⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🧘 10 Minute Yoga Nidra: Sometimes called "Yogic Sleep" or "Non-Sleep Deep Rest" is a practice of meditation that helps focus on intentional relaxation of different parts of the body to support a regulated nervous system. In recent weeks, I've been listening to this recording daily: ​Listen here.​

🤝 Relating as Beneficent Space: Uncover the transformative power of spontaneous action and open-hearted awareness in reshaping personal interactions, as inspired by Vajrayana principles. ​Read it here.​

👁 Social Intelligence Test: How well can you read the emotions of others just by looking at their eyes? Find out by taking this test. ​Try it here.​

🎇 Image of The Week

What you see above is a "Strangler Fig Tree." This tree has a unique and fascinating life cycle. Unlike most trees, which start life as seeds in the ground, strangler figs often start life as a seed that lands (often due to being deposited by birds or other animals) in the branches of another tree. The seed germinates and sends roots down to the ground while the young plant grows up towards the sunlight, using the host tree for support.

As the fig grows, it sends down more and more roots, which can envelop the host tree's trunk in a lattice-like network. Over time, the strangler fig can outcompete the host tree for sunlight and nutrients, eventually causing the host tree to die. Once the host tree dies and decomposes, the strangler fig is left standing alone, its trunk often having a hollow core where the host tree once stood.

🎬 Stop Seeking Conclusions

A few nights ago I had an intense, lucid dream. I approached a dream character who was wearing the face of a friend and asked if he had any wisdom for me. I wanted to see what my unconscious might offer up to me in this peculiar state of consciousness. He said "Stop seeking conclusions, allow emotions to resolve themselves, and let life take its course."

This resonated with me. Lately, I've noticed a desire to arrive at the punchline, to know how things will unfold. But doing so robs me of fully experiencing the beauty and richness of each day. It also doesn't recognize that when we reach one set of conclusions, the mind simply fixates on new ones.

Instead, if we remain open and attentive to the emotions driving the desire for resolution, we no longer need to fast-forward life just to avoid feeling them. We can feel those emotions in the present moment, then be free to fully experience life as it is now..

💯 Unleash Your Inner Warrior

Friend of the Down The Rabbit Hole and long time colleague Eric Brown is launching something new:

"Do you have greatness inside you waiting to be unleashed?

Most of us do. But it takes courage to step into our power.

Society wants us to play small - avoid conflict, numb emotions, shrink from discomfort. This leaves many feeling lost, drifting, lacking purpose.

But there is a radically different path available to you today.

By committing to just 4 simple daily disciplines, you’ll unlock the greatness lying dormant within you.

In 100 days, we will FORGE:

• A resilient body through physical training

• A disciplined mind through concentration meditation

• Unwavering integrity by speaking your truth

• Connection to purpose by studying the timeless warrior virtues

You will build real courage, honor, focus, and self-respect. And be equipped to make a difference in the world.

This is what the ​Warrior100​ is all about: A rigorous 100-day training program that develops your mind, body, heart, and spirit through the devoted practice of four daily disciplines.

This is not a challenge for the faint of heart. But if you feel the call and are ready to unleash your inner warrior, now is the time.

It kicks off on September 1st.

Use code ‘RABBITHOLE’ to save $20 on enrollment today.

Let us forge greatness together.

Onward,

Eric Brown"

☀️ The Good Life

Digest the wisdom in this quote from the eminent psychologist Carl Rogers:

“I believe it will have become evident why, for me, adjectives such as happy, contented, blissful, enjoyable, do not seem quite appropriate to any general description of this process I have called the good life, even though the person in this process would experience each one of these at the appropriate times. But adjectives which seem more generally fitting are adjectives such as enriching, exciting, rewarding, challenging, meaningful. This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the fainthearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Eunoia: A Greek word that described a well-mind; beautiful thinking

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

​Dream Yoga: The Ancient Practice of Using Lucid Dreaming to Gain Enlightenment​

Tibetan Buddhists have been meditating in their dreams for more than a thousand years. Let’s step into the mind-bending world of dream yoga.

According to legend, when Siddhartha Gautama was glowing right after his enlightenment, people asked him if he was a god, a prophet, a rishi, or a saint, and to each he replied, “No.” What he simply said is “I am awake,” and his answer became his title.

The word “Buddha” comes from the Sanskrit root budh, which means “to awaken” and denotes one who has awakened from the deep sleep of ignorance. Thus from the outset, Buddhism has been intimately connected to literal and figurative sleep.

One way to understand the Buddha’s teachings is that we’re actually the most spiritually awake in deep dreamless sleep and the most asleep in so-called waking reality. Unfortunately, most of us have got it completely backward. Spiritual practice, and the nocturnal meditations, can lead us to this realization.

Nocturnal Meditations

The nocturnal meditations begin with lucid dreaming, which is the launching pad for exploring the deep inner space of the nighttime mind. In lucid dreaming, you’re fully conscious within the dream and therefore can do almost anything you want within it.

Lucid dreaming is the ultimate in home entertainment. Your mind becomes the theater, and you are the producer, director, writer, and main actor. You can script the perfect love story or the wildest adventure. Lucid dreaming can also be used to solve problems, rehearse situations, improve athletic performance, and work through psychological issues. From the trivial to the transcendent, lucid dreaming provides a spectrum of experience mostly concerned with worldly matters and self-fulfillment.

​[Continue Reading]​

🎬 Endnote

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