3min chapter

#657: Professor John Vervaeke — How to Build a Life of Wisdom, Flow, and Contemplation

The Tim Ferriss Show

notes

CHAPTER

Awakening for the Meaning Crisis

I think there's a continuum from insight to flow to mystical experiences. And I think you want to expand your cognitive flexibility, your cognitive competence so that you can experience the whole continuum. There are ecologies and practices that can do this for people outside of an explicit religious framework. The solution to the meaning crisis in nihilism is not to brow people with argument or legislation. It's to enable them to fall in love with the depths of reality within and without and between.

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John Vervaeke (@vervaeke_john) is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He currently teaches courses on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on cognitive development, intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the psychology of wisdom.

Vervaeke is the director of UToronto’s Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness, emphasizing the 4E model, which contends that cognition and consciousness are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended beyond the brain.

Vervaeke has taught courses on Buddhism and Cognitive Science in the Buddhism, Psychology, and Mental Health program for 15 years. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” and his brand new series, ‘After Socrates.’

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[05:31] The four ways of knowing (4P).

[10:15] Affordances.

[13:04] Semantic memory.

[13:37] Flow.

[27:03] Did John find Tai Chi, or did Tai Chi find him?

[29:46] Leaving Christianity.

[34:42] Wisdom vs. knowledge.

[36:54] Self-deception.

[41:53] When is logic the illogical choice for solving a problem?

[46:05] The powers and perils of intuition.

[55:05] Spotting patterns that need breaking.

[59:18] Meditation vs. contemplation.