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So you've bought into the great insights of Iain McGilchrist, as explored in The Master and His Emissary, and also, The Matter with Things.You understand that the key ability is “presencing the world”- comprehending, not merely calculating- experiencing, not merely modelling- attuning, not merely measuring- understanding, not merely manipulating- living and dying, not merely being on or off.But what now to do? How not to live? What’s needed is a conversion of awareness. So here I suggest 10 ways in which our experience might be transformed, not by fixing perception, but by paying attention to how we perceive and experience, and cultivating more expansive modes of awareness.1. be interested in darkness2. understand the imagination as concealing and revealing3. be embodied to be changed by sensing more4. love the minute particulars to know the universal5. monitor your experience of time6. look for the third awaiting to be seen or born7. be open to other intelligences, natural and supernatural8. reconsider the nature of suffering9. love the precipitousness of infinity, eternity10. know life is a comedy that survives, embraces tragedies.Drawing on great adepts such as Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa, and particularly on Dante and William Blake.0:00 intro02:17 be interested in darkness06:45 understand the imagination as concealing and revealing13:01 be embodied to be changed by sensing more17:05 love the minute particulars to know the universal19:17 monitor your experience of time22:30 look for the third awaiting to be seen or born25:45 be open to other intelligences, natural and supernatural32:37 reconsider the nature of suffering37:00 love the precipitousness of infinity, eternity43:46 know life is a comedy that survives, embraces tragedies48:45 summary in conclusion

Objectivity has come to be regarded as a prime ingredient of reliable knowledge. But what is objectivity, how has it arisen, and is the notion in need of reform? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert and Mark consider the recent work of the philosopher, Richard Gunton. With colleagues, Richard examines older understandings of objectivity in science and proposes an alternative which is truer to scientific work. In particular, the reductive idea that links objectivity with replication seems increasingly untenable, given the replication crisis in science. Instead, linking objectivity to representation provides a fruitful way forward. Rupert and Mark consider facets of the history of science, not least the difference between so-called primary and secondary qualities, as well as how science is actually carried out, with the role that imagination and aesthetics bring to innovation and insight. Might a new notion of objectivity be not only good for science but also become part of overcoming modern alienation from the world? Richard Gunton’s paper is co-authored with Marinus Stafleu and Michael Reiss and is entitled "A General Theory of Objectivity: Contributions from the Reformational Philosophy Tradition."For more dialogues between Rupert and Mark see:https://www.sheldrake.org/audios/sheldrake-vernon-dialogueshttps://www.markvernon.com/talks/talks-with-rupert-sheldrake

Prince Harry is caught in a media storm. But within the mix of sympathy and loathing lie transatlantic differences in psychological and psychotherapeutic traditions.What is sometimes called Self Psychology plays a bigger role in the US, focusing on the healing potential of empathy, idealisation and narrative. This shapes therapeutic and cultural styles. It seems as if Harry has, in part, turned to this tradition to find healing.In British and European traditions, a different approach tends to dominate. Called Object Relations, it is more inclined to challenge the individual and foster a capacity to see how they are situated in a network of relations that is sometimes supportive, sometimes not.I wonder whether something of these differences is playing out in the different receptions of Harry's story, and also in the psyche of one painfully public man.

To celebrate the release of his new book, Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps, the Pari Center invited Mark Vernon, to talk about his new work with Beth Macy.They discuss the notions of spiritual intelligence, the spiritual commons, the Axial revolutions, the presence of suffering, and whether we are in a new Axial Age now.For more on Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-stepsBeth Macy has been a manager, leader, consultant or participant in organizations experiencing difficult issues. David Bohm’s dialogue has been core to her research, writing, consulting and teaching for nearly three decades. Living in the USA (Texas) she is a contributor in the forthcoming Holoflux:Codex – Form/Movement/Vision inspired by David Bohm (Pari Publishing).For more on Mark Vernon see - www.markvernon.com

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step five, which is about death. Any wisdom tradition worth considering will have much to say about death, both as an end to mortal existence and as a daily experience.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step seven, which is about different types of time. Chronos, or clock time, dominates the world today. But there are other kinds, including kairos, which sees every moment as revelatory and is needed in times of change.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step one, which concerns the big history that we tell ourselves about ourselves. In short, the dominant big story is driven by a crude Darwinism that writes out spiritual intelligence, though there is good reason from the science to conclude that's wrong.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step four, which is about how beneath and through the ups and downs of everyday life, that vitality which can be called our soul, can be detected a wider being, which can be called spirit.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step two, which asks about the nature of our freedom. Spiritual intelligence understands that, whilst good to have, freedom is not ultimately about choice or voice, but aligning with what's good, beautiful and true. This is where true freedom is found.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step six, which is about how spiritual intelligence understands the value of virtue over ethics or morality. This preference is because virtues don't primarily tell us what to do, but rather connect must fully with the nature of things.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step three, which is concerned with how our sense of individuality, or oneness, can be known as a mirror of the unity of all things. This perception, in turn, facilities awareness of an abiding simplicity running through all complexity.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps is my contribution to aiding the recovery of the full range of human capabilities and consciousness. Artificial, rational, even emotional intelligence are not enough to ground us, valuable though they be. We need not just know-how, but know-that our lives are grounded in a spiritual commons.The steps I outline here, and explore fully in my book, are to do with story, freedom, simplicity, soul, death, virtue and time.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps.

The secular historian, Tom Holland, has made the case that atheistic humanism is, at heart, an off-shoot of Christianity. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon ask how that can be so. After all, contemporary humanists are inclined to blame Christianity for all ills, not thank Christianity for seeding values they share. Rupert and Mark agree that there is much in what Holland argues. For example, the tendency to evangelise for western values, as well as fall into dispute over what they might be, mirrors Protestant Christianity. But Mark is also wary of Holland’s theory, both as history and also because it risks presenting Christianity is a moral creed, not a revelation of the relationship between the human and divine. (A recent speech that Holland gave outlining his ideas can be found at Unherd.com and the website of the think tank, Theos.)For more in our longstanding series of dialogues see https://www.sheldrake.org/audios/sheldrake-vernon-dialogues andhttps://www.markvernon.com/talks

Peter Owen Jones is a writer, broadcaster and priest. His new book is Conversations With Nature.We discuss falling in love with the natural world once again, what difference this might make to the climate crisis, how Christianity has failed to respond in any significant way to environmental collapse, though also has an answer, if we are prepared to give no thought for the morrow, value the falling sparrow, and follow the way.William Blake's sense of participation, imagination and divine return are also in the mix.For more on Peter's book, Conversations With Nature, see https://www.clairviewbooks.com/viewbook.php?isbn_in=9781912992416For more on Mark Vernon, see www.markvernon.com

The Last Judgement, William Blake argued, is not a terrifying forthcoming rapture but an awakening present moment, “Whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth".For more on William Blake, Dante and other things see www.markvernon.com

For more on John-Paul Flintoff - https://flintoff.org. And his latest book - https://spckpublishing.co.uk/london-psalms.For more on Mark Vernon & Owen Barfield - https://www.markvernon.com/consciousness.

We live in an age of emergency, exacerbated by a collapse of meaning. Writer and psychotherapist, Mark Vernon, examines the type of intelligence that, whilst often dismissed and overlooked, is crucial to understand and cultivate if we are to survive and thrive in our times. Spiritual intelligence is the foundation of who we are and our particular type of consciousness. It is the perception identified across wisdom and religious traditions, and known by many names, which can be summarised as the awareness of awareness, and so of being itself. It is the foundation of peace, even in the face of death, as well as purpose and solidarity. The challenge today is to recover and live according to that knowledge.Examining themes from the nature of consciousness to the experience of time, the emergence of our species and the teaching of spiritual adepts, the book is an antidote to rampant AI and a complement to emotional intelligence. It is written without presuming religious commitments in readers and draws on a mix of sources, from the writings of mystics to the films of Pixar, the work of scholars including Iain McGilchrist and Robin Dunbar, and experience gained from the author's own practices, particularly psychotherapy. It advocates pilgrimage and improvisation, virtues over morality, and big histories that do not turn the story of our species into a bleak struggle for survival.The seven steps will help readers identify spiritual intelligence within themselves, unpack why it matters, and suggest how a wider trust in it may be revived. Each chapter ends with a short practice or question."In Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps, Mark Vernon draws on the understanding of numerous individuals and cultures, weaving them into a text that leads the reader on a journey into the very heart of their self and, at the same time, to the reality that lies behind and is expressed as the world. Each chapter guides us more and more deeply into the perennial understanding that lies at the foundation of our civilisation." Rupert SpiraISBN 978-1-80341-032-6Published by Iff BooksFor more on Mark - www.markvernon.com

Rishi Sunak is Britain’s first Hindu leader. His success is a conspicuous manifestation of the deep links that exist between Indian and English culture.It reaches back William Blake, an early reader of the Bhagavad Gita after it was translated into English. His angel-morphic figures and Vedantic impulses would have been developed with his reading, helping him to restore the unitive sense of reality to English Christianity, much lost after the Reformation. As Jesus tells Albion in Blake’s epic poem, Jerusalem: “I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love."For more on King Charles and Kathleen Raine see - https://www.markvernon.com/awakening-in-a-caroline-age-king-charles-william-blake-kathleen-raine

A number of public figures, in literature and ideas, have recently been talking about discovering Christianity, or perhaps it'd be better to say, being discovered by Christianity.So what's going on with this renewed interest? Why now? How can this be talked about? What kind of Christianity are they being draw to and captured by? And what does their experience say about the inadequacies of much Christianity in modern culture?These questions are asked by Elizabeth Oldfield, host of The Sacred podcast and former director of Theos. Mark Vernon, who often writes and talks about Christian things, is intrigued by and feels something of their lively reality.For more on Elizabeth - https://www.elizabetholdfield.comMark more on Mark - https://www.markvernon.com

C.S Lewis is not the apologist and writer you might assume, if Jason Baxter is right. Plato, Boethius and Dante mattered immensely to a man who felt more at home in the medieval world, and longed to inspire the modern world with a half-forgotten theophany.His friend, Owen Barfield, also anticipated a transfigured today, one in which participation with divine life was known by ourselves and within the inside of the whole world.Christianity itself would recover its experiential, mystical core, the friends hoped, and be less  eclipsed by credal and moral formulations.In this conversation, Jason Baxter and Mark Vernon explore matters from Christian Platonism and the Incarnation, to the Eschaton and the strangeness of miracles. What might Lewis and Barfield have talked about in private? How closely are the soulmates' visions entwined? Why does Christianity need to recover its oddness and surprise, drawing on the past and being drawn by a renewed future?Jason Baxter's book's include The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis, full details here - https://www.ivpress.com/the-medieval-mind-of-c-s-lewis.Mark Vernon's books include A Secret History of Christianity on Owen Barfield, full details - here https://www.markvernon.com/books/a-secret-history-of-christianity