Nick Seneca Jankel

“It’s even possible to get there with art. Utterly modern painters like Vassily Kandinsky and Mark Rothko were expressly attempting to create spiritual, and maybe even shamanic, experiences with their paintings. If you sit in the Rothko room at the Tate Modern, you may find yourself slipping into connective consciousness and able to release something to find peace. As well as totally ‘organic’ practices”
― Nick Seneca Jankel, Spiritual Atheist: A Quest to Unite Science and Wisdom Into a Radical New Life Philosophy to Thrive in the Digital Age

“When we react to problems, as opposed to create with them, we get hooked into stress. When we are under constant low-grade stress—and it’s estimated that over 80 percent of us are all the time—this begins to hurt us.1 When we are stressed, our nervous system tightens up and we lose our creativity. Stress stops us learning, and if we aren’t learning, we aren’t growing.2 Stress, AKA fear, corrodes the curiosity and courage we need to experiment with the new. It is almost impossible to play big in life, if we are scared of looking like idiots, going bankrupt, or being rejected. Stress kills creativity and kills us too. Whereas small amounts of stress help us focus, engage, and learn, chronic or elevated stress burns us out, literally as well as metaphorically. People who live near airports and deal with the stress of giant airplanes roaring above them have higher rates of cardiac arrest than those who don’t.3 People who deal with a controlling or uncommunicative boss have a 60 percent higher chance of developing coronary heart disease than those who don’t.4 Stress leads to tangible changes inside all the cells of the body. Specific genes start to express proteins, which leads to inflammation; and chronic inflammation is associated with killers such as heart disease and cancer. Over time, stress reduces our ability to prevent aging, heal wounds, fight infections, and even be successfully immunized.5 Unmanaged stress, simply from having a sense of disempowerment at work, can be more dangerous than smoking or high cholesterol.”
― Nick Seneca Jankel, Switch On: Unleash Your Creativity and Thrive with the New Science & Spirit of Breakthrough