⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

👁 Why kids lose their sense of wonder, according to Carl Sagan: The curiosity of children is a national resource. Adults destroy it. Read it here.

🤩 You should be amazed: Remarkable things tend to fade into invisibility. This is a reminder. Read it here.

📗 The Four Agreements: A mind map exploration of the bestselling book by author Don Miguel Ruiz that reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. Watch it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

Vinicunca, also known as the Rainbow Mountain or Montaña de Siete Colores (Mountain of Seven Colors), is a remarkable natural wonder located in the Andes mountains of Peru's Cusco region. The mountain's striking multicolored appearance is the result of a unique geological process. Over millions of years, volcanic activity and tectonic movements exposed various mineral deposits, including red clay, white quartzite, green phyllite, and yellow iron sulfide, which combine to create the mountain's vibrant palette of reds, pinks, greens, blues, and yellows.

⛈ Hard Days

Some days can be really hard. That's okay.

You don't have to relentlessly claw towards positivity.

It's okay to be inside the challenge.

Deep wisdom often emerges from difficulty.

It can enable us to find a well of greater compassion toward the world at large.

We need not judge ourselves in these dark spaces but welcome, embrace, and encourage the parts that are overwhelmed, run-down, and defeated.

No one gets out of life with an undefeated record.

We all take losses.

We all have hard days.

If today happens to be one of those days for you...

I'd like to take a moment to be a pinprick of sunlight through the dense clouds.

I have no idea what makes today so hard for you but here are some things I try to remember amid my own difficulty...

You have permission to feel the way you do.

Your flaws do not make you unworthy.

This too shall pass. It never rains forever.

There are people, some known to you as well as complete strangers, who have an abundant love for you as a precious human being on this earth.

You're probably more resilient than you think.

You got this.

 🤗 Give into Joy

Accept this poetic invitation from Mary Oliver:

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Ostranenie: encouraging people to see common things as strange, wild, or unfamiliar; defamiliarizing what is known in order to know it differently or more deeply

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

Midnight Gospel: Being, Doing, and the Search for the Self

I recently watched the brilliant philosophically provoking, psychedelically animated Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel.

The show was created by Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time) and Duncan Trussell (Duncan Trussell Family Hour). Researching, I learned that the show was based on Duncan’s podcast.

In the final episode of the series, Duncan has a conversation with his late mother, Deneen Fendig. She was a psychologist. He is a standup comedian.

In the conversation, they talk about her impending death, grief, attachment, relationships, change, resistance, suffering, personal work, and inner growth. It is insightful, thoughtful, and filled with tenderness, a dying mother, and a grieving son, discussing life, death, and everything in between.

The words that follow are partially inspired by the topics discussed in that conversation in addition to my own meandering thoughts and experiences with mindfulness, the self, being and doing, dating apps, therapy, and inner growth.

I discuss ideas from books and talks that I’m currently mentally ingesting as well as personal stories. The quotes from Duncan and Deneen are all from the podcast episode.

I hope this resonates with you in some way, shape, or form.

[Continue Reading]

🎬 Endnote

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With Wonder,

Mike Slavin