Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
contemplative practices, which was truly a transformative moment
for me in my life. And I've often thought the greatest gift I ever
gave myself was the gift of meditation.
That's when I stated going to meditation retreats, and learning
from meditation teachers like Jack Kornfield, or Shinzen Young,
Ruth Denison and others out here in the West Coast, and took up a
serious meditation practice. Then over the years the authors are
just I suppose too numerous to mention, but I eventually found
my way into the writings of various Vedanta Advaita writers,
Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramesh Balsekar, those
guys. And I think that pretty much marks what I would call the
end of my spiritual journey was when I discovered those writings
and those teachings.
WIZARD: Same for me, Ramana Maharshi's talks was the one
that nailed the coffin shut.
RICHARD YOUNG: Yes, exactly. The book that nailed the coffin
shut for me actually was one by John Wheeler, are you familiar
with his writing?
WIZARD: No, I'm not.
RICHARD YOUNG: He's a modern day Advaita; I suppose he
would resist that label, but nondualist. And I went through about
a year, this was three or four years ago anyway, about a year of
very, very intense introspection and self-examination, and spent a
lot of time in journaling and thinking and so on. And really felt
like by the end of that year that I was spinning my wheels, I was
exhausted, I was tired of the search, and I was just at a place where
I said where do I go from here? Where is there to go from here?
Because there was still some longing left in my heart, and I
happened to pick up a book by John Wheeler called You Were
Never Born, and that was the final nail in the coffin. As I was
reading through that book, I didn't even get all the way through it
before just this intense sense of seeking that I had always had from
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