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Conversations With God said something similar. Hitler showed us the light by showing us what isn't light. I certainly don't want to be Hitler and it's not something I would obviously promote but there is a certain perfection in it. Either you carry the light directly or you carry it indirectly. Either way, it's all light underneath.

What do you feel the benefit of doing this would be?

This is a fair and reasonable argument, but because I'm looking to help you if possible, I'd ask you how long have you been gathering information and not applying it? A month? A year? It took me almost no conceptual knowledge to start a meditation practice. You don't need theory to understand paying attention to the breath. So just do some introspection for your own sake on this. Could you be rationalizing not taking action here? If so, why? Decide for yourself. For me, normalcy was socializing in a healthy way, exercising, taking care of my diet and working on my life purpose. Again, it's really up to you to decide what "normal" is.

The reason you're having a hard time applying this advice is that you're young and don't have a lot of experience. That's perfectly normal and fine. But, if you want to "get girls" then you've got some work to do. You're looking for the "right answer". But there is no general "right answer" that we can give you that will apply in every circumstance. What you need is not more theories, but experience. Go be social. Talk to girls. Pay attention to what works and what doesn't. I know it's scary, but that's the thing you have to do. Otherwise you're just going keep staying confused.

@Dan Arnautu Seeking knowledge is amazingly powerful and necessary. So for you, what I would ask is are you applying all this research? Are you doing meditation? Self-inquiry? Astral projection? Contemplation? Examining your egoic stricuture? The paradoxes will always remain paradoxes if you don't apply the theory. It's a huge potential trap. There also may be times when you don't balance the rest of your life and spirituality. I know for me it was hugely important to have these surges where I did nothing but study and do consciousness work. No friends, no entertainment, nothing. What I've found in these cases is that your deep intuition is always right. It knows the next piece that you need to move forward. Trust becomes crucial. If your intuition is telling you to drop everything and do spirituality, do that. If your intuition is telling you that you've gotten off balance and need some normalcy, do that.

This is more of a fringe topic in spirituality, but it's something that has become very important in my awakening process. I'm talking about angels. Angels are non-physical, higher dimensional beings. They guide and assist us on our soul's mission. This is all still new for me, so it's not something I'm ready to talk about on my blog or YouTube channel. But I'm sure there are those who will benefit from this information, which is why I'm writing this post. My Direct Experience With The Angels How I first found out about the angels was through talking with one of my spiritual mentors. He frequently channels these beings, although I did not know that at the time. Out of the blue, he asked me if I was experiencing ringing in my ears. I was shocked because I had been, usually during meditation. But I had always assumed it was just tinnitus. He told me that ringing in the ears was often one of the ways angels communicate with us. If I wanted, I could "talk back" and ask them to increase or decrease the ringing. I was initially extremely skeptical. Angels? C'mon, that was going too far. And yet I had to admit that people had been talking about angelic encounters for thousands of years. So I decided to try out what he said. Expecting nothing to happen, I reached out to the angels and asked for the angels to increase the ringing. No sooner had the words left my mouth did BOTH my ears start ringing incredibly loud. I freaked out! The next week, the ringing would happen all the time, often more than once per day. Eventually I decided to see a medium to find out if I was really communicating with angels. That's another whole story I won't get into for brevity sake, but it's enough to say that this medium was able to channel these higher dimensional guides. From there, I began seeking guidance from the angels on a regular basis. Ringing in my ears is still one of their main ways of communicating with me, although seeing certain repeating numbers like 11:11 or bizarre synchronicities happen as well. My final direct experience with the angels came from actually seeing one. Someone who I know was experiencing a tremendous amount of suffering, and so I prayed for the angels to assist her. A few seconds later, a flash of white light appeared on the wall and then disappeared. We were both shocked. There was nothing in the room that could have caused this light to appear, and the light even seemed to "move" across the room. We both came to the same conclusion: it was an angel. You don't have to believe these stories or my conclusions. That's not what this is about. But if you open yourself up to the possibility, you might be surprised at what you find. How The Angels Work Here are the basic rules I've come to understand about angels: -First off, the angels are NOT SEPARATE FROM YOU. There is nothing that is not God, so don't feel the need to externalize your power to them. Just think of them like guides. -Everyone has at least one angel who is specifically "assigned" to you. You have many other spirit guides that you can reach out to, but these guides tend to help many beings at once. -The golden rule, for better or worse, is ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE. Angels will not stop you from harming yourself if that is what you ask for. You are a free will extension of God and they will not go against your desires. In fact, they will offer no guidance at all if that's what you want. -The universe operates on vibrational frequency, and I've found that angels are no exception. I would not try going to the angels and saying "please angels, can I PLEASE have a million dollars by tomorrow? I really, really need it!" is going to work. That's a low vibration request and you're probably going to be disappointed. -Drop you expectations. The angels communicate in several different ways, and if you're expecting your guidance to look a certain way, you may miss it all together. -Allow for time. Many times when you ask the angels for assistance it may take longer than you hope. Allow things to play out as they should, trusting in divine timing. -Thank your angels! The angels won't judge you if you don't show gratitude, but genuine gratitude will inspire more communication with them. -Don't be afraid to ask for small requests. These beings are not bound by space and time, so don't think you're "bothering them". -Trust your intuition. Sometimes they communicate just through a sense of "knowing" what the right answer is. -The angels will often push you in terms of your comfort zone. When this happens, I simply thank them for their assistance and then ask for additional guidance on breaking through my own limitations. -They have a sense of humor. Feel free to joke around with them How This Helps With Enlightenment One of the main tasks the angels can help you with is waking up. This is your soul's highest desire. So set an intention for Truth or seeing God, and then bring them in when you have questions or would like help. They often help me when deciding what I should be learning. They direct me to certain books, people and circumstances that have led to really rapid growth. Seriously, things start to move fast when you bring the angels in. They will push you if you ask for it. If you're unsure about a guru, technique, purpose in life or anything else, ask your team. They love to do it.

If you spent 10 years doing what you loved, was it a waste?

I'll give you some broad advice that may or may not be helpful for you right now: embrace your multi-interests. Yes, it's true that mastery of something is important. And mastery takes many, many hours of intense focus and work. So if your focus is diffused, you may not master something very quickly. But, consider that life purpose is not a straight forward, clear cut process. Consider that it might be messy, something that you carve out slowly over the years as you understand yourself more and more. And even still, it will be messy. Ambiguity has to start becoming your new comfort zone. There is no one who has your uniqueness. So no one can tell you who you are. It's scary because we're so used to looking to others for answers. But this is one question that no one can answer for you. They can only reflect back the knowingness you already have. So embrace your interests. That genuine joy and "rightness" you feel for doing something is a sign that "this is why you're here".

Oh man, so many. I'll limit it for practical sake but the amount of help I've received from others is incredible. Religion The four horseman of the new atheists, i.e Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet. They were absolutely crucial to me leaving the religious beliefs I had been brought up with. Dating The entire RSD crew. I had other dating coaches that helped me but no one as much as those guys. They really took it to another level, and you can definitely see a lot of their influence in me now. Besides improving my dating life, I also learned so much about self-actualization and work ethic from them. Absolutely crucial piece for me. Business -John Carlton. Not many people seem to know who he is these days, but he was essentially the king of copywriting. -Gary Vaynerchuck. Gotta love this guy, his passion for entrepreneurship is really contagious. -Karl Marx. Putting the Commie King might seem like a strange one for business, but Marx really showed me a unique perspective on what Capitalism was all about. Self-Actualization -Leo Gura for sure. I've been following his content for years now and I really gave me crucial insights at different points in my process. One thing that's interesting about Leo is that I think I've been following for so long that it almost feels like we're always in the same place in terms of personal growth. Probably not true, but it has that feel to it. -Tony Robbins was big for me as well. He helped get me out a pretty big downward spiral I was in at one point Spirituality -Sam Harris gets a double nod here for introducing me to spirituality in general. That book Waking Up was the first time I ever heard the term Enlightenment. -Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now flipped my world upside down. Nothing was the same after reading that. -Jed Mckenna. McKenna essentially single handily broke my mind and gave me my first enlightenment experience. I was probably more obsessed with his content than any other teacher -Psychedelics. LSD has shown me things that cannot be unseen. -My personal spiritual coach. I won't name his name but it's someone I see regularly and is really highly evolved. I know in theory I could have made it through this process without him, but I almost can't see how. He has helped me so much I could cry from gratitude just thinking about it.

I'm currently on my best meditation streak since I started practicing around 4 years ago. I was a dabbler for awhile and feel like I've finally settled in a groove that won't be broken. What changed is hard to exactly pin down because of the sheer volume of events happening in my life during that time. But I'll identify a few: -Having a few enlightenment / bliss experiences. This is probably hands down the most important because it showed me that meditation is not just sitting and wasting time. There are real, tangible results to be obtained and now I knew it for myself. -Taking a 10 Day Vipassana Retreat. Although I was initially worn out when I came back, overall this gave me a huge amount of macro momentum with my meditation habit -Just making the commitment to do it every day, no matter what. Even if that means I'm dead tired and fall asleep half way through, which has happened to me plenty of times -Not trying to jump ahead too fast. It took time to build up to my current habit of 1 hour a day. I did plenty of 20 mins a day, 30 mins a day, 45 mins a day, etc before I got here. So falling off the habit is part of the process. Nothing to do but get back on. God has all the time in the world...literally.

I actually made a video about veganism recently. So I'll weigh in on this. Essentially, both the absolutists and the relativists are right. In the absolute sense, there are no morals, no values, no rules, no "shoulds". And if you appoach veganism from the perspective of "trying to do what's good, even though I don't really care" than you're missing the point. That's the ego trying to hold up a self-concept. However, one of the shocking things I've found about this whole awakening process is that I have naturally shifted towards veganism. Why? Because I can't not. I love how it makes me feel. It resonates with me on an energetic level. Plus, I genuinely care more about the suffering of others than I ever have. When I see another being genuinely suffer, I feel it as if it's my own suffering. You can't still want to cause others to suffer once you see that. And the slaughter of animals undoubtably is creating huge amounts of suffering from them. I'm not saying I'm some perfect, compassionate being of light. I definitely have my moments of petty self-importance. But I've seen that there is something beyond societal morals that promotes loving behavior.

I'd say it's similar.

When you wake up is apparently a common time for contact because the mind is still calm and receptive. I had the ringing happen a couple times the moment I became conscious I was awake.

Do you still get short periods of higher intensity ringing? Because that's what I've found. There's a whole range of how strong it is.

"Coincidence" yup

Never heard any of that before. Where'd you learn this from?

Of course it is, we're using words. If you're looking Absolute Truth you have to become it. Meditation, psychedelics, and astral projection for starters. Just go for truth and let the chips fall where they may. The problem isn't necessarily using concepts. It's when you don't know a concept is a concept.

1) Soul is really ineffable, hence the ambiguous term "soul". My current understanding is that it's an energy that animates the physical. God divided itself into individual souls so that it could experience itself as whole again. A soul is not your egoic mental structure or your memories or anything like this. And no soul is actually separate from another soul or from God, so don't look at it as a separate identity. 2) I say that angels are not separate from you because on the fundamental level, nothing is separate from you. You are literally everything in your experience, and that just happens to also include angels. It's a paradox. I am an angel because I am everything. But I am not an angel from the conventional perspective. I'm just a guy on the internet like you.

I'm curious what experiences have you had that led you to that conclusion?

That's great. I've heard that dreams are definitely one of the ways where we communicate with higher beings, although I didn't mention that in this post. If you want to know more about them or communicate with them, ask! They're willing to do so.

You're welcome.

@ashashlov @Scholar I just started this, only at around 3 minutes so far so I can't really say what the effects will be. But I'm excited to see the possibilities.

There is a lot of nuance to this question. Money is stereotypical diametrically opposed to spirituality for a reason. It's people who are caught up in chasing material possessions that typically are lost in the illusion, and money epitomizes that. People get sucked into it. I'm sure we've all seen people chasing money and not even having any clue why they're doing it. It won't make them happy, but the conditioning has got them bad. There's also people who say that as you evolve spirituality, you really just don't care anymore about money. You transcend the desire for it, similar to transcending the desire for sex. So if you really wanted to, you could say "fuck material possessions, I'm just going to go meditate in the woods for 20 years". And you know what? You could probably live a pretty damn happy and spiritual life. There's a rich history of people doing just that. And I get it. The more I've gotten into this work, the more I've realized there really is nothing we have to do. We're all just on this never-ending "choose your own adventure" ride. So if you wanna go live in a cave, who gives a shit? For me though, that isn't desirable. As much as I just enjoy sitting and "being" these days, it's not what I want to do all day. My soul incarnated here with a purpose. I have a strong desire to help others and contribute my gifts. I love the work I'm doing. But guess what that sometimes requires? MONEY! I don't know anyone who runs a business without it. On top of practical concerns, why would a lack of money be inherently spiritually beneficial? Money can be a tremendous spiritual aid because it facilitates opportunities for growth. In that sense, money is highly spiritual. One of the problems I see with some people in spiritual circles is that they become unbalanced. They're so into consciousness or whatever the fuck they're doing that they struggle to support themselves financially. Then these same "spiritually evolved" people go around bad-mouthing the people with money. When in reality, there's a part of them that resents the fact that they have to struggle to put food on the table. So right now I like balance. Truthfully, I probably fall more towards the side that favors spirituality over money so I'm always looking to make those adjustments when I go too far.

I've done it a couple times at festivals and can't say it did anything for my personal growth. But I have heard people who claimed that MDMA opened them up spiritually, notably Sam Harris and Tony Hsieh.

I can definitely relate. As I've gotten deeper into this awakening process, I've started to realize just how magical the world is. We're essentially all wizards with amazing powers that would blow the average person's mind. You know how this sometimes makes me feel? Afraid. We like staying small. We like saying "this is possible, this isn't possible". It gives us a sense of "realness". I look back and realize that as a kid I would have killed for this. As a kid, we all want to believe we're in a magical world with super powers like Harry Potter. Yet now I push it away. I also used to use my imagination all the time. What happened to that? Now I "seek the right answer". So yeah. So much of this process is almost like becoming a kid again. But now you're a grown-up kid.