Patricia Pearson defines anxiety as fear in search of a cause. Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat, which results in feelings of apprehension, dread, terror and panic. As Pearson indicates, the cause of this fear is often veiled, misguided, or perhaps completely imaginary. In this sense, anxiety is a self-inflicted state that degrades the quality of our life. Our society has both a fascination and addiction to anxiety. We choose to immerse ourselves in it. The news media, in their attempts to retain viewers, leverage fear and anxiety in order to hold our attention and rarely, if ever, do anything concrete to resolve the issues we face. In the midst of the global financial crisis, a crisis originating in our own inherent greed and inability to act responsibly.
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Do schools kill creativity? This is the opening question of an interesting interview with Sir Ken Robinson, an “expert” on creativity and innovation. The answer is deceptively simple: “Yes, of course they do.” Though this may sound somewhat sarcastic, the reality of schooling is the systematic obliteration of the individual including their creativity, and their element. The reason for this is quite simple — all schooling originates in the concept of the prerequisite, that is, that one group of people who are deemed to be more knowledgeable enforce a system of knowledge and skills on those who are considered less knowledgeable. What is most surprising about education is its persistent inability to question its own assumptions denigrating all “innovation and change” to mere passing facade.
Religious belief is often characterized as being inflexible and closed. The source of the beliefs that give rise to a religious system lies within the interpretation of “sacred” doctrine that in some manner originates in an all powerful being, or God. The doctrine is considered to be an untouchable, while the interpretation of it may be widely varied. The notion behind many religions is the implant a specific set of beliefs into the minds of followers in order to elicit specific kinds of behaviors. If the follower is successful, they are granted some kind of reward in the afterlife; if unsuccessful they are condemned in the afterlife. In this sense, religion is a form of fear-based confinement and mindless conditioning. In 
The end effect of the Gulf Oil Spill disaster will not be known for many years. Some of the effects will be immediate and obvious, while others are far more mercurial and illusive. As with all disasters, a large contingent of people will be employed to distract and counter both the breadth and depth of the oil spill’s full impact. Many of these people will be scientists and perhaps even health experts who are willing to be paid to manufacture deception and degrade the integrity of their expertise. The media, as they so expertly do, will collectively create a bog of informational stench that serves only to confuse and add to the deception itself.
[Exploring Life] Darkness means an absence or deficiency of light. It creates an intuitive space in which the fragility of our own perception becomes uncomfortably apparent. Darkness immerses us in the unknown and renders our beliefs inadequate. On a dark night, when the veil of darkness merges with our sense of meaning and purpose our certainties dissolve — and we feel abandoned. It is abandonment that is, for me, the essence of a dark night of the soul. This deep and pervasive sense of abandonment is not that which is created by lost friends or a lack of company; we have lost our sense of self and place in the world. On a dark night we are embraced by a solitude of being which amputates our sense of identity. On a dark night, we reach a crossroad in which we can no longer be who we were and yet do not know who we are. A dark night of the soul is not merely an identity crisis, it is the sudden absence of identity and an absolute loss of self. A dark night of the soul is the medium in which we learn about our own suffering, and to learn about suffering is to pursue the essence of presence.Find
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