Resource List

The beginnings of the map

The Road Less Traveled - Scott M Peck
The start of the journey for me into real self discovery.

Intimacy: The Essence of Male and Female - Shirley Gehrke Luthman
For me soul food. I loved the vision of an authentic and intimate relationship.

CD: Shame - Pia Mellody
Getting to understand my two marriages and many of the dynamics in them as well as seeing my issues more thoroughly

(Inner) FITness and The FIT Corporation - Ben Fletcher
A framework for living. 5 basic principals that serve me on an on going basis - Self-Responsibility, Awareness, Balancing, Fearlessness, Ethics - combined with FITIntegrity and Behavioural Flexibility.

Slow Sex - Nicole Daedone
A way to start opening up and getting to the heart of true desire.

Vagina - Naomi Wolfe
My biggest take away was the link between sexual awakening and unleashed creativity. I wish that for every woman on the planet.

The Healing Connection - Jean Baker Miller
Introduces the idea of connection as mutual empathy and empowerment. Essential.

The Complexity Of Connection: Writings from the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute
A collection of academic quality essays and conference papers on the subject of connection. Dense and well worth it.

CD: Getting In Sync With The Opposite Sex - Alison Armstrong
Brilliant introduction to some advanced man-woman interactions

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
A great way to end addiction to New Age et al. Helped me become evidence based in my outlook.

Mindsight - Daniel Seigel

Currently reading:

Collection - A Continuation of "Intimacy" - Shirley Gehrke Luthman

The Power Of Mindful Learning - Ellen J Langer

Mindfulness - Ellen J Langer

CDs: Pia Mellody


Relational Cultural Theory
http://www.jbmti.org/
http://www.wcwonline.org/Videos-by-WCW-Scholars-and-Trainers/humans-are-hardwired-to-connect (especially 7min30s onwards)


Exploring:
www.core.eqi.org/invalid.htm
http://stevehein.com/
http://core.eqi.org/
http://www.experienceproject.com/explore/Sexless-Marriage


TRAININGS

Highly Recommended:
Non-Violent Communication
Inner FITness
Emotional exploration of some sort

• Sedona Method - http://www.sedona.com/, 
• Focussing - Eugene T. Gendlin

Body Work - Cranio-sacral therapy, Alexander Technique, Shiatsu

Essential part of my journey - recommended:
Imago
Group TherapyLandmark (Forum, Advanced, Self Expression and Leadership Program, Graduate Seminar - Breakthroughs, Communication Curriculum, Introduction Leaders Program)
Nutritional Understanding - Tony Robbins Life Mastery, Juicing
Libby Adams' Transformational Meditation - http://www.academyofselfknowledge.com/adams.asp
ManKind Project
Tony Robbins (Senior Leader - not so senior really)

Essential part of my journey but not recommended
Van Tharp - SuperTrader
NLP Master Practitioner
Spiral Dynamics
Enneagram - http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/
Myers Briggs

Merely notably part of my journey
Transactional Analysis
A coaching weekend with IHD - http://www.ihd.co.uk/ - where my current journey really started
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy


Good:

30 Lies About Money

Fast Thinking Slow Thinking

The Never Ending Quest - Clare Graves
The theory of spiral dynamics by the originating theorist. What's great is the observation that as humans we are always pursuing the answer to one hard to solve question and with growth our questions change. It's been somewhat hijacked by Ken Wilbur which has moved it into New Age spirituality and away from it's key message. Academically dense.

Responsibility

Wow I'm back after years.

I read this "I am not responsible for how a person treats me. I can only influence how a person feels towards me. The way a person acts towards me has nothing to do with me... It says nothing about me...".

I want to add to it - I can choose to be responsible for how another treats me. Ultimately there is some action I can take that will totally change their behaviour towards me.

One the other hand I think it true to say is that I can have a sense of worth in the face of someone mistreating me.

Although the impact of another on us is palpable - consider a person being lynched at the hands of the Klu-Klux-Klan. They could cry out "Freedom" in a manner similar to Mel Gibson in the film Brave Heart. But even someone that self-expressed I bet would be even more self-expressed in the audience of their cheer-leaders.

Eyes Wide Open - DM

Two realisations

1) that there is no right and wrong only choice and consequence and need and thought and evaluation and feeling.

2) that I own nothing not even the breath that I breathe but it is all given to me from above and all I do have is who I am.

With these I can set aside two whole areas of distraction and focus more on what matters.

"Naked I came from my mother's womb,
And naked I shall return there
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the LORD."

Judgement

"all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"

What a statement. What a quote.

When did you first hear it? How did you feel? What memories does it provoke in you now? What's the context of the passage? Was it used fairly, manipulatively or encouragingly?

For me the quote fills me with depression. It is the archetype of harsh judgemental thinking – a philosophy of beating down another and exerting total control. For me it is steeped in unreasonable judgement. It is used as a proof text to establish a problem that I am not certain really exists objectively outside of human ego – the problem that we are with total certainty deserve to be utterly annihilated in complete pain betrayed by a so called loving God in the most grotesque way imaginable. Then having convinced us that we are only fit for the rubbish heap we are offered a way out if we yield our God created freedom to a controlling task master who is unconcerned for our real wellbeing. At least that’s the way I extrapolate the attitude and logic of many "Christians".

I look at the whole context now and wonder what it says about the writer and their ability to relate to judgement. I wonder what it says about me.

Apparently mercy triumphs over judgement. And yet the Christianity I encountered was steeped in judgement. I think that passage says more about the one who wrote it and those who quote it than it says about the Divine. I think it reveals more about the hearts of men not the heart of God.

It's not enough to be good

I was raised (and strongly conditioned) to be a good boy. I was told to not to hurt others, etc etc etc. I was told to be holy as God was holy.

However it all seems a little unfair when I'm not allowed to kill the firstborn to get my own way and He is. Come on guys what sort of God do we have? Someone worthy of emulating as a role model or not?

Maybe it's time to get smart as well as good?

The Birth of Ego

This one is careering around the empty space in my head banging against my skull in the totally off-hand clueless manner as many of my thoughts. But this one answers a long standing question of mine - "Why did God create the sinful nature?". Well here the theory.

Inside we have a compelling desire to create. Something real. If we don't we feel bad. If we do we feel good. To create something good we have to spend lots of energy from our total budget. Self preservation informs us that we are spending too much. So our flexible brains come up with the idea that we can pretend to create. That way we feel good about what we've created and we don't have to spend much valuable budget on actually doing anything. The part of our brain that comes up with that as a solution persuades the creative part to ignore the fact that the pretend construction isn't real – well largely. I don't think the creative part of the brain is ever totally convinced but it is largely silenced. So far so good. The creative compulsion is largely satisfied, at least to the order of magnitude where the good feelings of completion outweigh the bad feelings of awareness and honesty.

There is one big problem. The Other. They don't share our brain so to protect the fragile system of things we have to persuade them that our construction is real.

I think we now have enough of the theory to extrapolate the process to explain the world we see around us.

Where is your life going once you’ve defeated your inner theological demons?

The theological journey I was on is over. I needed to find a place of being where I wasn’t stressed out by the metaphysical. I am now in a place of communion with God unhindered by the Charismatic Conservative Evangelical theological system I was immersed in for the first 35 years of my life.

The comments of those still in that system no longer bother me. I don’t need to argue anymore. I know what I believe and I believe that that belief is acceptable to the great infinite and eternal.

I see the struggle of those around me trying to make sense of it all and I’ve seen a couple of people enter into a different kind of awareness on this. Eddie of Grace Unzipped is one such person. Steve of Free Thinking Faith is someone who I suspect is close. Jeff and Dorsey I don’t think have the same demons to defeat and are on a different journey. Bruce of YBMT? I think is ahead of me, as are some of the commenters here.

One thing that propelled me to this place was the compelling desire born out of pondering the above question.

So what is your answer and what is your question?