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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 213 (Mar 16, 2025) — Slowing Social Media, Developmental Models Compared, Intentional Indigenous Wisdom, & More
The Sloww Sunday newsletter sends to 10,000+ readers slowing down to the wisdom within. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding this newsletter to others.
New to Sloww? Here’s what it’s about in a nutshell (which mirrors the newsletter sections below):
🌀 Human Development Models Compared
Did you know the appendix of Ken Wilber’s book Integral Psychology (Summary | Amazon) includes a ton of charts comparing 100+ developmental models?
Since each chart in the book is broken into multiple pages due to size, I manually stitched them together and added them to this Premium post: 🔒Integral Psychology & Spirituality Synthesis: How to Develop Holistically (10+ Visuals)
Here’s one example comparing self-related stages:
0️⃣ Explore More: 50+ posts on Lifelong Learning & Deeper Development (Sloww Stage Support)
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🌎 Intentional Indigenous Wisdom
I finally explored the Indigenous teachings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass. Here are my top 5 lessons:
1. Plant blindness:
- “Our whole society suffers greatly from what has been called ‘plant blindness’, of not really even being aware of the gifts of plants … It’s a sign of respect and connection to learn the name of someone else; a sign of disrespect to ignore it. And yet, the average American can name over 100 corporate logos and fewer than 10 plants.”
2. Radical gratitude:
- “Gratitude is a really radical act in a consumer-driven society that’s always telling you, ‘Consume more, take more.’ What if, in deep gratitude, you said, ‘I have enough, thanks. I live in a really abundant world’ … Gratitude is our first responsibility because gratitude acknowledges the gifts of the world—things that we have not bought and paid for, things that we don’t necessarily deserve, but they are given to us.”
3. Gift giving:
- “What does it mean to be an educated person? It means that you know what your gift is and how to give it, on behalf of the land and of the people, just like every single species has its own gift … Gifts and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin … Everything comes in this duality of gift and responsibility … The notion of this coupling of gifts and responsibilities is that in return for the gifts that we are given by the earth, that each of us is called upon to give our gift in return.”
4. ‘It’ language:
- “In English, we have a very peculiar grammar that we don’t often think about … You’re either a human or you’re an ‘it’ … The language of ‘it’—which distances, disrespects, and objectifies—I can’t help but think is at the root of a worldview that allows us to exploit nature … When we objectify nature—we’re very good at this—it creates a circle of moral exclusion. It says you’re ‘other’ … Those ‘others’ are lower-than, lesser-than beings.”
5. Nature as subject:
- “My language of nature was ‘nature as subject’ (as opposed to the Western paradigm of ‘nature as object’). I understood the plants, the animals, the insects, the birds around me as beings, as persons. I understood the land as a community, a community of sovereign beings.”
1️⃣ 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)
✍️ The Purposeful Life of a Philosopher-Poet
I offered a preview of philosopher-poet John O’Donohue in the previous newsletter. Now, after exploring some of his work for a week, I just published this page of John O’Donohue’s top quotes on suffering, compassion, time, change, identity, humanity, beauty, imagination, spirituality, God, and more.
Pair with his good friend: 50+ David Whyte Quotes on Poetry, Identity, Vulnerability, & More
Here are some of my favorites:
- “Every great thinker is haunted by one idea or by one major obsession.” — John O’Donohue
- “Part of the characteristic or the quality of maturity or growth is to be able to free yourself from the prisons of your own making.” — John O’Donohue
- “If you take your time, it’s amazing what will come to meet you … When you have time, your soul begins to decipher things.” — John O’Donohue
- “The beauty of being human is that we are incredibly, intimately near each other, we know about each other, but yet we do not know, or never can know, what it’s like inside another person … Internally each world is completely different. No one else sees the world the way you do.” — John O’Donohue
- “Once you get involved with God and taste the divine, there’s nothing else that’ll ever satisfy you again … The beauty of mysticism is that the mystic is someone who falls in love with God.” — John O’Donohue
2️⃣ Explore More: 50+ posts on Life Purpose (Sloww Stage 2)
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🧘 Ultimate Guide to Alan Watts on The Self & Free Will
I recently went even deeper into my curation of everything Alan Watts ever said about free will, and this post has been updated: 25+ Alan Watts Quotes on The Doer, Free Will, & Everything Just Happening
The self and free will are two sides of the same coin. In other words, your sense of self determines your sense of freedom as a byproduct. For those who really want to grasp this, these two Premium posts cover everything:
- 🔒 Alan Watts Synthesis: How to Answer the Ultimate Question of “Who am I?”
- 🆕🔒 Alan Watts Synthesis: How to find Freedom beyond Free Will
A few favorites:
- “When you wake up, you see, and discover that all this ‘to do’ wasn’t you—what you thought was you—but was the entire works, which we can just call ‘it.’ That you’re ‘it,’ and that ‘it’ is it, and everything is ‘it,’ and ‘it’ does all things that are done—then that is a great surprise.” — Alan Watts
- “Supposing that God is the one playing all the parts … All the different roles which are being experienced, all the different feelings which are being felt are being felt by the one who originally desires, decides, wills to go into that very situation … To be inevitably compelled by God is to be one with God, and that in this way, determinism becomes freedom.” — Alan Watts
- “In the moment of death many people undergo the curious sensation not only of accepting but of having willed everything that has happened to them … the unexpected discovery of an identity between the willed and the inevitable.” — Alan Watts
3️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Mental Mastery (Sloww Stage 3)
🧠 Featured Product: Mini Mind: 365 Days of Bite-Size Brain Food
☯️ Who am I?
The previous newsletters featured Swami Sarvapriyananda’s short books What is Vedanta? and Dissolve into Infinity. We’ll wrap up with one more: Who Am I? (Summary | Amazon).
If you aren’t familiar with Swami Sarvapriyananda—who I’d consider one of the best living spiritual teachers out there—here are 50+ quotes on Advaita Vedanta, Reality, Self, & more.
- “The enlightened one feels, ‘I am everything. I feel oneness with everything.’” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
4️⃣ Explore More: 100+ posts on Spiritual Seeing (Sloww Stage 4)
👣 Featured Product: Wise Walk: 365 Days of Enlightening Exercise
Always question those who possess ‘power of the pen’:
- “A drop of ink may make a million think.” — George Gordon Byron
- “One pen suffices to set off a million tongues.” — Gabriel Tarde
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All the best,
Kyle Kowalski
Founder, Sloww
