⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

👁 Renewing Our Sense of Wonder: This interview explores Sam Keen's journey from theology professor to countercultural journalist, focusing on his philosophy that our lives are shaped by the stories we tell ourselves. Keen discusses the importance of confronting and understanding these narratives to live consciously. Read it here.

👽 How Society Makes You Feel Alienated: Dr. Gabor Maté on the implications materialistic culture has on our mental and physical health. Watch it here.

✅ Atomic Habits Tracking App: Get the world's most comprehensive app for building good habits and breaking bad ones. Try it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

“Crown shyness is a naturally occurring phenomenon observed in forests where the crowns of trees avoid touching each other, creating a stunning visual effect akin to a network of cracks in the canopy. It’s been observed in species of European oak and pine, but is most prevalent in tropical and subtropical rainforests.

Scientists are yet to reach a consensus on why it happens, but the most popular theory is that it’s a preventative measure against shading; to optimize the tree’s exposure to light and maximize photosynthesis.”

✨ Magic: An Endangered Species

To some magic is considered an endangered species.

A vestige of a time before we smartened up to the cold hard facts of life.

There’s an unfortunate smug categorization that magic is child’s play.

Invoking ideas of unicorns and potions.

Too smart to find the sacred hiding in plain sight.

So caught up in disproving the impossible that they could not muster astonishment in the face of the possible.

That we exist at all. That these words are reaching you. That you just exhaled.

THAT is magic.

Magic isn’t an endangered species.

It is the ground we stand on.

It is the soil from which all life blooms.

We are enveloped in it.

And our ability to see it is a skill of attention.

It is a process of undressing our arrogance, of loosening our grip on our fixed ideas of what this world is.

Our knowledge is only a tiny island, a speck in the vast ocean of the incomprehensible unknown.

And when we learn to embrace the grandeur of this mystery, the tectonic plates of our being shift to cause an eruption of wonder, cascading into the cracks and crevices of a previously deadened world.

No, magic isn’t an endangered species.

But those who know it, feel it, and breathe it…

Those who can taste it on the edge of this moment.

Are becoming increasingly rare.

This highlights the exquisite burden and gift of being bastions of bedazzlement.

You see, magic exists abundantly all around us like gas waiting to ignite.

We are the spark.

Is this day worth setting ablaze?

🌠 Experience The Mystery

Enjoy these eye-widening words from Albert Einstein:

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

🤓 Learn This Word

Tenalach: an ancient Gaelic word that refers to a connection with nature so deep that one can hear the Earth sing

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

The Dis-Ease of Busyness: Why We Desperately Need to Slow Down in a Non-Stop World

Lately I’ve been feeling really busy, not productive, not engaged, just busy, like there’s always something to be done or somewhere to go, a general sort of buzz of busyness. I don’t like it. It makes me feel anxious and ill at ease. I don’t think it’s good for me, or for any of us, to be in that constant state of buzz, that constant state of feeling like we have so much stuff to do that we can’t take a breath, that we have so much to do we don’t even know what we’re doing.

I think we often try to pack life with so much stuff to do that we stop actually living life a little bit, we stop enjoying what we’re doing right now in anticipation of what we have to, or want to do, next. I’m guilty of this all the time, thinking about what I’m going to have for lunch while I’m eating my breakfast instead of just sitting there enjoying my breakfast, sometimes not registering that I even ate breakfast at all and feeling hungry just minutes later.

Dis-ease, lack of focus

Or I’ll feel like I have so much I need to get done I can’t resist the urge to jump right into it, so I’ll skip my morning movement and meditation sessions, the two things I know with certainty help me to be more productive during the day, that help me keep my pain levels down, that help me feel calmer, more at ease, and allow me to approach my day with more clarity, more confidence, more focus, more enjoyment.

I end up skipping the things I know help me to live most fully, most happily, in order to get to the living faster and instead end up in this state of busyness and dis-ease, a buzz of unsettledness and unproductiveness, exactly the opposite of why I jumped right in in the first place. It’s counterproductive. It doesn’t work. It leads to increased muscle tension, rising anxiety, elevated pain levels, all the things I can avoid by taking some time to slow down, to move, to breathe, to meditate, to be present in the now.

Even if I try to save the day later by going for a walk, I’ll too often think about my to-do list, all the things that I should be doing instead of being out for a walk, all the things I need to get done as soon as I get home. So rather than paying attention to and engaging with the world around me, rather than taking the much needed break I went out for a walk in the first place for, I feel like I need to hurry home to get back at it. I feel rushed and anxious rather than calm and relaxed. sigh

​[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