🌀🐇 #39 The Art of Marveling

Reuniting with the world of wonder  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ​ ​ ​ ⚡️ Enlightening Bolts In this issue, we explore The Art of Marveling. The links can be found deeper in the issue. Here are some of the key points and resources we'll explore: 🔮3 Techniques To Marvel: Break free from jadedness and gaze upon the beauty of reality. 🌊This is Water: David Foster Wallace on finding the sacred in the mundane. 🧭Randonautica: This app puts you in the director's chair of an adventure yet to be written. Break from your mundane day-to-day and take a journey of randomness into the world around you. 🌕Full Moon Digest: A monthly newsletter sharing wisdom, poetry, and other beautiful things. Did someone forward you this email? Get this newsletter every week when you [sign up here.](​ 🎇 Image of The Week ​ The stream of light you see shooting out of the mountain is actually a meteor falling into Mount Merapi, the most active volcano in Indonesia. The photo was captured by Gunarto Song on May 27th of this year. 🔮 The Art of Marveling 👁‍🗨Last week we explored an alternative mythic structure to the Hero's Journey: [The Journey of Enchantment.]( Seeing the world as enchanted is a skill that can be practiced. I call this the "Art of Marveling" and that is what we will explore this week. There is a lot of magic that lives in the background and a ton of beauty in everyday objects in the foreground that we hardly notice. When we marvel, we stop taking these things for granted. 🎞 Rather than living solely for dramatic peaks and plot twists in the narrative of your life, you can cultivate a foundational appreciation for the things others might call boring or ordinary. We can pick up the footage left on the cutting room floor that wouldn't make it into the big screen and engulf them in an attentive loving perception. The majority of our lives is made up of these moments after all. Loving them is akin to loving the world and loving ourselves. 💪So let's try this out. Here are 3 techniques you can use to conjure appreciation for the mundane and revivify the world around you. Practice these to become adept at the Art of Marveling. 🌳 Find Freshness Through Relabeling 🦏"It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't." 📦This quote from G.K. Chesterton reveals how we can become blind to the majesty of the world around us. Once labeled, we don't revisit these things and examine them for their uniqueness. If we recognize it, it's placed neatly in its mental box without a second thought. 🌴Friend and author of many iconic HighExistence articles, Jordan Bates, used to call trees "Bark-clad Earthclaws." This is an excellent example of relabeling to promote freshness of perspective so something's uniqueness can shine through our rigid frames of reference. 🙌Try It: Find an everyday object and relabel it in a unique way. Realize how the label and the thing are very different. Ponder how the thing exists beyond our abstract categorizations. 👁 Practice Sensory Immersion 🔊"Close your eyes. Listen, moment-to-moment, to the sounds of your immediate environment. Listen to how your mind may make sense of the sounds: naming, categorizing and figuring them out. Now, give yourself permission to simply listen to the sounds as different energies. You can do this by not associating meaning to any of these sounds and just let the sounds come sweeping through you as currents of sonic energy. Let these sonic forces have their way and go where they may within, around, under and over you. If they like, let them merge forces with other sounds to produce new levels and overtones of sonic resonance. Your sensory task is this: How much can you give yourself over to this experience and let it envelop and encompass you…until you are at one with the sounds?" 🎨This quote is from a book from Antero Alli's book Angel Tech. I discovered it in Claudia Dawson's newsletter the Full Moon Digest (link is below). Instead of seeing, I encourage you to drink in the sights. Rather than hearing, I ask you to soak up the sounds. Rather than focusing on distinct elements, allow yourself to sink into the field of senses where overlaps and ambiguity reigns. From here you might more clearly experience the vibrantly textured, kaleidoscopic weirdliness we call reality. 🙌Try It: Treat your sensorium as a single field. Imagine that every input is just a temporary whirlpool pattern in a pond of sensation. Let the lines between things soften. Embrace the whole. 🦋 Wandering Into Wonders 🚄"Orderly travel now means going at the maximum speed for safety from point to point, but most reachable points are increasingly cluttered with people and parked cars, and so less worth going to see, and for similar reasons it is ever more inconvenient to do business in the centers of our great cities. Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home. As already suggested, fast intercommunication between points is making all points the same point." 🚀This quote from Alan Watts reveals how our prioritization of speed and efficiency can strip the world of its magic. If we overvalue expediency, we might accidentally extinguish all opportunities for serendipity. 🚶🏽‍♂️Intentionally wandering can reignite our appetite for unlikely discovery and increase the likelihood we encounter synchronicity. You can do this using [Randonautica](), an app that will provide random coordinates for you to navigate towards depending on your location, or just do it the old-fashioned way: unplug from the screen and mosey around the hidden pockets of your neighborhood. 🙌Try It: Take yourself on a self-directed spontaneous walk or download [Randonautica]()and see where it takes you. 🔎 Paying Attention A snippet from David Foster Wallace's iconic speech This Is Water: "But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down." ​[Read or listen to the whole thing here.]()​ 🌝 Full Moon Digest We are always trying to find other inspiring creators to help fill your inbox with wisdom. This week we invite you to check out [Full Moon Digest.]( Every full moon Claudio Dawson sends out poetry, wisdom, and other beautiful things to help you connect to the natural cycles of life and ponder the magic of existence. If you enjoy Down The Rabbit Hole, you'll love the gems she shares in her newsletter. [Click here and scroll to the bottom to sign up.](​ 🤓 Learn These Words Umwelt and Umgebung As described by David Eagleman: "In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll introduced the concept of the umwelt. He wanted a word to express a simple (but often overlooked) observation: different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different environmental signals. In the blind and deaf world of the tick, the important signals are temperature and the odor of butyric acid. For the black ghost knifefish, it’s electrical fields. For the echolocating bat, it’s air-compression waves. The small subset of the world that an animal is able to detect is its umwelt. The bigger reality, whatever that might mean, is called the umgebung." [Read more here.](​ ⏳ From The Archives A hand-picked classic HighExistence article. ​[We Live In A Beautiful World](=)​ We live in a beautiful world. Look around you, it is amazing: skyscrapers, gravity, daisies, peaches, archipelagos, children, languages, music, wars, phosphorous, galaxies, snow, literature, human existence. We live in such a breathtaking environment that is full of magic and wonder. Although we can feel intense sadness, profound happiness can be just around the corner. One step away. One thought away. One kiss away. Sources of joy are literally everywhere; one just has to overlook all of the negative things trying to cover them up. The world conspires for you to be happy, not unhappy. It is all a matter of perspective, of stepping back and taking a good look at the world around you. How can you ever be bored, depressed, frustrated, annoyed or jealous in a world of such infinite possibility? Are you discontent with your current situation? Then change it. Move elsewhere. Do something else. Befriend other people. This world is not a single plane; it is vast and varied and waiting for you to experience it. ​[Continue Reading](=)​ 🎬 Endnote We hope you enjoyed this issue of Down The Rabbit Hole. Feel free to reply and tell us what you think. Want to help us spread the word? We love sharing these gems of wisdom and wonder with you each week. If you love receiving them and want to help us spread the word, here is one quick way you can do that: Forward this email to one friend. That's it. It will take 5 seconds and will help us spread the good vibes and reach more people. We appreciate you. With Wonder, Mike Slavin & The HighExistence Team P.S. Did a friend forward you this email? Read previous issues and sign-up to receive future issues here: [(​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​[Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 40 E. Main St. #1137, Newark, DE 19711 [Built with ConvertKit](