so that 2 of the 12 modules in Mini Mind are dedicated to supporting concepts that will help you build your psychological immunity. For several relevant books, search my reading list for “memes.”
What it is: a mind that is more resistant to parasitic ideas, mis/disinformation, propaganda, fake news, and divisive ideologies—thereby suffering less memetic hijacking and supporting more cognitive and emotional sovereignty.
Also known as: mental/cognitive immunity, memetic/epistemic immune system.
“One of the things that happens as people start to get the aspect of media literacy is that they get a memetic immune system—they see that the thing that’s being called ‘news’ and even a lot of what’s being called ‘communication of science’ is actually narrative and information warfare for specific economic or political agendas. And, they start to recognize the tools of that like cherry-picking of data, or decontextualization of a fact, or Lakoff framing the fact—all that will make it through a fact checker and you can still lie with that stuff … They’ll be able to start to recognize that they are victims of a narrative war camp more than they are sovereign thinkers. So, the goal is that they can recognize it and have an immune system against it—a memetic, epistemic immune system—and then also develop the epistemic tools needed to actually make sense of complex topics.” — Daniel Schmachtenberger
Get the email: Mini Mind: 365 daily emails of bite-size brain food
Explore more: How do I master the mind (Sloww Stage 3)?
☯️ Timeless Wisdom
Beware of Spiritual Materialism & Narcissism
It’s quite a realization when you realize that even spirituality has blindspots and dark sides. Spiritual narcissism is using spirituality, spiritual knowledge, and/or spiritual labels to increase your sense of self. If this topic interests you, you may also want to check out the book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa (on my reading list).
“Unconscious people – and many remain unconscious, trapped in their egos throughout their lives – will quickly tell you who they are: their name, their occupation, their personal history, the shape or state of their body, and whatever else they identify with. Others may appear to be more evolved because they think of themselves as an immortal soul or living spirit. But do they really know themselves, or have they just added some spiritual sounding concepts to the content of their mind? Knowing yourself goes far deeper than the adoption of a set of ideas or beliefs … Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.” — Eckhart Tolle
“You may rid yourself of all worldly addictions and aversions…the most deadly pretension may raise its head. You may begin to believe you are a spiritually superior person.” — Gerald Heard
“Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment.” — Chögyam Trungpa
Image Source: Reddit
Explore more: How do I embody wisdom (Sloww Stage 4)?
🤯 Mind Expanding
All things Dr. Michael Levin
Michael Levin has to be one of the most interesting people on the planet right now. It’s wonderful to see him recently on a big stage with Lex Fridman: Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots (YouTube).
For more Michael Levin, check out 🔒Sloww Sunday issues #085, #062, and #060.
“We all start life as a single cell, and that cell self-assembles into a creature that can later say, ‘I am a centralized intelligence. I am a single I—a self.’ Yeah, that may be, but you’re made of a bunch of cells, and you used to be one cell and then a ball of cells. That whole process of how that unified self is arranged and supported by a collection of competent agents (cells) is very similar to how the pattern of the body is arranged by the collective intelligence of cells.” — Michael Levin
Share: Sloww Sunday currently sends to 10,000+ students of life each week. If you enjoyed this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this newsletter to some friends and family. It’s free for them to subscribe here.
Support: Sloww is a one-human labor of love (it’s just me over here 👋). Your support keeps the site ad-free and invests in me while you invest in yourself—a true win-win! There are free and financial ways to support.
Speak: Have something you want to say, or just want to say hi? It’s always greatly appreciated. Just reply to this email or reach out socially.
Go with the Sloww,
Kyle Kowalski
Synthesizer & Solopreneur
Leave a Reply