Hunger for Wholeness

In this episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Ilia Delio speaks with neurotheologian Shaleen Kendrick about neuroscience, contemplative practice, and the biology of spiritual experience. Shaleen shares her journey from conservative evangelical ministry through deconstruction, suffering, and contemplative prayer into the emerging field of neurotheology.
Together, Ilia and Shaleen explore how religious experience is not separate from the body but mediated through it. They consider how God-language, belief, prayer, trauma, neuroplasticity, and contemplative practice all shape the brain and body—and how changing our images of God can change the very neural pathways through which we experience reality.
Later in the episode, they discuss the resistance many theologians have to locating spiritual experience in neurobiology, the promise and complexity of psychedelics and healing, and the growing scientific evidence that spirituality is an innate human capacity. Rather than reducing God to biology, this conversation asks what becomes possible when we understand the body as the living temple of divine encounter.
ABOUT SHALEEN KENDRICK
Rev. Dr. Shaleen Kendrick, ThD, is an emerging neurotheologian who developed the Neuro-Relational Integration™ (NRI) model—demonstrating how conscious integration across Mind–Body–Spirit neural systems can facilitate rapid adaptive evolution in how we think, act, and relate to ourselves, others, and the challenges of our time. NRI integrates neuroscience with liberation theology to show that through daily wholeness-making practices we can expand our human capacity and create new abilities that nurture not just individual flourishing but transform the systems we live in. She serves companies, practitioners, and faith communities, translating evolutionary spirituality into embodied practice—because the world needs humans who can evolve as quickly as our challenges emerge. This is Human Evolution in Practice.
Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.
We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.
Support the show
A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!
Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.
Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio.  Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.

In this 100th episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Sr. Ilia Delio continues her conversation with Nicholas Hedlund, PhD exploring what it means to seek coherence in a world shaped by fragmentation and acceleration.
Beginning with Teilhard de Chardin’s sense that the future is not simply ahead of us but mysteriously within the present, Ilia and Nick reflect on evolution as an unfinished process of becoming—one that calls for “unity in diversity,” not a monolithic consensus. Nick develops his concept of alethic resonance: truth as an attunement to reality that is participatory and transformative, not merely a set of propositions we “possess.” If reality is relational and dynamic, then truth is not something we control but something we learn to hear, honor, and live.
ABOUT NICHOLAS HEDLUND
“Humanity is not suffering from a crisis of information but a crisis of integration.”
Nicholas Hedlund, Ph.D., is a philosopher, metatheorist, and contemplative practitioner whose work explores the intersection of spirituality, science, and worldview transformation. He is the director of Eudaimonia Institute and director of research at the Institute for Applied Metatheory, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice.
Nicholas developed visionary realism, an integrative philosophical framework drawing from critical realism, integral theory, and complexity science to illuminate deeper structures of reality and help navigate the global metacrisis. He earned his Ph.D. from University College London, where he studied under Roy Bhaskar and Arthur Petersen, and he was also an exchange scholar at Yale University.
He is the author and editor of Metatheory for the Twenty-First Century and Big Picture Perspectives on Planetary Flourishing, and his work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Zygon and Environmental Science & Policy. He is currently completing two new books further developing visionary realism and its implications for civilizational transformation.
Alongside his scholarly work, Nicholas is an APPA-certified philosophical counselor and a spiritual director-in-training, supporting individuals in exploring meaning, inner transformation, and spiritual experience. A long-time contemplative practitioner and musician, he is deeply interested in the resonance between sound, consciousness, and human evolution.
Nicholas teaches in the Integral Noetic Sciences Department at the California Institute for Human Science, offering courses in integral philosophy, consciousness studies, and the global metacrisis. Learn more about his studies and work on his website. His PhD thesis, Visionary Realism And The Emergence Of A Eudaimonistic Society, is also available online.

Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.
We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.
Support the show
A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!
Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.
Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio.  Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.

In this episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Sr. Ilia Delio speaks with Nicholas Hedlund, PhD—a philosopher, metatheorist, and contemplative practitioner whose work explores spirituality, science, and worldview transformation.
Ilia begins with the simple question: What is metatheory? Nick traces the thread that drew him into big-picture thinking—an early dissatisfaction with surface-level responses to ecological crisis, and a deeper inquiry into root causes: who we take ourselves to be, what we take the natural world to be, and how our relationship to the sacred shapes the world we build. Together, Ilia and Nick explore the metacrisis (or polycrisis) as more than a collection of competing emergencies. 

ABOUT NICHOLAS HEDLUND
“Humanity is not suffering from a crisis of information but a crisis of integration.”
Nicholas Hedlund, Ph.D., is a philosopher, metatheorist, and contemplative practitioner whose work explores the intersection of spirituality, science, and worldview transformation. He is the director of Eudaimonia Institute and director of research at the Institute for Applied Metatheory, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice.
Nicholas developed visionary realism, an integrative philosophical framework drawing from critical realism, integral theory, and complexity science to illuminate deeper structures of reality and help navigate the global metacrisis. He earned his Ph.D. from University College London, where he studied under Roy Bhaskar and Arthur Petersen, and he was also an exchange scholar at Yale University.
He is the author and editor of Metatheory for the Twenty-First Century and Big Picture Perspectives on Planetary Flourishing, and his work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Zygon and Environmental Science & Policy. He is currently completing two new books further developing visionary realism and its implications for civilizational transformation.
Alongside his scholarly work, Nicholas is an APPA-certified philosophical counselor and a spiritual director-in-training, supporting individuals in exploring meaning, inner transformation, and spiritual experience. A long-time contemplative practitioner and musician, he is deeply interested in the resonance between sound, consciousness, and human evolution.
Nicholas teaches in the Integral Noetic Sciences Department at the California Institute for Human Science, offering courses in integral philosophy, consciousness studies, and the global metacrisis. Learn more about his studies and work on his website. His PhD thesis, Visionary Realism And The Emergence Of A Eudaimonistic Society, is also available online.
Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.
We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.
Support the show
A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!
Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.
Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio.  Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.

Sr. Ilia Delio continues her conversation with Abre Fournier, PhD—a science-based philosopher of consciousness whose work bridges contemporary cognitive science with Asian contemplative traditions and practices of mind transformation.
Picking up their inquiry into what is meant by “the self,” Ilia and Abre turn to childhood development and the social shaping of identity. Abre draws on figures like Jean Piaget and Donald Winnicott to describe how the “me/not-me” distinction emerges over time through relationship, culture, and the formative environment of family and education. This raises a deeper question: if selfhood is an emergent, relational process, should we even keep the word self? Abre proposes selfing—self as a dynamical activity rather than a fixed thing.
The conversation widens to politics, education, and the pressures facing the humanities today, asking how modern notions of autonomy can fracture our collective life. Finally, Abre introduces the metamind: a planetary intelligence taking shape through recursive coupling across human, cultural, and technological processes. In the age of the internet and AI, what might it mean for collective intelligence to become aware of itself? How can we participate consciously in transformation, not merely information flow?
ABOUT ABRE FOURNIER
“Can we as human beings really understand what it would mean to have a conscious experience without a sense of self?” 
Abre G. Fournier, PhD, is a science-based philosopher of consciousness with a focus on mind transformation, bridging the advancements of contemporary cognitive sciences with teachings and practices from Asian philosophies centered on states of awakened awareness. Her work synthesizes insights from evolutionary biology, dynamical systems, embodied cognition, and advanced intelligence to articulate the rise of a new dimension of planetary mind. Her international work in facilitating consciousness evolution offers vital insights for philosophers and scientists investigating the complexities and transformation of human consciousness, as well as for professionals and practitioners engaged in transformative practices. She has also been active in the arts and higher education, with academic and executive roles at the State University of New York (SUNY). Her work as a practicing artist in films and new-media collaborations with musicians and composers has been shown in art museums and galleries, film festivals, and live concerts in the US and abroad. Originally from France, Abre lives in the New York metropolitan area.

Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.
We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.
Support the show
A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!
Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.
Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio.  Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.

In this episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Sr. Ilia Delio speaks with Abre G. Fournier, PhD—a science-based philosopher of consciousness whose work bridges contemporary cognitive science with Asian contemplative traditions and practices of mind transformation.
Abre shares the personal journey that shaped her research: years of intensive contemplative practice, an encounter with what she describes as “awakened awareness,” and a profound, lasting shift in the sense of self that led her to investigate how transformation actually works in lived experience. 
Together, Ilia and Abre explore enduring questions at the heart of consciousness studies: what we experience as the self, how mind and consciousness differ, and what contemporary science can (and cannot yet) reveal about these mysteries. Abre draws from philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and embodied and extended mind research to reframe selfhood as relational, interactive, and dynamically formed rather than fixed and isolated.

ABOUT ABRE FOURNIER
“Can we as human beings really understand what it would mean to have a conscious experience without a sense of self?” 
Abre G. Fournier, PhD, is a science-based philosopher of consciousness with a focus on mind transformation, bridging the advancements of contemporary cognitive sciences with teachings and practices from Asian philosophies centered on states of awakened awareness. Her work synthesizes insights from evolutionary biology, dynamical systems, embodied cognition, and advanced intelligence to articulate the rise of a new dimension of planetary mind. Her international work in facilitating consciousness evolution offers vital insights for philosophers and scientists investigating the complexities and transformation of human consciousness, as well as for professionals and practitioners engaged in transformative practices. She has also been active in the arts and higher education, with academic and executive roles at the State University of New York (SUNY). Her work as a practicing artist in films and new-media collaborations with musicians and composers has been shown in art museums and galleries, film festivals, and live concerts in the US and abroad. Originally from France, Abre lives in the New York metropolitan area.

Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.
We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.
Support the show
A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!
Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.
Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio.  Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.