[Main Blog Post] The Open-Minded Materialist's Gentle Introduction to Spirituality

[jprussell]

I've written my first "full" blog post of the year and posted it to my main blog here. If you have any thoughts or ways I might make it better, kindly let me know by commenting here or dropping me an email!

Comments

Similar Background

[davidtrammel]

Good post Jeff. I read it once this morning over coffee and will definitely read it for more depth tonight. I look forward to more from you. I am restarting my own shamanism blog after a few years of hiatus and trying to put together my thoughts and assumptions as well.

I have a huge scientific background, having studied both physics and anthropology in college. Though I got exposed to the magical side of life a few years earlier and kept my interest in it. I think my acceptance that the World has both a scientific side and a spiritual side is still strong because at the time I was learning both, Quantum Mechanics was the hot topic in physics. When you see some of the things the top people in that field write, you come away with the feeling that what is believed in spirituality and magic isn't anywhere as weird. Now that the theory of "E8" and Quantum gravity is gaining traction in physics it's getting even weirder, lol.

Keep writing. I think that you can come to a worldview that accepts both material science and the spiritual as equally valid and complementary.

Re: Similar Background

[jprussell]

Thank you very much for the kind words! I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on shamanism, as it's a field I think is likely rather relevant to my Germanic, Woden-focused interests, but there's a lot of mularkey on it out there, and it's not something JMG has had anything to do with. So a credible source would be most welcome!

Thank you for the encouragement! After reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem I tracked down some of the books on quantum physics in his list of inspirations and read them, but as a Classics and Ancient History B.A. with an MBA, I lacked much of the mathematical and scientific grounding to much follow. Since learning the occult philosophy of "everything has consciousness", I have found myself thinking back to Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics by Henry Stapp, which I more-or-less followed and found intriguing.

Also, to be clear, I am in no way "anti-science", and I agree that it is an incredibly useful tool that tells us much about the world that we wouldn't know without it. I just don't think it is well-suited to the bottom-most level of qualitative questions about values (such as "what is best in life?" "is this discovery good, bad, or some blend? what should we do with it?") - I don't think you can arrive at answers to those empirically.