⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

👑 Otis The King: A Tribute That Will Move Any Dog Lovers. ​Watch it here.​

👁 The Truth About Trauma: Bessel van der Kolk, Rachel Yehuda and George Bonanno. How the mainstreaming of trauma is changing culture. ​Read it here.​

📱InnerSense: the mobile app that combats anxiety with science-backed practices, personalized to your daily routine. ​Try it here.​

🎇 Image of The Week

"This photo is a little window into the beautiful city of Fujinomiya. It's located in Japan's Shizuoka Prefecture and is best known as a gateway to the iconic Mount Fuji, with the city offering a popular route to the mountain's summit. The city is blessed with stunning views of this majestic peak, which are enjoyed by locals and tourists alike. Additionally, Fujinomiya is the home of the historic Fujisan Sengen Shrine, one of the grandest and most significant shrines dedicated to Mount Fuji. The shrine, steeped in deep religious and historical significance, is a pilgrimage start point for those embarking on a spiritual journey up the mountain."

🤩 Unlearning Adulthood

I've made a habit of splitting synonyms and uncovering nuance between words typically treated as identical in meaning.

Today these words are Adulthood and Maturity.

(The caveat here is that these definitions may not be what is typically agreed upon but that's not the point. The point is to allow yourself to sense the subtlety that these distinctions afford).

Adulthood is the culturally prescribed path of growth where one leaves their child-like wonder behind as they "grow up" in pursuit of some contortion that allows them to contribute to the economy.

Maturity integrates child-like wonder into the basic functioning of life never feeling like the mystery has been solved and that the world can be contained into a model that has been taught.

Maturity recognizes the responsibility that needs to be seized to move beyond childhood but doesn't leave the wisdom of childhood behind.

According to these definitions, I would suggest that it is admirable to mature but adulthood is a mutation of maturity forced upon you by a culture that needs you to participate in upholding its structures.

Unlearn adulthood. Become mature.

🧭 No Mind Can Compass

The beloved author Cormac McCarthy died yesterday. Here are a few sizzling passages of descriptive prowess, the first of which is about death:

"Most people don’t ever see anyone die. It used to be if you grew up in a family you saw everybody die. They died in their bed at home with everyone gathered around. Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us. It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd."

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Evanescence: the quality of being fleeting or vanishing quickly; impermanence.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

​3 Thought-Provoking Speakers Similar to Alan Watts: Krishnamurti, Anthony de Mello, and Socrates​

Alan Watts is, of course, inimitable. Everything from the particularly humorous yet incisive blend of insight he delivers, to the uniquely delightful tone and cadence of his voice, which seems to have been made to be listened to and persist on record throughout eternity, to the human frailty that coupled his profound understanding of Eastern spirituality and which gives his words an intimate accessibility.

But every great spiritual teacher’s insights lie in their ability to communicate profound truths in a direct manner, in a way which makes something in your mind go ‘click’, where something ancient and inchoate it knew but couldn’t speak is unlocked and presented to consciousness. And there are many other great teachers who can do that. Let’s take a look at three other speakers that have a way of communicating the immeasurable. The point is not to go into great depth with any of them, but simply to introduce them if you haven't already introduced yourself. The rest of the journey is up to you.

​[Continue Reading]​

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