⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

☀️ The Mythic Power of A Solar Eclipse: Creative Director of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project (and widow to Carl Sagan) describes how science can serve as a sort of informed worship, correcting faulty pattern recognition and opening the door for a deeper love of nature. Watch it here.

🌳 Alan Watts - Conversation With Myself: While walking in a field above Muir Woods, Alan Watts points to humankind’s attempts to straighten out a wiggly world as the root of our ecological crisis. Watch it here.

🤗 Could that tingle down the spine be a way to rediscover joy? In new research, scientists have looked into the potential benefits of giving people with depression the aesthetic chills. Read more here.

🎇 Image of The Week

The above photo captured April 8th’s solar eclipse was taken by Brandon Bell in Brady, Texas. Were you in the path of totality to witness this awe-inspiring natural event?

🁼 Small Choices With Big Impact

If you find ever find yourself in a rut, it may be that the patterns of behavior you've been nurturing are suboptimal.

The routines you've cultivated aren't creating a nourishing, joyful environment for you to become rejuvenated after facing challenges.

This can cause life to feel like one ever-extending track filled with hurdles.

There are choices you can make that have a radical impact are your well-being.

And they can start with very little effort.

If you're wanting to meditate, start with a commitment of 30 seconds.

If you're wanting to exercise, start with 10 push-ups.

If you're wanting to write, start with 50 words.

When we're trying to build unfamiliar habits, even if it's something we feel we should enjoy, we can experience friction if the "dosage" is too high.

This really is about how it's framed in your mind rather than the actual output.

It's much easier to hold the idea of 30 seconds of meditation, 10 push-ups, or 50 words on the page.

It's so straightforward that it becomes almost difficult to fail.

The deal you make with yourself is you can stop once you've hit your pre-defined threshold.

But what can often happen is the act of starting begins turning the wheel of motivation...

Continuing on for 5 more minutes, 20 more push-ups, 250 more words, or whatever it might be, feels so much more accessible.

As time passes, with more reps under your belt, you can increase the bare minimum because you've built up the capacity.

So what's some small activity you can do that will kickstart a cascade of positive effects?

Decide for yourself and make it so small you can't fail.

Then do it before you've finished reading this email.

This is such a simple strategy but when applied properly it can have life-changing consequences.

🙌 True Friendship

Enjoy these heart-jostling words from treasured poet David Whyte:

“But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

“The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Eremocene: A term coined by E.O. Wilson that describes an epoch marked by an existential and material isolation resulting from having extinguished so many other forms of life.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

42 Joseph Campbell Quotes to Help You Conquer Your Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey, among myriad other contributions to collective psychology and literature, is the brainchild of Joseph Campbell. Campbell was a legendary American author and comparative religion scholar.

From studying Sanskrit in Europe to spending 5 years reading 9 hours a day in a wooden shack in the forests — Campbell had a unique vantage on world religions, the familiar underpinnings of life and meaning, and the academic prowess to pull it all together.

He elucidated the journeys that we all share, building upon the foundational frameworks laid down by Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and many other depth psychologists.

In fact, George Lucas, the visionary creator of the Star Wars saga, credits the hero’s journey as helping create the narrative arc of the series.

Also widely credited with dispersing the idea of ‘following your bliss’, one of the core tenants here at HighExistence — Campbell was a true mastermind of tapping into the collective unconsciousness, the depths of the psyche, and emerging with sacred gems of insight that carry through over millenia.

The master of mythology, the sultan of story, Campbell has dissertations to share with anyone willing to listen, to absorb, and to dive in on their own hero’s journey.

So if you’re ready, read along with us, as we have 42 quotes to give you your own PhD in heroic drama and equip you with the weapons you need to go out and slay your dragons.​

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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,

Mike Slavin