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@Arman Thanks for the words of encouragement! Sorry, I'm only seeing your message now, but it's still most welcome! Glad to hear everything balanced out for you eventually. It does sound like you went through something eerily similar! Must have been difficult with less info available / no-one to talk to. Although I've probably been dealing with too much information to sift through and still hard to talk to many people about it! Anyway, thanks for the advice!

I've been going through a very difficult awakening of sorts and have been trying various things to become more stable. I might seem to be improving only to get worse again a few days later - and I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong. It might have been down to things like yoga and meditation. I found this girl Kelly's advice quite helpful - in which she says grounding is key and common advice like meditating and yoga, is not as suitable for us already dealing with this influx of energy - in that practices like this actually charge us up energetically even more and can prolong and intensify our symptoms. I've found her videos quite helpful - I've also been working my way through a short course on her site called Grounded Awakenings. The other advice I got from elsewhere, which I followed up on was to see a Herbalist - in that our nervous system and body in general can need a lot of support during this time. So I've been taking a herbal tincture thing 3 times a day, recently and it seems to be helping. I'm no expert though, so there probably is merit to meditating (I've found it hard to bring myself to Stop meditating actually!) and yoga during all this, if you know what you're doing. If you don't really know what you're doing or what's going on (like me) and are generally just struggling to make it through each day - then taking the girl in the video's advice might be helpful. Good luck!

Thanks for all the information. EFT tapping was recently recommended to me and I have been looking into it. Pretty much everything you said corroborates (and even expands upon) what it is and how it possibly works. I take it as a vote of confidence! I recently (inadvertently) triggered some sort of awakening process (kundalini? - I'm really not sure) after trying ayahuasca for the first (and last!) time, in an attempt to gain some clarity on my life direction. In this state where my whole system seems to be getting flooded with extra energy - it is extremely ungrounding and the whole thing has been quite hellish, from feeling like I've been losing my mind, to just completely unmanagable and overwhelming emotions. I believe a lot of suppressed stuff is being driven to the surface. I was very naive and didn't really understand the magnitude of the physical and energetic components of spirituality - my whole mind/body system has been in complete turmoil for months. It was recommended to me that traditional advice to ease such an experience such as yoga, meditation and use of crystals (not so sure on that one) will actually make things even more uncomfortable because they are charging your energy even more, when you're already overloaded, leading to even more ungroundedness - which causes its own plethora of issues. Anyway EFT Tapping was highly recommended as a way to deal with and release all the stuff coming up, because it is a very grounded and efficient method that can be used on pretty much any issue (apparently). This really resonates with my recent experiences and some tough lessons I've learned. I was getting way too ahead of myself and focusing purely on meditation, absorbing all sorts of information on spirituality, while finding it harder and harder to deal with some of the more day to day aspects of life. I'm actually quite concerned now that a lot of people might be following Leo and other Youtube teachers and all this material and shooting straight for Enlightenment and other advanced stages of development, without growing their roots first - I think this could be what leads to all the spiritual horror stories and things like depersonalisation and such (which I've had the misfortune of dealing with). I would also say now (after learning the hard way) to stay away from psychedelics unless you are very grounded! In hindsight, I think myself and probably about 90% of the people watching the youtube videos probably think they are way more stable / advanced / have a more mature ego than they actually have, so any disclaimers and such probably fly over our heads. I thought that because I had been meditating fairly regularly for a few years and had saved up a good bit of money, that I was ready for some of this stuff, but it was quite the rude awakening I was in for. With working and day to day responsibilities, I (and imagine many others) only have a certain amount of time to dedicate to studying all the material - we end up watching a video on "Have an Ego Death experience", "How to have an OBE" or "Open your 3rd Eye right now!" - with no idea of the dangers of what we might be opening ourselves up to, psychological or otherwise. These were my personal learnings anyway, for where I am at.

Not sure what to make of the fact that I went from browsing Actualized.org content, to watching the latest episode of Rick & Morty, then a 3 minute video of Dan Harmon discussing the philosophy of the show, then googling if Dan Harmon was enlightened, then finding myself back on Actualized.org looking at this thread Thanks for the resources!

Not sure how I didn't come across this thread before! I've been thinking a lot about the combination of these two for a while now, in regards to my own life purpose. It's definitely a tricky line to walk, as games have the capacity to engross and consume people entirely, but I like to think they can be a positive force. They are after all, a medium which can combine many other media and create powerful experiences. Like Liam and Vibivub mentioned, those games come to mind for me too. The company that made Journey have a few other games, that break the mold too - notably "Flower" - they're definitely pushing the medium forward from an artistic point of view. For me Shadow of the Colossus probably counts as a spiritual experience, or at least very emotionally stirring. The music plays a big part. Another favourite of mine in recent times has been "Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons". It's a shorter game, that plays like a very-moving fairytale :') If you're still interested in making games, (and haven't done so already) some game engines to start looking at would be maybe GameMaker Studio or Unity, especially if you wanted to incorporate your own physics knowledge. Actually deep, practical understanding of physics is quite rare in the games industry (i've been working as a games developer / engineer for the past 5 or so years). If you could transfer that knowledge into some programming or practical applications, it might be your ticket in the door at a studio somewhere, where you could learn more about the whole industry and process of making games.

I truly hope to get there someday. Thanks Leo!

So, I get that there's no real "Good" or "Bad" and that morality is pretty much a cultural, subjective phenomenon... However, I seem to keep coming across the notion that; while on one hand it doesn't matter what anyone does, ultimately, really the only way you can do "good" in the world is by becoming more conscious. I've heard Leo allude to this in many instances; like saying in the rant on morality vid, that without morality, he's actually more moral (by society's definition) (apologies if I'm mis-remembering exactly what he said). Why is that the case? Also in the "What it means to be a Real Hero" vid, he mentions that the true heroes are the saints and sages. I've watched a few times and must still be missing something... why is it the case that the saints and sages are the true heroes, if there is no good and bad? What is it about them that makes them heroic and how are they helping? Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in this because I love everything about heroism and witnessing any sort of heroic act is usually what brings me to tears, instead of typical sad scenes in films / TV shows etc. I've always felt like the compassionate ones are the ones we should be trying to emulate, as opposed to the "successful" business types and so on. The main metric I go by is suffering - even if there's no good or bad, I still ideally want to reduce suffering in the world. I guess I'm just wondering if there is any sort of universal truth behind that approach or is it just a personal preference of certain people? Along the same lines, why is unconsciousness deemed "bad" (or less desirable) and consciousness "good" (or more desirable) - by spiritual folks who also acknowledge that good and bad don't exist? What's the metric for the desirability? For example, if a philanthropic business man uses his money to cover some sick kid's life saving surgery and a seasoned mystic does the same thing - one is coming from a place of lower consciousness and the other from higher consciousness - why is low conscious guy's behaviour considered less "good" than the other's? (Slightly contrived example) I feel like the world needs more consciousness, but is it true that it does, or is it merely subjective preference? Why does pursuing and attaining more consciousness / becoming enlightened, make one heroic? Why is it so much more beneficial to the world? Is the ego capable of performing any heroic acts, or do all acts of compassion come from the higher self? Sorry for all the questions. I feel like this topic is close to my heart and deeply connected to my life purpose. If I knew exactly why following the spiritual path is the way to do the greatest good / become a true hero - I think I'd have an easier time following it with more drive and intention. Thanks!

I've read 'Letting Go" by David Hawkins and one of Leo's meditation videos is all about surrender. I can kind of get a sense of what it means to surrender in the context of a meditation session or some period of solitude when nothing is going on, but I've been running into some paradoxical stuff when it comes to trying to live my entire life this way. I'd love to some fresh perspectives on what is actually going on during this process and how to reconcile it with more day to day living; making large life decisions, intuition, preferences and free will. Does "surrendering to life", "taking your hand off the tiller", "following the tao" mean following your intuition and taking conscious action on it or being more passive and letting life move you around? (The latter is usually a definition of low consciousness behaviour as far as I can tell).

Sorry, I just felt compelled to say something on the foundational topic that is, the chopping off of tips of dicks There are medical reasons why this can be beneficial / necessary. I can attest to this as I had to have it done later in life. Not saying you should go about it willy-nilly mind you, no pun intended

Sounds a bit like this Eckhart video I stumbled across yesterday. Not talking about AI, mind you - more about the planet stepping in if we get out of hand and ending humanity in non-violent way.

I've struggled with overthinking a lot and it is definitely hard to be mindful when you're caught up in the midst of a bombardment of thoughts about anything and everything. From a meditation point of view, some guided meditations might be a good thing to try if you haven't already as it they actively give you something to focus on. As for the confusion, I'm probably not the man to be giving advice on that as I'm still quite confused myself. Leo's video on confusion is great so I'd recommend looking at that if you get the chance. For me, my deep confusion is only really starting to fade away since I started using Holosync for meditation. It seemed I was in need of a higher strength dose of meditation. You might need something like that to help snap you out of your current thought-patterns and see them for what they are. I've found that I get very confused when I feel like I have to make a decision about something IMMEDIATELY. When I can be a bit more patient with myself and give myself a longer period of time before "having to figure it out", that usually helps. Some other things I've heard people recommend for calming oneself down are supplements like Ashwagandha and of course the general advice about basically living cleanly - diet, sleep, exercise and getting out in nature.

Thanks for the sage wisdom Dingus! I really would do well to remember that, in particular. I've been prone to spin many an epically contrived yarn, in my time, about my potential future.

It kind of goes against the "focus on one thing and master it idea", but I think some of us might be just wired differently, more oriented towards piecing together the bigger picture and thus really wanting to explore many things, finding it extremely painful to limit ourselves to one avenue. I know I've struggled with this a lot and found some solace in the "multipotentialite" community (probably mentioned elsewhere on this forum somewhere). Emilie Wapnick runs this site: http://puttylike.com/ And just released this book (which I haven't read yet) https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Everything-Guide-Those/dp/0062566652 She also has a TedTalk floating around out there somewhere. It might be of some interest to people on this thread. Again, there are probably dangers and cop-outs to be wary of when thinking along these lines... I guess - lean heavily on strategic thinking and your intuition as best you can, when navigating these waters. Another perspective is one that Sadhguru talked about before - about how we're all craving more and more all the time and want to do everything and have everything - he says we're really yearning for infinity (i.e. our true selves). So, I have a suspicion that through deeper spiritual work, this need and want to study and learn and experience absolutely everything in the world on material level might start to fade away, to more sane levels. Also pretty sure I butchered what he actually said, so it might be worth trying to track down that video!

Thanks! I didn't know about that book. I read "Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing" and was fairly engrossed in it throughout, but became fairly ungrounded in my day-to-day life trying to go to work and so on! Would you recommend I finish out the Spiritual Enlightenment trilogy before taking a look at Dreamstate? Ah maybe I'll just get it and skip to the last few chapters My issue at the moment is trying to tell which messages I'm receiving are the authentic ones I should follow and which ones might just be an egoic thing. There a couple that feel pretty authentic, but unfortunately seem logistically opposed to each other and I can't act on both! As a alternate / joke suggestion for a video idea, maybe Leo could explain what the hell is going on in this thread:

I'm wondering if anyone can elaborate on the idea that "doing what you love to do is the best way to contribute to the world / help the world" as opposed to doing something that would help people in a more "standard" / direct way. I've come across this idea a lot from Actualized.org and on some level believe it's probably true, but can't quite logically understand it. For a lot of my passions I don't really see how indulging in them / mastering them could help do more good in the world than say, helping people in severely impoverished countries through charitable works / healthcare etc. For example, me dedicating my time to mastering playing the guitar vs. working a high paying job and giving shitloads of money to a proven effective charity. I've been reading up on the Effective Altruism movement and it's really got me thinking along these lines. Interesting book so far: https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Altruism/dp/1592409660 It's likely my own hang up, that I feel inherently guilty for being born in a privileged part of the world and can't indulge my own passions and pleasures when there's so much suffering in the world. Looking for any insights! Thanks!

Yeah, it's more about: if I have the means, then maybe using some money to aid charities in alleviating starvation and supplying medicine for easily curable health issues, that I was thinking about, as opposed to thinking everyone in Africa is unhappy because they don't have all the stuff we have. It's a good point though - there are some depressing stories about people who try to "help" and actually end up making things worse

Thanks for the wise words all! Definitely given me some things to go and chew on. I think my current motivations are mix of things; some stemming from authentically wanting to help, some from guilt and probably a lot from my ego trying to strengthen itself through "being good". I'm becoming more aware of how much guilt I seem to have. I'm not sure where it's all coming from, but it seems to unconsciously whisper that it's somehow selfish to pursue my passions for their own sake, like they aren't grandiose enough or won't help anyone. Obviously this argument has a lot of holes in it, so hopefully as awareness grows this will start to unravel further. P.S. I might have to up my guitar game from playing Final Fantasy X songs, to get to that Caprice level! Thanks for the link!

Hi all, I have a question about how one should think about the visual world they are seeing, as they go about their business every day, if aiming for enlightenment / more awareness. During meditation and self inquiry practices I have much easier time of things with my eyes closed, distinguishing between different sensations and phenomena arising and falling away; the audio channel is the clearest for me and gets me closest to being able to focus on what I really think I am (the perceiver of these sounds). I find that whenever I open my eyes I instantly "snap-back" into the default mode of operating, pretty much all sense of inner spaciousness disappears and very much feel like "the world-out-there" is almost unquestionable. I'm not sure if I'm just to easily distracted by all the "objects" and motion that I see, or what. I find myself trying to "flatten the illusion" often, as proposed by Leo, and find that helpful. However, I'm unclear what way I'm "supposed" to be seeing the world. Should I be looking for any and all evidence that boundaries don't exist, that everything is unified? Should I be interpreting what I'm seeing as "this is just an image in my mind"? Or "this is akin to a 2d image, like 3D scene rendered on a computer screen"? Or should I be accepting of the 3D appearance of the world. I find myself looking around and asking myself "what am I missing here?" and pretty much come up with a blank every time. How do you guys interpret what you are seeing with your eyes, as you go about your daily activities?

Thanks all! Definitely gotten some helpful new perspectives on this. I am also planning to make some changes in my life to be able to attend retreats and practice more. Some people may require less hours of practice, but I think I am someone who probably needs a significant amount. I've spent many years in my head, so l likely have a huge amount of interpretations to shed! The problem is when I can't even fathom what the interpretations are and think I'm seeing things for what they are - but clearly am not! "Raw experience" of the visual field / channel - I think that's what I was looking for clarification on and have now gained some better understanding. I feel like I can get a far better sense of raw experience when it comes to audio (less layers of interpretation maybe), but become far more easily distracted by the "contents" of any visuals, "looking too far into the image" if you will. Thanks again!

That's very helpful, thanks a lot! Also encouraging, as I do find myself asking what is external and what is internal to me. I think the question that comes up then is why do experience I everything from a certain perspective? I feel like the body is almost feeding awareness with sensory data from it's perspective / position in the world. How else would I see, for a example a wall from one side, maybe indoors, as opposed to from a different angle? (These are questions I ask myself, not asking you, as such ) Similarly for sound. If a sound appears in my awareness as more distant than another sound, why is that the case? My mind still seems very hung up on processing everything from a very object-oriented / geo-locational type of frame. I guess one genuine question I do have is: is this counter-productive to raising awareness, or is accepting some sounds as being "closer" or "further away" more accepting of reality? I suppose my questions are really about which way am I supposed to be accepting reality? Directly as is, from the default, regular human point of view, accepting of my labels for things or consciously trying to drop all distinctions and ask myself the difficult questions like you gave examples of? I am assuming the latter. Thanks for the feedback!

I have struggled a lot with my finding my purpose. Don't get me wrong, I found the Life Purpose course to be really great, but I appear to have many layers of personal bullshitting to sift through before landing on anything really concrete. After completing the course over a year ago, the main questions / points of confusion for me have been: * Note: not all of these are direct questions and others have been framed in some sort of question form, mainly to make it easier to imagine them being part of an eventual list. I'm not actually fishing for answers to all of these at the moment! - I can't really tell if my passion for personal development, consciousness work / spiritual interests are all purely self-motivated and something I only care about "for me", or whether it has any connection to my "outer" purpose and what I want my life to be about. I feel like I don't want to be another guy telling people to meditate when there are far more qualified people out there doing that already. - I have felt far more of a burning desire for turning inward than outward, so am very unsure how to balance consciousness work with life purpose discovery work. This also makes me doubt my own motivation for taking brave risks / leaps into the unknown. - I also have a strong fear that any commitment I make to a life purpose could start to fall away and unravel rapidly as I do more inner work. This makes me think I should stick with my current job until I gain more clarity through inner work. Catch 22: current job leaves me with little time to focus on inner work or life purpose small bets experimentation - I identify as a "Scanner" / "Multipotentialite" / "Renaissance" type person who seems to be interested in everything but not burningly passionate about any one thing day-in, day-out. It's more a cyclical rehashing of many different things. So I have huge issues in committing to one area of mastery. - I feel like I'm more "good - to quite good" at a lot of things as opposed to ever really being brilliant at one thing, lacking the motivation to focus on a singular pursuit long enough to truly master it. Should I focus on what I perceive to be my top strength or try to make synergystic use of many "lesser-strengths" to generate something unique? - Is striving for mastery over expanding your life experience in multiple fields, a universal principle of good advice or just a strong value of Leo's? I understand you're probably better off being as much of an expert as possible, but it often feels very inauthentic to me to sacrifice many of my perceived talents and passions, for mastery in one area. Is this something that just requires making a "hard decision" for better long term benefits? This article from Steve Pavlina was exciting for me to stumble across (of course it's far less comprehensive than an entire Life Purpose course, but raises some interesting points as well as whole other bunch of questions ) https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2016/12/mile-wide-mile-deep/ - Lifestyle minimalism tells us to slow the fuck down, do less, have more time for being and mindfulness. The life purpose course extolls shitloads of hard work, grit and even possibly sacrificing health & relationships out of pure passion. What is the ideal balance between being, doing, inner work and life purpose discovery / life purpose work? And what strategies if any are there to transition to this kind of lifestyle, from a busy 9-5 (or more) career. (My personal main issue here is a lack of patience I imagine - it can be quite challenging to decide what to limit myself to focusing on next, when realistically I can only take on so many endeavours / small bets / inner work topics). - Psychological Stress - I'd just like to note, (while this might not be applicable to the great majority of people) I have struggled to a pretty alarming degree on my personal development path over the last year or so, to incorporate all that I've been learning, focused primarily on Life Purpose discovery and enlightenment work, whilst trying to eat a lot more healthily and work. It is probably my personality and disposition - so focused on finding closure, but most of my more difficult moments have been around trying to nail down things like my values, my ideal medium, my life purpose statement (actually most elements of my Me Sheet! ). I really took to heart the advice that friends, relationships and family are all secondary concerns when it comes to Life Purpose and Enlightenment pursuits and I think that has been a real struggle throughout - everyone seems a lot happier than me, even though they're not interested in any of this stuff. I probably have grown quite a bit as a result and am hoping it will all pay-off in the long run, but this whole path certainly isn't for the faint of heart. I'm not sure I could actually recommend it to anyone else at the moment, due to the strife I've encountered, but again that may be just down to the way I have been going about things and a real reluctance to give up what I currently have. - Final point about concurrent Life Purpose and Enlightenment work: I have been trying to work towards both of these. I have probably been thinking about Life Purpose all wrong, but I've very much been approaching it from the angle of almost: "this is the pinnacle of self-definition" "this is my purpose" "this is what I'm here to do" etc. and obviously enlightenment teachings are telling me that I don't actually exist and to Dr. Martin Ball it all screams "Ego! Ego! Ego!". It may be because I am only a fledgling in my forays into both fields, but I can't help but feel like both endeavours were under-mining each other to a degree. Doing things like Life Purpose affirmations and imprinting on one hand to solidify my vision, passion and motivation, while trying to question my reality and drop my beliefs on the other hand. It's all been a bit of a mindfuck. I don't want to appear ungrateful. The Life Purpose course has been a great tool in self-discovery for me. It's actually outrageous to have been able to pull out so many commonalities and create a general purpose approach that can get the vast majority moving in the right direction. I understand it's impossible to tailor an entire course to every individual's needs and current situation. Perhaps it's been my own attachment to figuring it all out and taking on too many things at once that's been damaging me. These were just some of the major concerns I've been dealing with over the last year, after completing the course. (P.S. If we could get that list of 1000 ways to raise consciousness, that would be just great. Just kidding.)

That's pretty cool. I'd like to work on projects more based in reality and contribution to society like that, as opposed to creating content purely for entertainment value. Your personal projects sound like some sort of programmatic epistemology Best of luck with the degrees! I hear a lot a people dissing degrees and their importance from time to time, but I found my time in college critical to my understanding of computer science and programming.

Hi all, I know the path is different for everyone and some things can't be rushed, but I'm at a large crossroads in my life and am wondering if anyone can help me with recommendations, tips, strategies or best courses of action for moving forward. Small backstory: I have a decent amount of money saved up and pretty much ready to ditch my 9-5 software engineering job, but am at a bit of impasse when it comes to next steps. I've given myself a few months to tie up some loose ends and figure out my next move. My two current fascinations are Enlightenment and Life Purpose. I've been trying to take major action on both fronts but am being severely hindered on account of my work responsibilities and how draining it can be, not leaving a lot of time for action or for research. On the site here, I see a lot of - "you're not going to get anywhere unless you dedicate 10,000 hours to this" and I believe this to be true for both Life Purpose and the pursuit of enlightenment. I have been oscillating back and forth between which one I should really commit myself to, but the drive for realising the truth of things is undeniably winning out and would just undermine my Life Purpose work for now. I believe consciousness work and my eventual Life Purpose will be closely related too, which is conflating and confusing things no end My question is mainly this: If someone is in the position to take time out to really dedicate themselves to enlightenment / consciousness work, say for at least a year straight, what would be the best approach or sequence of techniques that would help maximise the potential for making progress along the path, experiencing non-dual states and possibly attaining enlightenment? I'm thinking it should be a combination of the following, but have no real idea how much time to dedicate to each area: - Meditating - Going to meditation retreats - Self-Inquiry - Enlightenment retreats - Trying to get my hands on psychedelics - Reading / Research on everything mind/body related I am current based around the San Francisco Bay Area so am planning to move away if I leave my job, due to the rent prices. My options are: - Move back to Ireland (where I'm from), possibly limiting the avenues of possibility for my future - Move somewhere cheaper in the US - Move somewhere else in the world (no idea where) The major concerns and factors around my choice of living destination are: - Accessibility to high quality retreats (meditation, enlightenment) - Legality / accessibility to psychedelics (I'm pretty much hopeless on this front anyway and am thinking religious groups / organised retreats somewhere are my only real options here, due to a lack of contacts in this space) - Rent / cost of living (won't be bringing in any income so looking to minimise this) If anyone has any suggestions about particular regions that you think would be well suited to support this work, please let me know, thanks! * A smaller but frustrating issue is that I am currently training with Shaolin Monks in San Francisco when I can and am really enjoy it, finding it to be another step in the right direction for my Life Purpose, spiritual pursuits and physical well being - and will be reluctant to withdraw from it. I guess something's gotta give though

Thanks for the wise words, all. You've given me a lot to consider and reconsider I guess it is true that I just don't want it badly enough yet. I want to want it. I've embroiled myself in too many less important things that are just distracting me and draining me. Whenever I actually get some time and space to think, I feel like I'm thinking clearly and my yearning is much stronger. It may just be a case of waiting for some of the noise around me to die down, which it should do soon and then truly cut out all unnecessary distractions. @Leo Gura I'll definitely check out that book, thanks! And I don't doubt that guy probably was working harder than me. My issue has been trying to strategise around enlightenment work and life purpose transition work and it's all been a bit overwhelming. I think my priorities are becoming much clearer as time goes by, so thanks for all the advice. @Richard Alpert The mind identification is definitely proving to be the most difficult part. Feeling like I'm aware one minute and all of a sudden I'm gone again... Thanks for the reminder. The minute I say "I'm not the mind", I really do get a serious question arising of "well then what the hell am I?!" @cetus56 Thanks for the suggestions. That does really sound like an idyllic set up! I have been thinking about trying to work remotely more and more. It will probably require a different employer though, as I think it will sicken my SOUL to keep doing the work I'm doing I'm hoping I might actually be able to not work for a decent amount of time. I'll be happy to work when I eventually hit on something I'm truly passionate about doing.

@Azrael Thanks for the considerate responses. Leo's enlightenment video had a similar effect on me; it was the first time I'd been introduced to the idea and I haven't really stopped thinking about it since. So, I'm definitely on-board. I'm just in a transitional phase the moment and am slightly frustrated at not being able to just drop everything and pursue all these avenues of investigation. Similarly for my life purpose. I've tried to be strategic and set myself up financially, so I can actually have the time and freedom to really dive in deep when it comes to figuring out my purpose and doing consciousness work. I'm almost at the point, where I can make this leap I've yearning to make. It's cool that you're a programmer too and love it. I wish I was as clear about my passions. I have many but they wax and wane. Programming was one, but I think it has been stifled by the professional / corporate aspect, even if it is a games company I work for. I loved it in college. It is partly why I have been reluctant to fully jump ship, as there is something in my job that I enjoy and it pays very well, but just doesn't leave me the time to pursue all that my heart/intuition is telling me to. I believe (but am not attached to the idea ) that I have some self-trust issues to work through. Out of interest, what kind of programming / projects do you enjoy working on? I think a shift into more of research mode might help re-invigorate my passion, as opposed to churning out code for projects I don't ultimately believe in. I do get enjoyment out of fleshing out systems and such to support the gameplay though and tend to enjoy investigative elements, when not racing against the clock. @RossE I think you're right that the mentality of enlightenment as a huge goal could be a big hindrance. I'm very open to experiencing these states right now! I just want to make sure I am giving myself enough time and space and giving the pursuit the focused attention it deserves. I do find myself lost in my mind an awful lot, when at work, not so much when away from it, so I think any additional time away from that environment is ultimately only going to help me. Thanks though, I think you helped me clarify something for myself.