⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🕹 The Operating Manual for Your Nervous System: Embrace ‘state over story’ to shift your thoughts and overcome anxiety.  Read it here. 

🏛 Ask Seneca: Ask the ancient Stoic Philosopher your questions and get tailored advice.  Try it here. 

💯 The Hero100 Challenge: Our Recipe For Identity-Level Transformation:  Watch it here. 

🎇 Image of The Week

Pictured two weeks ago by Elias Chasiotis, a crescent moon was captured near the horizon, just before sunrise, far behind remnants of the ancient Temple of Poseidon in Greece.

💡 Creative Breakthroughs

Last night, I experienced a breakthrough in my creative process. After years of slowly nurturing a new magic show, recently I have found myself caught in a bit of a dry spell.

But last night something just clicked: multiple dots, long separated and seemingly unrelated, coalesced in my mind, forming a pattern that I had not previously envisioned.

The creative process, I have come to realize, is not a steady, linear progression, but rather a tumultuous, often unpredictable series of ebbs and flows. And while these dry spells may threaten to snuff out our enthusiasm and leave us feeling defeated, we must persevere.

To all my fellow craftsmen and creatives out there: do not be disheartened by the occasional dip in your ingenuity. These moments of struggle are not evidence of a lack of talent or ability, but rather an essential part of the process. Trust in your own creative instincts, keep showing up, and I promise you, the dots will eventually connect.

️‍💯 On Identity-Level Transformation

Whatever you’re working on, it’s rooted in identity-level transformation.

More discipline? Identity. Core confidence? Identity. Self-transcendence? Identity. Habits, awakening, career development, addiction recovery, psychedelic integration.

It’s identity all the way down…

So what does identity-level transformation actually require? We have a new podcast out today exploring all the details of this. Dive deep with Eric Brown exploring the seriousness, playfulness, and intricacies of transforming yourself.

We cover all of this and more:

• What does identity level transformation actually require?

• The 4 core requirements to step into a new identity

• Being humbled 5 days into a medicine retreat…

• Essential mechanics to assist a transformative journey

• What grounded action for a better world looks like

If identity-level transformation is what you’re after, this is what the  Hero100  is made for.

It is a trojan horse, a transformational initiation disguised as a discipline challenge. It will challenge core beliefs, help you step into new identities and possibilities, and build a community of practice around you.

We begin on April 1st.  Take the leap. 

✍🏼 A Broken Bottle of Ink

Enjoy this classic Alan Watts passage:

"It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it."

🤓 Learn This Word

Prestidigitation:

1. Performance of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of hand.

2. Skill or cleverness, especially in deceiving others.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

 The Marcus Aurelius Guide to Stoic Journaling 

Do you ever contemplate the many facets of your existence? Chances are, if you’re reading this article, you probably do.

What about the characters in your life—do you feel as if you’ve chosen them? Do they add value to your life, and you to theirs? What kind of value? Are you conscious of how they might be influencing you?

Do you ever choose to write down the fruits of your contemplations? Do you ever harness the flow of your thoughts to a page with no particular end in mind?

That’s what Marcus Aurelius was doing around AD 170 – 175. What have come to be known as his Meditations began purely as personal, written explorations which were never intended for publication.

Posthumously, his notes were divided into twelve chapters—or “books”—each one of which offers us a plethora of timeless existential insights, maxims and, perhaps most importantly, questions that encourage the reader to reflect directly on his/her own life, as opposed to merely observing the philosopher’s viewpoint from a detached position.

 [Continue Reading] 

🎬 Endnote

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