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High signal digest #12

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High signal digest #12

Summing "the Power of Now" + things I read online this week

George Kurdin
Jan 22, 2023
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High signal digest #12

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Est. reading time: 3 min

Today at a glance:

  • Raw notes from “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightment” by Eckhart Tolle. This book is about how we interact with life and with ourselves. The book was published in 1997 and sold >2M copies.

  • Things I read online this week that you may enjoy

source: book cover for “the power of now”

Why did I read this book?

Someone recommended it. Around that time I read the Surrender Experiment and decided to check it out.

Raw notes from the book
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  • We are not our mind. Start watching the “thinker” to go to next level of consciousness. 3rd person. We are not the emotion, but the watcher

  • Accept the now and make the present the focus.  First accept → then act 

  • Pain feeds on pain. To heal: observe the pain→become aware of it→do not judge it or analyze it. To fight pain you must become aware of pain 

  • Dissolving yourself from pain is dissolving yourself from a part of your identity which is scary. Am I deriving pleasure from being unhappy? 

  • Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within

  • Your ego is afraid to die. Fear of being wrong, fear of failure, fear of being hurt. Our mind and our ego love problems because they give ego an identity

  • Ego is a derived sense of self. It needs to be defended and fed constantly (possessions, social status, being right etc.)

  • We engage in dangerous activities (i.e. mountain climbing, car racing, surfing) because it forces us into the now (flow).

  • All negativity is caused by worrying about the future or the past. All of our lives are full of problems. Is there a problem this very moment? 

  • Do not be concerned with the results of your actions. Focus on the action itself. Results will come

  • If unhappy - take action, speak up, or leave the situation. No other path 

  • Growth is considered positive, but nothing grows forever. Forever growth is destructive so problems are a natural part of life. Embrace problems.

  • Let negativity pass through you

Select quotes that stuck with me:

  • Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.

  • Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.

  • Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.

  • If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.


Things I read online this week that you may enjoy:

  • 20 things I learned in my 20 years as a software engineer

  • Stock market charts you never saw

  • Why to start a startup in bad economy?

  • My 8 best techniques for evaluating character

  • GPT-3 is the best journal I’ve ever used

  • The art of knowing when to quit

  • What can we learn from Barnes and Nobles surprising turnaround?

  • How much does aging really hurt a country?

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obligatory reminder that I am a biased man with a certain world view and that if any of this is remotely interesting - check out the book and draw your own conclusions

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High signal digest #12

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High signal digest #12

acehigh.substack.com
Yuri Drabik
Writes Business In a Cloud
Jan 22Liked by George Kurdin

Great outcomes! I loved the last quote, it’s stuck with me now too...

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