🌀🐇 #44 TV is a drug, New World's Fair, Finding Faith

Plus our responsibility to awe  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ​ ​ ​ ⚡️ Enlightening Bolts Gems of The Weird and Wonderful From Around The Web 🌳 Everything Is Fertile: This is the kind of writing that makes you stop to appreciate your surroundings a bit more. Nick Cammarata shares his fascination with director Hayao Miyazaki and chemist Alexander Shulgrin. These two men invested their lives into very different fields but both spent time venturing to enchanted places. And if you explore enough of them you start to see the ground beneath your feet with the eyes of wonder as well. [Read it here.](​ 🎡 It's Time To Build A New World's Fair: This piece by Cameron Wiese explains how the World's Fair inspired "a collective vision of a better world" and makes the case for reanimating these popular mega-events of the 1960s to reinvigorate our imaginations and grow our appetite for possibility. [Read it here.](​ 📺 Television Is a Drug: This fast paced video illustrates how screens capture our attention. Although it was made over 10 years ago to make a point about television, there are obvious parallels you can draw to our present day addiction to social media. [Watch it here.](=)​ Did someone forward you this email? Get this newsletter every week when you [sign up here.](​ 🎇 Image of The Week ​ "An ice cave glowing like amber from the golden rays of a setting Sun captured by travel photographer Sarah Bethea in Iceland." ⛅️ Finding Faith The future is uncertain. But you can be certain that it will change, often in surprising ways. People spend a lot of time trying to eradicate the possibility of change because of the emotional overwhelm it causes them. People seek out artificial stability with external arrangements like large bank accounts and high-paying jobs. It's illusory. Money is spent. Jobs are lost. Life keeps on changing. There is nothing that can be found on the outside that will bring true peace. There is no antidote except for faith. This word is often used to promote a sense of religiosity. That's not what I mean. Faith is not "I trust things will work out the way I want them to." Faith is "I trust whatever happens is what is meant to be." This is not passive orientation either. It's active and freeing. Rather than gripping tightly to some old model of reality, your hands our and mind are made available to respond more creatively to what is unfolding. When you accept where you are, you can move where you'd like to be more gracefully. If you encounter obstacles, your sense of faith keeps you from crumbling. And sometimes you'll still crumble. That's fine. Your faith will reassemble you into your phoenix form. You'll discover more meaningful things than simply arriving at your originally desired destination. Faith fuels becoming. Faith takes the crumbling and turns it into a cocoon. Faith takes tragedy and transforms it into a venue for metamorphosis. 👁 A Responsibility To Awe Enjoy these poetic musings from Jason Silva: "So I think a lot about the contrast between banality and wonder, between disengagement and radiant ecstasy, between being unaffected by the here and now, being absolutely ravished emotionally by it. And I think one of the problems for human beings is mental habits. Once we create a comfort zone, we rarely step outside of that comfort zone. But the consequence of that is a phenomenon known as hedonic adaptation. Overstimulation to the same kind of thing, the same stimuli again and again and again, renders said stimuli invisible. Your brain has already mapped it in its own head, and you no longer literally have to be engaged by that. We have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not and hearts that neither feel or understand. There's a great book called The wandering brain that says that one of the ways that we elicit wonder is by scrambling the self temporarily so that the world can seep in. You know, Henry Miller says, even a blade of grass, when given proper attention becomes an infinitely magnificent world in itself. You know, Darwin said "Attention, if sudden and close graduates into surprise, and this into astonishment, and this into stupefied amazement." That's what rapture is. That's what illumination is. That's what that sort of infinite comprehending awe that human beings love so much. And so how do we do that? How do we mess with our perceptual apparatus in order to have the kind of emotional and aesthetic experience from life that we render most meaningful. Because we all know those moments are there, those are the moments that will make final cut. Only in these moments when you experience afresh the hardly bearable ecstasy of direct energy exploding on our nerve endings. This is the rhapsodic, ecstatic, bursting forth of awe that expands our perceptual parameters beyond all previous limits, and we literally have to reconfigure our mental models of the world in order to assimilate the beauty of that download. That is what it means to be inspired. The Greek root of the term means to breathe in, to take it in. We fit the universe through our brains and it comes out in the form of nothing less than poetry. We have a responsibility to awe." ​[Watch the video here.](=)​ 🤓 Learn This Word Sisu: This is a Finnish concept that refers to extraordinary determination in the face of extreme adversity, and courage that is presented typically in situations where success is unlikely. It expresses itself in taking action against the odds, and displaying courage and resoluteness in the face of adversity; in other words, deciding on a course of action, and then adhering to it even if repeated failures ensue. It is in some ways similar to equanimity, though ‘’sisu’’ entails an element of grim stress management. ⏳ From The Archives A hand-picked classic HighExistence article. ​[Floating Through Innerspace: Why You Should Try A Sensory Underdose](​ This is my sensory deprivation tank experience. Are you ready to take a trip through interspace? You hop in the shower to cleanse yourself of your accumulated dirtiness. A mandatory ritual before entering the silent sanctuary. You walk to the futuristic egg, leaving a few wet footprints behind. You plug in some earplugs before you dip your toes in the water. The sensation you feel is neither hot nor cold. The water matches exactly the temperature of your body. The water does feel different somehow. A bit jelly-like. You know this is because the total volume of the water-like mixture consists of 25% epsom salt (In chemical terms 400kg/850lbs magnesium sulfate – MgSO4·7H2O, on average). This cool chemical brings the floatation to the tank. By increasing the density of the water, you increase the force necessary to cause you to sink, to displace enough fluid. At a certain point, the force of gravity dragging your body down is not enough to push away the mixture completely and hence, you are now floating. Beyond that, epsom salt is also a source of muscle relaxation, capillary dilation, and endorphin generation. Nice. ​[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](