Jed McKenna

Thanks for the thought provoking response again, Jonathan. I definitely want to make it clear that most everything that I have said really is not an original idea. The things I am talking about have been issues that were introduced to me, and then self-verified. The other disclaimer here is that all I know for sure is that they have been true for me in my life and I can only assume that they would be relevant to some other people. That's kind of the idea- to get these thoughts out and share with people what has and hasn't worked for me.

As far as talking about Jed McKenna - Well, I have made a conscious decision to not mention him yet and I don't really know if mentioning much about him is helpful now. I would definitely consider his books the most influential of any of the spiritually-minded things I have read. What's interesting tho, is that he is very critical of spirituality in general and had me questioning a lot of unexamined beliefs.

He is anonymous and the material is presented in a fictional and non-fictional format and it's hard to determine whether or not the events are imagined or real. Among all of the spiritual material I have been exposed to, his was most applicable to me and most self-verifiable. And things that he mentions in his books that I didn't understand, this journey has already helped me figure out. I'll probably talk more about those things soon.

He made me realize that you have to go and figure things out for yourself. And that the idea of this type of process is to move beyond the person that has taught you the most. And this point is funny because I got an email recently from a friend who told me that I should remember the old spiritual saying,  “If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him!”

Basically you have to do something new, bring something new to the world and/or present it in a way that will be applicable to people who otherwise may not have been able to access this sort of stuff before. That's what my whole reason for this thing is. I gave up my life to do this, I now realize. My original intent was just to get out of a suffocating situation, and now this has opened up to me and given me a purpose. A purpose that continues to unfold…like on the Greyhound bus last night...Stay tuned!