🌀🐇 #40 nurturing possibility, reframe difficult moments, variations on meditation

Plus spirituality defined and the blanket octopus  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ​ ​ ​ ⚡️ Enlightening Bolts Illuminating Gems of Exploring The Weird and Wonderful 😤Reframe A Challenging Moment To Feel Empowered: Gabor Mate and Tim Ferris explore an exercise to shift our perception around upsetting moments. Gabor leads us down a line of thinking: Something happens that causes an emotion, that emotion signifies that we are treated that way because we are a certain type of person (unworthy of love, attention, etc.), that perception is not the reality but a reaction to it where there are many additional plausible interpretations, and when upset we often jump to the worse one and this interpretation is informed by some past trauma. We're reacting to our perception of the thing instead of the thing itself. We're reacting to the past instead of the present. You feel victimized if the source of the emotion is in the event. You feel empowered if the source of the emotion is in you because then you can work with it and transform it. [Watch Gabor guide Tim through the exercise here.](=)​ 🧘‍♀️Notes on Spirituality: A frequently abused and loaded term. For some, spirituality can mean a humble life lived in accordance with one's values and for others, it can be a bundle of metaphysical claims including extra-dimensional beings and distant star systems. The wide range of uses for this term has made me somewhat allergic to describing myself as “spiritual.” I more often align with terms like reverence, wonderment, and wisdom. Jordan Hall’s recent piece “Notes on Spirituality” does some work to reclaim this term. He describes Spirituality as “precisely concerned with the well integrated wholeness of self in relationship with the full complexity and intensity of life.” [Read more here.]()​ ✅Build healthy habits with Friends: Kin is a new app that helps you build long-lasting healthy behaviors harnessing the power of friendships and social accountability. It's available for both iPhone and Android devices. [You can download the app here.](=)​ Did someone forward you this email? Get this newsletter every week when you [sign up here.](​ 🎇 Image of The Week ​ "This is a blanket octopus. You should know her because, while she's shy & rarely seen, when danger gets near she does not hide, she shines: unfurling a giant rainbow cape so bright everyone realizes she's stronger than they knew." [See the video here.](​ 🔮 Nurturing Possibility 👁I don't talk about the law of attraction or manifestation very much. And if I did, I would probably use those concepts in a way that would be very different from how they're popularly used. Instead, I'd like to discuss something similar but with less preconceived notions swirling around it: The Art of Nurturing Possibility. 🌀The amount of possibility, opportunity, and serendipity we experience is informed based on certain states of being that we inhabit in our day-to day-lives. Many people are conditioned into mindsets of chronic limitation. This creates a vicious cycle where they exclude themselves from possibilities before they've even had a chance to recognize they exist. And so the world closes in on them. Those that begin to have a greater openness to possibilities flowing into their life become more prone to actually seeing them. They then act on them creating an upward spiral of increasing possibility. Confirmation bias is at work here. Whether or not we believe our life is drowning with possibility has a lot to do with whether or not we're open to seeing it. ⛓Here is a hard truth to swallow: Sometimes we're getting something from our stuckness and our stagnancy. Sometimes we get a lot out of feeling bad for ourselves. And that is a pass to remain in the comfort of the familiar. where we don't have to venture through the gates of fear and the portals of discomfort that we would have to navigate to experience a life that aligned more deeply with our dreams and aspirations. 🤝So if you wanted to begin nurturing greater possibility in your life today, you first have to begin to imagine what that greater possibility looks like. This could happen in the domains of relationship, work, or your passion projects. 🎩A good example of this: I recently decided I want to perform more sleight of hand and share my talents as a magician. Once I committed and started communicating this to the world around me, opportunities started showing up. Parties, gigs, connections. Had I not thought it was possible, these opportunities would be less likely to surface (and I'd be less likely to act on them). 💪It's easy to find ourselves habituated into stagnancy and stuckness, especially over the past 18 months where many of us felt our lives are on pause (and some of us feeling a profound sense of loss). But we have more power than we realize, and we can exercise our agency in the world to bring about a life that feels more beautiful for us and those we love. 🌳If we start walking the path, day by day, we can start to see a beautiful cascade of events that lead us to beautiful worlds we never could have imagined on that first step. By planting the seed of possibility today, we eventually can grow fruitful trees of opportunity that inevitably lead to a flourishing, abundant life. 🕯 Holding Each Other Chew on these 3 wise riffs from James {NAME}: "Nothing is fixed. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers." “It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.” 🤓 Learn This Word Annealing: "a concept in metallurgy where blacksmiths heat a metal object in a forge until it undergoes a phase change. All the molecules move to occupy whatever the lowest-energy place for them to occupy is, strengthening the metal’s structure. Then the metal object leaves the forge and the metal freezes in the new, better configuration." We call this "neural annealing" when applied to the brain. For instance, a potent stimulus like a psychedelic can "heat up" the nervous system to create a space where the molecules of belief can re-organize into a more resilient form. ⏳ From The Archives A hand-picked classic HighExistence article. ​[Awesome Variations on Meditation]()​ Meditation is simply the training of the mind. It has been used, primarily for spiritual practices, for thousands of years. The effects are numerous. In the same way training the body gives rise to numerous benefits, so does training the mind. From achieving incredible states of focus (now being recommended as self-therapy for ADHD) to having insights in the nature of reality and dealing with stress, anxiety and depression. Throughout history these practices gave rise to many men who were pure of heart, loving, compassionate, wise, patient and extremely disciplined. Since everything you’ve ever experienced and know is in your awareness, the end goal is understanding That which is Aware. You can define yourself in a multitude of ways, looks, jobs, gender, race and everything else that words divide in our sensory world. And, at every moment of you playing one of these roles, there was this awareness. Are you the concept of I or are you that which is aware of the concept? This is the reason Eckhart Tolle recommends the following: “Give up defining yourself. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.” ​[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](