Just my experience, maybe it will help someone.

Throughout my life, I have always 'hustled' for what I wanted, and I got many many things. I was 'successful'. I believed that I could have anything if I just DID something. So I was always DOING, if not physically, then scheming intellectually. None of it was ever wholly satisfying, which just made me hustle more, for more.

Finally I ran into several cumulative devastating circumstances where I could not "DO" anything in a positive way. There was no action possible to take that got me closer to what I wanted; all action available to me was the equivalent of a maximum security prisoner screaming in their cell to a guard "Let me out!" Absolutely futile as far as positive outcomes.

This all brought me to my knees, because I realized that if even one single thing I wanted could be withheld from me, then the true power I had was really zero. In other words, my hustling had done nothing, I just believed it was necessary.

I stopped doing anything, hustling for anything. Now, I do as Bashar says "follow my highest excitement." The last six months, maybe a year, the most exciting thing for me has been to turn completely inward and face every dark corner and shadow and clean it up. Carl Jung style, I see everything in my life as a personal archetype; everything in my life MEANS something, stands for something, and I've been busy exploring it all. Exploring every joy and pain. The mystery of the world is in me, as it turns out!

I do very little every day, and only what I want. I don't work for money, because I don't want to, but I tend to a rose and cactus garden, and have a little dog to care for. I have not yet gotten two things I want. But I have gotten different things, things that are really satisfying as they came, and I didn't have to hustle for them!

I will never, ever go back to the maxtrix way that I knew the world, where I had to work for what I wanted and sacrifice some of myself in the process. I don't ever again want to be 'normal'. Been there done that! If it doesn't come easily and ask of me only what is a joy for me to give, I'm not interested! Feeling good (doing what I want) is so much better than chasing after something in the outside world in order to feel good. I just have no more belief in that. I do what I'm inspired to do, which never feels like 'taking action'. It's just a harmonious happening and it's easy. And things happen for me! Sometimes really big things. It's like the 'action' is not something I have to do, but just an natural effect of what I want.

Those two things for which I still have a little bit of yearning...well, since I know don't need them to be happy, I don't chase after them, not even mentally, and I fully believe that they will show up into my lazy happy evolving life at some point or another, so what's there to be concerned about? The pain surrounding their absence is almost gone. This in and of itself has increased my joy exponentially. Also just that a lot of my hustle was because I thought the things would make me happy...when I realized this wasn't true, a lot of things became unnecessary. What I really wanted came sharply into focus. I was having a relationship with myself in an extremely indirect manner...doing all these hustling things in order to get things in order to be happy...sheesh what a bizarre runaround to being happy, which was available to me directly!

I'm so glad to be free of the action journey. It took a long long time, because it is very counterintuitive to how life seems to work. But once you manage to break that orbit, life (and stuff) becomes so much easier!!

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Addendum 9/11/17, this was added in response to @Surfgrass comment:

Hi Surfgrass, more explanation! After I completed @Stingray The 30 Day Vortex Challenge, http://www.inwardquest.com/questions/93202/the-30-day-vortex-challenge

I began to have a very different perspective on life, manifestation, LOA, etc. That the 30 Day Vortex Challenge is not constantly on the top of the forum list astounds me, because there is absolute genius in that process. It does not 'get you stuff', but it delivers something so much more; you gradually beome disabused of the notion that stuff (circumstances, objects, people) can cause you to be happy or unhappy. Stuff just shows you your level of resistance or non resistance to your natural state of being, which is happiness, your autheticity, what you really want, etc. 

I was enamored of Carl Jung's work for a long time, in fact, it was a letter he wrote to someone that deeply inspired me to turn inwards, but when I did that, when I turned completely inwards, I started to have trouble with fitting myself and my experience into his archetypes. So I began to make up my own archetypes based on my unique life, but then that quickly led to my realization that absolutely everything in my life was an archetype, in that everything meant something. Everything was a form representation of an idea or belief that I held in that moment.

These two realizations, 1) that stuff does not make me happy or unhappy, with 2) physical life is nothing but stuff that interacts all the time and that has meaning for me...this led me to do the 'shadow work'.  I knew from the Vortex Challenge that I was, by nature, happy without stuff. I knew, from my exploration of Carl Jung's work, that all my stuff meant something to me. So I knew it had to be me that was filling my life with stuff that was painful, tragic, uncomfortable. 

All the things I wanted, all the things I didn't want...I stopped looking at them like "I need THAT person/place/circumstance/thing to be a certain way" and started seeing that each thing was just a representation of some truth I had. For example, let's pick relationships. If I have an unfullfilling or unhappy relationship with someone I like,  if I look at all the attributes in the relationship, the joy, the intimacy, the lack or presence of communication, the selfishness, the boring (all the wanted and unwanted), I see how all these ideas MEAN SOMETHING to me. They represent my ideas, my beliefs. So I don't try to fix the relationship, or fix the person, or try in any way to improve on the relationship, to make this person into my dream person, or the relationship into my dream relationship. No, instead, in order to get my dream person, I work FROM the dream. I focus on my my ideas that make it not dreamy, how those ideas feel, and I experience all the thoughts that come up about it. That's doing the shadow work. 

For this I also use another of Stingray's processes, I am sorry that I forget the name, so I can't link it, but it is his version of the focus wheel. I do this process but I make everything a numbered list, and each thing is separated out individually, so that I am not creating a new story, but just listing ideas. This is another process that I feel is understated in its genius; I say that simply because of the evolution I've had from applying it.

You also asked about how I came to not work for money. I don't have the smoking gun for you for that, but I guarantee that you do! How I came to my current circumstances would require a novel and it would just be another story, but it's clear to me that I'd been leading up to this for a long time, before I even realized consciously that I didn't want to work. This is so great because it aligned with what Abraham Hicks says, which is that what you really want is in your Vortex, even if you don't know it's there. Because of my resistance, I had a lot of bumps, turmoil, it was a rocky ride for me. Now that I know better, I know nothing ever needs to be that rocky again! So if what you want is not to work, and you know that consciously, then you are already ahead of me and because you can come to that state of being consciously, your journey can be much softer and more joyful, because you can let go of resistance more easily.

So first, "Not working for money" is an archetype for you. The reason you want it is because your   ideas about it are meaningful to you at this time. If you haven't already done the 30 Day Vortex Challenge, I very much recommend that you do it, just so you can know that you can be happy whether you work or don't work! :)

So what does "not working" represent? As you do this, you might find that you have beliefs that not working will make you happy, but that you have to work, that you are afraid to be hungry, to be homeless, that you want to not work but also be rich (ideas that seemingly contradict each other per your current experience). You might find beliefs that you label silly and would be embarrassed to share with anyone, because it makes you seem naive or childish or selfish or whatever. When these come up, that is EXCELLENT. Your vortex, you true being, or however you know yourself as (I just say, "I"), knows what you want, so you don't have to worry that by looking at all the negative ideas and feelings you have, that you will derail your dream. 

You may also find that you really do want to work, but you want to work in something you love. As you explore that, you may find that you believe that you can't make a living doing what you love, that it's too risky, that everyone else is already doing it and better than you, that nobody will want to buy what you're selling, etc.

When you pick any subject and treat it like an archetype instead of something to get, something to create, something to manifest, you will easily access your shadow (Carl Jung's label for resistance). That is where I've had the most astonishing personal growth. To know, not just intellectually or as an idea, but experientially, that I don't have to create anything, because per my existence I am already creating. To know that I am always manifesting,(becoming a "better" manifestor never felt right to me...too much work, ha!). To know that life is easy. But wow what a long strange trip it's been! (courtesy to the Grateful Dead).

You truly don't have to create anything, or do anything, in order to improve your life. You WILL do things, but there is not one specific thing you HAVE to do. Follow your highest bliss, per Bashar. And let your resistances into consciousness, explore them or experience them (they leave of their own accord), and you will get happier and happier and life will just flow, and become much more like "what you want." Whatever that is, it is unique to you! Everyone is, actually, in what we want, a special special snowflake!

To summarize,  for the dream life, work FROM the dream. How to have a better dream is to let go of everything that is present that makes up a bad dream. How to have better phyiscal manifestions is to let go of the ideas that you hold that are making the physical manifestations less than you want them to be. You are always creating. If you hold ideas of love and hate and compassion and selfishness and beauty and ugliness, etc, your dream manifesting in physical form will have to include all those things. Look at your shadow, and the physical world will start to improve without you lifting a finger. Work from the dream, and just do as you are inspired to do.

I hope this helps! You can ask me more specific questions and I'll answer them the best I can. Possibly I should proof or edit this for clarity or grammar, but I have a guest that is waking up and I want to bring them coffee! :)

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Addendum added 9/20/17

I just went through the process that I was describing above, so I wanted to share it experientially, which sometimes can be more clear than abstraction.

My recurring sleeping dream:

"I dream that I go places that are like antique shops or thrift shops or estate liquidations....basically where you find things that are no longer made. I find stunning things. Sometimes things that didn't even exist in real life, or only in legends. Sometimes huge things like an entire circus Carasoul. This last dream, I found a jeweled chained cascade of spoons (beautiful but impractical to the point of nonsensical in reality). Each time I go to find someone to help me with these objects, or to pay for them, I never find anybody, and when I go to where I think I must pay, I am back outside in the parking lot without the item."

My waking Reality, presented in dream terms:

"I dream that I live in an older house with 4 windows that are 10 feet tall and 12 feet wide, and several more that a little smaller, but still very big. The glass is thin, single pane. I remove the huge, very heavy drapes that cover these windows  because I want the light and airiness the glass gives, but with the light and airiness means inside the house is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. To replace these stunning but impractical windows requires much more money that I have to spend on windows."

You can see how my sleeping dream and my waking reality show the same thing. I am aware there is something I really want, but it seems impossible to get, I cannot 'do' anything to get it. I cannot change the way sun and heat and cold and glass interact with each other, and I cannot make the panes of glass thicker, and I cannot produce the money to replace all the windows in an attractive manner. The only thing I can do is go back to where I started, which is with huge heavy drapes back on the windows, which I don't want to do (uninspired and unwanted action).

As soon as I frame my reality in dream terms, I can begin to see the absurdity in it...not from a practical, world-action perspective, but from a LOA perspective. I want something that I basically view as impossible to get. Now that I am conscious of this, I can work on becoming conscious of all the limiting beliefs/resistances I hold in this situation (the shadow work! Shadow work and releasing resistance/limiting beliefs are one and same process, one just sounds more dramatic than the other!) and the situation will resolve itself in whatever way it does.

One does not need to searching through legends and myths and the bible in order to find the answer to what a dream (ultimately one's reality) means. To 'dream' your reality removes the middleman of symbols...symbols that are standing in for other symbols, and takes you directly to the symbols right in front of you. This is when you have the insights and journey OF Carl Jung (the journey of all the Greats, whoever they are to you) instead of filtering your own world THROUGH Carl Jung's personal journey. A much more direct (and effective IMO) approach to cleaning up one's life!

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For Marin 9/20/17

Marin, you have it exactly right. There is a word that makes much sense to me in this regard: "Meta". Which in me I understand as "about the thing, rather than of the thing." When I have a dream, the dream character does not question the dream, even if it's absurd, because it's IN the dream. Only the dreamer, upon awakening, can question, and pass judgements. Here I add that I know nothing about and have never experienced lucid dreaming...except that by the description of lucid dreaming, as I've heard others describe their experiences, that is more how I experience my waking life...more like a lucid dream (at times, not all the time).

So treating life like a dream...the JMA that wants new windows (and other things) will just try and figure out how to get new windows, or accept that there is none to have, or they exist but are out of reach, or whatever. The wanter of new windows cannot get them in the dream as it is, because the dream  is not really about windows (although it seems like that to the dream character!!!), it's about that it is possible to want impossible things. A shadow idea. 

That the windows are just pageantry or setup is clear, they are neutral in and of themselves. Another owner of this house might decide the only value here is the view, and tear the house down. To build a mansion of their dreams, or recreate the Bat Cave, or maybe instead construct a yurt or two and have goats and chickens. Someone else might like the drapes because privacy is what they value most, or because they dig vintage things and the drapes are old silk, or install heating and cooling systems so functional that the outside climate makes absolutely no difference to the inner. 

To the Self, or Inner Being, what is wanted is to transcend this shadow vibration of "I want what is impossible, therefore, I cannot have what I want." This is a terrible idea. Yet it exists in me. The windows (and other things) symbolize this idea! Indeed, since I've  recognized it like I have, earlier today, I've felt very uncomfortable, maybe even a little bit terrified. I have been aware of this belief before, but never at this level. Another eat-the-shadow freak show! I get very fearful when I see how I am boxed in by my own beliefs!

What happens next, that, I cannot say! Maybe I will move, maybe the money will show up, maybe the house will catch fire or be eaten by termites and insurance will build another, maybe the movie industry will film here and need to put in new windows for their creation...I cannot say but I know the conflict will be resolved, one way or another. 

Well, maybe I can say! A recent happening, in the last two weeks: I've had a property for sale, for not a long time, but long enough that I was getting very stressed that I'd received no offers. ~75% of the feedback I'd received through real estate reviews said "Too high a price". And those were the nice ones! The positive feedback I'd had was very little.

This brought up something which I can only describe as doing a Focus Block in real life. I 'lost it' emotionally and ranted and raved (to no one of consequence) about how everything was wrong, what I'd done wrong, what realtors had done wrong, etc. This lasted almost an entire day...but when it was over, even though nothing had changed, I hadn't fixed anything that I felt was wrong, I felt very peaceful, like it didn't really matter anymore. Nothing had changed, except that nothing was wrong now. 

The next day---.the VERY NEXT DAY---an offer that was nearly full price came in, which I accepted immediately. But it had contingencies. Which brought up new fears. I focus-blocked those, and within a week, those contingencies were removed, and a sooner closing date was established.

I now have a contract closing date of less than a month. I know if anything goes 'wrong', it's just another opportunity to release something that has limited me. This life is a partnership between Self and  humanity, or me and Higher Me, or however! Self wants to transcend shadow vibration. Me wants what I want. Where we align is in joy, harmony, ease. The sooner I let go of what is negative, things shift for me, in a way that is pure and good and harms no one and seems to benefit all. 

I hope this can help in some way! I love that you are enjoying your life and all the inspired action that is arising for you! 

Addendum 10/5/17for monk and Antheia

Hi monk and Antheia, these are my thoughts today, I hope they are clear enough! :)

"Can you unpack what you mean by "work FROM the dream"?"

It's the nature of consciousness to identify with the highest level of awareness as truth or reality.

So when you have a dream, while you're dreaming, you're the dream character and the dream circumstances are reality. It's only when you identify with a higher level of consciousness as reality that a dream stops being reality and becomes a dream. Reality is very flexible, but it's always experienced as reality. 

When I say 'work from the dream', I mean stop seeing reality as reality. Not from an action perspective, but from an internal perspective. Look at everything in your life as a symbol for something that is more real than reality, the way your dreams are symbols for your waking reality. See what is behind reality. See what makes reality, reality. It's incredible, and yet so very ordinary. 

If you give me an example of something that seems impossible to you, I can help zone in on the symbolism. I'm not an intellectual so I do better with personal examples rather than the abstract, just because I don't think in the abstract, it's like translating to a foreign language in which I'm not so fluent! 

"Can you detail the process of confronting your blocks? What do you do once you notice you want something impossible? It seems that most of my resistance is ultimately in this category."

I see blocks/resistances as actual rocks or boulders that I'm wanting to get through to the other side. If you imagine this as a real life scenario, it doesn't make any sense to go through the rock. As Jed McKenna would say "This is kind of dumb." Climb up, climb over, go around, dig under, fly over! This is what 'normal' people do and it's perfectly sensible.

If you listen to people, like eavesdrop at a cafe, you will hear how they avoid looking at resistances. It's a very efficient system. Everyone has excuses and reasons why things don't work out for them. IOW, they've answered their own pain with a particular fact. Which settles it. "The rich just take advantage of the poor and get richer". "The government won't allow this". "My religion prohibits this." "You can't always get the person you want." "You have to work hard to survive." "People just get sick, it's a fact of life." "You can't live forever." "I had a bad childhood so I can't ever be normal". "I didn't go to college." "I went to college but studied the wrong thing." "I'm fat." "I'm not attractive." "I'm sick." "I'm poor." "It's God's will." "Life is suffering." It just goes on and on and on. And none of it matters. 

When you go through the blocks, what you are doing is finally allowing consciousness to expand, instead of perpetuating what everyone else knows is true. You know the cliche "history repeats itself?" That's because everyone accepts reasons and excuses for their own specific pain. When you understand this concept, your mind is blown forever. And you realize the great power of the individual to change the entire world, just by letting their mind change.

What you really want is good for the entire world and it's available. No mater what it is. But you won't realize this until you go through boulders. You don't even really know what you want until you go through the boulders! You're stripping away appearance and form (like the stage setting) and getting to the real desire. I promise you this does not mean that you will end up with less than what you want, or all form will disappear and you will be left in nothingness. But going through a block always transforms you, and you will not be the same on the other side as you were at the beginning. What makes sense and what you want right now, may become nonsensical later on. But you will never have to settle! 

Let's take the theme of attractiveness, since it's one that comes up a lot on the LOA forums, and everyone experiences it in one way or another. The reason people want to be attractive is two-fold: 1) They feel unattractive, and they don't like the feeling, and want it to go away, and 2) They view attractiveness as essentially money, that it's a currency that is supposed to get them what they REALLY want, which is to feel validated, desired, powerful, magnetic, satisfied, secure, etc. If you imagine being on the proverbial desert island, with nobody else, any desire to be attractive completely ceases to exist, because in that context, attractiveness ceases to have any meaning. 

If you want to be attractive, but you look in the mirror and know or feel that you aren't, in shadow work, instead of doing anything to be more attractive, you go into the unattractiveness. Where is this unattractiveness? Your face and body are just an arrangement of features, until you give them meaning. What does your face mean? How does it feel to see your face? What does your body mean? How does it feel to see or experience your body? Do you look at your face and body through somebody else's eyes? Are your beliefs about your body really your own? If they are, they'll feel good. If they hurt, you are looking at your body through a meaning that is no longer right for you...consciousness has expanded and is waiting for you to catch up. 

Remember, this is a boulder, and you're going through it, so you won't go through the whole thing at once, and there will be a point where there is just darkness and no light because you are right in the middle of it, too far away from your old excuses and rationalizations and compensations and not close enough to the light of clarity. 

Alan Watts said something to the effect that confusion is the result of not going deep or far enough into something. Jed McKenna just says "Further."

Hardly anybody does this. People feel the unattractiveness and then they make haste to change their appearance in some way, some more extreme than others, but it's always action. Or get someone or some circumstance that validates that they ARE attractive. Or give up on being attractive (settling). Or try to develop other qualities that will compensate for the unattractiveness. The possible run-arounds are as infinite as the individuals.  

And it's all bypassing the boulder "unattractiveness". It definitely works, at least somewhat,  and it makes total sense. Much more sense that going through the boulder!

Until you finally realize, in another circumstance, that the boulder is still there. Waiting for you to hit up against it again and again.  You will be feeling powerful and magnetic and then you will know someone who is more attractive, and you will watch them getting what you want, and then you'll do even more to be attractive. Or someone you desire will not see your attractiveness and so you realize your currency is not adequate. Or many people give up in hopelessness and treat their bodies in a way that doesn't have appreciation for it, and consequently attract more circumstances where their body and unattractiveness are reinforced for them. 

In all cases, the body and face, the appearance, the behavior, the personality is seen as the problem to be overcome. Or the 'laziness' of "not doing anything about it!" NO! What matters is the meaning you have placed upon your appearance.  Or more specifically, the shadow side of the meaning, which is what is causing you pain. And you feel pain because consciousness wants to expand, and is pushing up against this boulder, and wants nothing more to go through it, if you will allow it. It's expanding eventually anyway, resistance is ultimately futile, so the sooner you surrender to it, the faster it all goes away. 

This can be really difficult at first, until you learn to trust your own experience and desires. Because the entire world appears to be supporting your painful beliefs as fact. Of course...this is why you believe what you do. But the world itself is just made up of individuals who all hold beliefs. When enough people believe something it becomes 'fact'. If you are called to your shadow, you will challenge internally every single fact that you know, wheresoever you find pain. 

Substitute any idea you currently have that is uncomfortable for the "unattractiveness" example and the process is still exactly the same.

"What do you do if you work through the blocks and they don't 'clear'. Like you are in a hole, you keep climbing out and then just falling back in again?"

Further!

"How do you keep going to work and interacting with people when you are in the middle of jumping into the fire? I'm not sure I am ready to shave my head, wear robes and beg for food "

I get this! I have zero desire to experience a life of sacrifice too!

Go into what is the actual problem you are having. Pretend you are dreaming.  Write out whatever is bothering you as if you dreamed your reality last night.

"I dreamed I was in a world where everyone was sleep walking and brain washed and I was awake, but still doing the same things the brain washed and sleep walking people were doing, and I couldn't stop, because even though I was awake, there didn't seem to be any other option available. It was like I was stuck in a world that I knew wasn't real, but I couldn't escape it so I kept just doing the same things, but I was awake! And when I tried to talk to everyone else, they acted like I was insane and I felt so lonely and like it's all so useless, but like there was no other option!" 

I don't know if this is at all your symbolism, but it's a place to start! If you start anywhere, the whole thing unravels eventually. 

Dreams are insane, we all know this, but reality can't be seen as insane, because then where is reality? By framing reality in dream terms, you allow yourself to realize the absurdity of reality, per your own desires and blocks.

I hope this helps you both go further! Expanding consciousness, not on spiritual God terms, but in real life ways, is the most sublime experience I could possibly imagine. It's a merging of the spiritual and pshyiscal so that they are just one thing, and ideas like human and God cease to mean anything. There's this center where it all comes together, and moving through life from there...well, It's the best thing EVER. :)

Joy and expansion to you always!

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Addendum for @monk 10/24/17

Hi monk, you are doing wonderful, IMO.

The more you can internalize the crazy, the meaninglessness, the brainwashing you see in people 'out there', the faster you resolve the unresolved in yourself. Always remember that those brainwashed people and bizarre cultural systems are just a symbol for you. They're graciously telling you that you've reached a point where consciousness, you (the self) is ready to expand beyond the current common facts or beliefs of the time and place you are experiencing.

An interesting example, which I hope makes sense because it's what is coming to my mind: Last night I was surfing around TV for something to watch, and I found a documentary on monogamy vs polygamy, well not really polygamy, but...sex with other people while in a primary committed relaitonship. An open relationship. They (the film maker) wanted to have all the perceived intimacy and support and love that comes with a monogamous relationship, but wanted to separate sexual behavior from it, in order to continue to have sex with other people.

So they made a film! It was very one-sided.  It delivered experts who said that monogamy wasn't normal or natural (and why this was true). The counter argument came only from the pressure perceived to be from family and culture and the at-first-reluctant partner. The film maker was essentially making a film to justify their own desires about which they felt so uncomfortable...because they deeply wanted to be part of the social order. And so the film was about how to change the feelings of the partner, how to pathologize current social beliefs, make the family and culture 'wrong'...just so they could feel better about the feeling that "giving up sex with everyone else to just have it with one person felt like a trap". Woah. Stop! That is the interesting part...and, that's not what the movie was about, alas. 

Yeah, I did find the documentary idiotic and boring. Oh so much more interesting if explored why they wanted to have sex with everyone to whom they were attracted, why they felt trapped if they couldn't, why they wanted to make someone 'special' to be with them at home, but wanted freedom to share orgasms with everybody....but not their home! Now that would have been fascinating.

It's the war that goes on forever. People who want to make sex sacred, and people who want to make it as casual as going out for dinner. Both sides are trying to control sexual expression in others. To make themselves feel normal per what they desire, or fear!  Billions of people who just want what they want, but don't know why, or what they are really seeking. To really understand this...That is the prize! Like now...if you have the awareness of insanity outside of you, you get the opportunity to release the insanity inside you. And then the world changes, and you attract people and circumstances that are what you really want. It's the most amazing magic trick except that it's not magic at all, it's super ordinary. 

To a person who wants to get really clear, you have to go completely inwards. And when you do that, it's true that others begin to seem idiotic and insane in their projecting and chasing and denying and hustling behavior. But that's just because you are resisting seeing the boulder in you, that everyone else represents. Like writing this right now, I see my own level of projection in some areas. I can see there are still more boulders that I'm still projecting onto someone or something. I see the filmmaker's projection and lack of self awareness...thus I become aware of my own. It's funny! The idiots and the insane become my wisest teachers.

Eating your shadow requires rejection of society on an internal level, not an external level (unless you feel inspired). You can still go to work or do what you do, have relationships, be a jerk or a people pleaser, be a meth addict or hedge fund manager or both at the same time...whatever you are doing, who you are being...just be it with consciousness. Everything you do, whether you judge it good or bad...do it with consciousness, be aware of what you are really seeking, what you really desire, and to the best that you can to be true to your own desires vibrationally, leave the rest of the world out of it. You will get where you want to be so much faster if you give up bringing anyone or anything with you, or trying to change 'out there'. Just change 'in here'.

I had to go through an experience where I saw that the entire world is hell. Not like hell...it is hell. Everything about it. The only reason I didn't see it before was because I thought there was a separate hell, as in, things could get worse. But I began to see that was the trap itself...why I didn't recognize I was in hell right now. You don't see that you're in hell if you judge someplace or something else as worse than where you are.

What is hell but a place where you have to cling to experiences of goodness and hope that nothing snatches it away from you? What is hell but a life where you have to do things you don't want to do, just so that you can go on existing? What is hell but having to be nice to people you really don't enjoy, just so you can not be alone? What is hell but a place where someone you love can leave you or not love you back, where they get to choose what they want no matter how much it hurts you? What is hell but a place where you can be born into a body that is feared or despised by others, or seen as something to be possessed by other people, because it's so beautiful? What is hell but beauty and vigor that disintegrates with time? What is hell but to have the ability to want something you cannot have? What is hell but being in a world where you are not valued for being yourself? What is hell but a life where you have to learn to 'manifest' good experiences and things? What is hell but a life that is not really your own? What is hell but the idea of God itself, an entity with a will other than your own, and in whose honor you endure great pain and anguish, in hopes of a future reward? OMG...Life itself is hell. 

Well, when I had that realization..that I was, actually in hell right now...that was a huge shift for me. Once you know you're in hell, that in and of itself changes hell. I mean, if you're actually in hell...doesn't everything make sense...doesn't your whole life make sense? It's the denial that you're in hell that causes all the trouble. :)

That led to more realizations....mostly about judgement and thoughts. Now I can't think that way about my life. And that's an interesting point to make...when I resolve something, it just disappears. It's like the "who am I" or "I am separate" spiritual stuff...it's not that I know who I am or that I am separate or not...it's that this stuff never ever occurs to me, and even as I'm typing it, it feels nonsensical. I can't access that belief or query or confusion anymore, the question doesn't exist for me, except as a memory that once, it seemed pretty important. 

Right now I feel like my life is a playground. Things keep working out without me even doing anything, by that I mean I don't really do things I don't want to do. Things keep evolving. But not everything. I want two people back in my life very much, and there is zero sign that either of them are coming back. But I lean into that topic whenever it arises, and I know that I want an opening for a reconnection to happen. I don't know what will happen. I know that I feel a lack. I have not yet been able to get through this boulder. But every day, things change just a little bit. There is always progress in some way, if you are open to how you really, truly feel. 

The expansion never ends. How could consciousness stop expanding? Lean into your anger, lean into your disappointment and weariness, lean into the confusion, lean into those boulders and know that you may never be completely clear, but the most joy is in the expansion, not the manifestation. I was talking to a friend the other day who is not spiritual consciously, but really interesting and open to themselves. So I was talking about how the manifestation is not as good as the expansion that occurs before the manifestation. And they compared it to sex...they said the split second before sex occurs but it is realized that it's going to happen, is the absolute best part for them. It made me laugh but it's so true! That final expansion into whatever is resisting your manifestation...that is better than the manifestation itself.

So lean in. You are doing really great! You don't need anybody or anything. The self that you really are---consciousness itself--- is expanding against a current mindset. That's all. The discomfort, negative feelings, is just the resistance. It's not about getting anywhere, except letting yourself expand against the contraction of 'you', that incredible network of contradictions! :)

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Addendum for @Antheia 10/26/17

I'm so glad you're looking at the EGS because to me it's an invaluable benchmark. Dr. Hawkins has something similar, but there are far too many choices, and it becomes like trying to pick the perfect blue paint hue from 1000 paint chips rather than a lovely curated selection of 10 shades. And Richard Dotts is brilliant with his "zero point" scale, but that can get complicated too: "Am I actually at zero or am I nine degrees northwest of zero??" 

IME, the most difficult part of climbing the EGS is the neighborhood you're in right now, 10-8, Frustration, Irritation, Impatience, Pessimism, and Boredom. Superficially, it doesn't make sense that higher up on the scale might be experienced as more difficult than lower. However, at the lower levels, there is a natural enervation that occurs. When you go up the emotional scale, and are nearing the border where you will get into emotions that don't feel negative, but you're still not there, what you're experiencing is the energy that was suppressed further down. It's more of the energy that exists in the higher, positive levels, but still packaged with negative emotions. So it can feel much more intolerable. And if something is intolerable, you don't like it. If you don't like something, it seems endless. Essentially, you have energy combined with negativity, and that can feel less tolerable than grief or despair, because it seems like you should be able to "DO SOMETHING TO GET RID OF THIS." 

I read somehwere that when extremely depressed persons start on anti depressants, there can be an increase in statistical suicides, and this is attributed to the fact that the person 'felt better'. IOW, they didn't feel good, they just suddenly had the energy to do something about their negative feelings. Suicide is not exactly about grief or despair, it's actually a kind of mechanical reaction, a fail-safe protector to the intolerable feeling "I can't cope with this feeling anymore." If you're experiencing an energy surge from being higher up on the scale, but still in the negative zone neighborhood, it can feel endless and like it is truly beyond the scope of your being to endure any more of it. The good news is that that itself is just a feeling, and feelings---all feelings---can be tolerated, and seen through, despite what a thought might indicate. Look how far you've climbed...don't you want to come just a little further? Because it gets so much easier just a little higher up. Yes!

This isn't about manifesting. It's never really about manifesting...because every single being is always manifesting. Every single being is a blend of vibrations that is constantly being translated into thoughts, feelings, and forms, literally all that can be experienced. If there is experience, there is manifestation. Every moment that you are aware, you are experiencing your true vibrational self as you are right now. Via what you are experiencing. If you look and see stuck, or lack (like me and my friends with whom I want to reconnect), or unhappy job, or whatever you don't like, whatever doesn't' feel good...that is only there because vibrationally, you were a match for it first. The mirror cannot reflect something that isn't there already. 

You're really aware of the vibrational part of you that is producing the unhappy job, and whatever else you don't like. The hard part perhaps is this: You truly do not want the unhappy job to change in order to bring you your relief. You do not want this. This will further anchor any belief that 'out there' is the cause, and not the effect.  What you want, truly, is to find relief without your job needing to be any different. This sets you up with power you will not believe! The whole idea of manifesting as something to do or learn will begin to disappear, you won't need it, it happens naturally, because you already are manifesting. Everyone is. It's not magic, even though it can feel magical, especially at first, and it's not anything you need to get good at. You already are the most masterful of master manifestor, because you exist, and your vibrational existence is transformed into experience, so you can know yourself. All you have to do is expand. Right now you feel stuck. Expand into the stuckness.

If you look on the EGS, you'll see that contentment is the first of the non negative feelings. Look around your life for things that you correlate with contentment. Maybe a favorite show, or pizza on Friday nights, your tennis shoes, whatever. Look for those things and then feel contentment. Whatever negative feelings that arise for you, lean into those. But keep reaching for contentment, by that I mean, keep looking for the symbols that are already manifest physically, and let those start to become equal in focus to the stickiness. What you focus on increases, meaning, the more you notice something, the more of it there is to notice. So consciously select contentment to focus on.

Understanding and being extremely familiar with the Vortex/peace of God/Zero point/the shimmering darkness/the self is super important. Not because it produces anything...it doesn't. It can't. It never changes. That's what makes it so great! I used to say "being in the Vortex makes you happy." I would not say that anymore. The feeling of happiness is a byproduct of being aware of it, but what the Vortex really does is make you aware of space. This is your connection with the infinite. If you think of negative feelings or blocks as a volcano, the Vortex provides you with the space to let the volcano do it's thing, to spend itself and transform. Without space, the heat and pressure of the volcano (negative feelings) is overwhelming and you feel as though you will be destroyed. With space, the volcano happens from a distance, in a manner of speaking, and you can even see the great beauty in the fiery destruction. 

When you become aware of the infinite, you become the space in which everything arises. And if you let it, your blocks will arise, and with space, you have the ability to move through those blocks, because you know you're actually very safe. You are part of infinity...what is more safe than that? :)

Get really personal. More than you can imagine possible. Get to know yourself. Play games with yourself, for no other reason than just to feel better. When you're at your work with difficult situations and people, imagine yourself as a traveling anthropologist observing an undiscovered tribe. Pretend you're super rich and were totally bored with a life of luxury and wanted to know what it was like to have to work and be a 'regular person'. Pretend this is the greatest experiment in human nature. Because it is. It's your experiment. Play with it and see how it evolves!

I hope this helps, and I wish you joy! You're doing great, and everything in your life is running right on time. :)

Edited to add:

Becoming the Phoenix Egyptian Book of the Dead

“I flew straight out of heaven, a mad bird full of secrets. I came into being as I came into being. I grew as I grew. I changed as I change. My mind is fire, my soul fire. The cobra wakes and spits fire in my eyes. I rise through ochre smoke into black air enclosed in a shower of stars. I am what I have made. I am the seed of every god, beautiful as evening, hard as light. I am the last four days of yesterday, four screams from the edges of earth – beauty, terror, truth, madness – the Phoenix on his pyre.

In a willow I make my nest of flowers and snakes, sandalwood and myrrh. I am waiting for eternity. I’m waiting for four hundred years to pass before I dance on flame, turn this desert to ash, before I rise, waking from gold and purple dreams into the season of god. I will live forever in the fire spun from my own wings. I’ll suffer burns that burn to heal. I destroy and create myself like the sun that rises burning from the east and dies burning in the west. To know the fire, I become the fire. I am power. I am light. I am forever. On earth and in heaven I am. This is my body, my work. This is my deliverance.

The heat of transformation is unbearable, yet change is necessary. It burns up the useless, the diseased. Time is a cool liquid; it flows away like a river. We shall see no end of it. Generation after generation, I create myself. It is never easy. Long nights I waited, lost in myself, considering the stars. I wage a battle against darkness, against my own ignorance, my resistance to change, my sentimental love for my own folly. Perfection is a difficult task. I lose and find my way over again. One task done gives rise to others. There is no end to the work left to do. That is harsh eternity. There is no end to becoming. I live forever striving for perfection. I praise the moment I die in fire for the veils of illusion burn with me. I see how hard we strive for Truth, and once attained how easily we forget it. I hold that fire as long as I can. My nose fills with the smell of seared flesh, the acrid smoke of death, so that years from now I might look on that scar and remember how it was to hold the light, how it was to die and come again radiant as light walking on sand.

I change and change again, generation after generation. I find anguish than peace. I am satisfied with my birth and the faith to which it led me. I do not regret the discomforts and terrors of my mortality any more than I regret the company of angels. I have entered fire. I become invisible; yet I breathe in the flow of sun, in the eyes of children, in the light that animates the white cliffs at dawn. I am the God in the world in everything, even in darkness. If you have not seen me there, you have not looked. I am the fire that burns you, that burns in you. To live is to die a thousand deaths, but there is only one fire, one eternity.”

– The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day

Hi :)

From the bottom of my heart, I say: ACT!

But there's this one little thing, this one little detail:

Act because you want to act;

Act because you love what you want to do;

Act because if you do it you will feel better, even if you don't get all the stuff you wanted;

Do it because you love action above all things;

And never, never, take score of what you have, because that is a "killer".

Know thyself and make your choice, and take the responsability for your actions - or lack of action, if that is your choice.

More and more I have the impression that these entities are talking about something they "believe in", not something they have "experienced" in the physical world. Get the difference?

After studying this material for a while, comes the time to follow our own Inner Being and our own Inner Guidance - after all, what is general, for the general public, cannot serve all people, different individuals, unique souls.

At some point, we've got to go back in the world, like the hero from the legend, and face the consequences of our own choices.

These entities can teach, but they cannot choose for us - and, anyway, we should not allow anyone to choose for us. How can we take responsability for what we choose when we only choose based on what they say we should choose? If it doesn't work, it's not their fault, it's ours! We lack the courage to do what is in our heart to do because we are afraid of not manifesting stuff.

Is manifesting stuff more important than living, than playing the game, as everybody else is doing? Playing the game is what Life is about - at least for some -, and if we do not play, we may be dead and not even know it. :) Great post, my friend.

@VitoriaRegia has summed my similar answer up.

"Act because you want to act."

If you are coming from the position of uneasiness, of, "I don't have what I want yet, and this isn't good so I better act to get it."- this frazzled state of being will produce more unease, and will cause a resurrection to new action, but will then produce more frazzlement, and the cycle carries on.

I don't desire to argue at all. Because there are times where an explosion and infinite action process is the most fun process involved.

As a one dosage fix all approach to desires and life, this approach of "massive action no-matter what" does not agree with me.

There was a period of my life when I was attempting to come across a new job. The amount of action and effort I put into that approach was Herculean, day in and day out. It produced results. But the result produced were not to my satisafaction.

The "all out on action no matter what" approach to every single thing in life, no matter the subject of time of day, is a surest way to heart attack. What are you escaping from? What is so desperate to get and attain that it now becomes a thirsty necessity to hunt down and massacre with bold action? This is the way of the murdurer.

The enjoyer and spectator, the master of Wu Wei, will sometimes appear to work like a slave, and sometimes appear to be a passive victim. Their state of being of peace and harmony and trust in life is what makes the subtle difference as is that which cannot be conveyed to outsiders.

In my experience, the all out dose on action is always designed to prove to others what a worthy soul I am. It is belief loyalty. This old belief of no pain no gain will either kill you, or otherwise, you ought to kill that specific belief. Drop all the suitcases that are too heavy.