The Box

Good Sense Ministry Newsletter has a great section on simplicity stating that once we have begun to cultivate the inner reality of simplicity, what might our outer reality look like? Foster offers 10 principles.
Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status.
Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you.
Develop a habit of giving things away.
Refuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern gadgetry.
Learn to enjoy things without owning them.
Develop a deeper appreciation for the creation.
Look with a healthy skepticism at all “buy now, pay later” schemes.
Obey Jesus’ instructions about plain, honest speech.
Reject anything that breeds the oppression of others.
Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God.
In our materialistic, over-marketing-messaged world, simplicity isn’t, well, so simple. But as Richard Foster points out, it begins on the inside with the attitudes of our heart and mind. And those are cultivated through prayer and meditation on the truth of God’s Word. Some good places to start include Luke 12:15-21, Luke 12:33-34, Luke 6:30, and Philippians 4:12-13.
Link

“I wonder why, I wonder why. / I wonder why I wonder. /
I wonder why I wonder why / I wonder why I wonder!”

Research on the brain, mind, and consciousness was given a significant boost by Nobel laureate Dr. Francis Crick in 1994,
when he wrote in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis, “that ‘you,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your
ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of
nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
This is what is called “the hard problem”—explaining how billions of neurons swapping chemicals give rise to such subjective experiences as consciousness, self-awareness, and awareness that others are conscious and selfaware; that is, not only the ability to wonder, but the ability to wonder why we wonder, and even onder why others wonder why….
Explaining each of the functional parts of the brain is the easy problem, such as the differences between waking and sleep, discrimination of stimuli, or the control of behavior. By contrast, what has come to be known as the hard problem in consciousness studies is experience: what it is like to be in a given mental state? Adding up all of the solved easy problems does not equal a solution to the hard problem. Something else is going on in private subjective experiences—called qualia—and there is no consensus on what it is.

Dualists hold that qualia are separate from physical objects in the world and that mind is more than brain. Materialists contend that qualia are ultimately explicable through the activities of neurons and that mind and brain are one.

What do you think…?