You never solve a problem with the awareness that it is a problem. As a matter of fact, it’s often that awareness that helps create that problem in the first place. It’s a pretty common state of mind and therefore people don’t take it seriously as a problem. This is why people with clinical anxiety disorders are typically very embarrassed about their issues. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is actually an outgrowth of anxiety.

As I was saying, we can’t solve a problem with the same awareness that brought us to it. So for those who are overly anxious they tend to impair their own ability to remedy whatever they are anxious about. Anxious minds come to anxious conclusions.

Anxiety isn’t harmless, even if the object of the anxiety is. It is even a classic concept. We have always dealt with it though for the most part surprisingly poorly. In the Bible, Job laments, “Alas for that which I have greatly feared has come upon me.” His faith was being tested for that very reason. Fear is the opposite of faith at least in essence. Faith is trusting something you imagine to be true. In theory, true faith is whatever rhyme or reason you ascribe to the universe. It runs counter to fear and are mutually exclusive.

Any meaning you see in life is imagination. This doesn’t make it not true, but when it comes down to the wire, often our imagined paradigm proves inconsistent and thus we revert to less constructive faiths. The tricky thing is that many faiths impart a doctrine of fear, and thus the capacity for faith creates anxiety as much as the capacity for reason and planning can. “I’m a sinner. I hate myself.” These are truths that do not set one free. So they loose their faith and gravitate toward what they really have faith in. What they have been shown is very real; intoxication, social isolation, misanthropic behaviour that has very real practical consequences. The media bombards us with anxiety and we have faith in it. All praise CNN? Our sponsor, who art in charge, commerce be thy name.

Well pardon, but I don’t subscribe to commercially canned opinions. But thus we have to talk people down from the markets collapsing. Yet any end is a beginning, so what is to fear in ending? There are no voids to get lost in. Life is a long string of doors. I think we get nervous because that’s all we find. We are taught to look for confining opinions, leaders, identities to link to. We aren’t taught to be free. You aren’t you. You are your parents child, or your mates partner. We get very anxious when we don’t have those bonds.

Faith in the unknown whilst bombarded with factoids? Well actually, faith in the unknown would be very good, and nobody has it. We can thank science for that. They “know” everything supposedly.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~