Hi Jed,
Just wanted to thank you for letting me into this forum. I guess I'll go into where I came from, what I studied, et cetera. The backstory. I didn't go into that in my original post, because it's not really important, but I guess I just want to go over it.
It felt right writing all the above stuff, but it feels like just a dream I had last night. It's weird to have a dream define oneself.
I read only your first book so far, but the important thing is that I tried Spiritual Autolysis, and I had realizations and could let things go. That's the real test: it doesn't matter if the instructions sound good, only if the workout gets you ripped
Everything I do in S/A makes me feel like I was such an idiot yesterday.
Anyway, my most recent epiphany is that trying to control things is just dumb. We try to act like we are driving a car some where, but really we're just catching a bus. I don't have control over my life, nor can I create reality. I can try to do stuff, but no guarantee that anything will come of it.
One of my biggest 'mantras' or thing I like to mentally chew on is: "The Matrix cannot tell you who you are," but if everything that "you" can point to as "you" is part of the "Matrix" itself then how can you tell yourself who you are? I'm a bit stumped on that. The answer is "you can't." But then what can? Do you even need to know? Nothing can, and I don't need to know. That would be the answer, I guess. Then what about doing anything? What about getting nice things like apartments and cars and stuff? Only if I want to I guess.
Anyway, sorry I'm so jumbled up. Here is a list of books and stuff that I have learned from or influenced me:
The Matrix (and Reloaded and Revolutions)
Bhagavad Gita
Judaism (the Tanakh, the Talmud Etc.)
Buddhism (Zen, Shingon, etc.)
Tao Te Ching
Ken Wilber
The Red Queen
Nietzsche
Psychocybernetics
And more stuff, but it doesn't really matter