Read Beautiful

Transcript

I’d like to talk about reading beautifully, read beautiful.

The title will be one of those. Thinking about the interview Eric Weinstein did with Werner Herzog the filmmaker and one of the key points of advice that Mr. Herzog gives is to read.

Someone asks what the top three books and he says I am very hesitant to recommend any particular book because people can make the mistake of reading them and saying “Ive done it, Im a reader now, I accomplished what Herzog said I should do, I read.”

What he said the more important thing it doesn’t matter what you read, actually its the act of reading as a process, exposing yourself to these different ideas as an ongoing process.

Exploring new ideas and constantly finding new perspectives. Novels or textbooks or instructional manuals or psychology books, it doesn’t matter what you read as long as you read.

I remember listening to the blueprint by Tyler Durden also known as Owen Cook. He talks about how there are maybe some problems with the world maybe things aren’t exactly right but hey there’s something pretty good about the system we have where you can buy a book, where someone has spent thousands of hours of their lives working on.

We are coming to the point where they can write that book and you can buy it for 6 dollars. That’s pretty remarkable if you stop and think about that for a moment. The power of the Gutenberg press, modern printing press, the Amazon kindle to download straight to your phone or your reader.

And get going.

Some beautiful books I’ve read recently over the last year:

On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers that I have read many times. He is providing this clinical view of what I describe as spiritual experiences, experiences where people come to terms with the fact that we are an ongoing process.

You read these and it’s like its remarkable to read the very quotes that he has transcribed in which someone is realizing who they are or what they are.

Of course I’ve been reading Abraham Maslow’s Toward a Psychology of Being where Maslow provides this sketch of what a complete healthy person, a self actualized person looks like. Of course there’s this misconception that a self actualized person doesn’t experience emotions or that everything is fine for them, they don’t experience struggle or guilt or pain or shame.

This is the kind of robotic idea of the self actualized person that says not that. A self actualized person works on real problems, real pain, real guilt and real shame. Those are the problems that confront them of course that inevetiably leads to greater content.

As we say that’s a blessing. May all your struggles be meaningful.

Of course I have mentioned many times Victor Frankl’s Man Search for Meaning where he describes being in the concentration camp and how some people have it upside down. Some people have it preposterously.

Some people think in the camp that they must get through this for it to mean something.

He says no that’s not it. This must mean something for us to get through it. It must mean something now, we have that power to decide what our experiences mean.

Now other books of course, Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. By saying that Im surprised to say it, of course many people criticize her and many are justified. Many are not at all justified. A very hard strong woman and reading this book you can feel that razor edged determination, the kind of determination…

I remember hearing a motivational speaker describe his own motivation as a chainsaw slowly slicing through a redwood.

Unstoppable, that’s the kind of feeling you can get. It’s fascinating because as Owen Cook said you pick up one of those books and read it and it is like your are tapping into their way of being.

Well of course this is actually a deeper spiritual concept. There is a name for it, I forget what they call it but my friend Luis mentioned it to me once.

But if you read for example Baba Muktananda his book Play of Consciousness where he describes his personal spiritual experiences, some of them unusual perhaps even fantastic. Difficult to believe but you read this book and hear about the mental processes he is going through.

The poetry of his words, the art of an experience of a dedicated yogi and you can feel something. Something fascinating, some feeling that perhaps many people never come into contact with.

But it is available in a book that costs maybe 15 dollars. The world is open to you, so many peoples worlds are open to you. All you have to do is pick up a book and begin to read, read beautifully, read beautiful. Read beautiful.

Thank you for putting yourself in that position where you are exposed to these unusual energies and different states of being so you can be a more complete person, so you can have access to different ways of seeing the world.