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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 148 (Jun 25, 2023) — Money and Metapay, Psychological Distance, Enlightenment, & More
Sloww Sunday shares my latest and greatest creations and curations to 10,000+ students of life. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this newsletter to other lifelong learners.
📚 Lifelong Learning
Reading List Updates
I just added a bunch of books to my full reading list. A few things I’ve noticed:
- Of authors I’ve read: I want to read even more from David Bohm, Iain McGilchrist, Ken Wilber, Anthony de Mello, and Douglas Harding.
- Of authors I haven’t read yet: I’m excited to read a bunch from Zak Stein, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Sapolsky, Joseph Campbell, Bernadette Roberts, and Sri Aurobindo.
- In terms of subject areas: I want to read more on complexity, memes, human development, free will, intersection of science and spirituality, and nondual spirituality.
”Books are the training weights of the mind.” — Epictetus
Explore more: How do I learn for life? 25+ posts on Lifelong Learning (Sloww Stage Support)
🌎 Lighter Living
What does internal development change externally?
I recently received the following question:
- “On your human development journey, obviously, a lot has changed for you on the ‘inside,’ but has this led to any changes externally—such as with relationships, where you live, how you live, etc.? I’m just curious if such a big internal change can exist in the same external environment—if that makes sense. Thanks!”
Here are some things that come to mind:
- I never considered myself a reader growing up (or even as an adult until age 30), but now I’m definitely a reader. My approach to researching, reading, note-taking, summarizing, synthesizing, writing, etc have all been positively impacted over the years.
- I did decluttering, the KonMari method, and a no-buy year with clothing. Voluntary simplicity is always top of mind when it comes to physical stuff for me now.
- My wife and I sold our McMansion and have a much better handle on lifestyle inflation these days. We cut our household expenses 30%, and I have a 🔒healthier relationship with money.
- I downshifted by 🔒quitting my career and designed my life around my life purpose.
- I’m currently in the midst of a 🔒no-alcohol year which isn’t something I would have ever considered in the last 20+ years.
- I 🔒dissected my lottery of birth and think about the lottery of birth on a daily basis with virtually every person I interact with—it’s one of the most incredible realizations for universal compassion.
Those are just some examples from Sloww Stage Support (Lifelong Learning), Stage 1 (Intentional Living), & Stage 2 (Life Purpose). Things get really interesting in Sloww Stage 3 (Mental Mastery) & Stage 4 (Spiritual Realization), but they may appear more subtle and nuanced externally.
Explore more: How do I design a lighter lifestyle? 100+ posts on Intentional Living (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Deeper Purpose
Maslow on Money & “Metapay”
This is one of my favorite learnings from Abraham Maslow’s work on self-actualization (🔒Premium synthesis) and transcendence (🔒Premium synthesis).
On being paid for your passion:
- “The most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do. This is exactly the situation, or almost the situation, with many (most?) of my subjects … A large proportion of self-actualizing people have probably fused work and play, i.e., they love their work. Of them, one could say, they get paid for what they would do as a hobby anyway, for doing work that is intrinsically satisfying.” — Maslow
On money as a byproduct:
- “Of course money is welcome, and in certain amounts is needed. But it is certainly not the finality, the end, the ultimate goal (that is, in the affluent society, and for the fortunate man). The salary check such a man gets is only a small part of his ‘pay’ … Self-actualizing work or B-work (work at the level of being), being its own intrinsic reward, transforms the money or paycheck into a byproduct, an epiphenomenon … The role of money in the realm of being is certainly different from the role of money in the realm of deficiencies and of basic needs.” — Maslow
On metapay:
- “What is crucially important is the fact itself that there are many kinds of pay other than money pay, that money as such steadily recedes in importance with increasing affluence and with increasing maturity of character, while higher forms of pay and metapay steadily increase in importance.” — Maslow
Companion posts: 🔒Behind the Scenes: My Evolving Relationship toward the “Money Middle Way” & 🔒Monetizing Purpose Synthesis: How to Meaningfully Make Money from Your Life Purpose (+ Infographics)
Explore more: How do I find deeper purpose? 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
🧠 Mental Mastery
Psychological Distance & Solomon’s Paradox
I found myself down a rabbit hole this week. I was initially researching “subject-object theory” (primarily associated with Robert Kegan’s theory of adult development—more on that coming soon). But, I ended up discovering a few new concepts as a byproduct.
Psychological Distance (Wikipedia) & Construal Level Theory (Wikipedia):
- Psychological distance is the degree to which people feel removed from a phenomenon. The greater the psychological distance, the lower the mental perception of importance is for the person. Psychological distance is egocentric: its reference point is the self in the here and now, and the different ways in which an object might be removed from that point—in time, in space, in social distance, and in hypotheticality—constitute different distance dimensions. Transcending the self in the here and now entails mental construal, and the farther removed an object is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the level of construal of that object.
- Construal level theory (CLT) describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people’s thinking (e.g., about objects and events) is abstract or concrete. The core idea of CLT is that the more distant an object is from the individual, the more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of.
Solomon’s Paradox (Overview & Mechanisms):
- A pervasive asymmetry characterizes the way people reason about personal issues: people are wiser when reasoning about others’ problems than when reasoning about their own problems. Self-distancing reduces this asymmetry in wise reasoning.
- Solomon’s paradox can be explained by the difference in positive affect and self-transcendence when reasoning about the two conflicts. People showed significantly lower self-transcendence when reasoning about personal conflicts than about those of others. Additionally, the mediating role of positive affect provides theoretical guidance to avoid Solomon’s dilemma through emotion management.
Relevant Research Studies:
- Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance
- Thinking of oneself as an object of observation reduces reliance on metacognitive information
- Training for Wisdom: The Distanced-Self-Reflection Diary Method
- Does Distanced Self-Talk Facilitate Emotion Regulation Across a Range of Emotionally Intense Experiences?
- Third-person self-talk facilitates emotion regulation without engaging cognitive control
Explore more: How do I master the mind? 75+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
☯️ Beyond Mind
Enlightenment is not an Experience
Here’s a short video clip and excerpt from spiritual teacher Rupert Spira:
- “Enlightenment is not an experience. It’s not something that happens to you. It’s not something that can be found. It is simply the recognition of the nature of your being. There is nothing remotely exotic about enlightenment. The taste of tea is more exotic … Your own being is simply that which shines in your experience as the knowledge I am.” — Rupert Spira
More Rupert: Being Myself by Rupert Spira (Book Summary | 🔒Premium Summary)
About enlightenment: 🔒Stream of Consciousness: What is Enlightenment?
Explore more: How do I see beyond mind? 50+ posts on Spiritual Realization (Sloww Stage 4)
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Go with the Sloww,
Kyle Kowalski
Synthesizer & Solopreneur
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