# How Building A Zettelkasten Is A Spiritual Practice # Titles - How building a zettelkasten is a spiritual practice - How the zettelkasten is a spiritual practice # Script Most people when they think of Zettelkasten don't think of Spirituality. But I would argue the Zettelkasten practice is one of the most spiritual things you can do. I used to be addicted to video games. For the longest time I was terrified of writing anything remotely to do with video games. One day I was sitting processing some notes on Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by [[Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]] and Actionable Gamification by Yu-Kai Chou--a book all about how we can take elements typically found in games and apply them to real life to make it more engaging. **Then it clicked.** Through seeing the two books in tandem naturally by the connecting nature of the Zettelkasten I realized that through combining both of their ideas I could begin to understand what about video games had entranced me so much as a kid. Than I could apply it to my life and others to help make real life the most fun game imaginable. I felt a massive reservoir of energy bubble up from inside of me. As I delved into the connection which naturally came up through my Zettelkasten, deep seeted insecurities about my video game past began to be healed. **My Zettelkasten had brought me not only to an insight about myself but about the whole world.** This is what I want to dive into for the rest of this article. How is the Zettelkasten a spiritual practice. To do so we will explore: - What Spirituality Is - How Your Zettelkasten Is A Reflection Of You - How To Make Building Your Zettelkasten A Spiritual Practice **I believe everyone can make the same fundamental realization as me; you just have to come to your Zettelkasten with the right mindset.** ### What is Spirituality? Spirituality to me is [[There is no separation between you and the universe, you are ONE|the practice of fully integrating the fundamental inseparation between you and the Universe]]. You wouldn’t exist without the existence of other people or things in the universe. The way you sense, feel, think, and act in the world is fundamentally dependent on the existence of other things in the world. You are literally made from the dust of the Big Bang. **Awakening comes with realizing the unity of yourself and the universe.** There is no I to be independent of the universe! The only reason we feel there must be an I is because we are conditioned by society to have certain beliefs, categories, labels, etc. Awakening comes with returning to your childlike self and surrendering the need to rigidly see the world through your clingings. This is incredibly difficult because the ego doesn’t want us to stop projecting ourselves into the world. It barrels us with thoughts relentlessly. **The spiritual practice therefore is a process of recognizing your ego, understanding it, and than surrendering your attachment to it.** We'll now see how the Zettelkasten can help you do this. ### Your Zettelkasten Is A Reflection of Your Yourself If you are messy inside you will have a messy Zettelkasten. [[The two biggest issues of people getting into PKM|The two biggest issues of people getting into PKM are:]] 1. They don't know what to create 2. They over collect People in the Zettelkasten and broader PKM community tend to say this is because of faulty processing habits or creation habits. This is of course true. But it doesn't get to the more insidious third route to the problem. **The third and BIGGEST issue of people getting into PKM: *Not Understanding Yourself*.** Not understanding your feeling and thought tendencies, the information you consume, your values, your goals, aspirations, the people you hang out with, everything about yourself. Luckily we can use the Zettelkasten practice itself to recognize our ego, understand it, and than learn to surrender our attachment to it. # How To Make Your Zettelkasten A Spiritual Practice ### Recognizing The Ego Firstly, start treating your Zettelkasten as a way to help you recognize the ego. Your Zettelkasten reflects the information you consume throughout your day. Information is like food. If you consume garbage and thus feel hateful and angry it will show up in your Zettelkasten through the notes you create (or don't create). **So look inside.** What do you see? What notes are coming up again and again? What are the feelings you express inside of those notes? After my experience mentioned in the beginning of the article I dove into my old Zettelkasten in Roam Research and I noticed there was a profound lack of feelings expressed inside of my journal entrees. In addition, I had no mention of video games anywhere throughout any of my notes despite my love for them through all of my middle and high school years. Clearly something was up. ### Understanding Your Ego The second step is to start trying to understand your ego. What is peering into your Zettelkasten allowing you to see? Why are you consuming that information? Why are your forming the connections you are? [[Your second brain is an externalization of your psychology]]. Writing things down in your [[PKM MOC|PKM system]] serves as a physical manifestation of what we believed and thought before change. > “Never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things — childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves — that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.” - Salman Rushdie Writing allows us to capture the transformations we experienced in [[Liminal Spaces|liminal spaces]] where we felt doubt, discomfort, unfamiliarity, anxiety, but at the same time growth, change, and discovery occur. So recognizing these old notes and trying to understand them can give us immense clarity into ourselves. After peering into my old Roam Research Zettelkasten I began to uncouple why I felt so aversive to showing feelings and mentioning video games inside of my Zettelkasten. For all of my middle and high school years I wasted hours and hours of my time playing video games. During the summer months I could play for as much as seven hours on end. When I finally exited my addiction, I realized the insane amount of life I had lost. **I rejected it.** I didn't want to accept my loss so I didn't write about it in my notes, in my journals, nothing. I didn't realize that [[Anytime you renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce|anytime you renounce something you tie your wellbeing to that thing]]. That's because the fact that you are renouncing that thing becomes a part of your identity. By rejecting my past in video games, I paradoxically strengthened its hold over me, which got exemplified in my Zettelkasten. ### Surrendering Attachment to The Ego %%Discuss how by surrendering attachment to our ideas, to not processing everything we collect, to the uncertainty of not knowing what t owrite about, from following the way and flowing with where our mind takes us we can overcome the three biggest problems mentioned earlier.%% [[Taoism MOC]] [[Efforts over projects when developing ideas]] ### The Beauty Of The Zettelkasten Without Ego Attachment [[Creativity is an act of assemblage]] [[Your Zettelkasten can serve as a reflection of what you should create]] [[The Notetaking Mindsets of The New Era Student]] [[Your second brain protects you from the distraction of outside resources]] [[Your notes should be pieces of understanding rather than pieces of truth]] ### Conclusion: Start Building Your Own Zettelkasten--Make Your Spiritual Transformation