⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

☀️ In the Midst of Winter, an Invincible Summer: Finding the light in the darkest of times. Read it here.

⌛️ Life is Short: Focus your time and energy on what truly matters, avoiding distractions and trivial pursuits that detract from a meaningful life. Read it here.

🎨 Exploring Color Under Monochromatic Light: Sodium lamps simulate what it’s like to be blind to certain colors. See it here.

💌 Want More? Down The Rabbit Hole readers also enjoy these awesome (and completely free!) newsletters. Explore

🎇 Image of The Week

French photographer Rachel Moore captured this stunning photograph of a whale’s eye.

“This moment of eye contact was beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve never encountered a whale like this one, and it was the most profoundly beautiful experience of my life.”

👁 Wanting What's Right In Front Of You

The comparative mind will convince you that the "good life" is always just beyond where your feet stand. This highlights the importance of the distinction between "wanting what's right in front of you" vs "hyper-awareness of ways things could be better."

Now surely recognizing the ways you can improve your experience of life is important. Striving to better our conditions is one of the ways we can experience great adventure.

But to only do that and to atrophy your capacity to savor and enjoy the moment as it exists now, will leave you in this predicament Alan Watts so lucidly expressed:

"Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly."

If I find myself preoccupied with all the ways that I can improve my circumstances to the point that I am not embracing the beauty and grandeur of the now, I deliberately shift into a mode where I engage the senses and find contact with all the good fortune flowing towards me and the immensity of blessings that envelop me.

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• 1-Minute Power Moves: Go from distracted to focused in a minute.

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• Movie Brief: A weekly deep dive into the world's best films.

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🌊 Pebbles By The Ocean

Enjoy these words from Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“Modern man fell into the trap of believing that everything can be explained, that reality is a simple affair which has only to be organ­ized in order to be mastered. All enigmas can be solved, and all wonder is nothing but "the effect of novelty upon ignorance." The world, he was convinced, is its own explanation, and there is no necessity to go beyond the world in order to account for the exist­ence of the world. This lack of wonder, this exaggeration of the claim of scientific inquiry, is more characteristic of writers of popu­lar science books and of interpreters of science to the laymen than of the creative scientists themselves. Spencer and others "seem to be possessed with the idea that science has got the universe pretty well ciphered down to a fine point; while the Faradays and Newtons seem to themselves like children who have picked up a few pretty pebbles upon the ocean beach. But most of us find it difficult to recognize the greatness and wonder of things familiar to us.”

“Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Mooreeffoc: The oddness of everyday things when suddenly (and usually unintentionally) viewed from a new perspective.

As described by J.R.R Tolkien “Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written up in every town in this land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle.”

⏳ From The Archives

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

The Psychedelic Emotion: Why We Need More “Awe” In Everyday Life

I stood there with my toes in the sand gazing at the endless expanse of water.

I was a little boy and it was my first time seeing the ocean in person.

It gave me goosebumps. My jaw was left hanging wide open, stunned by what I was witnessing.

I was experiencing awe.

Awe is a profound self-transcendent feeling.

It is the wellspring of the mystical experiences through which religious traditions have emerged.

Keep reading this article and you might find yourself struck with awe before you finish.

I’m going to share an exercise with you that will help you tune into the awe-inspiring experiences all around you.

But before we dive, why is awe so important?

Astonishingly, we only began researching this emotion rigorously in 2003 and we are beginning to discover that awe carries with it powerful benefits that could help recenter a world off balance.

What are those benefits?

• After an experience of awe, you’re more likely to engage in altruistic behavior because you’re feeling a deeper sense of connectedness with others

• You’re more likely to engage in experiences over material goods

• Your perception of time transforms creating the feeling that you’re inside of a timeless moment

• Awe is the emotion that most strongly predicts reduced levels of cytokines, a marker of inflammation that’s linked to depression because they block serotonin and dopamine

• It sharpens your mind making you more discerning and enhances your capacity to analyze the strength of an argument

To some, this combination might sound like the description of a psychedelic trip.

But this experience is accessible to all of us. No drugs necessary.

[Continue Reading]