⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

❤️‍🔥 Touching The Heart: A dharma talk from Shinzen Young on accessing a place of unconditional love and deep understanding of human experience. ​Watch it here.​

🔍 Seeking Language Large Enough: David Whyte reminds us, that so much of human experience is a conversation between loss and celebration. ​Listen here.​

🎩 Magic To Do: Automatically break down your big tasks into smaller, more achievable chunks using this tool. ​Try it here.​

🎇 Image of The Week

"What glows there? The answer depends: sea or sky? In the sea, the unusual blue glow is bioluminescence. Specifically, the glimmer arises from Noctiluca scintillans, single-celled plankton stimulated by the lapping waves. The plankton use their glow to startle and illuminate predators. This mid-February display on an island in the Maldives was so intense that the astrophotographer described it as a turquoise wonderland. In the sky, by contrast, are the more familiar glows of stars and nebulas. The white band rising from the artificially-illuminated green plants is created by billions of stars in the central disk of our Milky Way Galaxy. Also visible in the sky is the star cluster Omega Centauri, toward the left, and the famous Southern Cross asterism in the center. Red-glowing nebulas include the bright Carina Nebula, just right of center, and the expansive Gum Nebula on the upper right." ​Source.​

👑 Dethrone The Inner Critic

The talking points of the inner critic are often informed by real-life experience. This makes it hard to shake the truthiness of this internal naysayer that is constantly darting emotional fastballs of judgment in your direction.

Sure it might spit some truth but this truth is incomplete. The inner critic's perspective is almost always constrained and limited.

Some people will approach dealing with the inner critic by addressing its criticism through action. "I'm so lazy and procrastinate all the time. I'm going to ramp up my productivity and discipline."

Then the critic won't have anything to criticize, right? But alas, for the few who actually succeed at their change efforts, the critic does not vanish. No, instead it fixates on some new object of judgment and will lambast you until you take its marching orders.

You do not free yourself from the suffering of the critic by listening to its instructions. You free yourself by listening to its tone.

A biting tone means this part of yourself needs to be nourished into a space of safety and tranquility. If a child is having a temper tantrum do you obey his commands? No.

This requires a bigger motherly/fatherly perspective that can hold the whole interaction: The part being attacked and the part doing the attacking.

The critic is tracing lines around things that really happened but it selectively highlights things to form a particular narrative. It does not offer a whole and complete perspective.

It does not act as a critic to make you better. It's a critic because it's hurt and scared.

So don't place it on the throne in your mind where it's capable of making decrees about your worth and capability.

The throne should be reserved for an aspect of yourself that is unifying and even challenging at times but never threatening to withhold love unless you change in some specific way.

🌱 Planting Seeds

This passage of from "Notes From The Song of Life" by Tolbert McCarroll. I found this book in a little free library on an aimless long walk a couple years ago and found some of the passages to be potent:

"Do not try to reason out your life. Quietly walk along the silent paths of your inner garden.

Eventually, you will enter a selfless moment where there is no time. You will feel at home, and one with all of life. Then listen, really listen. You will hear your destiny tinkling like a distant silver bell.

When you know the general direction of your path you must not wait for your destiny to be delivered to you. Worse still, you must not try to make it take place. You must plant.

If a good farmer feels within him a desire to raise corn he does not wait for someone to give him the corn crop. Neither does he take a handful of sand and try to form an ear of corn. The farmer plants a kernel of corn, and he devotes his attention to that piece of corn. As the kernel sprouts and grows the farmer learns from it what next to do.

Once you have heard your destiny go and find a seed to plant. If you will be a creator and builder then today make a loaf of bread--not tomorrow but today. Should you hear yourself drawn to a life with children then today go and touch a child. And, let a child touch you. When the bell within you sounds like a temple bell and you yearn for spiritual solitude realize that you are your own monastery.

Today establish your monastic routine. Your contemplative regime can only begin in the bustle of the noisy city.

Plant your seed now. Let it grow. In a few days you will learn what to do next. You must never neglect your plant for even a day.

Sometimes you will plant new seeds. There will be times for gentle pruning and times for daring transplants. Be aware, alert and vital. Respond to what you hear and see. Do not drift through life.

Live every day as if it were your last and every minute as if it were your first."

🤓 Learn This Word

Schulbildend: A German word that means inspiring or leading to the creation of schools of thought.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

​We Live In A Beautiful World​

Look around you, it is amazing: skyscrapers, gravity, daisies, peaches, archipelagos, children, languages, music, wars, phosphorous, galaxies, snow, literature, human existence.

We live in such a breathtaking environment that is full of magic and wonder. Although we can feel intense sadness, profound happiness can be just around the corner. One step away. One thought away. One kiss away. Sources of joy are literally everywhere; one just has to overlook all of the negative things trying to cover them up.

The world conspires for you to be happy, not unhappy. It is all a matter of perspective, of stepping back and taking a good look at the world around you. How can you ever be bored, depressed, frustrated, annoyed or jealous in a world of such infinite possibility?

Are you discontent with your current situation? Then change it. Move elsewhere. Do something else. Befriend other people. This world is not a single plane; it is vast and varied and waiting for you to experience it.

If today is not a good day, wake up tomorrow and start a better day. Better yet, close your eyes for one minute and open them looking for the beauty, the complexity, the awesomeness that is this Universe. Forget the ugliness, the adversity, the vacuous nature that so many impose upon the world around them for those details are not worth paying attention to, nor remembering.

​[Continue Reading]​

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