⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🐢 It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity: We need fewer things to work on. Starting now. Read it here.

🚲 The Thousand Year Journey: Jedidiah quit a job that he loved to ride his bicycle from Oregon to the southern tip of South America. Watch it here.

☘️ How To Be Lucky: Most of us think that luck just happens (or doesn’t) but everyone can learn to look for the unexpected and find serendipity. Read it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

This stunning image captures the Inceptus Project by artist David Popa. It’s an earth mural using all-natural, biodegradable pigments located in Norway's Bergsøyan Islands.

⛓ Self-Sabotage or Strategic Ignorance?

If you're like most people, you've probably tried to implement changes to your life only to slip back into old patterns at some point.

This is extremely common.

Many people explain this failure as self-sabotage.

When people get motivated to make big changes, it often comes from a place of restlessness in their experience of life.

Things have lost their luster. The internal dialogue is harsh. The emotional weather is stormy.

So "enough is enough!" I'm going to change things.

Then a big plan is built off of this spike in motivation.

The transformation is set in motion. Spirits begin to rise. Confidence grows.

Until...

Something happens that diminishes motivation and the plan begins to fall apart.

It could be something small like a bad night of sleep or a hangover after a night of too much fun.

Or it could be something larger like a breakup or a job loss.

Whatever the size of the disruption, the person slides back into old patterns.

Then they return to the harsh internal dialogue and stormy emotions with an added feeling of failure.

"Maybe I can't change? Why do I keep sabotaging myself? What's wrong with me?"

The answer is...

Nothing.

Nothing wrong with you.

There is very likely something to be adjusted in your approach.

You see, oftentimes, self-sabotage is strategic ignorance.

We have to expect the wild curveballs from life that disrupt our motivation rather than remaining blind to them.

So here's what you should do:

Focus on consistency over intensity.

If you start small, you'll be better able to continue when the unexpected strikes.

And if you still fall off the wagon you must learn to forgive yourself.

If you're punishing yourself whenever you slip up then it's worth asking the question:

Are you operating from a place where you're already whole and complete or are you striving to reach wholeness?

Already complete and whole means you recognize your flaws, you are learning and growing through your failures, and celebrating your successes on this wild ride through life.

If you are striving and straining then you are borrowing your wholeness from some imagined actualized version of yourself in the future. If you deviate from that specific vision then your wholeness is held in question leading to self-talk that is callous and cold.

The former provides a sustainable, ongoing fuel source for transformation. Our own self-love and acceptance.

The latter creates a prison that we’ll inevitably rebel against.

So start small and be kind.

From there you can grow changes into your life like you were planting seeds, nourished by water and sun until they blossom into a garden of beautiful possibilities.

🌠 Drink In The Beauty

Enjoy these wonder-inducing words from author Rachel Carson

“When one's thoughts are released to roam through the lonely spaces of the universe, can be shared with a child even if you don't know the name of a single star. You can still drink in the beauty, and think and wonder at the meaning of what you see.”

“Underlying the beauty of the spectacle there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of the meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to the riddle is hidden.”

And enjoy this sentiment from Kathleen Raine that shares some flavors of the words above:

“Strangest of all is the ease with which the vision is lost, consciousness contracts, we forget over and over again, until recollection is stirred by some icon of that beauty. Then we remember and wonder why we ever forgot.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Hierophany: the manifestation of the sacred.

Further unpacked by author Katherine May “When we make a tree or a stone or a wafer of bread the subject of our worshipful attention, we transform it into a hierophany, an object of the sacred.”

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

The Healing Potential of MDMA

“I encountered Jonathan Robinson, the Psychotherapist, motivational speaker and best-selling author, through his course Healing with MDMA about how to facilitate MDMA journeys. Intrigued by what seemed a down-to-earth, no-nonsense stance on the clear effectiveness of MDMA as a psychotheraputic medicine, I decided to do a little research, and it quickly became apparent that Jonathan was what you might call the real deal. 

It wasn’t that he had led over 800 MDMA journeys or sold millions of books that impressed me. It was the authenticity that I felt shining through Jonathan, the heart and soul that he clearly puts into this work. As the psychedelic renaissance intersects with mainstream medicine, one frequently encounters a cool, clinical approach to the use of mind-altering substances: input - drug, output - healing. But Jonathan’s approach was clearly much deeper than that, more human. He talks about MDMA as a sacred medicine and indeed emphasises its effectiveness for spiritual growth as much as psychological healing. It also helps that Jonathan is funny, warm and relatable, conveying a sense that everything will be alright in the end. 

What follows is a brief summary of his book, Ecstasy as Medicine, alongside information gleaned from various podcasts and the Healing with MDMA course I am currently participating in, which details the holistic approach, honed over many years of practice, that Jonathan takes towards guiding MDMA journeys.”

​[Continue Reading]

🎬 Endnote

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,

Mike Slavin