⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🥶 Everyone Is Numbing Out: The dark side of ironic detachment and possible antidotes for our apathetic world. Read it here.

✨ You Feel It Deep Within: Tiny synchronicities aligning with perfect timing. Watch it here.

🌻 The Most Profound Wonder Is Stirred By What Is Most Ordinary: Rare moments of wonder at the mere existence of things – rather than the dramatic or new – involve perceiving with the soul. Read it here.

💌 Get More Emails Like This: Down The Rabbit Hole readers also enjoy these awesome (and completely free!) newsletters. Explore

🎇 Image of The Week

Photographer Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove took this aerial photo of a volcanic eruption in Iceland. “Volcanoes are an extremely fascinating natural phenomenon. They are the most powerful force on our planet, with the unique ability to destroy and create. Volcanoes shape our planet and it’s incredible when we get to experience them moulding a new landscape. During the last years, Jeroen has had the privilege to witness several volcanic eruptions in Iceland, such as the Geldingadalir and Meradalir eruptions. In this gallery, you can see a collection of photographs taken during every volcanic eruption which Jeroen has photographed.”

 ⌛️ First Times & Last Times

A first time is obvious. The unfamiliarity stares you in the face.

The novelty makes it crystal clear that this is something you haven't done before. Its freshness makes it salient.

Contrasted with last times, they are often ambiguous.

Sometimes we are fortunate enough for a last time to announce itself so we can fully appreciate it.

This is not always the case.

In break ups and in deaths.

The last conversation. The last laugh. The last "I love you."

Can pass us by without the in-the-moment recognition they deserve.

This is a call to deeper presence in the commonplace. The ordinary. The mundane.

Because any of these normal, everyday happenings might be secretly a last time.

Give them the attention and the reverence they deserve.

🤔 For The Curious

The Daily Newsletter for Intellectually Curious Readers

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👁️ From Anonymity To Intimacy

Some statements on wonder from John O’Donohue

“If you have an infused sense of wonder then your wonder is able to transfigure that which is unknown within you and around you and it will take away the anonymity, the distance, and the separation, which the unknown always makes the vulnerable and fragile human creature experience. Wonder makes the unknown interesting, attractive, and miraculous and that’s why when wonder awakens in your life it is the lovely subtle presence that is always at the threshold of your heart transfiguring the anonymous into the intimate.”

“If you lose your sense of wonder, you no longer live in the sacramental majesty of a world. Nature is no longer a presence but it’s a thing and your life, instead of being a sacrament of possibility, becomes a dead cage of fact. Time instead of being eternity becomes routine. So wonder is a grace and a gift.”

Pairs well with this quote from Katherine May:

“Enchantment came so easily to me as a child, but I wrongly thought it was small, parochial, a shameful thing to be put away in the rush towards adulthood. Now I wonder how I can find it again. It turns out that it had nothing to do with beauty after all-not in any grand objective sense. I think instead that when I was young, it came from a deep engagement with the world around me, the particular quality of experience that accompanies close attention, the sense of contact that emerges from noticing. I worked hard to suppress all those things. I thought it was what I had to do in order to grow up. It took years of work, years of careful for-getting. I never realised what I was losing. But enchantment cannot be destroyed. It waits patiently for us to remember that we need it. And now when I start to look for it, there it is: pale, intermittent, waiting patiently for my return. The sudden catch of sunlight behind stained glass. The glint of gold in the silt of a stream. The words that whisper through the leaves.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Kahu: In Hawaiian, you don't call yourself your pet's owner, you are their kahu. Kahu has many meanings, among them guardian, protector, steward, beloved attendant, basically someone entrusted with the safekeeping of something precious, something cherished. What a kahu protects is not their property. What they protect is a part of their soul.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

Appreciate Life Like a Sunset: How Letting Go of Judgment Makes Life Easier

The most inspiring quote I’ve ever read comes from the late psychologist Carl Rogers.

Carl Rogers was an influential figure in psychology who worked to bring a more human touch to the field.  He wanted to see psychological professionals apply more empathy and emotional authenticity to therapy, as opposed to using the cold and detached forms of psychological analysis which dominated his time.

The essay in which this quote is found is a reflection on what helped Rogers to communicate well with others.  Rogers writes mainly about the attitudes he has brought to certain situations, and whether or not those attitudes facilitated good communication.

Although the quote discusses a certain attitude as he applies it to people, I have found that this is a beautiful attitude to bring to every aspect of life.  When I can relate to life with this attitude I am able to be much more peaceful in the face of adversity, and I am able to be much more grateful for the good things in life.

The Dank Quote

Without further ado, here’s the quote from Rogers’ book A Way of Being:

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