Today, I want to delve into the philosophical ideas of Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century philosopher from the Netherlands, and how they intersect with what Dr K's taught us.

I've been working through the HG coaching program and I'm currently experiencing some kind of epiphany, connecting Spinoza's ideas with Dr. K's teachings.

Spinoza's major work, the Ethics, demonstrates that people are naturally not in control of their own lives. He argues that we are passive, driven by external causes he calls "Affects". These Affects, according to Spinoza, are external influences that produce emotions within us. These emotions then drive our thoughts and actions. In other words, he says that people can normally not exert their free will because they are constantly driven to act or think the way they do, and they have no control over those drivers. In essence, people are slaves to their Affects.

Ultimately, he outlines a pathway that leads to regaining control over our life by raising our awareness of how Affects control us. Through knowledge of our external drivers and understanding of their effects on our mind, we can steer our behavior in ways that would normally be out of reach for us.

Said more simply, he states that knowledge and understanding of your Affects let you break free from full blown determinsm.

In some videos of Dr K where he talks about Motivation and Addiction, that all became crystal clear to me. It seems that our current knowledge of neurobiology align with those intuitions from Spinoza.

Dr. K explains how the brain's reward circuitry (e.g. the nucleus acumbens if I'm not mistaken) teaches reward-driven habits and baseline behaviors based on dopamine. This circuitry is also responsible for motivation - sudden drives to act differently from habit. But since people normally have no control of it, this system passively defines a person's life. Which aligns perfectly with Spinoza's notion of Passive existence!

Dr. K then explains how through knowledge, mindfulness and meditation, one can gain awareness of these drives, cravings and emotions, thus granting us the possibility of controlling our actions, breaking automatic patterns, and gaining self-direction.

I love Spinoza, but didn't know how to apply his ideas to daily life until seeing these connections to Dr. K's teachings.I still have a long way to go in my own journey, but finally, the path ahead seems more desirable.

I finally have hope.