“Originality is not something you invent so much as it is an utterance through you by your origins.” – Toko-pa Turner
I’m reading a beautiful book right now called The Dreaming Way, by Toko-pa Turner.
And I’m reading it old school:
Not by asking ChatGPT to summarize it, extract the bones and feed them to me in a single, raw gulp.
But slowly. Deliberately. One word at a time.
Retracing sentences, paragraphs, pages, and sometimes entire chapters.
Stopping, thinking, considering what I’m reading.
Feeling through the words to the deeper energy they carry, and allowing that energy to saturate my mind until the message becomes an experienced reality.
Books like this don’t come along often.
Once or twice a year, maybe. Sometimes less.
And when they do come along, they leave bookmarks in the timeline of our lives:
Noting the shifting of a paradigm, when we leave an old version of our worldview behind and step into a greater one.
These books don’t simply offer knowledge, they offer an experience that transcends knowledge.
An experience that, if we let it, can transform us permanently.
To speed-read a book like this would be like blending a Michelin Star meal into a smoothie to swallow it faster. Sacrilege.
But this is a possibility AI has opened, for us:
Rapid ingestion of information unlike anything humanity has ever known, where limitless knowledge can be mainlined into our mind with the click of a few buttons…
…Inspiring us to move faster and consume more while thinking little and experiencing less.
It’s not bad and it’s not good, it’s a tool that unlocks potential, and potential swings both ways.
What you use it for and how you use it makes all the difference.
But if you want my advice:
Be careful what you use it for.
While AI can accelerate our learning, innovation and advancement, it often does so by stripping the soul from our experience.
So, when you come across something truly beautiful:
A book, a piece of art, a video, a talk that inspires you…
Slow down.
And then, slow down further.
Take it in — all the way in.
Give it time to work its way through your mind, into your heart and spirit where it can come alive.
When it’s finished, you won’t be the same.
- T
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