iQUE /zine

THE QUE COLLECTIVe

The Que Collective is a religious order of Mystics of the Que or Qmystics. Qmystics are teachers of Natural Spirituality..  A religious order is a group of people, who lead a form of consecrated life in accordance with their specific religious devotion. Members of religious orders are typically called Monks and Nuns. .

Like most religious orders, to join, you show up naked, leave everything behind, shave your head, take vows of poverty (no personal ownership), fidelity (chastity), obedience and sobriety. You give up secular life and dedicate your life to a higher purpose. Leading a vowed life doesn't mean being shut away in a dim monastry. This is not about escaping the world its about serving human kind. In Natural Spirituality the purpose of life is not to remove all desire, hide away from the world chant mantras or worship anything. We see the natural purpose of life is to strive to thrive.

A Mystic of the Que is not in pursuit of some esoteric reward in an imagined hereafter. A Qmystic is a scholar engaged in the adventure of living through their craft, which is to be an educator. Our nuns and monks endeavour to teach from experience. While their function is first and foremost to teach. In order to do so they must create and to contribute to the lives of others.

The Collective is a religious community not a cult. There is no guru to follow. It is a modern monastic tradition. The function of The Collective is cognitive research and pedagogical science. Our processes are democratic. Shaving your head, abandoning all worldly possessions and joining a religious order is not the first thing most people would consider as a career. The fact is hair grows back. You will find that you don't really need to be a consumer to have a decent quality of life.  Being a Mystic of the Que, a member of any clergy is a calling not a career. Having the personal commitment to live a vowed life is not for everyone.

"We don’t sell granola or flowers or beg for alms or do anything like that. We leverage our expertise, inventions, science, technology, executive and entrepreneurial talent to create value for our community and our collective. "– Mystics of The Que

Like all religious orders there are vows. The vow of poverty doesn't mean a vow to be poor. One cannot associate the Que and poverty as concepts that go together. A vow of poverty means to abandon the pursuit of personal wealth. There is no vow of chastity but rather of fidelity. We do not see sex as a bad thing but rather, between consenting adults, sex is natural and human. Abstainence from Sex is a choice that one makes so as not to distract from the path. At the time of our choosing Qmystics can even choose to reproduce. Although said reproduction is a choice and not a accident of romantic love. Romantic love is one of the things you abandon as an ambition when you join a monastic tradition. We do not see anything wrong with Romantic Love, as with many things, it is a delusion that detracts from the path.

The Mystics of the Que is the institution responsible for training teachers of Natural Spirituality. It is a monastic tradition. The difference is that we do not work for the acquisition of personal material wealth. A member’s contribution to the collective is to keep their vows and to live and learn. Qmystics lead very productive and successful lives furthering human evolution in the fields of scientific research and development, medicine, education, and more. Natural Spirituality is a scholars religion. Think shaolin monk rather than catholic monk.We are educators with a unique body of knowledge helping people build a foundation for the rest of their lives. 

WHY WE DO

Human organisms use a model of the human experience to construct their experience of life. The architecture of this model is copied from one human being to the other. The architect of this model is culture. Today it is a hack, a set of beliefs picked up from books, movies, parents, teachers, friends, family, television, etc, which is reinforced by experiences. The prevailing model has gaps and is unable to model all occurrences. It is this hack that we use to run our lives and guide our society. Religion is historically the primary source of the first lines of code that form the basis of the model. This "code" is the "soft" ware that forms the brain’s operating system (the way to operate in the feild of time).

"Trying to explain the difference between Natural Spirituality and conventional religion is like explaining the difference between physics and tennis. Suffice it to say that no one can tell you what it is. To truly understand you have to come to know it for yourself."

Consider the premise from an enterprise perspective: we are in the business of producing an operating system (the only available comprehensive and modern version) for a hardware market of over 6.2 billion and the market is growing at 75 million per year - that’s about 205 thousands unit per day or 8500 per hour. Think of upgrading your religion/educational system like upgrading the software that runs the human brain. What if we could engineer a model of the human experiences that was based on how we understand the world today? Rather than being stuck with what you got from your parents and environment. Once you imagine the possibility of such a premise, no matter how far fetched it may seem, The benefits of just the act of reaching for such a goal to a person, a community, even someday the world, is obvious. It’s easy to understand why we are so passionately devoted to this. It is an opportuity to make a quantum leap forward in one generation. Some see things as they are and ask why. Others see things that never were and ask why not.

Our Mission

Natural Spirituality is a religion because it does what a religion should do. If gives you a way to make sense of your spirituality, a means to use it to be OK everyday and a sacred way to be in the world. It does it differently than ancient religions do. Natural Spirituality brings a modern sensibility to human spirituality.

We are educators and our mission is to evolve the body of knowledge and to teach those who make a conscious choice to learn.

" You get Natural Spirituality through education. It is not a believe or burn kind of thing. In fact there is nothing to believe in.No story to buy into. No guru to follow. No savior to worship. It is a practice not a faith."

We consider spirituality to be a private personal thing. We do not wear Natural Spirituality on our sleeves. We do not prosthelytize and we practice a doctrine of attraction not promotion. We do not need anyone to agree with us that spiritualiy is human. We are not here to "make" the world Que. The World cannot be Que because Natural Spirituality is not for everyone. Evolution is for the few not the many. We are not here to convert anyone to Natural Spirituality. You cannot convert to Natural Spirituality. Nothing will happen to you if you don't learn it. You don't need forgiveness because there is nothing here to condemn you. It simply does not work that way.

Natural Spirituality is a deeply personal choice you make about how you are going to live. It is a choice you make about what you want to know about yourself. This is something you do by yourself and for yourself. What the "religion" does is show you how.

The Secret of Stories

Stories play a central role in the human experience. IMDB lists over 1,764,727 moving picture stories including TV since 1898 and that doesn’t count the unrelasead versions. According to Nationmaster the United States had 1,421,000,000 trips to the cinema in 2003. This is second in the world, only beaten by India, who had 2,860,000,000 trips to the cinema. Ordinary every day conversation consists mainly of telling stories. Most religions are based on a book of stories. Stories are a central part of our lives.

We never seem to get tired of stories and our appetite is ever expanding. The more stories we see the more we want to see. A good story is even better the 2nd or 3rd or even the 100th time. Stories seed the imagination and power our drive for invention. We get our values from stories and stories shapes our behavior. Stories are more than just a series of events told through a medium of communication. Stories are social objects that are shared from one human being to another. In fact one can argue that it our story that defines us.

" Natural Spirituality is a religion that has no story. There is no creation myth, no founder, no story of redemption, no prediction of the end of the world or explanation of what happens after you die."

Natural Spirituality is a religion but it has no story to believe in. Natural Spirituality is for those who have the courage to be the hero of your own journey of life. Natural Spirituality is no "his" story. It is "your" story. In order to understand your story you need to discover the secret of stories.

A RELIGION OF ONE

Natural Spirituality has no cultural component. There are no testimonials and no examples. This is not about following someone or believing in someone. There is no origin story. There are no secret levels. While you cannot learn a body of knowledge from reading a website you will find that most of what you need to know is on our sites. This is not something old or new to believe in. This is not a way to cope with uncertainty in the world. This is a means to succeed in spite of it. Natural Spirituality is different from the ground up.

Religion tend to have an ethnic and cultural component. Natural Spirituality was engineered for a post-agricultural, post industrial society and was specifically meant for an information society. Natural Spirituality offers a new covenant, a new deal for grace. It gives us a way to get the blessings of having a way to make sense of the mystical (not obvious to the senses nor apparent to the intellect), part of our lives. It does this without myth and legend, in a way that uses reason as a means of knowledge, promotes the well-being of all human life (not just your own tribe, race or ethnicity), insures that each person thinks for themselves (as opposed to surrendering all wills to one will) and this body of knowledge does so in a way that is consistent with post-humanistic values.

" Natural Spirituality is is about cultivating a private spiritual practice that makes a practical contribution to the quality of your life. "

Natural Spirituality offers an education, nothing more. The church has no moral authority. It has no commandments to follow, save one, thou shalt not commit idolatry (imbue anything with excessive admiration and extreme devotion). You don’t learn Natural Spirituality to get away from the world. You learn it to live a better life and leave behind a better world. Natural Spirituality is not about the "world". Natural Spriituality is about you. Discover what we mean by the term a Religion of One.

IS NS THE TRUTH

Religions tend to start with a story about the usual suspects: the guru, the ancient doctrine, the wisdom, the revelation, the miracle, the savior, the celebrities, the promises and the rewards. Contrary to popular belief religion is not all faith and no reason. There is a reason people accept the things they believe. The idea of god for example is not an irrational concept. Many religions have an ontological argument. An ontological argument uses reason to provide the proof that a thing exists. This gives a rational person a concrete reason to accept something rather than simply accepting it because of an appeal to authority. There are many ontological arguments for god. There are completely rational reasons why one can accept the existence of god. Natural Spirituality is a religion that uses reason and not faith as a means of knowledge. It does not have a story but it does have an ontological argument.

"Natural Spirituality has a defined philosophy that serves as it’s epistemology, not a guru or savior or a revelation from esoteric source."

Natural Spirituality is not something you believe in. No one believes in Natural Spirituality. Natural Spirituality is a choice. This means it’s something you have to come to realize for yourself. This month we examine the ontological argument for Natural Spirituality.