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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 200 (Oct 13, 2024) — Specializing Generalists, Subjective Continuity, Direct Path, & More
Sloww exists to share the art of living with students of life. The Sloww Sunday newsletter delivers my latest and greatest creations and curations to 10,000+ lifelong learners every week. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by sharing this newsletter with others.
🆕 Sloww Milestones
🎉 Sloww reached 700+ total posts on the site!
I just updated the following post which is a good jumping off point: 10 Most Life-Changing Ideas I’ve Discovered after 700+ Posts. Premium members can also learn a little about everything on the site with the summary posts below:
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive: A “Short” Summary of Everything I Learned from Sloww’s Posts 601-700, 501-600, 401-500, 301-400, 201-300, 101-200, 0-100
🎉 Sloww Sunday reached issue #200!
The first Sloww Sunday newsletter was sent on Jan 19, 2020—almost 5 years ago. Over that time, I’ve learned an incredible amount simply by curating this newsletter each week. Premium members can see summary recaps of everywhere we’ve been:
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive: Sloww Sunday Summary: 100 Highlights from Newsletter Issues #101-200, 100 Highlights from Newsletter Issues #51-100, 50 Highlights from Newsletter Issues #1-50
📘🌀 Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development
Did you know even generalists must specialize?
Over the years, it’s become brutally obvious to me that even generalists must specialize in what they are general about—there are always learning trade-offs, and no one can learn everything about everything.
So, in the back of my mind, I’m always contemplating and honing what I personally want to specialize in as a generalist (and therefore what Sloww will focus on moving forward). A helpful frame to think about everything is Ken Wilber’s four quadrants:
After some reflection, I realized that the thread running through Sloww from the beginning has always been a primary focus on the upper-left quadrant (Self & Consciousness) with a dash of the upper-right quadrant (Brain & Organism). This is clear through the Sloww Stages:
Notice the last column above of “Developing Self.” Another way to think about it is through ever-deeper self-inquiry:
So, all in all, not much is really changing with Sloww moving forward. I just have some newfound clarity and focus for the future. You could say Sloww is focused on a synthesis of the self—an ever-deeper interdisciplinary inquiry into identity integrating science, psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and more.
In more detail, I’m interested in: I, me, ego, self, mind, persona, identity, agency, volition, awareness, subjectivity, subject-object, lived experience, psychology, developmental psychology, phenomenology, ontology, epistemology, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, consciousness, spirituality, awakening, enlightenment, nonduality, and more.
Lastly, I’ve started updating my full reading list to reflect this—removing books that don’t necessarily fit this focus, and adding new ones that do. Enjoy!
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive:
- Living Inquiry Synthesis: 20 Characteristics of Living Life as Inquiry (+ Infographic)
- Interdisciplinary Synthesis: How to be an Interdisciplinarian (+ Infographics)
0️⃣ Sloww Stage Support Explore More: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development
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🌎 Intentional Living
What’s your lifestyle design for the next decade?
My 30s have been quite the rollercoaster: from an existential crisis while a corporate executive at age 30, to a conscious entrepreneur and corporate dropout at age 33, to a first-time dad at age 39.
A lot has changed over the years. I now have purpose, read books for fun, and go to bed early (well, at least before the baby 😂). And, I’m no longer a busyaholic and don’t really drink alcohol (no drinking 532 of the last 533 days). So much has changed over the last decade that I’ll have to write a full post about it.
As I approach turning 40 next year, I’m revisiting these questions on lifestyle design: Lifestyle Design 101: What is Lifestyle Design? (& 35+ Questions to Ask Yourself). What does your own lifestyle design look like these days?
“If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” — John Irving
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive: Behind the Scenes: A Look at My Personal Lifestyle Design
1️⃣ Sloww Stage 1 Explore More: 100+ posts on Intentional Living
😃 Sloww Stage 1 Featured Product: The Hierarchy of Happiness: 100+ Powerful Perspectives on How to be Happy (Free eBook)
🧭 Life Purpose
Are you making the tough trade-offs?
The first two newsletter sections above (about focus in your lifelong learning & lifestyle designing) are essentially about trade-offs. By focusing your learning on one area, you’re not learning another area. By focusing your lifestyle design on priorities, you’re making choices about what your life will not include.
The reality of trade-offs is expressed beautifully in the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown (Book Summary). McKeown describes essentialism as the philosophy of “less but better.” An essentialist is someone who lives by design (not by default), understands trade-offs and their ability to choose, and therefore spends as much time as possible exploring, listening, debating, questioning, and thinking to discern the vital few from the trivial many (discerns more so they can do less). Where can you more consciously make tough trade-offs in your own life?
“Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, ‘What do I have to give up?’ they ask, ‘What do I want to go big on?’ The cumulative impact of this small change in thinking can be profound … It takes asking tough questions, making real trade-offs, and exercising serious discipline to cut out the competing priorities that distract us from our true intention.” — Greg McKeown
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive: “Essentialism” + “Atomic Habits” Synthesis: How to Pick a Path & Make Progress (+ Infographic)
2️⃣ Sloww Stage 2 Explore More: 50+ posts on Life Purpose
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🧠 Mental Mastery
What is Generic Subjective Continuity (GSC)?
This is one of the most interesting concepts I’ve come across lately. “Generic Subjective Continuity” (GSC) comes from philosopher Tom Clark’s essay Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity. You can also check out some videos of Clark discussing the concept here, here, and here.
GSC Overview:
- Subjective Continuity: From your point of view as a subject of experience, there are no gaps during the course of your conscious life. If you are unconscious for any length of time (like between going to sleep and waking up), you don’t experience that interval. For you (the subject), life is a single block of experience. During your life, you never find yourself absent from the scene or catch yourself missing. You’re always situated here in the midst of experience—the sense of always having been present. While personal subjective continuity is associated with one’s memory/personality, generic subjective continuity is independent of the context of memory and personality (of being a particular person). Subjectivity, awareness, consciousness, experience (whatever you want to call it) is always present for itself, never absent for itself—it never stops arising as far as it is concerned. It’s subjectively continuous and immune to interruption.
- On Death: You’re not going to be plunged into an abyss, black void, or oblivion because “nothingness” doesn’t exist. Instead, you should anticipate the continuing subjective sense of always having been present. You should anticipate more experience within a different context—just not “yours” because the “me” characterized by memory/personality ends. There is no “one” who survives, just the persistence of subjectivity for itself. Your death is the end of “this experiencer,” but not the end of experience. You don’t experience the end of experience—there is no eternal absence of experience. None of us has ever experienced (or will ever experience) not being here. Death doesn’t interrupt awareness, it only changes its context. Death ends individual subjectivities (centers of awareness) while at the same time others are continuing or being created.
“After death we won’t experience non-being, we won’t ‘fade to black.’ We continue as the generic subjectivity that always finds itself here, in the various contexts of awareness that the physical universe manages to create. So when I recommend that you look forward to the (continuing) sense of always having been here, construe that ‘you’ not as a particular person, but as that condition of awareness, which although manifesting itself in finite subjectivities, nevertheless always finds itself present … We cannot completely put aside our biologically given aversion to the prospect of death, but we can ask, at its approach, why we are so attached to this context of consciousness. Why, if experience continues anyway, is it so terribly important that it continue within this set of personal characteristics, memories, and body? If we are no longer haunted by nothingness, then dying may seem more like the radical refreshment of subjectivity than its extinction.” — Tom Clark
3️⃣ Sloww Stage 3 Explore More: 100+ posts on Mental Mastery
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☯️ Spiritual Seeing
Progressive Paths vs Direct Path
Here’s something interesting to consider about different approaches to spirituality (the overview below is mostly minimally paraphrased from Rupert Spira).
Progressive Paths Overview:
- Also known as: Indirect paths.
- In a nutshell: Uses object(s) to progressively point to the source.
- What it is: You progressively work your way back through all illusory layers and finally end up with the awareness of being. It requires directing the mind towards more or less subtle objects (so all progressive practices maintain the subject-object relationship).
- How it works: Instead of attending to 10,000 things, attend to 1 thing to steady the mind. Direct the mind towards some kind of special object (see examples below). The mind remains focused on the single object, then the object begins to fade, and the mind begins to trace its way back to its source.
- Examples: A mantra, a flame, a deity, a guru, the breath, the pause between breaths, yoga, chanting, etc.
Direct Path Overview:
- Also known as: Inward-facing path, path of discrimination, pathless path, effortless path (the essence and culmination of all spiritual practice, meditation, prayer, self-inquiry, self-investigation, self-abidance, self-remembering, self-returning, self-resting, self-surrender, focusing on the ‘I am’, sinking the mind into the heart, the practice of the presence of God).
- In a nutshell: The direct path goes directly to the source—simply being aware of being aware (the absence of an object and a subject).
- What it is: Ultimately, we must let go of our devotion to teachers, teachings, traditions, and practices (progressive paths) because even these are subtle objects. Then only one possibility remains: the mind turns its attention away from objective experience and ‘turns around’ upon itself towards (or returns directly to) its own source or essence from which it has arisen. That turning around is the beginning of the direct path.
- How it works: Awareness starts with itself and stays with itself. Awareness is simultaneously the origin, the path, and the goal—being aware is simultaneously the subject that knows, the process of knowing, and the object that is known. There is no distance, pathway, method, or movement from awareness to awareness. This is the only form of objectless meditation in which the ego, the apparently separate subject of experience, is not maintained—there’s neither something to meditate on nor a person that meditates. True meditation never begins or ends because meditation is what you are, not what you do. The highest practice of pure meditation is simply being—to be knowingly the presence of awareness or practicing the presence of God.
- Examples: Direct Path Nonduality (Rupert Spira, Francis Lucille, Jean Klein, Atmananda Krishna Menon); Advaita Vedanta (Swami Sarvapriyananda, Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna); Headless Way (Douglas Harding, Richard Lang); Self-Inquiry (Ramana Maharshi).
Supporting Quotes:
- “The direct path, which is really the essence of the nondual approach, doesn’t involve going through a series of steps purifying the mind and the body before it finally reaches the goal of fulfillment or enlightenment. It’s based on the recognition that we are, right now, already the essential, unlimited, infinite presence of awareness … The direct approach suggests that what we essentially and already are is this perfectly peaceful, inherently fulfilled presence of awareness. It’s just that what we are has been so thoroughly mixed with thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas, memories, etc that we have lost sight of or lust touch with our essential being.” — Rupert Spira
- “Realizing that we are not an entity, we take our stand as consciousness, and allow this exposure and relaxation of the knots in the body and the mind, with loving indifference. This is the direct path, standing knowingly as consciousness under all circumstances.” — Francis Lucille
- “In the direct path, you face directly the ultimate … here, look, what is the nearest. It’s not your body which is the nearest, it’s your consciousness … To deal with the mind is a waste of energy. There’s a direct way—point directly to the I Am … You are not the person, you are the I Am.” — Jean Klein
- “When water is realised, wave and sea vanish. What appeared as two is thus realised as one. Water can be reached straightaway from wave by following the direct path. If the way through the sea is taken, much more time is needed.” — Atmananda Krishna Menon
- “From where does this ‘I’ arise? Seek for it within; it then vanishes. This is the pursuit of wisdom. When the mind unceasingly investigates its own nature, it transpires that there is no such thing as mind … This path (attention to the ‘I’) is the direct path; all others are indirect ways. The first leads to the Self, the others elsewhere. And even if the latter do arrive at the Self it is only because they lead at the end to the first path which ultimately carries them to the goal. So, in the end, the aspirants must adopt the first path. Why not do so now?” — Ramana Maharshi
🔒 Sloww Premium Deep Dive:
- Rupert Spira Synthesis: Everything about Nonduality (+ Infographics)
- Atmananda Krishna Menon Synthesis: Everything on the Direct Path (+ Infographic)
- How to Practice Self-Enquiry with “Be As You Are” by Ramana Maharshi (+ Infographic)
- How to See Clearly with the Headless Way Experiments (+ Visuals & Videos)
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💬 Final Thought
Don’t be too quick to judge something “good” or “bad”:
- “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” — Cormac McCarthy
- “Good fortune has its roots in disaster, and disaster lurks with good fortune. Who knows why these things happen, or when this cycle will end?” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
- “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 a misfortune, or you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune … You never know the chain, the pattern, the connection, between events.” — Alan Watts
Pair with: The Parable of the Farmer who Lost his Horse: Lessons on Luck, Non-Judgment, & Interconnectedness
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
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