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Resources

If you’re serious about evolving, you’re going to need lot of resources. A lot of these are really fun and a much better way to spend your time than doom scrolling or daydreaming. I’ve put together this list of my favorites – the things that have really helped me progress on my own Unbreakable journey.

*Note: You’ll notice that a bunch of the following resources originate from Sam Harris via either his Waking Up app or his Making Sense podcast. Sam charges $15 a month for full access to all of it, which I can’t recommend enough. If you can’t afford that, you can reach out to them here and get an account for free.

Resources: General

How to Communicate with Humans (video)

Everyone (yes, everyone) needs to learn how to express their needs, desires, hurts and frustrations in effective ways, and be ready to receive the same from others and be able to see “the story behind the story” of another person’s speech and action. Though this video is long (3 hours), it is an extremely valuable resource, so bite it off in chunks and let it change you. If you have a significant other, it would be very beneficial to watch together.
Link: Essential Nonviolent Communication with Marshall Rosenberg

Attachment Style Test (website)

Learning one’s attachment styles can be an important piece of the puzzle in terms of understanding why we are comfortable and get along well with some people but struggle with others. Differing attachment styles is often one component of relationship conflict. I really like this attachment style test because it breaks down your attachment style toward your mother, father, partner, and general categories, and provides great resources based on your particular style.
Link: The Attachment Project
Link: The Attachment Project – Attachment Style Test

Attachment, Trauma, and Why You Might Feel Lost in Life (video)

In this podcast, one of the world’s leading psychologists, Gabor Maté, talks about attachment trauma, stress, addiction, and how it’s just hard to come out fully OK growing up in a sick society.
Link: Jay Shetty Podcast with Gabor Maté

Resources:
Happiness & Suffering

What is Happiness, and How is it Achieved? (text)

The book that started it all for Joe, this is a phenomenal resource on the pitfalls of pleasure chasing as a way of life, what happiness really is, and how it is (and is definitely NOT) achieved.
Link: Happiness by Mathieu Ricard

We’ve Got Everything Upside Down! (text)

It’s not the situations that matter, but how we respond to them and adapt.
Link: The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does by Sonja Lyubomirsky

It’s About Time for a Global Revolution in Consciousness! (video)

We need to stop acting like we don’t know what’s wrong with society and why people are stressed out, distracted, addicted, sad, anxious, and angry. Even though no snowflake ever feels responsible for the avalanche, we each need to level up our mind and heart. Though this movie is a bit corny, and I could do without the cool geometric shapes that seem to have nothing to do with anything, I did love this video.
Link: Awakening Mind Part 1: Know Thyself

Time to WAKE UP! (text)

A great book on secular spirituality and what it takes to lead a meaningful life.
Link: Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion” by Sam Harris

Resources: Motivation, Self-Efficacy, Discomfort Tolerance, and Time-Management

Time to Toughen Up! (text, audiobook)

Why do we avoid our therapy homework? It’s uncomfortable. Why can’t we stop eating, or stop eating crap food? It’s uncomfortable. Why don’t we exercise? It’s uncomfortable. Why don’t we meditate more? It’s uncomfortable. See the pattern? We need to increase our tolerance of discomfort if we want to achieve anything great in life. This book (I love the audio version) will do the trick!
Link: “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins

I NEVER Have Enough Time! (podcast, text)

According to Oliver Burkeman, it’s NOT about efficiency! Busyness and feeling overwhelmed are now at epidemic levels. The core issue is that there is way more worth doing than anyone could have time for in one lifetime. Not wanting to feel that, we engage in all sorts of methods to make sure we never feel the desperation at knowing we aren’t here for very long.
Link: Making Sense Podcast #289
Link: “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman

Mental Blocks and Related Emotional Struggles (texts)

When it comes to many things we may attempt to accomplish in life, we are our own worst enemy. Learn how your mind works against you and how to get out of your own way.
Link: “The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle” by Steven Pressfield
Link: “Turning Pro” by Steven Pressfield

Our Comfort Has Created a Crisis! (text, audiobook)

Our addiction to comfort is one of the root causes of the mental health epidemic in the West, and it’s one of the top factors fueling anxiety and depression.  This is the first book I’ve found that really calls the situation out for what it is and provides concrete moves you can make to break this addiction.
Link: “The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self” by Michael Easter

Resources: The Brain, the Mind, Consciousness, the Construction of Reality, and the Self

AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness (video)

A more general, multi-disciplinary discussion of Awakening – to Awareness and nondual reality, including the direct path (Awareness of Awareness). Great overview of the path. *Note – access may require a PBS Passport account.
Link: PBS: Independent Lens, Season 23, Episode 12

Your Brain: Perception Deception (video)

The hallucinogenic nature of all modes of perception, how our brains assemble coherent perceptions when there are many gaps and flaws, and how easily fooled our perceptions are. *Note – access may require a PBS Passport account.
Link: PBS: NOVA, Season 50, Episode 9

Your Brain: Who’s In Control? (video)

A great video about the brain and how it controls our system consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously. This is a great video, and I was rather disappointed with the discussion around free will / volition, which it somewhat took almost as a given rather than giving this highly contentious topic the treatment it deserves.
Link: PBS: NOVA, Season 50, Episode 9

Is Everything Made of Matter or Consciousness? (video)

An absolutely enlightening conversation with a scientist, Bernardo Kastrup, and non-dual meditation master, Rupert Spira, about the nature of consciousness and reality. Must watch!
Link: Simon Mundie Podcast

Are We Really Two People In One? (podcast)

In some very serious and consequential ways, yes. If nothing else, learning that your left brain (the storyteller) is largely full of it and doesn’t seem to care is worth it. This fact alone will change your life if you let it land. In this podcast, Sam talks with Ian McGilchrist.
Link: Making Sense #234

How Your Brain Constructs Reality and the Thing You Call “You” (podcast)

Sam Harris speaks with Shamil Chandaria about how the brain constructs a vision of the self and the world. They discuss the brain, Bayesian inference (your living in a simulation produced by your brain), the construction of vision, and psychedelics.
Link: Making Sense Podcast #320

Reality is a Simulation in the Mind (podcast)

Sam Harris speaks with Andy Clark about the predictive brain, embodied cognition, and the extended mind. They discuss the structure of perception, novelty, precision, pain, psychedelics, emotion, ways to hack our predictions, hypnosis, meditation, artificial intelligence, consciousness, and other topics.
Link: Making Sense Podcast #322

“You” Are the Problem! (text)

How your mind constructs the thing you call “you” and how that is the start of all suffering that has ever existed.
Link: No Self, No Problem, by Dr. Chris Niebauer

Free Will & Volition (texts)

This is one of the most important topics we have to set our mind right about because if free will doesn’t exist, or even doesn’t exist the way we think it does, it changes everything. What if you knew the person you are so hurt by, or angry toward, had no choice?
Link: ”Free Will” by Sam Harris
Link: ”Recent Work on Agency, Freedom, and Responsibility” (warning, this one is a bit heavy)

A Christian Take on Awareness (text)

How are God and Awareness related? Is the soul the spark of Awareness in each of us? How does living from the false self of the ego ruin our lives? All this and more!
Link: “Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self” by Father Richard Rohr

What is Consciousness? (text)

Why are we having an experience? Why are the “lights on” at all – why aren’t we just a bunch of chemical, electrical, and mechanical reactions?
Link: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, by Annaka Harris

My Favorite Theory of Consciousness: Panpsychism (text)

What is panpsychism, and why is it the leading theory on consciousness? I also love that he teases both Dr. Robert Lanza and Deepak Chopra in a footnote, something I’ve never seen in a scientific paper.
Link: “Quantum Physics and Consciousness: A (Strong) Defense of Panpsychism” by Carlos Eduardo Maldonado

From the Double Slit to All of Reality! (text)

While this book is criticized by Maldonado (see immediately above), I still think Dr. Lanza is a serious person who has very interesting ideas in this book. And, it’s just fun to read and think about all the possibilities. That said, once again, I was very disappointed with the discussion around Free Will – he preserves it but totally changes who the agent is without defining the new agent. Yuck, come on man, do better!
Link: “The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality” by Dr. Robert Lanza and Matej Pavsic

We Ran Lots of Experiments and Confirmed That Buddhism is True (text)

A GREAT text by a GREAT author and world-renowned psychologist Dr. Robert Wright which talks about our confused and distorted view of reality and ourselves and we suffer greatly as a result. The Buddhists are right – it’s time to stop acting like a petty and small ego.
Link: “Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment” by Dr. Robert Wright

What is Mind, How Does It Create Suffering and Happiness, and How Do We Unravel It? (podcast)

In this podcast, our own Joe DeNicholas speaks with Gary Allen, Executive Co-Director of the Mindfulness Peace Project, where the two discuss ways of understanding what the mind is, how it becomes confused through habitual egocentrism, and how we might go about unraveling this confusion.
Link: podcast

Resources:
Mindfulness & Meditation

Why Bother Meditating? (podcast)

If you are going to do something that’s challenging, you’ll want to understand how it will benefit you. In this podcast, Sam talks with one of the most prolific meditation teachers of our time, Joseph Goldstein.
Link: Making Sense #63

Working with Difficulties in Meditation (podcast)

Hitting the gas on your meditation practice, while admirable, may not always be the skillful move.  Learn about various aspects of practice that can be adjusted to keep you coming back to the cushion from Dr. Willoughby Britton, one of the world’s top scholars on Western adaptations to meditation practice.
Link: Dr. Willoughby Britton

Still Need Proof That You Have to Meditate Every Day? (text)

We’ve only been meditating with amazing effects for over 3,000 years, but if you still aren’t convinced that this is something you absolutely must do, this is the best resource. Spoiler alert (not really): You have a Formula 1 racecar on your shoulders, and you haven’t even left the neighborhood, possibly even the driveway, yet.
Link: “Altered Traits” by Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson

Mindfulness and Meditation App #1 (app)

There are now over 30 mindfulness and meditation apps. Most of them focus more on mindful relaxation, stress reduction, and/or improved sleep. Since my focus is on training the mind and heart rather than relaxing, I prefer neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’ app called “Waking Up”. The app includes a ton of psychoeducation and meditation practices that support the journey from confused mindlessness, through “basic” mindfulness and calm abiding work, all the way to the loss of self-identity and nonduality. The app isn’t free (though if you email them and explain your circumstances, they will give you an account for free), but I can assure you: you get what you pay for. This is a serious app for serious people on a serious journey.
Link: Waking Up App

Mindfulness and Meditation App #2 (app)

I’ve always liked Insight Timer, the meditation timer is great, but they’ve expanded to include tons of mental health related content and a whole community of people working hard on calming the heck down and waking the heck up.
Link: Insight Timer App

Non-dual Meditation Masters (people/websites)

Loch Kelly – an LCSW, he’s trained with great Tibetan meditation masters and is bringing those techniques into secular society.

Richard Lang – the Headless Way is one of my favorite methods to help people directly experience the non dual state of Awareness.

Stephan Bodian – famed author, meditation teacher, therapist, and educator.

Rupert Spira – 40-year meditation master; the site includes guided meditations and conversations on the source of happiness and the nature of reality.