There is no Christian church with a more direct, intimate relationship with the life of Jesus of Nazareth than the one I was born into: the Antiochian Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. Its roots lie in the same ground that Jesus walked on, and are deeper than the written Gospels. The church, my cultural heritage, and […]
Category: Spirituality
How to Use Humanizing Habits of Mind to Create a Spiritual Consciousness More men become good through practice than by nature. —Democritus Background A basic principle of the quadrune mind model of spiritual consciousness is that people are not born either spiritually enlightened or spiritually fallen. Also, being spiritually conscious does not mean having a holier-than-thou attitude […]
Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped,and the insight to know the one from the other.—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1937 Introduction In the quadrune mind model of spiritual consciousness, we state that the purpose of a Human life is to reduce suffering and increase healing, but what does that […]
It was like stepping into a tiny 1960s London police box and finding myself in Dr. Who’s TARDIS, suddenly unconstrained by the stifling dimensions of space and time. From the outside the restaurant looked physically tiny and claustrophobically crowded. Inside, the dimensions seemed infinitely spacious. But instead of being swept into Dr. Who’s divided universe of […]
(Or, What the Sackler family and the Haitian refugees have in common) What do the Sackler family and the Haitian refugees have in common? They are both using every resource they have to survive. The Sackler family has armies of highly-paid lawyers and tax specialists, unenlightened elitist judges, ubiquitous myth-manufacturing media, money-oriented medical professionals, and lobbied subservient politicians to […]
Introduction To define religion and spirituality is difficult to do. Yet, it is important that we have some understanding of what these words mean for the quadrune mind model of spirituality and this blog. The best definitions of “religion” and “spirituality” for the quadrune mind model come from Bowling Green State University. Spirituality is defined as “the […]
Recently I was talking with some friends and as we are all of a certain age, the conversation came around to funeral service options. For various personal and religious reasons, several different preferences were expressed. Choices included cremation, a launch to sea on a small boat, donation to a medical school, and my offering, a […]
(Or, Metamorphoses of Mind) Introduction Quadrune mind is a secular, evolutionary model of spiritual consciousness. Until the 21st century, consciousness has “naturally” expanded on earth without active, intentional human intervention, but that is rapidly changing. With emerging neurotechnologies, neuroscientists and neuroengineers are capable of making radical changes to what the human brain is and what kind of mind(s) […]
Introduction In the quadrune mind model of spirituality, there is no spiritual merit in the killing of another person—ever. In this blog we will describe some moral arguments for killing other people and indicate which level of pre-Human consciousness, as described in the quadrune mind model, best corresponds. We will end with an examination of the circumstances […]
Categories
Why Are We on Earth?
(Or, Why On Earth Are We?) Why are we on earth? I believe we are here to help extend an ancient trend from instinctive personal survival, to self-sacrifice for group survival, to seeking methods of universal survival and even well-being. The quadrune mind model is melioristic, meaning it believes the world naturally tends to get better […]