⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🔋 The Art of Recharging Well: Sometimes, we need a refreshing change in life. Datsuzoku can help you find one. Read it here.

💪 Why is it so hard to take a break from work – even if we want to? It is essential to slow down the nervous system to become calm, but there can be several obstacles to self-care. Read it here.

🙏 Enough: On the Pursuit of Less. 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

A fogbow is a fascinating optical phenomenon that resembles a rainbow but appears as a faint, colorless or nearly colorless arc in the sky. Unlike rainbows, which form from raindrops, fogbows are created when sunlight interacts with tiny water droplets suspended in fog, mist, or thin clouds. These droplets, typically less than 0.05 millimeters in diameter, cause light to undergo diffraction, resulting in the fogbow’s unique appearance.

Fogbows are usually larger and more diffuse than rainbows, appearing mostly white with occasionally very faint pastel colors. They are best observed in early morning or evening when the sun is low in the sky, from elevated positions, and in the presence of thin fog or mist. The formation of a fogbow requires the sun to be behind the observer, typically at a low angle of about 30 to 40 degrees above the horizon. Sometimes, fogbows are accompanied by a “glory,” which appears as a sequence of pale-colored rings at the bow’s center.

🚪Finding The Magic Door

I've been thinking a lot about Craig Chalquist's "Journey of Re-Enchantment." I've written about it before. It's a narrative structure distinct from the Campbellian Hero's Journey, which you've probably heard of before. It involves following breadcrumbs back to the world of wonder we left behind in childhood as we "grew up" and became skilled economic agents. Society molds us into particular kinds of box-checkers, and this forms a rigidity of mind that walls us off from that world of wonder. To find our way back, we must go through the "magic door."

Part of the trouble is that the adult world attempts to convince you that this world doesn't exist and that it was your youthful delusion that made you believe it ever was. They claim the door isn't real, and that's enough to keep you from ever looking. The wonder-erasers will parrot propaganda that this magic door leads to a world of unicorns and fairy dust. But that's not where it leads. It leads you back to where you are right now, just with eyes a bit more wide open.

You see, as we age and grow into adulthood, we come to understand things we didn't know as children. This is good, natural, and an important part of the maturation process. But it's not all "I once was blind and now I see." In the process of opening our eyes in some ways, we closed them in others. Walking through the magic door allows us to open our eyes again and rediscover the magic in the mundane.

The clouds, the trees, the ants, the wind, the moon, the shadows, the sun-drenched coin you passed on the road—all are whispering to you in the foreign tongue of wonder. You used to be fluent before you knew these things had names. We confuse knowing the name with knowing them. We don't know them. We can never fully know them. But we can drop the pretense that we do.

Then, we might find the doorknob that opens the magic door. I promise you, your inner child left it unlocked.

👁️ The World of Psychedelics

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🪐 Carl Sagan on Awe & Wonder

Enjoy these reflections from Carl Sagan

“I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and I was a street kid. There was one aspect of that environment that, for some reason, struck me as different, and that was the stars. … I could tell they were lights in the sky, but that wasn’t an explanation. I mean, what were they? Little electric bulbs on long black wires, so you couldn’t see what they were held up by? What were they? … My mother said to me, “Look, we’ve just got you a library card … get out a book and find the answer.” … It was in there. It was stunning. The answer was that the Sun was a star, except very far away. … The dazzling idea of a universe vast beyond imagining swept over me. … I sensed awe.”

“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Volta: During certain hours of the early evening, around dusk, everyone in the town who might feel like going for a walk takes a saunter or stroll up and down the main street

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked link from a previous edition of 🌀🐇

Make Your Soul Grow: 84-Year-Old Kurt Vonnegut’s Wonderful Letter to a Group of High School Students

In 2006, a group of students at Xavier High School in New York City were given an interesting assignment: to write their favorite authors and try to persuade them to visit the school.

Five students opted to write to none other than Kurt Vonnegut, the inimitable author of numerous hilarious, mind-bending, darkly satirical sci-fi classics such as Slaughterhouse Five and Cat’s Cradle.

Wily ol’ Kurt was the only author to reply to the high school students. Although he opted not to visit the school — noting that he no longer makes public appearances because he “now resemble[s] nothing so much as an iguana” — he did take the time to write the students a marvelous letter.

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