How to Read this Book of Essays
The Book of Continuing Creation, containing 34 Essays (chapters), is complete as of May, 2023. However, we have always intended to update chapters when they become out of date. It is also possible that J.X. Mason (or some other Agent of C.C.) may add Essays such as “The Rise of Multicellular Life,” “Evaluating Judaism,” and “What Modern Physics Means for Continuing Creation. J.X. Mason’s Newsletter (blog) publication continues on a weekly basis.
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There is a suggested order for reading the 34 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 Overview Essays, along with How to Read This Book of Essays (which you are looking at now).
(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 Complexity, Evolution, and Spirituality, are interwoven and interreacting. Continuing Creation itself is a Complex Adaptive System. Our Essays on science relate to religion and spirituality; and our Essays on spirituality relate to the sciences of complexity and evolution.
We will be posting each Essay to this website as it is finished. At some point, the author plans to arrange the Essays in a final Book order. (Note that the four-digit number at the start of each Essay title is simply a computer file number used by the Author for reference.)
We aim to present a practical Spiritual Path is that without myths and miracle stories.
A Principle of our Spiritual Path is that the Book of Continuing Creation must forever be open to revision and update. The date of every Essay’s most recent update will appear at its end.
The Book 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 and physics
- How to Lead an ethical life; how to lead a virtuous life
- How to lead a fulfilled and 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
- Modern Cults and Unusual Spiritual Paths
This Book is available for free, without ads, at ContinuingCreation.org.
J.X. Mason’s Blog Posts
Our website also holds copies of all the weekly Blog Posts written by our Author, J.X. Mason. These one-page Posts are about topics in the Essays, but the Posts are informal and often relate to current events.
We Welcome Constructive Comments from Readers
To send us a comment, correction, or suggestion, you can use the Contact Us tab on this website, or you can us the Comment Form at the end of every Essay and Blog Post.
Conventions Used Throughout the Text
The phrases “Continuing Creation,” “Nature’s Continuing Creation,” and “The Growing, Organizing, Direction of the Cosmos” are used interchangeably throughout this Book. They mean the same thing.
Our Practice or Path 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. Indentations are used for subsidiary points, examples, illustrations, and references. We intend readers to be able to capture all the major ideas of this Book without reading the indented passages.
Important Principles of the Path of Continuing Creation are formatted in dark-blue bold type, and may begin with a bolded phrase such as, “The Practice Continuing Creation Says — “
The phrases, “Old Desert Religions” means the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The phrase, “Old Asian Religions” means Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen. The phrase, “Old Religions” means all eight of these religions. “Western civilization” or “Western Tradition” refers to Euro-North American, as distinguished from Asian.
In this book, the words Nature and Earth are always capitalized…. because they deserve to be.
Attribution
Citations and references for each Essay are sometimes listed in the body of the Essay, but usually at the end of the Essay.
We have every intention to give other authors full attribution for their thinking and writing. If you feel the Book of Continuing Creation or this website have failed to properly acknowledge prior work done by other writers, please send us an email using the Contact Page and we will correct our oversight immediately.
Wikipedia
We draw heavily from Wikipedia articles. As of 2022, we find that the Wikipedia articles on nearly all the subjects in this Book are comprehensive and rigorously researched. That makes them perfectly “right-sized” for our needs, because we discuss a very broad range of subjects, ranging from religion to science. There is no way that J.X. Mason could have become expert on all those topics. Whenever we can, we link key words in our text back 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.
Not-For-Profit Status
Continuing Creation, LLC, this website, and the Book of Continuing Creation are completely not-for-profit. All expenses are paid from the personal funds of the Author.
Affirmation of Free Speech and Free Religion
We affirm the right of nearly every person to hold her or her own beliefs and follow their own spiritual path. 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. The Book of The Growing, Organizing, Direction spends almost no time or space discussing such extremism.
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