The Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom is a nonprofit corporation with 501c3 (tax-exempt) status. Its mission is to offer skillful means for changing the brain to benefit the whole person – and all beings in a world too full of war. It draws on psychology, neurology, and the great contemplative traditions for tools that anyone can use in daily life for greater happiness, love, effectiveness, and wisdom.
The Institute aims to accomplish this mission through:
- Highlighting the discoveries and methods found in the intersection of psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice
- Addressing a range of needs, from psychological healing and well-being to spiritual realization
- Respecting the unique path of each person through offering a diversity of tools that you can systematically individualize
- Collecting, organizing, and distributing resources for psychological and spiritual growth; actively supporting the work of others aligned with the Institute’s mission
- Maintaining an empirical, ecumenical, and pragmatic attitude; not privileging science over spiritual wisdom (or vice versa), and not privileging any particular contemplative tradition (or school within a tradition)
- Taking a particular interest in adapting methods from the monastic traditions for lay people committed to contemplative practice
The major activities of the Institute include:
- Sponsoring and developing the Skillful Means Wiki - an expanding resource of psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual methods; unlike most wikis, which focus on content, this one offers tools
- Publishing the Wise Brain Bulletin bimonthly
- Maintaining and expanding the Wise Brain website, a hub of resources for psychological well-being and spiritual depth
- Supporting the dissemination of useful information and skills through lectures, classes, workshops, etc.
We would be deeply grateful for any contribution you might like to make to the Institute, from simply your good wishes to written feedback, letting us publish your work, telling us about great resources, volunteering a little time, or making a donation. (Your contributions are tax-deductible, and the tax ID is 26-0328057.)
Because of the leveraged nature of the Institute’s work, any support you offer will make a real difference in the great undertaking of helping individuals gain greater control over their brain’s reactive patterns, for the sake of their own happiness, and for the sake of a planet poised on the edge of the sword. The way our world tips will depend largely on whether a critical mass of people become more skillful with their own minds – and thus their own brains.