⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

❤️‍🔥 Revealing The Love Within: Anita's self-love framework, informed by her transformative personal journey and coaching practice, emphasizes self-love as a discovery rather than an achievement, focusing on inner critic transformation, nervous system regulation, emotional fluidity, and fostering connections and belonging​​​​​​. Read it here.

🔆 Finding Calm With Little Signals: Many everyday objects find subtle ways to inform us - from the moving hands of a clock to the whistle of a kettle. Little Signals continues that theme and explores how we might stay up-to-date with digital information while maintaining moments of calm. Learn more here.

🌱 What if we treated life as sacred? Euvie Ivanova urges us to shift from abstraction to intimate engagement with the living world​​​​​​. Read it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

This stunning image captures a rare phenomenon known as 'upward lightning,' taken by astrophotographer Sergio Montúfar at the Volcán de Agua (Volcano of Water) in Guatemala. This remarkable photo snapped in July 2019, shows lightning bolts emanating from two communication antennas on top of the 12,000-foot high volcano, located opposite the twin volcanoes of Fuego and Acatenango. Watch a video of upward lightning here.

🎂 Blow Out The Candles

My birthday is Saturday. Each one seems to come a little faster than the last.

It has me reflecting on the magic of childhood birthday parties. No one ever explained to me why cakes were magic only one day a year.

And do they make genies jealous with all the wishes they accrue?

There’s something powerful about making a wish. As we grow it certainly feels like superstition. No adult really believes a cake will make our dreams come true, do they?

And sure the carbs might have nothing to do with it but the ritual itself might lend a hand in bringing our wishes to fruition.

This world is incredibly complex and we’re constantly engrossed in uncertainty. When we hold our desires closely it’s easy to become burdened by them feeling as if it’s all on us to make them happen.

But if we can release them to some grander cosmic force beyond ourselves it frees us from the clutching. This might give us the room and free hands to navigate the world in such a way that actually contributes to the emergence of the wish.

This notion reminds me of the Kierkegaard quote “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

I make the wish not to stomp my feet and demand it from reality but to hand it over to something beyond myself and let life take its course.

Then I’m not blinded by desire and can indulge in the sweetness of my ongoing unfolding and becoming, enjoying the general passage of time.

Maybe one day the cake will prove that it’s magic. Maybe the cake is a lie.

I don’t know. I’ll eat it either way.

 💪Amor Fati

Enjoy this passage from the mythical Joseph Campbell:

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Otium: The condition of being in control of one’s own time; leisure, free-time; ease, peace.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

Acceptance is the Key That Unlocks Human Flourishing

One morning in August 2000, I was sitting in my flat in Singapore, meditating, enjoying a state of inner calm. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, a loud, high-pitched ringing noise started up in my ear. It was as if someone had pressed a button inside my head. Everyone gets ringing in their ears sometimes, of course, so at first, I wasn’t concerned.

But this ringing didn’t go away.

And it seemed to get worse — after a few days, it got louder and developed an awful screeching overtone. I found it impossible to meditate, and difficult to sleep.

In fact, I was disturbed by the noise almost all the time. It was so loud that I was always conscious of it unless there was very loud background noise.

I gradually realized that the noise wasn’t going to leave me.

I realized that I had tinnitus.

Perhaps it was the result of playing loud music in rock bands for several years when I was younger, or perhaps it was related to an episode of bronchitis I’d had shortly before. The worst thing was that I could never escape the noise — it was always with me, 24 hours a day. I used to love silence, to just sit or lie down and listen to the stillness, so it was depressing to think that for me silence was gone forever. I went to see a specialist, who told me that I was partially deaf in my ear due to the tinnitus and that there was no chance of a cure — it was something I’d just have to get used to.

I tried to mask the noise — the specialist gave me a ‘white noise’ generating device to put in my ear, and at night I went to sleep with the radio tuned between stations. But that wasn’t fair on my wife – the noise of the radio made it difficult for her to sleep. Eventually, I said to myself, ‘This is ridiculous — the noise isn’t going to go away, so I’ll have to try to accept it.’

One night I decided to face up to the noise, and not switch the radio on. And to my surprise, it wasn’t so difficult. Imagine there’s a person who you think of as an enemy and are afraid to face — but once you do face them, you find that they’re not so objectionable after all. I managed to get to sleep quite easily, and the next night it was even easier. I found that I was less affected by the noise during the day as well. I even found I could meditate without background noise.

I still hear the tinnitus now — it’s screeching in my ear as I write this, but it doesn’t affect me. It’s just there, in a neutral, non-bothering way.

​[Continue Reading]

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

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With Wonder,

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