How to Read This Book of 40 Essays
(Essay #6, at 1-24-26)
This book, Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation, containing 40 Essays (chapters), is complete as of January 2026. However, we intend to update chapters, online, when they become out of date. The first page of an Essay displays its latest revision date. It is also possible that J.X. Mason (or some other Agent of Nature’s Continuing Creation) may add a few Essays in the future.
> J.X. Mason also writes a Journal (a newsletter), which continues on a weekly basis.
> Please Subscribe to our free Journal Entries… and View Our Earlier Journal Entries. No ads! No requests for contributions!
> This book of Essays & Journal Entries is available to all readers online — for free and without ads, at ContinuingCreation.org.
Our book opposes biblical or fundamentalist “creationism.” The creation we see all around us is real. It has happened and continues to happen through Natural open-energy flows, working through geology, chemistry, biology, and evolution.
There is a suggested order for reading the 40 numbered Essays, which have been split into 10 groups called “Parts,” all as shown in our Table of Contents.
Nevertheless, Essays can also be read on a stand-alone basis, according to the interests of the individual reader. However, everyone should begin with the Introduction and/or Overview Essays, along with “How to Read this Book of Essays” (which you are currently reading).
If you don’t care for the Essays on science, skip them! The same goes for our Essays on Ethics, Meditations, and anything else!
Because each Essay can stand alone, you may find somewhat more repetition between the Essays than you would find between the chapters of most books… but nothing like the endless repetition we see in the Quran!
Our topics, including Energy Flow, Complexity, Evolution, and the human “Search Purpose & Meaning,” are interwoven and interacting. Nature’s Continuing Creation itself is a Complex Adaptive System.
We aim to present a practical Path toward finding Life’s Purpose and Meaning, a Path that is without myths and miracle stories.
This Book on Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation Contains Essays on Such Topics as:
- Patterns, complexity, and process
- The psychology and evolution of religion
- The great religions of the world – their individual strengths and shortcomings
- Theology – some basic concepts
- Suffering, evil, and death
- Evolution — cosmic, geologic, biologic, cultural, and technological
- Insights from mathematics
- How to Lead an ethical life; how to lead a virtuous life
- How to lead a fulfilled & happy life
- Is there an “afterlife?”
- Meditation and Mindfulness
- Symbols, songs, poems, and traditions of our new spiritual path
- Overuse of resources, overpopulation, climate change, Mother Nature, and Gaia
- Smaller Religions & Modern Cults
Conventions Used Throughout the Text
The phrases “Nature’s Continuing Creation,” “Continuing Creation,” and “The Growing, Organizing, Direction of Nature” are used interchangeably throughout this Book. They mean the same thing.
Our Path and Practice is called by many names, including The Way of Continuing Creation, the Path, the Practice, the Flow, the Weave… and others.
The people who take up our spiritual path are called many names: Builders (of Continuing Creation), Designers, Cultivators, Practitioners, Agents, Weavers, Followers, Co-Creators, and other similar names.
For clarity, the Essays are written in textbook style. We often use bullet points and numbered lists to organize our content. Indentations are used for subsidiary points, examples, illustrations, and references. We intend readers to be able to capture all the central ideas of this book without reading the indented passages.
> The main text of the Path of Continuing Creation is formatted in bold black type, and may begin with phrases such as “The Practice Continuing Creation says…”
> Quotations, Photo Captions, and Tips for the Reader are written in bold brown.
> Links to other websites are written in bold teal (i.e., blue-green) color.
“Old Middle Eastern Religions” means the Abrahamic Religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. “Old Asian Religions” means Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen. “Old Religions” means all eight of these world religions. “Western civilization” or “Western tradition” refers to Euro-North American, as distinguished from Asian.
Capitalized Words
In this Book of Essays, The words “Earth” and “Nature” are always be capitalized… because they deserve to be!
Germans capitalize the word “Germany.” Since all humans live on the Earth, we should capitalize the word “Earth.”
It requires the entire Earth (lands, seas, atmosphere, ecosystem) to sustain each human on Earth (including all Germans). Therefore, the word “Earth” deserves to be capitalized more than the word “Germany.” We always capitalize Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the other planets; so we need to capitalize Earth, which is more important to us than all the other planets.
How about when “Earth” is used to mean “Dirt, Soil, Ground, or Dust.” Since plants and animals (including humans) are composed of this, and get sustenance from it and they live, we could capitalize them (So Genesis 3:19 could be, “For you are Dust, and to Dust you shall return”). However, in 2026 most readers would object to these capitalizations.
Humans on Earth could not live for long outside the processes of Nature, including moderate energy flow from the sun, the water cycle, photosynthesis, metabolism, and reproduction, and many other natural processes. Therefore, the word “Nature” also deserves to be capitalized.
Nature, as a whole, is also the set of Interlocking Processes on Earth. I call this summation “The Process of all Processes.” It includes geology, biology, and human technologies. It is the “Whole of all wholes.” Since it appears to be growing, elaborating, and progressing, (at least in our Earthly portion of the Universe), I sometimes call it the “Growing, Organizing, Direction of Nature.”
The fictional names, “Mother Nature,” “Mother Earth,’ and “Gaia” are used in literature to personify the the biological realities of Nature and Ecology of our planet. I use these personifications from time to time in my online book, “Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation: Finding Life’s Purpose & Meaning in Nature, Science, and History.”
J.X. Mason’s Journal Entries
Our website also holds copies of all the weekly Journal Entries (earlier called “Blog Posts”) written by our Author, J.X. Mason. These one-page Entries are usually about topics in the Essays, but the Journal Entries are informal and often relate to current events.
We Welcome Constructive Comments from Readers
To send us a comment, correction, or suggestion, use the “Contact Us” Page on this website. Alternatively, you can use the “Comment Form” located at the end of each essay and journal entry.
Sources
Authoritative, Scholarly Books and Articles
These Sources are numbered, and then noted at the end of each Essay.
Wikipedia
This book often draws from Wikipedia articles. As of 2025, we find that the Wikipedia articles on nearly all the subjects in this book are comprehensive, rigorously researched, and clearly understandable. That makes them perfectly sized for our needs, as we discuss a broad range of subjects, from religion to science. There is no way that J.X. Mason could have become an expert on all those subjects. Whenever possible, we link keywords in our text to the Wikipedia articles we have drawn from. And when Wikipedia has footnoted something, we endeavor to repeat that reference in a footnote of our own. Wikipedia articles are written and reviewed by real people who are experts in their respective subjects. The Author of Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation, whose pen name is J.X. Mason, contributes to the Wikipedia Foundation.
Perplexity.ai
Citations and references for each Essay are usually listed at the end of each Essay, but sometimes in the body of the Essay. However, this is not the case for the Essays “Mysteries of Modern Physics,” and “The Rise of Multicellular Organisms.” Perplexity Artificial Intelligence (Perplexity.ai) was utilized in writing three Essays in this book: “Mysteries of Modern Physics,” “The Rise of Multicellular Organisms,” and “Overpopulation Threatens Nature’s Continuing Creation.” In those three Essays, Perplexity.ai was used in tandem with Wikipedia. Readers can easily locate the ultimate sources by bringing up Perplexity.ai and Wikipedia online.
Note: We have every intention to give other authors full attribution for their thinking and writing. If you feel that this book about Nature’s Continuing Creation or this website has failed to properly acknowledge prior work done by other writers, please send us an email using the Contact Page, and the author will correct the oversight immediately.
About the Author, J.X. Mason
On this same website, please visit our webpage entitled “The Author” or “About the Author.” While conducting his research and writing, Mason was advised by several esteemed professionals who are listed and credited on the “The Author” page.
Affirmation of Free Speech & Free Religion
We affirm the right of nearly every person to hold their own beliefs and follow their own spiritual path. However, we exclude people who follow doctrines involving, condoning, or accommodating cruelty and evil — such as Nazism, fascism, the extreme communism now imposed on the populace of North Korea, and the extremely violent Islamic tribalism of Nigeria’s “Boko Haram.” Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation spends almost no time or space discussing such extremism.
Not-For-Profit Status
Continuing Creation, LLC, this website (ContinuingCreation.org), and this book about Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation are all completely not-for-profit. We carry no ads and ask for no donations. All expenses are paid from the personal funds of the Author. The Author’s pen name is J.X. Mason. However, this book of Essays will likely be published as an eBook on Amazon Kindle and other by other publishers. If a readers access these Essays through one of these eBook companies, it will cost a reasonable fee.
Copyright
The Essays of Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation, the Author’s Journal Entries (earlier called Blog Posts), and all pages of this www.ContinuingCreation.org website were written solely by the Author, J.X. Mason, whose wholly-owned company, Continuing Creation LLC, holds the Copyright for all these writings. Illustrations and images were copied from Wikipedia Articles or freely obtained from either Wikimedia or rented from Shutterstock.com. Since this book about Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation is free to all readers, there should not be any issue of attribution. But if image attribution is required, please send a note to J.X. Mason.
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— J.X. Mason. ContinuingCreation.org