⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

💦 Is a River Alive? Listening for the voices of rivers, acclaimed author Robert Macfarlane finds himself in the depths of their mystery. Listen here.

🤔 Curiosity Depends on What You Already Know: We seek novelty, but not too much. Read it here.

🌊 The Wisdom of A Waterfall: A reminder on the value of obstacles. Watch it here.

🪷 A Path Between Worlds: Upayosis is a 12-month psychedelic dharma journey of awakening and planetary service. Learn more.

🎇 Image of The Week

“Explanation: This butterfly can hatch planets. The nebula fanning out from the star IRAS 04302+2247 may look like the wings of a butterfly, while the vertical brown stripe down the center may look like the butterfly's body -- but together they indicate an active planet-forming system. The featured picture was captured recently in infrared light by the Webb Space Telescope. Pictured, the vertical disk is thick with the gas and dust from which planets form. The disk shades visible and (most) infrared light from the central star, allowing a good view of the surrounding dust that reflects out light. In the next few million years, the dust disk will likely fragment into rings through the gravity of newly hatched planets. And a billion years from now, the remaining gas and dust will likely dissipate, leaving mainly the planets -- like in our Solar System." Source.

 ✨ Magic: An Endangered Species

To some magic is considered an endangered species.

A vestige of a time before we smartened up to the cold hard facts of life.

There’s an unfortunate smug categorization that magic is child’s play.

Invoking ideas of unicorns and potions.

Too smart to find the sacred hiding in plain sight.

So caught up in disproving the impossible that they could not muster astonishment in the face of the possible.

That we exist at all. That these words are reaching you. That you just exhaled.

THAT is magic.

Magic isn’t an endangered species.

It is the ground we stand on.

It is the soil from which all life blooms.

We are enveloped in it.

And our ability to see it is a skill of attention.

It is a process of undressing our arrogance, of loosening our grip on our fixed ideas of what this world is.

Our knowledge is only a tiny island, a speck in the vast ocean of the incomprehensible unknown.

And when we learn to embrace the grandeur of this mystery, the tectonic plates of our being shift to cause an eruption of wonder, cascading into the cracks and crevices of a previously deadened world.

No, magic isn’t an endangered species.

But those who know it, feel it, and breathe it…

Those who can taste it on the edge of this moment.

Are becoming increasingly rare.

This highlights the exquisite burden and gift of being bastions of bedazzlement.

You see, magic exists abundantly all around us like gas waiting to ignite.

We are the spark.

Is this day worth setting ablaze?

🪐 The Universe is Blooming

I love this description of our predicament in the prologue of Henry Shukman’s book Original Love:

🤓 Learn This Word

Talaka: Every member of a neighborhood getting together to do a work for free for a poor member of their community

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

If you’ve been reading HighExistence for any amount of time, you’ve likely come across our affinity with the Hero’s Journey — the epic monomyth that describes an individuals journey through awakening, emerging the hero of their story and a warrior to their culture.

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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