⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🤖 IFSBot: A safe, non-judgmental space for you to explore and heal your inner selves.  Try it here. 

💊 MDMA Therapy: Certain things you might want to know.  Read it here. 

👨‍💻 The Real Global Village: 1967 clip where philosopher Marshall McLuhan uncannily anticipated what it's like to live in our world of social media.  Watch it here. 

🎇 Image of The Week

"Was this a lucky shot? Although many amazing photographs are taken by someone who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, this image took skill and careful planning. First was the angular scale: if you shoot too close to the famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, the full moon will appear too small. Conversely, if you shoot from too far away, the moon will appear too large and not fit inside the Arc. Second is timing: the Moon only appears centered inside the Arc for small periods of time -- from this distance less than a minute. Other planned features include lighting, relative brightness, height, capturing a good foreground, and digital processing. And yes, there is some luck involved -- for example, the sky must be clear. This time, the planning was successful, bringing two of humanity's most famous icons photographically together for all to enjoy."

❓ The Most Important Questions

It's easy to slip into an autopilot mode where each day mirrors the previous one.

Falling into these patterns can mean we are missing out on opportunities for deep meaning.

I've been asking myself, "What are the most important questions?"

The answers to these questions can act as guideposts, directing how I conduct myself in the world and what experiences I choose to foster with others.

I hope to inspire you with this message to contemplate this as well: What are the most important questions for you at this moment?

Let me provide you with an example of a question I'm currently grappling with:

"How can I best express my love to my parents while they are still here with me on earth?"

This question holds significant importance to me. I've interacted with enough individuals who have lost their parents to understand how easy it is to wish you had said or done something differently.

The answer to this question is not a simple sentence to jot down and move on. Certainly not.

The answer is a living one. I utilize the question as a tool to direct my attention towards opportunities to demonstrate my love for them.

Sometimes it's just small moments and other times for more elaborate projects.

I often fail to answer adequately. But I'm working on that.

There are many "Most Important Questions" to ponder over the course of our lives. What is one for you?

🐾 Grief is Wild

Enjoy this reminder from Francis Weller on the wildness of grief:

“Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Aloha: The Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy, that is commonly used as a simple greeting but has a deeper cultural and spiritual significance to native Hawaiians, for whom the term is used to define a force that holds together existence.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

 How Feedback Changes Your Life: Stories of how my world expanded through giving and getting feedback 

Feedback. It’s one of those things you know is good for you, then end up wanting to avoid even more for that very reason. Like vegetables. Or Buddhism.

But what if I told you that feedback could be one of the most powerful self-development tools around? That engaging in it with true and humble intentions could rapidly and profoundly change your life?

Yeah. Way better than vegetables. (The Buddhism is kind of important though.)

What is feedback?

Before we dive into all the wondrous benefits you stand to gain from giving and getting feedback, let’s get clear on what we mean.

Typically, we associate feedback with the workplace or figures of authority and, as such, we also typically see it as negative. We usually envisage someone more important and powerful than us passing down some infallible judgement, providing some quantifiable measure of our worth.

But feedback is so much more than that.

As ever, the clue has helpfully been left in the name. Feed-back is the means by which life - from the people around us to our environment more generally - gives back to us what we have fed it.

When we talk in more specific terms about giving feedback therefore, we don’t mean being critical, or kind, or blunt or frank or sharp. What we mean is allowing yourself to become a conduit through which information can be reflected back to someone and to oneself.

Feedback is the process by which what I put out into the universe is hand-delivered back to me, with intrinsically precise data on the quality of that output. It is how we figure out how we are showing up in the world. And how we help others do the same. That makes this shit important.

All natural systems have feedback loops. A plant sends feedback from its leaves to its roots that it needs more water when it is drying out. A calf sends feedback to its mother to tell it is hungry or full. Everywhere around us the world simply reflects truth back to itself.

But in our complex and eternally refracting minds, we have forgotten this. We have learned to obfuscate reality from each other, hiding the truth that wants to come through us. And each time we do so we all become a little more lost.

But each time we clear the hosepipe and let the truth come through us, the whole organism flows a little more smoothly, and we get one immeasurable step closer to truth, balance and wholeness.

Because the other thing about feedback is that when we give it from a place of openheartedness and integrity, we are inviting it back onto ourselves. When we commit to dealing in the truth, we accept that this is a two-way exchange. Giving someone feedback comes with the implicit understanding that they can respond to you with their own truth, and that you will receive it just as you expect them to receive your feedback, with grace and humility.

Understood as such, we can begin to see how something as innocuous-sounding as feedback really can change our lives and the world around us. Here are some of the ways it's changed mine:

 [Continue Reading] 

🎬 Endnote

We hope you enjoyed this issue of Down The Rabbit Hole. Feel free to reply and tell us what you think.

Want to help us spread the word?

We love sharing these gems of wisdom and wonder with you each week. If you love receiving them and want to help us spread the word, here is one quick way you can do that:

Forward this email to one friend.

That's it. It will take 5 seconds and will help us spread the good vibes and reach more people. We appreciate you.

With Wonder,

Mike Slavin & The HighExistence Team

P.S. Did a friend forward you this email? Read previous issues and sign-up to receive future issues here: