Hi Jed,
While you're digging up bombs ive been digging deep into the forum and reading all your old rants/posts and doing the exercises you suggest. I realised you asked that we start the thread with an intro of ourselves so i thought id try...
I read Autobiography of a Yogi at about 13 and that kind of kick started it but i became a severly depressed and suicidal teen and at 17 i decided to kill myself if i didn't find an answer to the meaning of life or happiness by the end of the day. A pretty heavy ultimatum! At about 4pm someone said to me "it sounds like you want to be depressed, its giving you something" and that burst through me enough that i thought it was all in my thoughts & I was choosing to believe them. I did a juice fast, cleared my head and concentrated on being positive and not being a victim. It worked for awhile but the whole positivity thing also seemed to be denying something and i started to repress things in my body. At 18 after i finished school i took the year off to get 'serious' about this. I prayed to the aspect of the divine mother fervorently to show me God exists before i committed to starting the journey. 2 days in a row during my prayers/meditation i had an experience of blissfull energy over flowing through my body, like almost too much to handle i was rocking back and forth, felt like i was levitating although i wasnt. So i thought that was God and i'd be certain forever. The memory of the experience faded over time and now i know the truth isnt an experience.
In my teens and 20's i was doing all the self help, new age books, eastern philosophy as well as dabbling in meditation and kriya yoga sporadically in between drinking, drugs, relationships & trying to be normal and forget about spirituality. I never got deep into the kriya practices, mainly meditation & concentration techniques and then went on to AYP practices with mantra meditation & spinal breathing which is self regulated and not Guru oriented.. (im still doing some of this, though not the spinal breathing currently).
This year Byron Katie's work somehow lead me to trace some of my assumptions back to my childhood for 'healing' where i was shocked to find nothing there, that the past didn't exist. I was just looking at thoughts. This was BOOM for me, like in an instant i didn't exist, or i couldn't prove it. I felt like i was flying through space trying to grasp at nothing, although i couldn't put those words to it at the time. I felt existance was futile, i found no joy in anything, no reason to get out of bed, and constant anxiety over the fear of no self. This lasted for quite a few months and i felt like i was dying.
This is where i stumbled across your books. It was so powerful all i did was read, SA then go for long walks and talk out loud to myself trying to figure things out. There is an apparently truth realised Zen master near me who i was planning on going to see, but i thought i better be really clear about my question if im to talk with him, so i started refining my questions on my SA and walks with the intention of bringing one to him but each would eventually dissolve. That started about 6 months ago and i still havent seen him haha. Maybe tomorrow..
Then i found this forum and its basically the same principle.
Im so grateful for this forum, despite wanting to delete everything minutes after i've posted
Thank you for your books and for your time.