The Great Experiment 2.0: Proving or Disproving God By Falsifying Enlightenment

The belief in supernatural abilities throughout the world is pretty high. Christianity, the most prevalent religion in the world (33% of the world according to Google), believes in Christ AND believes in prophets. Prophets are normal humans who were elevated to superhuman status and performed miracles. The apostles of Jesus were credited with many of the same miracles Jesus achieved, thus Christianity believes in the capacity of humans to become suprahuman. Hinduism (15% of the world) believes in moksha which is an equivalent suprahuman status in which swamis and gurus have been documented with psychic abilities, some quite distinct from what is recorded in Christianity. Buddhists (7%) believe in enlightenment, the belief that humans can ascend to suprahuman status. Muslims (24%) believe in prophets as a historical fact, but don't believe in the possibility for humans to achieve that status after the final prophet, Mohammed. In other words, at least 55% of the world currently believes that suprahuman achievement in possible with At LEAST 79% of the world believing it was possible at one point in time. Either way, to me that's too big of a percentage of the world to dismiss the idea offhand. If an elevated state of humanity exists, it becomes important to distinguish the characteristics of the people who have become superhuman. Nearly all, if not all, religions advocate for love and peace as the defining characteristic of these role models.

Most of the greatest philosophers in history have ended up agreeing that a person's greatest possible achievement is the mastery of self and it is in each person's and society's best interest to develop virtuous characteristics. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Nietzche, Kierkegaard, Confucius (Confucianism), Lao Tzu (Daoism), etc. all have stated the same concept in their unique form, but it's still the same idea. It's the same idea as all of the major religions stated above, that each individual can become their greatest self by cultivating characteristics often associated with love, such as those in the beatitudes that Christ taught, made possible through the love of wisdom, the meaning of the word philosophy, alternatively described as the love of truth. Google says that developing wisdom comes from being open and seeking knowledge, learning from experiences and consequent reflection, developing emotional intelligence and self awareness, seeking guidance and cooperation from others, and by cultivating humility. Philosophers didn't teach that achieving self mastery leads to suprahuman abilities, but wisdom alone is something we could certainly use a lot more of in today's world as it's current absence is readily apparent.

The Western world's professional healers of today's society, mental health therapists, primarily recognize that learning to love and accept yourself is the key to mental health. Fears and insecurities are at the core of what causes the vast majority of individual problems and conquering said fears and insecurities leads to stability and overall happiness and peace both for yourself and for those you surround yourself with. As a previous mental health professional I have personally seen tons of people who have completely transformed their lives by working through their fears and insecurities. Many of those same people told me they didn't think what they ended up achieving was even possible. Once again, while the individual ideas of how to achieve this vary, most therapists are in consensus of the end goal.

There is a clear pattern in the ideas presented by the major contributors of the overarching meta goal of healing: Heal yourself. Believe in God and want to follow spiritual leaders? Heal yourself so that you can follow the teachings of your religion and possibly achieve an enlightened status. Believe in the power of dedication to wisdom and truth? Heal yourself so that you can be achieve the pinnacle of self mastery and wield your own power wisely to make this world a better place. Believe in mental health and the Western world's paradigm for helping people be happy? Heal yourself so that you can live your life to its fullest and have happy and healthy relationships with your loved ones. All paths devoted to healing end at the exact same point. It's one of the most obvious patterns I've ever seen. The way I see it, no matter which reason you choose to heal for, for faith or psychic abilities, wisdom, truth, and self mastery, or for simply making yourself and your loved ones as happy as possible, there is no such thing as losing. All rivers flow to the sea so to speak.

Which brings us to my experiment. Over the past year I've been testing whether or not God exists by testing whether or not enlightenment is attainable. I choose to use the word enlightenment over other synonyms because its meaning is more easily recognizable and less controversial than, say, using the term "prophet." Enlightenment as a word is understandable and generally emotionally neutral. The year before this one I spent much of my time testing new age spirituality (Reiki, past life regression, Peruvian shamanism, Egyptian magic, light language, ayahuasca, etc.), spending over $10,000 to test it as thoroughly as possible, and came out of each experience with far more questions than answers and sometimes a fundamental paradigm shift. My goal at the time was to use spirituality to heal myself and explore something that I had hitherto ignored. I'd had unexplainable healing experiences before and I finally wanted to take them out of the proverbial closet and examine them. What began as an open-minded curiosity became a quest to understand and know truth.

In June of last year I woke up one morning to what may be best described as feeling insanely high, only I'd taken no substances. This feeling persisted for two straight weeks. There were days when I strongly considered getting an Uber instead of driving the 10 minutes it takes to get to work due to how intense of a feeling I was undergoing. I could feel energy. I got a series of images that felt like visions every night. I didn't need to eat or sleep nearly at all, but functioned without any problems. It has been the weirdest thing I've experienced to date in my life. The visions were all about me achieving enlightenment.

My life motto has been "fuck it" and I didn't plan on stopping now. As this had never happened before and the overall message was that I could develop super powers, I said "fuck yes, I'm in," albeit far too enthusiastically and quite recklessly. Shortly after telling all my close friends and family about how I was going to achieve enlightenment (or become a prophet more specifically), and them strongly advising me to go to a mental hospital, I realized I should probably take a step back. But, always being a person unafraid of going against the grain for the sake of what I believe and for truth, I didn't automatically write off my experience just because everyone else thought it was crazy. Instead, I decided to investigate.

In my master's degree for Marriage and Family Therapy at Kansas State University, I had to memorize nearly all of the DSM-5 for one of my classes, the diagnostic criteria for making mental health diagnosis. As a competent mental health practitioner with a thriving private practice, I searched first for a psychological explanation for my experience. There are several possible mental health candidates for my experience, namely mania, schizophrenia, or some kind of delusional disorder. Mania is an aspect of Bipolar Disorder which is characterized by severe mood swings with both the lows of depression and the highs of manic episodes. I was the most mentally healthy I'd ever been and had only been depressed once in my life so that didn't fit. Unipolar mania is experiencing manic episodes without the lows of depression, but it's not technically a diagnosis and, therefore, doesn't have criteria upon which to make a diagnosis. Considering it only happened once in my life as well, a differently diagnosis would fit better anyway. Schizophrenia comes with a whole lot of other extreme symptoms, none of which I had or have. Schizophrenia is very obvious and I've worked with many schizophrenic clients. It's very clearly not schizophrenia. Delusional Disorder fits best, but it still falls short. Here is the criteria:

• Delusions: The presence of one or more delusions for at least one month.

• Absence of prominent psychotic symptoms: Hallucinations (if present) are usually related to the delusional theme and not prominent. Disorganized speech or behavior, catatonia, and negative symptoms are absent or not prominent.

• Functioning: While the delusions can affect behavior related to the delusional theme, overall psychosocial functioning is not markedly impaired, and behavior is not obviously bizarre or odd.

• Disturbance is not attributable to substance use or other medical conditions .

• Exclusion of other mental disorders: The symptoms cannot be better explained by other mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or body dysmorphic disorder.

I didn't have delusions for over a month, it lasted two weeks and then it was over. Otherwise the diagnosis fits. What doesn't fit is why it was triggered. Mental health diagnosis are characterized by trauma and/or the brain's attempt to escape reality. I had no reason to escape reality as I had just gone through a year of rigorously healing myself through EMDR (my expertise) and spiritual ceremonies and I felt amazing, better than I ever had. Moreover, the altered state correlated with other spiritual events going on at the time. I was left with two options. Either I had a delusional episode without any psychological trigger, something that in my mind defies rational psychology (but is still possible), or something supernatural was happening. I decided that while I could very well be delusional, I was going to test the idea that I wasn't delusional anyway.

In order to test anything there must be a falsifiable theory, and in order to create a theory you need to know what the great thinkers in the field have said. I began to read voraciously, primarily starting with religious and spiritual books, looking for commonalities between religions believing that if God is real, then there had to be a uniform message across cultures and religions. I reached a general theory based on what I read which I described in my post on The Great Experiment, summed up as the attainment of love and peace by means of the elimination of fear, fear being the antithesis and absence of love. The process of creating the theory felt guided by something other than myself, but that doesn't mean that it was. Further studies opened into the scientific experimentation of spirituality as well as intense study into philosophy and the continued study of psychology to learn how to eliminate fear in the most effective way possible. Then my studies starting expanding into all other fields. I ended up reading over 120 books in the past year totaling over 50,000 pages in addition to many hours of podcasts, documentaries, and other mediums of information. This eventually led me to realize that all of them pointed to the healing of the self as the ultimate goal which culminated in a falsifiable theory based on enlightenment.

Falsifying God By Testing Enlightenment

Logical Assumptions

1. God is love. Most religions foundationally believe this. If God isn’t a being of pure love then most of us, if not all of us, are fucked anyway.

2. God wants us to become divine. Most of the world believes in some kind of enlightenment as stated earlier. If it's possible, I bet God wants us to do it and will help out.

3. If God exists, and is a loving being, and wants us to attain enlightenment in this lifetime, then there has to be a way laid out in order to get there. This would have to be present in nearly all cultures, if not all cultures, of the world. Truth would be everywhere, not just isolated in one particular region or religion.

4. If God doesn’t exist or doesn't want us to become divine in this lifetime, then mortality is what we’ve got to work with and we’ve got to start thinking about how to change our world for the better through mortal means.

Fundamental Assumptions and Theory

1. If God exists and enlightenment is possible, there has to be a way to get there.

2. Peace and love are the common factors described as the character or God or ideal way of being.

3. Fear is the antithesis of love as it prevents love from being expressed or received.

4. Both peace and love can be attained through the elimination of fear.

5. A person can effectively eliminate fears through mental health/ healing techniques.

6. Intuition is our instinct towards our greater nature (god's version of helping) and following it, while in a state of peace, will lead to the finding and absolution of fears and ultimate enlightenment.

Analysis of Evidence In Favor of Theory

1. Peace and love are the most emphasized expressions of God in all spiritual literature. All major religions profess this as their core belief system even though most of them ironically operate from a fear-based perspective rather than a love-based perspective.

2. Most great philosophers have viewed the conquering of the self as the greatest possible achievement, ending in peaceful existence within oneself. The philosopher is dedicated to the truth and love of wisdom, a similar goal to that of religion, at least conceptually.

3. In my opinion the conquering of fears is the entire field of mental health. It's what I do all day, every day, and it works beautifully.

4. Our biology seems to be geared towards peace. Telomeres are DNA sequences responsible for aging. Telomeres react negatively to stress by speeding up the aging process. In a way we are biologically programmed to be at peace.

5. Research on past lives. The University of Virginia, an Ivy League University, studies past lives with children who claim they have lived a past life. They get the information from the child and then fact check what they've said. Here is a research article on their findings. This is the ultimate conclusion of the article: "Currently, the best explanation for the strongest cases appears to be that memories, emotions, and even physical traumas can, at least under certain circumstances, carry over from one life to a subsequent one."

6. The flow state. The flow state is a scientifically verified state in which people learn faster and experience what many describe as oneness with the universe and absolute peace in addition to extremely enhanced sensory and physical abilities. Extreme athletes have been described not as adrenaline junkies, but flow state junkies. Some athletes talk about a hallucinatory voice telling them what to do in the flow state. The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler is a good reference for this.

7. Meditation states. There are many accounts of advanced meditators being able to achieve states of oneness as well as hallucinatory states by means of meditation. Meditation has also been used to achieve superhuman states such as regulating body temperature in freezing temperatures or speeding up healing in the body. Such accounts are scientifically verified.

8. Miraculous accounts of healing that were deemed impossible by medical professionals yet occurred anyway. There are tons of stories about people who were told their diagnosis was permanent and then they ended up changing it. One of my favorite examples is Bear Grylls who was injured in a skydiving accident when his parachute didn't deploy. He broke his back and was told he would never walk again. He ended up climbing Mount Everest. He is one of a large quantity of stories like this with a wide range of what was healed contrary to prevailing medical conclusions and abilities.

9. There are a lot of accounts of humans with supernatural psychic abilities. The choice to believe these accounts may be seen as naive to many, but I don't think most people intentionally lie and deceive. Moreover, the sheer amount of accounts is impressive and some have been scientifically verified. Here is a three minute read of a summary of a book about it. Here is another summary of a different book on it.

10. Many archeologists have found lost ruins by believing rumors and stories that others deemed as myth or fiction. For example, Troy and Crete were found by an archeologist believing that the Odyssey by Homer was literal and not figurative. What if the same concept applies to enlightenment? The book Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C. W. Ceram is about such archeological discoveries.

11. Quantum physics. One of the best pieces of evidence for how we do not understand what reality is. It breaks all of our supposed understanding of physics and, consequently, of our universe. The observer effect is about how the observation of quantum states literally changes reality. It's an interesting fact that has spiritual potential. Additionally, understanding quantum physics could possibly allow us to understand how shifting to a higher state of consciousness is possible. Quantum tunneling is when a particle passes through a theoretically impassable barrier. This rarely happens and it can only occur at high frequencies relative to the barrier (but not surpassing it). Electrons have been shown to jump energy levels to a higher orbital level if an energy threshold is reached. Scientists currently don't know what creates the electron jump. The barrier for quantum tunneling might be enlightenment in our case and the jump of the electron could show us how that's possible. New age spirituality uses the phrasing "raising frequency" to describe healing oneself, an odd word choice unless quantum physics is taken into account. Here is a basic summary of some of the core ideas of quantum physics.

12. Our brain hallucinates our conscious reality. This is actually a TED Talk that can be accessed here. He explains it better than I can. This is important because if we hallucinate our reality, what does that mean about reality?

13. Confirmation from independent sources. I'm a skeptic at heart. True skepticism is the opposite of dogmatism, it allows for possibility and investigates truth in claims. One way in which I attempted to do this was to limit self-disclosure in order to cross-reference what different spiritual practitioners told me without telling them about what other spiritual practitioners had told me. I was surprised by the amount of overlap in certain things that were said by different people without any prior knowledge about others' disclosures.

14. Psychic occurrences. During Reiki over the phone, a practitioner told me what I was feeling in my body immediately after I started feeling it. I didn't share what I was feeling, but she knew what I was feeling somehow. I don't know how that's possible.

15. My own psychic experiences. Reiki is weird, but cool. I learned to feel energy which is kind of trippy and it's fun to feel. There were times when I did Reiki with other people which resulted in psychic experiences. The one that stands out to me the most was when I drew a symbol I saw in my head during a Reiki session and gave it to the client and the client said they had been absent-mindedly drawing that symbol for no reason for the past month. Weird. Trippy stuff considering I'd never had a psychic experience before learning Reiki.

16. Physical feelings I've never experienced before during spiritual sessions. In investigating spirituality I have had many physical sensations that I don't even know how to begin to describe. I had never had them before or since. These feelings were so strong and foreign feeling that it defied any explanations I could come up with. During Reiki I also routinely feel many different kinds of energy by means of physical feelings that I don't experience in my day to day life. For example, sometimes while doing Reiki I feel heat or cool in parts of my body, pleasurable tingles not like pins and needles, a pulsating feeling, a vacuum-like feeling or a pressurized expelling of energy, pushing or pulling in different directions, and even pain in my own body where my clients have been feeling pain.

17. Changes that occurred after a spiritual session. I have had immediate impacts from spiritual sessions that cannot be attributed to anything else. Enormous shifts in mood and changes in my moral perceptions are two examples.

18. Statistical improbability of synchronicities. Synchronicities are coincidences on steroids. I'm not a statistician and can't give exact probabilities, but the amount of things I've experienced have shifted my thoughts from viewing these experiences as odd and coincidental to them being statistically improbable that said synchronicities are meaningless. I promise that even saying that it's statistically improbable that there isn't some form of God or higher intelligence out there makes me inwardly cringe. This has been a position I've taken largely against my will based on what I consider statistical evidence.

19. Personally acquired anecdotal evidence from others. Being a counselor has put me in a unique position for others to tell me things they haven't told anyone, or generally don't tell people. The more I talk to others openly about spirituality, the more crazy shit I hear. Many people have experienced things they can't explain, but are afraid to disclose this to others because they know they will be judged as being crazy. Well, I can tell you with complete confidence that spiritual experiences are much more prevalent than most people realize.

Method

1. Eliminate all fears by engaging in constant metacognition and using the body as a peace thermometer. Make zero excuses for not being at peace at all times, with all things, no matter the circumstance.

   1. Why metacognition and not meditation?

      1. Metacognition is the act of being aware of internal thoughts and evaluating them. I generally don't like meditation because it's emphasis is on the absence of thought, or merely monitoring it without judgment, which I find boring. I prefer actionable steps that create a tangible impact.

   2. Why use the body as a thermometer?

      1. The mind-body connection is a real thing. Our body's reaction to anything is our most reliable psychological tool to illuminate the subconscious. We can lie to ourselves, but the body doesn't lie.

2. Engage in spiritual practices to accumulate evidence for or against God.

3. Live a life devoid of fear. Radical moral living based on following intuition and being true to oneself.

Falsifiability

1. If all fear is eliminated and no enlightenment occurs, then the theory is proven incorrect. You could argue that fear is impossible to entirely get rid of which makes this factor unfalsifiable, but refer back to quantum tunneling and energy jumps. You just need to get close enough which makes it measurable. Brain scans could possibly even help with this. If God wants people to become enlightened, there has to be an achievable means.

2. If spiritual practices purport to do one thing, and nothing happens, or the practitioners are often wrong, then evidence can be accumulated against spirituality as a whole. Enough of a sample would need to be taken. I have only gone to practitioners that others recommended for how good they were to take a sample of the best spirituality has to offer rather than the worst. You don't seek out the worst doctors when your life is in jeopardy nor should you seek out the charlatans of the spiritual world when you want to know if there is truth behind it.

3. If complete peace is attained and intuition is incorrect, then intuition can be assumed to not be a directive from a higher nature. The challenge is that if the ultimate goal is peace, and your intuition betrayed you but it resulted in a fear-based response, then it could be argued that your intuition led you to something you needed to work on. This possibility really complicates this falsifiable option.

4. If radically following intuition and achieving internal peace leads to long-term instability, the theory doesn’t hold. This has to be with conscious and directed effort though, you can’t sit on a couch watching TV all day and expect to be stable. Concrete and smart actions have to be taken towards realizing your goals in order for this option to be fulfilled. Lack of effort or poor strategy can’t be present as the lack of stability can be attributed to either. This would be very challenging to prove.

I have reached the point where I am ready to conclude that my theory has been proven false. It's possible that I haven't fully reached the requirements I set in my theory, but there has to be a cutoff point and I have reached a state of peace in which I've felt peace all day without interruption on several occasions, a more challenging task than one might think. I can't think of anything that I fear or that bothers me, and I feel balanced, but the subconscious is a bitch and I could realize 6 more fears tomorrow for all I know or be imbalanced in subconscious ways. Regardless, based on my own falsifiable criteria I feel comfortable assuming that my theory is incorrect. If it doesn't work then I've gotta admit defeat and move on. I'd obviously prefer to be right, but given that this has only supposedly happened a couple times in history, the odds aren't great. I will continue working through my own fears regardless because it's proved incredibly beneficial to my life overall, so if I am preemptively calling it, eventually that will be corrected. Despite my assumed failure, I believe that this experiment is important to share for multiple reasons.

1. Promoting experimentation.

   1. One of the book's I loved was The End of Faith by Sam Harris. The book talks about the tendency of people of faith to have faith without evidence for their beliefs being true. I am also of this mindset. If spirituality is real, then there must be tangible, verifiable psychic or suprahuman phenomena associated with it, like prophetic level, Jesus type of miracles. Just because my experiment didn't work doesn't mean that this can't be achieved. What it means is that what I thought didn't work, but maybe this will inspire someone to try a similar experiment for themselves which will end up working. As Thomas Edison said: "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." Learning from failure can eventually bring success. We just need to be right once.

2. Learning what doesn't work.

   1. Here is what did not work for me at all:

      1. Attempting to force the bestowal of psychic abilities through sheer strength of belief. This really just speaks to my own fucked upness more than anything else to think that I can take power from God, especially without putting in the required work. But I did! And it failed miserably.

      2. Attempting to predict global phenomena from loose synchronistic symbols, more specifically, I predicted an earthquake that didn't happen. Divining information from synchronistic symbols didn't work. Or I misinterpreted it. One or the other.

      3. Attempted to fully outwardly commit to my spiritual role. I did this by telling everyone I knew about the alleged earthquake. Committing to the idea fully didn't work and I lost a lot of relationships and social status by doing that. It didn't work but I sure learned a lot from doing it. Would not recommend.

      4. Leading with any emotion other than peace. I've realized that manic or excited energy does not lead to helpful outcomes. Nor does anger. Or impatience. Or anything else you can think of really. A state of peace really is the most pleasurable besides being in a state of joy, which I think is a natural result of being at complete peace and doing what you're passionate about, and it seems to lead to the best possible outcomes.

      5. Acting out of a place of imbalance. Balance is one of the recurring things that seems to be important in what I've read. There have been many times I thought I was a balanced person when I wasn't. Imbalance is easy to recognize if you aren't at a state of peace, but it can extend beyond that. If you are at peace with something imbalanced or destructive to another human being, you're not acting in balance.

3. To normalize spiritual experiences.

   1. There is something to spirituality. I clearly don't know what it is, but I can't deny that there is something I don't understand at work out there. We are so used to immediately dismissing anything that doesn't fit within our worldview, but that's stupid. We know an infinite amount less than the amount of knowledge that is out there. For example, only 5% of the known energy of the universe involves atoms. 95% is something else even though atoms are the building blocks of everything we know about our world. And we don't even fully understand them! People have a lot of weird experiences and we need to stop running from them and start running towards them. How else will we get to fully understand our world and truth?

4. To help the world change.

   1. We lived in a fucked up world run by psychopaths and sociopaths, which is our fault. There was a point in time when I gave considerable thought to how I can best help heal the world, and achieving enlightenment far overshadows any other possible influence for good I could have. That's a large part of why I decided to do this experiment even though I questioned my sanity at least 90% of days in the past year, often multiple times a day. Unfortunately we live in a world where we praise the insane and seek to emulate them, and as such the average human being that doesn't think hoarding hundreds of billions of dollars, just cause, or indiscriminately poisoning other human beings for profit, or polluting the Earth to the point of possible global cataclysm, or killing other humans for power or natural resources is crazy. This is all our collective fault. We have chosen as a society and global community to worship money and dehumanize each other based on unbridled, lavish excessiveness and arbitrary prejudices. This has happened as a result of how we teach accountability. We don't. I think the only way to change the world is to show another way, and if it isn't through enlightenment, then it's through taking radical accountability for ourselves and our emotional responses and healing ourselves accordingly. Negative emotions are like warning lights in a car telling you to fix your shit and we need to start holding people to a higher standard rather than allowing them to blame others for their car's problems.

In many ways what I've chosen to do is crazy. I'm okay with that. I'm definitely a certain kind of crazy. We need radically different solutions in the world today and it needs to start somewhere. I have sacrificed my own self image, my pride, my excuses for not changing, all of my relationships to one degree or another, my sanity, my profession (I gave up my professional therapist licensure because I don't think the profession is truly concerned with helping people which I won't get into now), my social standing, my belief systems, my bank account, my stable and high income, my time, my sleep, and just about anything else you could think of. If enlightenment is achievable it will demand everything, that much I believe. In an insane world, the sane are the ones who are called insane. If what I'm doing is insane, trying to heal myself and others even to the detriment of myself, then I think the world could benefit from a lot less sanity.

Next Experiments

1. Kriya Yoga - What Yogananda said is the single most important factor in reaching enlightenment. I wanted to finish my own experiment before implementing other ideas so I haven't done this yet.

2. Meditating - Meditating is by far the most recommended tool to spiritually advance. I just don't want to. It's boring. And I already get bored easily. But I will anyway.

3. Learning Psychic Abilities - I've learned to develop abilities and perhaps the path to enlightenment is more about learning precept upon precept so to speak. Luke in the New Testament (2:52) said "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Maybe that's what this meant? Clearly he developed somehow.

4. REM Sleep - There are some interesting things coming out about REM sleep and what is possible during REM sleep. One of the most recent things I heard was that people were able to communicate to each other while sleeping and relay that information with 90% accuracy while awake. I couldn't find verification of this, but it's a potentially interesting option.

5. Explore More Past Lives - I know how to access past lives, I am just unsure about their validity, despite everything I've said in this post and the fact that I do it for others. I'm skeptical as I said. As a result of my own stubbornness I've been reluctant to fully invest in experimenting, but it is an option.

At the end of the day I'm willing to try all of these rather than discount them upfront. Maybe they won't lead to enlightenment, but maybe they will lead to learning more about what humans are capable of independent of whether or not God is the cause. At the end of the day, I'm just bored. I'm bored of the grind: Wake up, work, relax at home to a show or something else meaningless, and do it again. Fuck that. I'd rather explore the esoteric and unknown, possibly experience some weird shit, and learn something along the way. I'm going to keep doing this because it's fun for me. If we only have one life, then why not full send it?

Book List

For those interested I want to include a list of every book I've read this year that has informed my current belief system, as well as recommendations of potentially paradigm shifting books. I will rate books I recommend with 1-3 asteriks with 3 being the highest possible rating as well an explanation as to why I recommend it. Those I don't rate aren't super important books, not for this anyway, not to me. Here it is divided into categories:

My All-Time Recommendations (All ***)

• Intimacy and Desire by David Schnarch

  • Goes over the theory of Differentiation, radically taking accountability for your emotional reactions and health. Everyone I know that has read this book has absolutely loved it and for many it completely shifted how they think about their mental health. Don't let the fact that it's about couples therapy fool you, it is 100% worth the read for everyone. You can read a summary here.

• Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung (Would also highly recommend his other works)

  • Jung provides an argument for why symbology is so important. It changed how I view symbols. Symbols are often thought of as the language of God because they can convey so much information so effectively. A picture is worth a thousand words is a declaration of how important symbols are. You can read a summary of that and a synthesis of Jung's other works I've read here.

• Conversations with God by Neale Walsh

  • The god of most religions is not one that I can get behind. As stated in the book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, a great book, the character of God in most religions is fucked up. Really fucked up. This book series portrays a version of God that I can actually get behind. It's the only portrayal of God that I think fully captures what most religion's God is supposed to be.

• Think Again by Adam Grant

  • This whole book is about the importance of rethinking what we know. The book demonstrates over and over again how important this ability is to cultivate within oneself with excellent real life implications and a lot of psychological studies. We need to change how we think, literally. You can read a summary here.

• The End of Faith by Sam Harris

  • This book was referred to earlier and its value is in the critique of most world religions insistence on faith without results or individual work towards being better. As a species we need to stop believing that something else is going to save us and start taking accountability for the world we've created. If spirituality is real, it is verifiable just like the miracles that most religions believe in or did believe in. If it's not, we need to start making the change without divine intervention.

• Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

  • A fascinating book about the psychology behind being wrong, more specifically why we avoid being wrong like the plague. It helps shift our paradigm from avoiding making mistakes to embracing them, a requirement of learning.

• The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

  • This book is important to me because it challenges the idea that our intelligence is a fixed and unchangeable value, we are either just smart or we aren't. The author gives tons of examples about how genius most often isn't born, it's made through hard work and dedication. As a society we misunderstand genius and this book explains how. You can read a summary here.

Psychology

• ***Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: A Therapist’s Guide by Albert Ellis and Catharine MacLaren

  • Goes over the theory of REBT which says that our beliefs dictate our reality and we have the power to change our beliefs. It gives ways to identify beliefs which is essential for changing them.

• **The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

  • A beautiful analysis of how morality is developed and how people with differing views still have many morals in common. You can read a summary here.

• ***Intimacy and Desire by David Schnarch

• **The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van Der Kolk

  • Discusses the relationships between the mind and the body and how the body can store trauma indefinitely unless it's released.

• *Self Compassion by Kristin Neff

  • A good book on the importance of self compassion.

• *Leadership and Self Deception by The Arbinger Institute

  • A great book on how betraying one's natural helpful impulses leads to justification and blame.

• **Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute

  • Same as the previous book but a bit more information. You can read a summary of both here.

• ***Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

  • This book completely changed how I viewed strength/ weakness and taught me the value of vulnerability. You can read a summary here.

• ***A Therapist’s Guide to EMDR by Laurel Parnell

  • EMDR is one of the most effective means I've found to treat psychological issues. This book goes over unique and creative ways to use it. You can read my version of EMDR, RAT, which I've found to be more effective than EMDR, here.

• *Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Dr. Travis Bradbery

  • Teaches about why emotional intelligence is far more important than our culture realizes. You can read a summary here.

• Psychological Types by Carl Jung

• ***Think Again by Adam Grant

• The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy by John Gottman

• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver

• The Self-Hypnosis Formula by Max Trance

• The Instant Hypnosis and Rapid Induction Guidebook by Rory Fulcher

• Handbook of Hypnotic Suggestions and Metaphors by American Society of Clinical Hypnosis

• *The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

  • Good book about living authentically. You can read a summary here.

• The Mountain Is You by Brianna West

• *Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown

  • Play is far more important to our health than we give credit for. You can read a summary here.

• **Mental and Emotional Release by Matt James

  • A simple meditation focusing on releasing emotions, but one that can be very healing for many people. You can read a summary here and my theory expanding of the idea here.

• Introduction to Clinical Hypnosis by Gary Elkins

• NLP: The Essential Guide by Tom Hoobyar, Tom Dotz, and Susan Sanders

• ***Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy

  • Potentially the most effective way to heal yourself of everything I've tried. 100% worth reading and doing. You can read my summary/ version of IFS here which simplifies it and distills it to it's essential components making it a much faster version of IFS.

• Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual by Anderson, Sweezy, and Schwartz

• Healing Trauma by Peter Levine

• **The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck

  • Discusses the importance of healing oneself despite how difficult of a journey it is, hence why it's the road less traveled.

• Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz

• *Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt

  • A great description of how your experience with your parents as a child can impact your choice in romantic relationships. I disagree with how it advocates to heal oneself through one's partner quite vigorously, but the concepts are useful.

• Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn

• *Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz

  • A really good description of beliefs and how they impact people although I don't agree with some of what the book talks about.

• ***People of the Lie by Scott Peck

  • A great analysis of what "evil" is. You can read a summary here.

• ***Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

• Mindset by Carol Dweck

• ***The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Spirituality

• **Between Death and Life by Dolores Cannon

  • An alternative view of what happens after death and before rebirth.

• **They Walked with Jesus by Dolores Cannon

  • An alternative view of Jesus.

• **Jesus and the Essenes by Dolores Cannon

  • An alternative view of Jesus.

• **The Three Waves of Volunteers and the New Earth by Dolores Cannon

  • An alternative view of the role of aliens with humanity.

• **Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss

  • A great book on past live regression and how past life trauma can carry into current life.

• *Gene Keys by Richard Rudd

  • Interesting take on the purpose of existence/ our spiritual gifts as well as the stages of existence and being.

• The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

• *The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

  • A really interesting book on how going with the flow of life led to incredible success.

• A New Earth Eckhart Toole

• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

• Words of the Shaman by Marie Chieze

• Alchemy by Paul Selig

• Dreamhealer2 by Adam

• ***Conversations with God 1-4 by Neale Hersch

• *The Vision by Tom Brown

  • A story about supernatural abilities from a Native American.

• Convoluted Universe by Dolores Cannon

• *Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

  • Stories about supernatural abilities from the life of Yogananda.

• There is No Death by Sarah Menet

• Ye Are Gods by Annalee Skarin

• *Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

  • A commentary on the role of humanity on the Earth. You can read a summary here.

• The Eye of Horus by Carol Thurston

• Resurrection by Paul Selig

• The Ra Material by Elkins Rueckert

• Ross Peterson: The New Edgar Cayce

• Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife by John Fuller

• *A Course in Miracles by Foundation for Inner Peace

  • Helpful to view love differently, but very repetitive.

• There is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem by Wayne Dyer

• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

• The Sophia Code by Kaia Ra

• The I Ching or Book of Changes by Wilhelm/Baynes

• The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie

• Resolving Spiritual Skepticism in Recovery by Andrew Pierce

• A Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Gikandi

Mixing Science and Spirituality

• The Isaiah Effect: Decoding the Lost Science of Prayer and Prophecy by Gregg Braden

• ***Man and His Symbols by Dr. Carl Jung

• **Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza

  • One of the current world leaders in testing spirituality with science.

• Mind Magic by Dr. James Doty

• The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden

• The Emotion Code by Dr. Bradley Nelson

• Biogeometry Signatures by Dr. Ibrahim Karim

• The Archetypes and the Collective Subconscious by Carl Jung

• Psychology and Alchemy by Carl Jung

• *The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Pierce

  • Goes over experiences that defy our current understandings of the world. You can read a summary here.

• *How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollen

  • Great book on how psychedelics often lead to spiritual experiences.

• ***Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibration of Consciousness by Valerie Hunt

  • Great book with a lot of fascinating scientific experiments on spirituality.

• Ayurveda: The Science of Self Healing by Vasant Lad

• Light: Medicine of the Future by Jacob Liberman

• **The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler

  • Interesting analysis of the flow state and how it impacts extreme sport athletes.

Religion

• The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English translated and explained by Geza Vermes

• ***The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian Muraresku

  • An analysis of the role of drugs throughout religious history. Super interesting. You can read a summary here.

• **The Prophets by Abraham Heschel

  • An analysis of the character of biblical prophets. Important for anyone seeking enlightenment to understand the character of those who have achieved it. You can read a summary here.

• The Nag Hammadi Scriptures explained by Marvin Meyer

• Psychology and Religion: West and East by Carl Jung

• Conversations in the House of Life: A New Translation of the Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth by Richard Jasnow and Karl-Theodor Zauzich

• The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt by Stephen Quirke

• Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion by Abraham Heschel

• The Essentials of Hinduism: An Introduction to All the Sacred Texts by Trilochan Sastry

• The Holy Quran

• The Book of Enoch

• Awakening Osiris: The Spiritual Keys to the Egyptian Book of the Dead translated by Normandi Ellis

• God In Search of Man by Abraham Heschel

• A History of Indian Philosophy by S. N. Dasgupta

• **The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

  • A merited critique of major world religions and the discrepancy between what they say and what they do. You can read a summary here.

• Tibetan Book of the Dead

• *Zhuangzi

  • A very interesting and lesser known spiritual book from Lao Tzu. It's surprisingly easy to read and more straight-forward than other spiritual literature.

• The Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah by J.F.C. Fuller

• The New Testament

• ***The End of Faith by Sam Harris

• The Zend-Avesta edited by Max Muller

Other

• ***Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari

  • An analysis on the war on drugs and how most of what we think we know about drugs, addiction, and psychology is wrong. You can read a summary here.

• ***The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann

  • A great description of how selfishness has become the norm in our society with a strong warning about it's consequences. You can read a summary here.

• *How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks

  • A great description about how the military became a one stop shop for all global endeavors. You can read a summary here.

• *Mycellium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets

  • Important information on how mushrooms can help save the world. You can read a summary here. Here is his TED talk on it which is even better.

• ***The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann

  • A really interesting analysis on how psychological underpinnings of myth and its relation to personal development.

• *Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Your Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth by John Robbins

  • A book that challenges our paradigm around the healthiness of eating meat.

• Confessions of an economic hit man by John Perkins

• *The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

  • A interesting analysis of the heroes journey, one of the most common story archs of all time relating to personal development.

• The Republic by Plato

• The Psychedelic Explorers Guide by James Fadiman

• Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

• The Accidental President by A. J. Baime

• All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky

• *A Brief History of Thought by Luc Perry

  • A really good introductory book on philosophy.

• Plato: The Complete Works

• *Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Harari

  • A really interesting book on the history of humanity and its development.

• The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall

• ***Quantum Physics for Beginners by Carl Pratt

  • Quantum physics is insane and it changes our paradigm of reality. You can read a summary here.

• Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

• The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham

• The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollen

• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

• Outlive by Bill Gifford

• *Blue Gold by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke

  • The corporate theft of water, the overall pollution of water by corporations, and the decreasing access to clean water globally.

• Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

• **Nexus by Yuval Harari

  • A warning of the possible consequences of AI. Very relevant to the growing relevance of AI in the world today and the enormous risks it poses along with it's obvious benefits.

• Decoding The Pyramids by John Desalvo

• Beyond Growth by Herman Daly

• *Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C. W. Ceram

  • I like this one because it shows that sometimes there is more to myth than meets the eye.

• *Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

  • The book that changed the national paradigm on pesticides. Worth reading to know what chemicals have been okayed to be used in our nation's history and makes me wonder what we have deemed okay now that isn't great for human consumption.

• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Weird Books That Possibly Have Symbolic Meaning?

• The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross by John Allegro

• Millennial Egyptian Wisdom by Dr. M Doreal

• The Yellow Book: The Divine Mother, Kundalini, and Spiritual Powers by Samael Weor

Thrown Away: I mean that I literally threw these books away because they suck.

• I Asked for Wonder by Abraham Heschel

• The Lost Books of the Bible and the forgotten books of Eden

• The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley

• The Seekers Code by Donny Epstein

Other Knowledge Mediums

• ***Philosophize This podcast by Stephen West

  • I could not recommend this podcast more. It is absolutely incredible and a must for anyone interested in getting into philosophy without a lot of painful hours of trying to figure out what the fuck philosophers are saying. 11/10.

• ***The Telepathy Tapes podcast

  • An investigation into the paranormal abilities of the non-speaking autistic community. UVA is going to start conducting studies as well as a result of this podcast. A lot of interesting things to think about in this podcast.

• **Quark Science Documentary

  • Really cool documentary about quantum physics and the development of scientific ideas that change our current perception of reality.

• **Intelligent Trees Documentary

  • Trees are apparently dope as fuck.

• Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics Documentary