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You don't HAVE to do anything obviously. But yes, if you read Pursuing Consciousness by Ralston or The End of Your World by Adyashanti, they talk about the importance that personal development can play before and after an enlightenment experience. Wilber is tough to recommend, because he's highly academic. Just jumping in and reading him is tough. But I know many people like A Brief History of Everything. I'd suggest moving on to others after that like Integral Spirituality and Integral Psychology. I actually read all these books BECAUSE I was so confused after my own enlightenment experience. Life WTF, I realized I'm God and experienced the void, yet I still can't seem to resist Facebook? What gives?

I'll be honest man, I'm not with you on this one. You have to understand social nuance and context. You're right, a random stranger has no interest in your problems. And why should they? And more importantly, why would you want to dump your problems on them? Since you posted this in the "social" part of the forum, I'm going to answer this in terms of social skills. Being good socially means you're looking to give people positive emotions. Not all the time, obviously. But generally speaking at least. When I go out with my friends, I'm not thinking just "how can I have a good time". Sometimes I definitely do. But often times I'm thinking, "how can I make THEM have a good time". You don't think I have problems? I got problems out the ass man. Don't make the mistake of thinking you're special in this situation. Everyone has their shit. So why am I doing this? Being social is a way for people to get away from all that for awhile and just enjoy being in the moment. No one wants to hear about more problems, they have enough of that already. Of course, there is also a time and place to dump problems. I do that all the time as well. But it's a very different context. These are good friends who I would gladly sit and listen to their problems as well. What's funny though is that as you shift your focus towards making other people feel good, it makes YOU feel good. You give, and you'll receive. That's the law of the universe. But you just want to receive. "How come no one cares about MY problems. Because MY problems are so important, I'm going to bring you all down with me!" You think that's going to make you happy, if people would just listen to your problems. But it won't. It's just not how it works man, I don't know what else to say. If you find another way, left me know. You give to get.

There's no easy solution here, you're going to have to get creative based on your personal circumstances. I'd recommend a PART-TIME job, full-time only if really necessary, which it sounds like it's not yet. For instance, when I decided to do the entrepreneur thing, I leveraged my graduate degree and teaching experience to become a private tutor on the side. Really good money, but also not requiring a lot of time / mental focus. That's money to stay alive and support your dream. Ask yourself: what skills do you have that you can leverage? If you really can't think of something, then I don't know, get a job as a bartender or something else simple. You don't need a perfect long term solution, you just need enough to keep buying yourself at least a couple months.You might have to entrepreneur-esque stuff like crash on a friend's couch. You'll probably have to cut out everything else though. Little socializing, little entertainment or free time of any kind. But hey, if you're really an artist, this is an easy choice to make. Extra work > free time any day. So if this is that important to you, you've GOT to find a way. Just figure it out, no excuses.

For whatever it's worth, I've had a pretty serious enlightenment "experience" and will confirm what @Leo Gurais saying. I suppose for some people their first enlightenment experience could be incredibly deep enough to eventually alter them in ways we would consider beneficial to "personal development". But this seems very rare and not likely for most people. Ralston, Adyashanti and Ken Wilber have all written about this in depth. For me, while I do believe my experience has been beneficial in terms of personal development, it's certainly not over for me. Still many habits remain that I would ideally like to kick. Of course, maybe if I ever achieved full enlightenment I would drop all desires for personal development. But I really can't say. Such a perspective is way too radical for me to grasp at my current level. All I know is that right now I'm just as motivated to do personal development as really ever before. There is no reason that becoming directly conscious of Truth would suddenly mean you knew how to, for instance, run a business. These things are totally independent of each other. I believe a good life comes from mastering both your inner purpose (enlightenment) AND your outer purpose (world of form). This is the Middle Way. The alpha and the omega, everything and nothing, in this world but not of it.

Yes I got a real sense of this "meaninglessness" when I had my own awakening experience. Totally devastating at the time, showed me how much of a joke everything is. Agreed as well. I still favor the balanced approached. The Middle Way, so to speak. A big click for me was reading Ken Wilber. He talked about how anyone could have a spiritual experience, but it was their level of psychological development that would determine how they would interpret it. Total light bulb moment. Explains why there's such a wide variety of people who seem to be enlightened. You need both to really get the benefits.

First off, it's equal parting finding and creating. There's no "life purpose" just waiting out there for you, it's just a mental label you give to a set of actions and goals. So you've just got to choose at some point that this is going to be your life purpose. You find what you should choose basically just by learning and experimenting. The more shit you try, the more self-awareness you'll develop and be able to see what you should be doing. Here's a big hint: what do you want to do? I understand that's a loaded question because most people's can't distinguish between socially conditioned desires and authentic desires. But still, it's the right question to ask. The more you experiment, the more you'll be able to drill through the nonsense and be able to answer that question honestly. Also, your life purpose might evolve. Who says your life purpose today must be your life purpose tomorrow? You're in the driver seat, it's all about what you want.

You're welcome. I mean drink if you want...in the end it's all waste of time. But sure, it's not something I want to put my time towards. I've got nothing against drunk girls either, they're just not ideal when trying to do pickup on a long term basis. Yeah it's definitely predatory sounding. When your game is bad, that's usually your only option. But for any guy I know with actual good game, that's not what he's doing.

Curious what you mean by this. I agree that there's definitely limits to positive focus and ultimately you need to learn to dis-identify from your thoughts. At the same time though, there seems to be real benefits to positive focus, especially if you are new to self development. Do you disagree?

I'm having a hard time understand what your problem is with doing pick up except that you've inherently labeled it "weird", but I'll answer the question I think you were asking. First off, if the only girls you're connecting with are the girls who are drunk bitches, you're doing something wrong. I did pickup sober, and so most girls I hit it off with were...drum roll please...mostly sober. In fact, I LIKED when girls were sober because then that meant they would remember me if I got their number and take it more seriously. Drunk girls are a pain in the ass to deal with when it comes to logistics. Why do you do pickup? Well I can't speak for everyone but I know for me I did it because I had no choice. Whatever strategy I had been using in past failed pretty badly and so I had to try something new. Trust me, it was traumatizing enough that there's NO WAY I would have done that if I didn't feel like I had to. And yes, I don't know if I'd say 1000s of hours but at least 100s. You're carving out a new psychological identity for yourself as well as developing an entirely new skill set. That shit doesn't just happen over night. Nope, I very rarely if ever drink anymore. What I do is I just don't do it. I've got enough social experience, mostly from pickup, that I don't need to be wasted in order to have a good time with people. Own it and no one will question it twice.

You're welcome!

Who here has experience with Tapping and emotional freedom techniques? Here is a link for anyone not familiar. My therapist has recommended it to me as a way to help release trauma energy from panic attacks. Personally I've noticed a small improvement in my emotions when I try it but I can't say it's definitely a permanent solution.

it all depends on this: what do you want? I understand you may not have the answer, but that is still the question that matters most. Sure, college will be a blast. I know it was for me. You'll meet tons of people, have crazy experiences, and have time to explore your options as far as what you want to do with your life / discover your talents. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, or some other job not requiring a college degree, you can get started on that right now. DO NOT underestimate how ahead of the curve you could get in four years instead of going to school. I know now I would have LOVED to have started earlier. But it just wasn't in the cards for me, I needed to explore first. Maybe it is for you. So really, what do you want? What are your priorities? I'm not even saying one is better than the other. I don't really care, it's up to you to live your life.

Prepare everything you need to prepare. After that, meditation, breathing exercises, visualizations and affirmations. Then just do it.

This is a big shift. Guy always want to knock the authenticity thing, pointing out these cases where it would be more effective to put on a front. Well no shit. But how's your LONG TERM results doing? Long term, being authentic is going to get you the girls that you'll really connect with. And if you don't click sexually, you can just be friends. It's still the winning play by a long shot. I'm SHOCKED sometimes how compatible my girlfriend and I are. But really it's not surprising, considering I met so many women who I was NOT compatible with.

Awareness is key here. You just have to notice when you're doing it and see that's what's happening. Once you really see it, you usually can stop

You have to start somewhere. How else are you planning on getting the right motives in your head unless its a belief?

Nothing needs to be done

McKenna for me as well. Damndest was like a spiritual bomb going off in my head.

Love this book. My good friend who is one of the most charismatic people I know recommended it to me.

Self-development is a journey. Some of the content Leo is putting out right now is very advanced and might not be right for you right now. I won't say it definitely isn't, but just consider it. If I was in high school, I would do normal things like try and have a social life. Those are nice things to have. I'd also say it's never too early to start mediating. Maybe try that and see how you like it.

Glad to hear you're making your way man. I wouldn't dismiss this dream as irrelevant just because it's a dream.

I'm almost finished it now! Going to publish the review on my blog on Sunday. It's a fantastic book. All about how our life is decided by our choices. Topics include the power of positive thought, detachment and pendulums (weird energy suckers).

No you do not. There is no reason you need to give up on relationships in order to be happy or achieve whatever you want out of life. However, I will add the cavet that for me, large periods of solitude have been something I've needed at certain points in this journey. That may have been difficult with a romantic partner.

Detachment means you don't rely on it for your happiness. You're acting out of INSPIRATION instead NEEDINESS. Imagine you were going to sing a song you love with someone you know. And then as you started singing, this person looks at you and says "wait a minute! Don't you realize we could be singing FASTER? After all, we're singing with the intention of reaching the end of the song. Therefore, I conclude that the best way to sing must be to go as fast as possible. And I will NOT BE SATISFIED in till we reach the end of the song." You would think this person insane. After all, the purpose of singing a song is not to get to the end of the song. You sing because in each moment, you just enjoy it. When it's over, maybe you'd do it again. That's how I think of life. People act as if the goal of life is to "get somewhere" or to reach the end. But here's a new flash: the end result of life is death. If you're just running through life as if it's a mission to get from one goal to the next, you're missing the point. Of course this doesn't mean don't do ANYTHING. Notice even in the above song, you're still singing. But you're acting now because you're INSPIRED to do so, not out of fear and misery.

It all depends on your goals. Are you trying to transition into being a financially independent entrepreneur? You'd better be hustling way more than 6-8 hours a day. Why worry about productivity when you're throwing huge chucks of your day away? But if you're not looking to do something that extreme, then I'd say just work smarter. I've never worried about productivity, only how can I play a better chess game.