Dvdmon

Heady stuff

Revisado: 03-30-25

I love explorations into consciousness, and Annika Harris had brought together an incredible cast of renown scientists to bounce things off of. Personally for me, some of the discussions get so technical and complex that it makes it pretty difficult to follow, at least in audio format. Perhaps as book it would work a bit better in order to give one the time to go back over passages, perhaps research things, even ask an AI to explain them on a more basic level. I think if you don't have a formal scientific background, or just have not studied a lot of science in depth and don't have that kind of very technical mind, some of this stuff can get pretty daunting. That being said, I prefer that to being so basic that it doesn't really give you much new information, and treats you like you are a complete neophyte either, although there are certainly contexts where that's entirely appropriate.

While I'm agnostic about the metaphysics of consciousness, I kept thinking to myself, "I wish she had talked to X or Y" about these things. Specifically, I have three people in mind, who are all scientists. One is the fairly well known idealist Barnardo Kastrup. Another is a neuroscientist who's done a lot of spiritual as well as philosophical and scientific work on areas of consciousness and came out last year with his own excellent book on the subject, Dr. James Cooke. And Finally Michael Levin, a professor at Tufts who's done a lot of work on living systems and has spoken a bunch about how ideas of consciousness plays into "simpler" life systems. However, at least Cooke's work was not nearly as well known as the scientists that were interviewed for this book, so I can understand this, and Kastrup perhaps comes with his own baggage. But I wish that given her look into the plant kingdom and consciousness, that Levin's work would have provided an additional area of inquiry and a perspective that was similarly less hard physics in it's approach than what seemed to be the main scientific target for the inquiries in the series.

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Too much woo and God

Revisado: 06-12-24

I'm only 40% of the way into this book so will try to update this with further thoughts if/when I finish it. My general impressions of the book are positive. Some people complain of "slurred speech" but this is simply the way Singer talks. He's not a professional orator or narrator. If you need that, you may wish to instead purchase the written book or ebook. That being said, I'm also not in love with Singer's performance. The tone and cadences are so similar throughout that I found it sometimes causes my mind to wander a bit, IE it starts to fade into the background and I really have to intentionally pay attention.

Much of the book covers what are fairly well known areas in spiritual circles like Buddhism. They have fancy terms for some of the things Singer explains in more matter-of-fact ways (impermanence, dependent origination, clinging and aversion, etc.), although Singer directly references a lot of Buddhist ideas and terms directly - like samskaras. I generally enjoy how he does this, although at times he does belabor the point a bit, tending to long leadups that might have been done more succinctly.

One point that I think is important for some like me (an atheist who comes to spirituality without the desire to invoke some all-powerful being), is that Singer does seem to invoke "god" quite a few times. I don't know if this is because he is writing to an aundience he perceives as generally Judeo-Christian Westerners, but Buddhism in general does not use "god" in the teachings that I'm aware of, and even adjacent teachings like the Hindu scriptures seem to talk about "god" as something we all are at some level, not a single all-powerful creator as much as the universe and everything (and everyone) in it. Whether you subscribe to one of those or are simply agnostic (as I am) about the subject, the continual use of the term (without him defining what he meant exactly by it) was annoying to me, although he seemed in many points to be talking about the conventional dualistic separate entity of the dualistic religions (at least in their non-mystical forms), rather than the more open "universe" type of meaning of Eastern religion and spirituality. So that was confusing to me. Perhaps he's spoken about this publicly or in other works, but I haven't been able to find anything, and I wish he would clear it up.

In general, I think this is probably a great intro to Eastern philosophy and religious ideas for a Western audience who were reared in a religious or semi-religious household (Christian, or Jewish, perhaps Muslim as well). It doesn't necessarily push a definition of "god" but perhaps references it enough so that those who are believers would feel less defensive about changing some of how they interact with reality by absorbing some of those Eastern philosophies.

I guess my only other complaint so far is his seeming preoccupation with the term "vibration" or "vibrational." He tries to use it in a scientific sense, but then starts talking about "higher vibration" vs "lower" which to me reeks a bit of woo, which is unfortunately because other than that, his ideas seem pretty straightforward, practical. He references a lot of science (almost too much!) and I think he tries to used science to definite this vibrational stuff, but to more logical sceptics like myself, it comes off as being too New Agey.

--- update:

Ok, I've now listened to about 80% of this book and the more I listen to it the more I dislike it, unfortunately. Maybe for someone who is a believer it's fine, so if that's you, that's great. However, that's not the only issue I have with the book (Singer's continual referencing God as is everyone in his audience is a unquestioning believer), but also that as the book goes on, he gets increasingly into all of this woo woo energy talk, energy blockages, higher vibrations, etc. If I didn't know better I would say he lives in Southern California, but amazingly he doesn't. He starts talking about chakras and I was almost ready for him to start in with crystals. I don't mean to belittle those who find these concepts important, but as a rational, science-oriented person, I have limited patience for this stuff, and once we are halfway into the book, it seems this is a huge chunk of what he talks about.

My other issue is one of tone. The tone is of someone who's a know-it-all. He keeps asking questions about analogies - like - "if you were eating something that you knew was making you sick, you wouldn't keeping it it, would you? Well, that's why you shouldn't do X." But these are just his limited perspective. Plenty of people are self-destructive or simply have different attitudes and motivations as this one guy who grew up in 50s in the US. Of course we don't know anything about his childhood because apparently he won't share anything about that publicly, which just makes me suspicious. In any case, the tone that I pick up is that of "I know best and I'm going to tell you what you're doing wrong"- almost a lecture. It doesn't feel very compassionate, it sounds kind of impatient - "how could you not see this stuff that is so clear to me."

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Classic but challenging listen

Revisado: 09-04-23

I've heard of this work so often as a classic of early psychedelic boosterism, but unfortunately had to stop about halfway through. The narration is very "refined" and "eloquent" but sounds like it is from an old uppercrust from Masterpiece Theater. Everything is pronounced with a theatrical pronunciation, and even so, sometimes it seems that this gentleman doesn't time his breaths well enough and runs out of air before the sentence is done, making the last word or two sound like he's somewhat gasping for breath!

I'm not saying that the material necessarily is a mismatch for the narrator though. Huxley's writing is more like poetic pontificating more than anything else, very literary, but not very accessible. Perhaps literary types would enjoy it, but I found it tiresome to listen to both due to the narration as well as all the flowery prose.

All of this to essentially say some very insightful things, which could have been said much more directly and with ten percent of the verbiage. It's a shame, but then again, this was free with my Audible membership, so I can't complain too much. There are definitely much more interesting books out there describing psychedelic effects, the most well known of which, at least right now, are Michael Pollan's recent books. I'd suggest starting there rather than this, but if you are up for it and it's free with your membership as well, it's only a bit over two hours. I found I had to speed up the audio to at least 1.4 times or else I would have stopped listening after the first 5 minutes. For those who have an interest in this work as an historically important one, it might be a fun listen at that speed.

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Helpful and direct insights.

Revisado: 09-04-23

I've listened to some of Adya Shanti's meditations and was never a huge fan. I'm a pretty science-oriented non-spiritual/religious person and gravitate towards teachers who are down to earth and use fairly direct and practical language. Not that Adya is particularly woo woo, but I do find a lot of his meditations to be a bit airy/heady/esoteric, with poetic language that isn't simply explained in a practical way. But I had some expiring credits and figured I'd try this audiobook just to make sure I wasn't missing something.

I'm glad I did take that chance because this book doesn't have the same qualities as much of the meditations of his that I didn't resonate with all that much. This was fairly practical information both about his own awakening but also about his philosophies around human thoughts and emotions and how we get caught in them and he presents some great insights around how to relate to them in a way that makes sense, especially for those of us who are less spiritual.

One of my key takeaways was an idea that was not new to me, but he phrases it in a way that I found very helpful. That is, that we all want things to go a certain way, and that much of our suffering has to do with being dissapointed about how things are going now, or how they went earlier. The words he uses are, I believe "arguing with reality" (as if that will change anything). He makes the point that all thoughts (and I beliefs as well) are false. Thoughts are false because they are simply abstract representations that can at best point to actuality, and beliefs are basically thoughts that one has chosen to, well, BELIEVE, without actual (experiential) evidence. Tie these all together and you essentially are arguing against truth, rather than seeing that reality/truth, just is. We can have preferences, but the idea is that things aren't innately good or bad, they just are, or they are truth. Good and Bad are dualistic value judgements and are completely dependent on your perspective. So what may be good for one person may not be for another. Even things we think may be universally good or bad may only be for humans, or for living things on this plant, etc., etc.

Anyway, the other part of this that was very helpful for me was the part about emotions and how important it is for us not to use "spirituality" as a bypass mechanism to avoid them, to say we are just "above it all" and immune to human nature, which includes "negative" emotions like anger, sadness, shame, etc. Those emotions are essentially bodily reactions to (false) thoughts about the "self" but are reinforced and strengthened and prolonged, sometimes indefinitely mostly by our resistance to them. Letting go of that resistance and actually feeling (deeply) those emotions, are crucial to "processing" them, not to get rid of them per se, but just to see them as passing clouds in the sky, just as any other impermanent object of awareness, whether it's an itch, a headache, etc.

There are other insights that might appeal to others, and he does talk quite a bit about awakening. I'm not sure every part of it spoke to me, but I did feel like I got a tremendous amount of helpful ways to think about things that added a lot of perspective to my ongoing journey.

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Good ideas but bad narration/meditations

Revisado: 08-28-23

There are some good nuggets in this book, but unfortunately they are spread fairly thin in a sea of a kind of sales-pitch about non-duality and a HUGE amount of guided meditation instructions. Some of those guided meditation I'm sure might be very helpful if they were actually guided meditations, but they are not, they are instructions on doing a meditation, with miniscule pauses, steps, instructions to pause the audiobook and do X for 2-3 minutes, then unpause, etc. If these were ACTUAL guided meditations, or better yet they were available on a website that one could listen to separately, they would have been 1000 times more effective. After the first one or two I had to skip the rest as it was way too distracting to constanly have to pause and restart the audiobook!

While many of the concepts described here ring true to me based on what I've read elsewhere (or rather they were at least consistent with what I've read), nonetheless, it seemed like the author was trying too hard to "sell" nonduality as some kind of ultimate prize. It's only in the last chapters where he "gets real" and starts talking about the pitfalls and also how this isn't about just living in a blissful state 24/7. If he had led with that, then I wouldn't have complained, but this is stuffed at the very end almost like a fineprint disclaimer.

The narration also really, really detracts from the quality of this book. The narrator's voice is certainly very pleasant, but it doesn't suit this kind of audiobook in the least. She has this hushed, breathy, low voice, like she's telling a kid a bedtime story or she's sharing the secret of the universe but has to do it quietly because... I'm not sure, it's a secret? It's seriously sounds like someone is reading a kid's fairy tale. I have no clue why they chose this narrator other than to give this book a more "ethereal" tone, and maybe that sells in New Age circles, but unfortunately it's going to turn the vast majority of those who might actually benefit from the material (materialist sceptics, agnostics, etc.) far, far away. After listening for an hour or so, I finally had to increase the speed to 1.3x, which improved things slightly, but this still would have been so much more listenable with a different narrator or a different style of narration.

I also simply don't understand how pronunciations of regular English words can be mangled by professional narrators and not be caught by professional editors. This was the case for at least one word in this book that I couldn't help cringing over every time I heard it uttered - ubiquitous. It's not that uncommon a word, a technical term, or a foreign word. I just don't see a reason for it not being caught during production! The other word that I recall her not being able to pronounce was paradoxical, which she pronounces "paridoxal." I'm kind of a stickler for pronunciation, especially when you have a native English speaker narrating a book with the words, you really should pronounce them correctly.

The other issue I had with the book is the parts at the end of each chapter where the author kind of recaps what he went over in the chapter and then says what he's about to go into in the next chapter. To me this is useless filler. Just give us the goods, no reason to rehash or preview. It takes one out of the actual message and reminds me of a technical textbook where the constant repitition and summarization is needed in order to cement knowledge. But the whole point of a book like this is supposedly to convey information only partially conceptually, but more in a "pointing" (sub-cognitive) way. But having to listen to these chapter bookends (and there are a LOT of chapters), just takes you out of the book and its message.

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An important book to those open to its message

Revisado: 08-17-23

This book is not for everyone, I see many reviews from people who would be precise examples of what Shepard critiques. I took it more as a call to strive for looking at things in a more wholistic way (duh), but also it helped motivate me to go further on the path from disconnecting from toxic media and culture whenever possible and staying as much attuned to the present monet rather than living in the past or the future.

I was recommended this book on a forum that's dedicated toward meditation, so I thought this book might have some direct relationship to it, but essentially the whole book is "meditative" in a way. It definitely talks about presence a lot, which is a main theme of meditation, but it also critiques some of the meditation schools as being merely concerned with "self help."

There's a lot in here that will sound like nonsense to those who are unfamiliar with meditation and Eastern spirituality. Shephard does pay homage to science in talking about brain networks and quantum mechanics, but I'm guessing that experts in these fields might think he is simplifying things to an extreme at best.

I'm a science-oriented guy who isn't spiritual, but I've been meditating for eight years and so a lot of what was in this book spoke to me on a level that was not purely "intellectual" and I assume would do so for anyone who is somewhat receptive to the message and not resistant to anything that wasn't based in huge randomized controlled meta analyses and/or officially sanctioned by large international scientific bodies. If you have that purist materialist point of view and believe that everything is just particles, that science either can answer everything or will given a little more time, then this book probably will do very little for you.

That being said, I do feel like the book could have been a little shorter, a bit less repetitive, and perhaps introduced ideas about the "pelvic bowl" much earlier. It is constantly referred to from very early in the book, but isn't really explained in depth until really the very end of it. The exercises seem interesting but it would have been a lot more convenient if these were provided in a separate pdf, Then again, this book was free with my audible subscription, so I can't complain too much!

In any case, I found a profound and motivating look at how I live my own life and from the reviews it sounds like I'm not alone. Looking forward to looking into more that Shepherd has written as well as his YouTube channel.

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Not as helpful as I'd hoped

Revisado: 02-26-23

As someone who has been looking at ideas of awakening for a while, I was hopeful about this book. I've heard some of Adyashanti's meditations on the Waking Up app, and they didn't really resonate with me, but I thought perhaps an expanded version of them might do them more justice. And the reviews here are unanimously glowing. Maybe his stuff is for those who already speak spiritual lingo and or are already very in touch with these concepts and not more analytical like I am. I found the first week - on "boundless awareness" to be most helpful. The second week, about the "spiritual heart" much less so, and when the third week started, I just kind of gave up. Adyashanti does talk about relistening to the days that resonate with you.

He gives instruction to do certain things throughout the day, not as a seated mediation practice, but in everyday life, which I think is a great tip, but it also requires you to remember to do this. I wish the PDF that came with this book had more meat, it's basically just a chapter list. I also wish this book came as a paper book or even eBook where you could highilight area. There's a lot of talk for each day, but I feel like the gist of it could probably said in 30 seconds vs. the 7-20 minutes that each day's chapter takes.

A lot of terms are used that are not really explained. Or Adyashanti perhaps TRIES to explain them, but doesn't really do that unless you can somehow feel into or intuit what he's talking about, have felt it before, etc. In that way, it is not "direct" enough for a non-spiritual, analytical individual, I don't think. Obviously it is very helpful for others as the reviews indicate.

I don't want to ding this book too much because I think it obviously is very helpful to many. While I said I've "given up" on it, that's not exactly true. My intention is to go back to Day 1 and just notate the most salient and clear points form each chapter and then refer to those notes throughout the day to try to put this into more regular practice. But I may still get stuck on many of the days where I'm just supposed to "feel the spiritual heart" whatever that means - simply by paying attention to my chest? This probably has something to do with Chakra's which I think he mentions at least once, which is another trigger point for me. Yes, I'm one of those skeptical by nature people who is trying to become more open-minded, and so perhaps this book is not really targeted at my demographic, but I was really hoping that it would be a more practical guide, given that it is specific exercises for 30 whole days. Yet, so much of it is "do this" where "this" is so open to interpretation that I had no clue what he was talking about...

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Interesting context for looking at ourselves

Revisado: 01-28-23

I think this is going to be an enjoyable read for those who are interested in neuroscience but also more mystical experiences, medidation, awakening, etc. Perhaps armchair psychologists as well. Talylor creates a neurological framework around four "characters" representing different brain regions, and while she does a convincing job of it,

My main complaint is that she doesn't provide much in the way of hard examples. I know there are plenty of case studies of people who, like Taylor, and damage to one region of the brain or another and how it effected their personality as it did hers. I wish she would have talked about this, as it would have given a bit more of a solid sense to her hypotheses around the different characters. As it stands, it more seems like a personal imagining of different aspects of her persona, mapped onto brain regions, without real scientific underpinnings. Her main basis for this seems to be around her own stroke and its disabling of her left pre-frontal cortex region. That indeed is convincing, but I would like to know how damage to different sides of the amygdala plays out, or even the entire right hemisphere, etc. Without this scientific underpinning, it sometimes felt to me like these four characters were more of a "gimmick" and everything else in the book was being used to tell a story around that gimmick.

I also agree that there's a lot of generalization and stereotyping, especially in the generational sections. Generations surely have a lot of things in common, but they also have a lot of diversity, and at least for my own generation (Gen-X), apparently I had to develop based on the fact that my parents probably divorced and I was a "latchkey" kid. My parents didn't, although my dad died when I was 9, and we had a "housekeeper" would take care of us from the time we got home until my mom got back from work. No, it may not be a common situation, but the point is that there are enough Gen-X'ers who had non-divorced parents, stay-at-home moms, etc., that making these broad generalizations is not really "scientific."

Aside from that, it is in interesting framework and one that I think can be useful in terms of considering different aspects of our psychology, enabling us to listen to aspects that we normally try to shut up, and consequently not let any one aspect dominate us to the expense of all the others. Whether or not it hold scientific accuracy, it may still be a good model about how we think about ourselves as "whole" human beings to the extent that we are so rigid in dealing with ourselves and our lives in a one-dimensional way with tunnel vision.

Narration was ok. I enjoyed Taylor's voice in her TED Talk, but listening to it for 9 hours is a bit different from listening for 18 minutes! I had to speed it up by at least 10%, but that's kind of par for the course with how a lot of audio books are recorded. I would give her narration a B, it was listenable, but in some ways her tone was a bit monotonous - not that she was monotone at all, but her speech pattern is very constant, without much variation from sentence to sentence...

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Mildly useful

Revisado: 10-23-22

As a non-disabled person married to someone with a disability, I was encouraged to read this book by my wife, who seems to be more and more pointing out ableist attitudes I seem to have about things, especially around COVID. So it would have been nice to have the Ladau's take on COVID and how it effects those with disabilities, and she does mention it very briefly, but really doesn't give it any real attention.

I think this is a great primer for those who have really almost no exposure to people with disabilities, at least not close exposure, and disability rights issues. A lot of the scenarios Ladau talks about are truly cringeworthy and to my ears sound like incredibly obvious, but I suppose that my experience has already clued me in enough to where these things are not particularly useful. They are like... "duh!" About the only suggestions I found useful personally were ones around always asking people before asking questions or really doing anything in terms of an interaction. I'm such an introvert that I generally don't strike up conversations with random strangers regardless of their disability status, so I'm not sure whether this will help much, but it did make good logical sense and might actually clue in some extraverts - and make them less pushy not just to disabled folks but to everyone, lol! The other part was around unintentionally "ableist" language that's used as general terms not really with those with disabilities in mind. Such words as "blind" and "lame" which people could use other words, but aren't actually referring to people with disabilities but rather general conditions. Like "he was blind to the concept of ..." or "That's a really lame idea." Such words have been so coopted into the language that I really wonder how many disabled people really take offense at these, and whether talking about this is focusing in the wrong area.

In other words, there are lots of bigger fish to fry when it comes to disability, and fixating on what I would consider to be minutia when there are serious harms being committed against disabled people, either by exclusion or active harassment, sems to be not the best way to win advocates and allies.

Ladau does thankfully cushion some of this by talking about how it's very easy to slip up and that even she does it, so I appreciated that. But I do think that fixating on some of these, especially very early on in the book, puts a big emphasis on what I consider to be extremely minor issues in the grand scheme of things. How about addressing the lower hanging fruit first, and working your way down to things that may (or may not?) offend some of the disabled community? And I do mean "some" because, as Ladau reminds us, disabled people, like really any group, are not a monolith.

The book also is very much an example of identity politics and talks a lot about intersectionality, privilege, etc. This is great if you are on the left end of the political/cultural spectrum and vibe with these concepts. But for anyone who isn't really in agreement about the current obsession on the left with identity (whether you are more conservative, centrist, or even on the left yourself, but just not in love with this aspect of the current political/cultural fixation), the concepts are thrown out as if they are just part of the accepted reality when it comes to the "correct" worldview. Given that at least half of the US is not so inclined, I don't know if this was the best choice. My thought is that if Ladau wanted to reach the largest number of people and convince them to both read the book and take the messages to heart, that some of this rhetoric could have been left out without compromising 98% of the overall message.

I do really like the reference section because it provides a lot of great items, both books, movies, and videos, to learn a lot more about those with disabilities and from various different perspectives.

I think in general the book has a good overall message and it definitely has its interesting and useful pieces even for those of us who have had a fair amount of exposure to disability issues and those with disabilities, It has some insights into the lives of those with disabilities that I wasn't really that familiar with despite my experiences. There are, however, issues with some of the message that I think are going to turn a lot of people away and dismiss it out of hand, which is unfortunately because I think the larger message of inclusion and respect for those with disabilities is an important message that people of all political and cultural stripes would benefit from hearing and thinking about.

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Great history, light on the science

Revisado: 09-16-22

This is indeed a very thorough recounting of the various characters throughout history who reported on fasting. I'm grateful that the author took the time to debunk some of the myths around some of these figures like Hippocrates and Pythagoras. If you love history, and are particularly interested in fasting, this book will be very entertaining for you.

My interest lies not so much with the detailed history of fasting, although it's interesting (to a point), but rather more of an understanding how it works, and how different types of fasting compare. This isn't that kind of book. It's not an instruction manual or a scientific analysis. It's both a personal biography of the author's journey with fasting, as well as the history, as well as personal accounts of two specialized fasting centers, one in the US and one in Germany.

There is a bit of scientific explanation to the book, but it's fairly minimal compared to the biographical and historical content. The other thing that might be good to know for some is that the author is vegan and is very confident that a low-fat vegan diet is the best diet there is, so you'll need to deal with that little piece of bias, unless of course you have that same bias. :)

I thought the narration was quite good. My only issue is that it was extremely slow. I had to push it up to 1.3X in order for it to sound like it was going at normal speed. I normally listen to things at 1X or 1.1X these days, but this seemed excessively slow. Other than that there were the usual occasional mispronunciations of names and such, but that's to be expected I suppose. Interestingly, one doctor who is featured prominently (Goldhamer), has his name pronounced one way in part of the book and a different way in another. Go figure.

The writing is, well, sometimes extremely, shall we say... flowery? That might be nice in an essay, article or even a fairly short book, but a book this long it just got a little tiresome. It's as if the author was either trying to show off or just lengthen his book by using complex sentence structures and thirty dollar words. I heard him speak on a podcast recently and he does not speak that way, so it's not like his natural way of communicating. I suppose some people might enjoy this, whereas it may be a barrier for others. For me it was ok to a point, then started to get a little annoying. I could have also done with all his blow-by-blow reporting of his physical bodily functions throughout his fasts. He does give a "trigger warning" at one point about these, I probably should have heeded that!

I do think it's a good reference about fasting's history though, and despite some issues with the writing and narration, I think it's a decent read for those interested in the subject.

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