Love of Books and Learning

The very first thing I do whenever I visit someone's house for the first time is to check his personal library if it's located in his living room. I already know at least from my own experience that I belong to the minority. I've noticed that many of the people who have visited my apartment paid little or no attention to my personal library, the active part of which (in the living room) are composed mostly of Hasidic books (as well as dictionaries).

I still don't know if these people are not interested in books in general or the kind of books I keep in particular. But I'm already quite sure that many people I know are not so enthusiastic at least about books for life wisdom, including teachings of Chabad rabbis and non-Jewish non-dual masters.

I have always loved books since I was a small child. For more than 30 years until I stopped my academic activities about three years ago and officially left academia about one year ago, most of the books I read on weekdays were on languages and linguistics; only on Sabbaths I could allow myself to read books in other areas for life wisdom.

I've never read so many books for life wisdom as in the past three years. During this period I've also built a quite respectable library of print books on Chabad Hasidism (in Hebrew, English and Russian) and electronic books on various teachings of non-duality (mostly in English).

As I became more and more absorbed in and enthusiastic about these books, the less people I've come to have to talk with about these books and the teachings they represent.

I wish I were wrong, but many people, including my frum Jewish friends and even some rabbis who are busy with their respective communities, may not be reading (enough) books as a way of life-long learning for the soul.

When I took some online test for checking my core values, I was surprised to discover through this test that my most important core value is learning. But this makes perfect sense to me. I realize now more clearly that I've always loved books since my childhood simply because I've always loved learning. And since I was a child, I've always sensed that learning, especially for the soul, is and must be a life-long process.

Dynalist - An Ultimate Outliner

"The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order - not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries." - Umberto Eco

If you are one of those many people who use a word processor, especially Word, exclusively for all text-related tasks, you may not be aware that there are other types of tools that can process different specific types of texts far more efficiently. One such tool is an outliner, which helps you organize your ideas and tasks hierarchically as foldable bulleted lists.

I discovered the usefulness and efficiency of an outliner for managing my daily tasks more than 20 years ago when I encountered a very simple Java-based outliner called Java Outline Editor. As my frustration with Java and Java-based programs grew, I stopped using this outliner after a few years. Since then I had been looking for my ideal, one-page outliner, until I stumbled upon Dynalist this Tuesday.

This is a truly amazing crossplatform one-pane outliner who surpasses all my demands and expectations, and it's free at that! A commercial pro version is also available, but at least in the meanwhile I'm more than satisfied with the free version. If I'm to switch to the pro version, this will be mainly for supporting the developers of this incredible tool, which has already become an indispensable tool for me.

I used to use my favorite versatile text editor, EditPad Pro, for processing bulleted lists in Markdown, in which I write almost everything now. Though this superpowerful text editor highlights the syntax of this popular lightweigh markup language, it can't add folding points automatically unlike dedicated outliners.

Even if you haven't used any outliner yet, please trust me and give it a try. In the past 20 years I've tried tens of outliners, and Dynalist far exceeds all its competitors in every respect. But unlike a number of other text-related tools, this outliner doesn't have a steep learning curve. You can start using it immediately. You'll be pleasantly surprised to see how easy and useful it is.

So for what purposes can you use it? You can use it to organize any hierarchically structred texts. I, for example, use it to plan and organize my 1) daily/weekly/monthly schedule, 2) travel, and 3) lists of books I like, plan to buy, am reading now, and plan to read. Since the desktop version of Dynalist is automatically synchronized for free with its mobile version, I also use the latter for managing my shopping list on the go.

Wants vs. Needs

"When we tell G-d what we want G-d to do, or we tell the universe what we want it to do, we're not really opening ourselves up yet - we're still speaking from an egoic place. But when we confess our deepest heart's yearning and tell the divine that we're inviting it to give us anything we need to awaken, we very well might get it. To open ourselves to this grace, to this flow of truth, means that we have to step out of ourselves. We have to let go of the illusion that we are in control of our life. When we hand it over, we'll find ourselves falling into grace, falling into this clarity and openness and love, falling right into the grace of awakening from separation, where we realize our true spiritual essence: this beautiful, unknown, unborn presence which manifests as everything we see." - Adyashanti

In one online course I joined recently each of us students is asked to draw the so-called "vision board" and share it in the private Facebook group for the course participants. When I was asked to do the same almost around January 2018 in group coaching I participated in as a coachee, I hesitated to do this assignment and showed a blank sheet of paper in front of the other coachees, explaining that I would like to get rid of all the negative emotions.

When I saw vision boards posted by about a number participants so far to the Facebook group of the course, I understood why I had hesitated instinctively to draw one. Most of the pictures on these vision boards reflect what the ego wants - manifestations of materialistic "success". In the meanwhile I've decided to leave this Facebook group in order to protect myself.

What the ego wants isn't the same as what it needs for itself, the physical body and the soul. And for this very reason we aren't supposed to always get what our ego wants. Drawing such a vision board only inflates our ego and gives us an illusion that what our ego wants is what it really needs.

Many people "pray" for the realization of what their ego wants, and many life coaches seem to "promise" to help their clients realize what the latter's ego wants. Just as I hesitated to pray for the wants of my ego, so do I hesitate now as a new life coach to make such promises to my new clients. I'd like to help them help themselves to identify what their soul needs. As for their realization, I'm not worried as I'm more and more convinced that we are supposed to receive all the needs of our soul sooner or later in our respective life until we return to where our soul came from and belongs to.