Awakening: Renewing the Spiritual Dimension of Humanity

By Danny Kinane

Religion and spirituality are today at odds, and in many ways religion has lost contact with its basespirituality. As we try to reconcile the objective world out there with our own subjective experience of it, the split between what religion says and what our spirituality reveals can become even more acute. Yet because our very humanity is itself spiritual, we can make humanity great again through a renewed spirituality.

In Awakening: Renewing the Spiritual Dimension of Humanity, author Danny Kinane explores this apparent rift between spirituality and religion and instead posits that there is a transformative and important alignment between our human experience of the world and our own sense of spiritualityand that advancements in modern science, especially in quantum physics, can tell us something about this spirituality. With both personal accounts of his own journey as well as discussions of Eastern and Western philosophy and spirituality, Kinane invites fellow seekers to discover with both faith and logic how they can awaken and reclaim their spirituality.

A secular faith that incorporates rationality, science, community, philosophy, and spirituality can free us from the confines of our egos and offer us true meaning. We need only realign our humanity with our spirituality, finding in the subjective world a world of faith, love, compassion, forgiveness, peace, and unlimited energy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Aug 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504309646

Danny Kinane

Danny Kinane is a retired priest, and he has four previously published books on spirituality. His focus is to reclaim the spiritual dimension of religion as being more appropriate to our modern age. Today Kinane lives in rural Queensland, Australia, where he can be close to nature.

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Copyright © 2017 Danny Kinane.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-0963-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0964-6 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 07/20/2017

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Prologue

PART ONE

The Market-Place

Chapter 1:    Revelation In The Market-Place

Chapter 2:    What Kind Of Belonging?

Chapter 3:    Ultimacy & Belonging

Chapter 4:    The Search For Community

PART TWO

History’s Gift

Chapter 5:    The Western Enlightenment

Chapter 6:    Logic

Chapter 7:    The Mystery Of Matter

Chapter 7:    A New Revelation

PART THREE

The Mystery Within

Chapter 8:    What Is Faith?

Chapter 9:    The First Axial Age

Chapter 10:  The Advent Of The Inner Me

PART FOUR

Buddhism & Awakening

Chapter 11:  Awakening

Chapter 12:  A Time To Remember

Chapter 13:  Implications

Chapter 14:  Secular Faith &An Expanding Universe

Chapter 15:  Implications Of The Experience Of Awakening

PART FIVE

The Church

Chapter 16:  The Church & Theology

Chapter 17:  The Church & Modernism

Chapter 18:  Walking On Water

PART SIX

God & The Ultimate

Chapter 19:  God

Chapter 20:  My God

A Cautionary Tale

Appendix

DEDICATION

- to my nephew Martin who brought us a special gift

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

- to everybody who crossed my life-path, in word and deed, and helped to create the meanderings and sighs of my heart

INTRODUCTION

There are two ways of arriving at the truth; I decided to follow them both.

Georges Lemaitre

According to Einstein, a contemporary scientist of the Belgian priest Lemaitre, the concept of a space detached from any physical content does not exist. In the same breath, he suggests that physical concepts are free creations of the human mind and are not determined by the external world.

Many moons before Einstein existed, the Buddha declared: by becoming attached to names and forms, not realising they have no more basis than the activities of the mind itself, error arises and the way to emancipation is blocked.

Both Einstein and the Buddha are questioning the suitability of some of our commonly accepted factors in the pursuit of knowledge such as concepts, names and forms. But where is rationality, we wonder, without them?

Here we seem confronted with knowledge as a mobile reality, a surface moveable feast of what is and what is not. How then can we speak of the truths or dogmas of religion or spirituality with any sense of definitiveness – not to mention infallibility – from such a perspective?

Strangely, this initial difficulty should offer us a sense of direction in our venture. It highlights a difference between religion and spirituality, between the concepts and forms of religion as we find them in theology – the methodical structure of religion – and the human experience that is spirituality.

Our venture is into human experience and how religion has lost contact with its base, spirituality. This loss, in hindsight, I believe was inevitable because of the complexity of the history of human thought, especially in trying to reconcile an objective world out there with our subjective world in here. This has become even more acute today because of the advancement of modern science, specifically in quantum physics, which seems to suggest a mysterious alignment between the two. A probing of this alignment, of its spiritual implications, will be a major preoccupation of where I want to go in this venture.

The following is a little summary in verse of a possible finale.

In the beginning was the word,

a human