Rebecca used Site Build It! to create her website. Since many people are curious about what kind of real-world results can be achieved with Site Build It!, I asked her if she’d be willing to share specific traffic and income figures from her business’ first year online, and thankfully she agreed. I think you’ll find her results encouraging.

If you aren’t familiar with lucid dreaming, a lucid dream is a dream where you become consciously aware that you’re dreaming. With practice you can learn to do all sorts of amazing things in lucid dreams — fly like Superman, wield a light saber, jump around like Trinity in The Matrix, create dream characters out of thin air, move objects by thought, defeat the Kobayashi Maru, and lots more. Erin and I are both experienced lucid dreamers.

Enjoy the interview…

1. Why did you create World of Lucid Dreaming?

I wanted to get out of the rat race. When I left school I fell into the financial sector and before long, I found myself working a stressful city Editor job. I told myself it was worth it because it stretched my mind and the money would go a long way. By my mid-20s I came to realize that life isn’t about creating stress and drama, so I emigrated to the tranquil shores of New Zealand with my Kiwi partner.

I knew straight away I wasn’t going to rejoin the rat race here in Auckland. So I decided to become self employed, trading on my writing skills. It was a much better lifestyle working for myself, but the income was sporadic. When the credit crisis turned the industry upside down, it put the nail in the coffin for my investment writing. I decided to find a new niche.

That’s when I heard about Site Build It and discovered I could build a profitable online business based on my own life experience, no matter how little technical knowledge I possessed. And so World of Lucid Dreaming was born from my desire to be financially secure on my own terms, to work a job I am passionate about, and to be free from corporate slavery.

2. Can you share some stats on how your site is doing in terms of traffic and income generation? How did these figures change over time?

My site went live in June 2008 with 20 or so content pages and averaged 76 visitors per day. By July, it was time to start monetizing that traffic. I added my first two income streams: Google AdSense (which I would later drop for more lucrative affiliate partners) and Mind Sync (a seller of MP3s which puts your brain in an optimum state for lucid dreaming). I made $60 that first month. That may not seem like much but to me it meant my website was a viable income generator. Site Build It worked!

After that, World of Lucid Dreaming grew quickly. Site Build It warned me about “the hump” – but it never came. I did everything by the book: writing quality articles, putting my own personality into the site, building an online presence, and all the rest. It helped that I loved every minute – I was creating something new and unique and if I did it right, I would never have to work for anyone else again. I couldn’t ask for much more motivation.

By early 2009, Alexa had ranked my website in the top 0.3% globally. My average daily visitors had climbed to 750 (more than 20,000 hits per month). That’s some snowball effect in just over six months. SBI showed me how to monetize those visitors and in the month of January my monthly income topped $1,000 – a landmark event for me. I knew that if I could earn $1k from my website, I could earn $2k, $3k, or $4k a month. Even if I maxed out the potential for World of Lucid Dreaming, I could create another website in exactly the same way. I was delighted.

[SP: These are excellent results, Rebecca, and you have every reason to be optimistic about future growth. By comparison it took a year for StevePavlina.com to pass $1K per month in revenue, with Google Adsense being the main source of income. One year later it hit $41K in one month. That was obviously an exciting year.

Once you get the hang of traffic building and monetization, rapid growth is possible. The key is to be consistent and keep doing what's working, while continuing to experiment to test new ideas.]

3. What specific strategies do you use to generate income from your website? Which ones have been the most effective for you?

I currently make all of my income through affiliate programs. Once I find a good value product – usually one that directly aids lucid dreaming – I test it out and write a review on my website. I use my unique affiliate link so I earn money when people decide to buy it through my site. Sometimes I can offer special discounted prices which adds further value to my readers. I raise interest in these product reviews by posting banner ads around the rest of the site. I’ve even begun designing my own graphics which is fun – the creative process never ends for me!

I’m signed up with about a dozen affiliate programs for World of Lucid Dreaming. These include brainwave entrainment recordings, “how to” books and videos, and natural herbs to increase awareness and dream recall. My first e-book (Lucid Fiction) is underway and should be selling on site by July. I also plan to distribute this via affiliate marketplaces like ClickBank, so that other webmasters can do the selling and help me reach a wider audience.

My best selling products are brainwave entrainment MP3s created by affiliate partners. Binaural beats and hypnosis really helped my early quest for lucid dreaming and these MP3s have numerous other applications as well. Through my affiliate partners, you can buy MP3s for deep meditation, astral projection, out of body experiences, ESP, remote viewing, chakra healing, manifestation, and so much more. The seller tracks all links from my site for up to 90 days, so I earn profits from any future sales too.

Crucially, I don’t stock or sell any tangible goods myself. An online business is about making money with minimal ongoing costs. A traditional business might have to fund staff salaries, growing office space, wholesale goods, storage, packaging, posting, and resolving customer queries. In contrast, an online business like mine can generate high margin profits simply by recommending products and taking away a commission. Once I publish a product recommendation, the profits come in on autopilot, earning me passive income 24/7.

[SP: I discovered that a similar strategy works well for me too. Today most of my income is from sales commissions from product recommendations. When you have high traffic and can generate many sales for your partners, you can also negotiate custom deals for higher commissions and better terms, especially if your partners have strong back-end sales and don't need to see a high profit on the first sale.]

4. Why did you use Site Build It! to create your business? What has it done for you?

I chose Site Build It because it takes away the scary technical bits about website building, and leaves me in charge of the creative stuff. Before World of Lucid Dreaming began, words like RSS, pings, trackbacks and SEO meant nothing to me. The idea of starting an online business was all too overwhelming and not worth the risks associated with technical failure.

Site Build It virtually eliminated all that risk, because it told me exactly what to do, day by day, in order to build a profitable website. First I used the brainstorming tool to find a profitable niche, based on a number of my own passions and life experiences. Then I planed my site structure, researching article ideas with the optimum keywords. Then I designed my custom template with SBI’s point-and-click tools (although I would later get a re-design by Cre8ve Media). After that, I learned how to write for the web, how to pre-sell, how to create value, how to monetize visitors, and many more tricks for success.

I could go on about Site Build It for ages! Suffice to say that if you’re thinking about starting a website or blog – and you don’t already have the extensive knowledge required to succeed in online business – then make this a serious consideration. During the 10-day course I learned everything I needed to know in order to succeed. SBI simplified the whole process and even outsourced the most technical bits for me, like submitting my site to Search Engines, or pinging them when I posted a new article. And since I was committed to the project, it guaranteed my success. So Site Build It is not merely a blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger. It’s a complete guide to successful online business. (And it caters to internet dummies!)

5. Why did you select lucid dreaming as your site’s main focus? What related topics does your site address?

I discovered lucid dreaming when I was 14 and have been consciously exploring my dreams ever since. But I wasn’t what you’d call a natural lucid dreamer – I had to go through a process of learning, making lots of mistakes along the way. And that gave me tremendous insight. So now I know what rookie mistakes people make and how to avoid them. I know the coolest things to try in your first lucid dreams. I know what reality checks work better than others. I understand the potential of lucid dreaming and how it can affect our lives. That is my edge: inside knowledge – and passion.

So when Site Build It told me to write a list of all my hobbies, interests and areas of expertise, lucid dreaming was pretty high up. I also considered making a site about stock market investing as well as numerous travel related sites. I plugged all these potentials into Site Build It and each niche idea was given a score, based on the extent of my knowledge, passion, popularity and monetization potential.

Lucid dreaming came out top – and from then on I knew I couldn’t go wrong with it. Most bloggers don’t even consider this kind of concept examination, they just pick a topic that “feels right” and start writing. Unfortunately, not all niches are a good idea; they may be oversaturated or too obscure. Lucid dreaming is perfect for me because I am very enthusiastic about it and the concept is timeless – meaning people will still be searching for “how to lucid dream” in 5, 10, or 20 years’ time.

What’s more, the concept of lucid dreaming stems from a host of other subjects. I can write on a range of subjects while staying true to my niche, including human consciousness, dreams, psychology, self awareness, altered states of consciousness, meditation, astral projection, out of body experiences, dream yoga and Tibetan philosophies. While I fulfilled my original site plan some months ago, I am still struck by new article ideas all the time. It’s a wonderful topic of exploration.

[SP: It's awesome to create an online business based on something you're passionate about because then you have even more reasons to "play." For example, I can now justify my crazy growth experiments as research.

You raised a key point when you mentioned timeless content. If you focus on creating timeless content, your archives will retain their value. If you create mostly time-bound content, your archives become obsolete as they age. It's best to create assets that won't depreciate.

It's great that you picked a niche that gives you room to grow horizontally. You can also go vertical by producing your own books, home study courses, DVDs, teleseminars, webinars, and even live events, should you so desire.]

6. What are some key lessons you learned during your first year of running World of Lucid Dreaming?

The single most important lesson that World of Lucid Dreaming has taught me is this: anything is possible. I never dreamed that I could earn a living this way – I always thought that real money came from a stressful office job and you couldn’t have one without the other. While this thought was always niggling at the back of my mind, I stayed true to the lessons of Site Build It. I kept moving forward, delighted by the little things that showed my site was becoming a success. Too many people give up on SBI because they get bored or lose motivation. I couldn’t let that happen to me. And now that I’m earning my living from it, doing something I love every day, I have gained proof that you CAN have your cake and eat it.

I learned many new skills through Site Build It, like writing for the internet – something my job as an Editor never taught me. It’s a completely different way of relating to people. And it’s actually very easy. The ground rule is: Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). If you read my site you’ll see I’m hardly Shakespeare. I just write like I’m talking to a friend, and that’s all. SBI has a free e-book called Make Your Content Pre-Sell which explains this technique in detail. I think this is also what makes my site accessible to a broad audience – I have everyone from teenagers and retirees writing to me, and they all “get it”.

I also learned that I am not Wikipedia. I started out writing generic factual articles, indistinguishable from hundreds of other “how to” web pages. So I sat down with the SBI e-book on writing for the web, and I began injecting my own personality into my words, introducing real life experiences. It really brought the site to life, helping me connect with my readers better.

[SP: Something I learned in Toastmasters was the adage, "Make a point; tell a story." It's best if the stories are your own. This helps you create content that appeals to both left-brained and right-brained readers. Some people just want the straight-up information; others prefer to extract their own insights from stories.]

7. What have been the major contributing factors in making your online business successful?

Traffic, traffic, traffic! Without people landing on my website, it would be nothing. No-one would benefit from the value I’m creating, and in turn I wouldn’t benefit from their custom. It would be a 100% failure.

Thankfully, I learned how to generate plenty of free traffic through SBI’s techniques. I dabbled with Google AdWords (pay per click advertising) but without becoming a PPC guru, I had no hope. It was better to focus my efforts on free traffic techniques and that is where all of my website traffic comes from today.

I should add that you need to pick a high demand concept to begin with. Traffic doesn’t materialize out of nowhere; people have to be looking for you in the first place. Lucid dreaming has that strong demand, and catches the imagination of quite a broad spectrum of people. When I tell someone they can become self aware in their dreams – so that everything looks and feels as real as waking life – most people respond with “Really?? How!?”

That leads to the second advantage of my site concept. Everyone thinks lucid dreaming sounds awesome, but not many people can actually do it. I can tackle that with a “how to” approach on site and teach people what they want to know in order to improve their lives. Having that practical element encourages people to return to my site and learn the next step. It also opens plenty of doors for monetization.

Motivation is also a major contributor to success. I’m the type of person who has a great idea and gets really excited about it, but then gets bored because it takes too long to finish. I can’t tell you how many novels I’ve started writing and left off at chapter four! And so the concept of Site Build It is to give you a step-by-step framework without feeling overloaded, which is an enormous advantage. I could never give up when I had the next day’s instructions right in front of me. Ultimately, Site Build It made the difference between a barren two-page blog that I would delete a few months later, and a profitable online business that has changed my life.

8. What is some of the most popular content on your website? What value does it offer people?

Many people are keen to learn about brainwave entrainment and how it can help them improve their lives. I have several articles explaining how binaural beats work and reviewing my favorite CDs/MP3s. My readers trust my opinion because I only recommend products that have actually helped me achieve lucidity. I also make a lot of sales of other entrainment tracks like astral projection and meditation MP3s. This is excellent because practicing one often helps the other. People who meditate regularly (i.e. enter altered states of awareness on demand) improve their ability to relax deeply, visualize dream scenes, communicate with their inner voice, and question their self awareness. It’s ideal practice for lucid dreaming.

Another popular page is lucid dreaming techniques. These are all scientifically established methods of dream control, so I create value by explaining what works best for me and why. I also present the techniques in a user-friendly way – with no technical jargon or esoteric interpretations of the dream world. I haven’t found a free collection of lucid dreaming techniques like this anywhere else on the net. To get this kind of insight, you’d have to surf several different sites or buy a book on lucid dreaming. I give this all away for free to build further credibility with my readers.

[SP: This is a great example of creating value. Making ideas accessible can be a powerful benefit.]

9. You also have a second website called Improve Vision Naturally. Can you tell us about that site and how it’s been developing with traffic and monetization?

I was so excited about the success of World of Lucid Dreaming, I launched my second website, Improve Vision Naturally, in November 2008. I made it using all the principles of Site Build It, planning my site structure in advance, using effective pre-selling techniques, and putting my own personal experience into the site. I had been doing eye exercises to cure my nearsightedness earlier that year, so I already had a monetization strategy in mind – to sell the 30-day vision training course, Rebuild Your Vision.

The first month averaged 55 visitors per day and generated my first trickle of income – $32! Like World of Lucid Dreaming, it proved early on I had a concept that worked. Today, just over six months old, it generates $500 per month from one-off sales of Rebuild Your Vision and recurring monthly sales of Ocu Plus Formula eye vitamins. This website has so much potential but scaling up two websites at a time is proving a little too much for me. So I’ve decided to focus all my energies on World of Lucid Dreaming. In the meantime, Improve Vision Naturally continues to be an ongoing passive income earner.

[SP: The nice thing about having an online business is that it can generate income month after month even if it just sits there. There's no rule that says you have to work on it full-time.]

10. What are your expectations for the road ahead as online entrepreneur?

I want to advance both my websites as far as possible, creating value by translating my personal experiences and passing on the lessons I’ve learned. Now that I have taken the Site Build It concept and replicated it twice, I feel confident about my future earning potential in online business. I have ideas for my next infosite and am really excited by that. In time, I hope to have a fleet of SBI sites to my name, each delivering their individual income streams on autopilot. This will leave me free to pursue all the goals I want to in life, without worrying about having a steady 9 to 5 job or where that’s taking me.

[SP: Sounds like an awesome plan, Rebecca. There's no substitute for directing the course of your own life. :)]

11. What advice would you give to others who’d like to create their own online businesses?

Educate yourself in online business. Building a profitable website is not something you can do going in blind. So many people start a blog with the best intentions but when the traffic (or income) doesn’t appear, they let it fall by the wayside. If you want to start your own income generating website, I totally recommend Site Build It. You will learn everything you need to know to earn your living from it. In fact, if you follow the instructions and are motivated to keep going, I believe you can’t fail.

Lastly, check your personal beliefs about income generation. Most of my friends don’t know how I earn my living nowadays and if I told them I don’t think they’d believe me. It’s that kind of limiting belief that could break your spirit and make you give up before you’ve even started. Becoming self employed and earning a steady income from the internet is not an impossible dream. You just need to know how to succeed – and that’s exactly what Site Build It taught me.

[SP: As you discovered, some people have huge misconceptions about making money online. For example, people often get stuck fussing over the minor costs involved, trying to go as cheap as possible, but those who are succeeding think of those costs as no-brainer investments because they earn back many times more than what they spend. Perhaps the best advice is to learn from those who are already succeeding and ignore the opinions of those who've never done it.]

Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview, Rebecca. I’m sure many readers will find your success inspiring. I certainly do!

SP: If you want to learn more about lucid dreaming, World of Lucid Dreaming is an outstanding place to visit. The site is filled with great articles and tips to help you learn this amazing skill.

I also highly recommend using Site Build It! for building an online business. Rebecca certainly isn’t alone in achieving positive results with it. SBI is a great service that provides all the education, tools, and support you need to create a profitable online business. Watch the free video tour to learn how it works.

Where would you be today if you’d worked on your goals during the past year like Rebecca has done? Where do you want to be a year from now? It’s never too late to get started.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

On Sunday Erin and I attended Ron’s memorial service followed by a reception attended by his family, friends, and many other Las Vegas Toastmasters. I probably knew about half the people there.

Since Ron had such a deep and lasting impact on me, much more than he probably realized, I wanted to share some of what I learned from him, partly as a way of expressing my gratitude for the man that he was, and partly because I think it may inspire you to rethink a few things about your own life.

Mentor, coach, and friend

Ron was an incredible mentor and coach to many people. He was a DTM in Toastmasters International (the highest rank one can achieve) and was Toastmasters’ District 33 Mentor of the Year. He has attended and judged more speech contests than anyone I know. Just last weekend he shared his advice at a free workshop to help local speakers improve their performance in speech contests. Because he was so generous in giving of himself, he touched a lot of people’s lives, including mine.

I first met Ron in October 2004, just a few weeks after I started blogging. Ron came up to me after my first Division-level humorous speech contest (where I finished in 2nd place) and told me that he thought I showed great potential as a speaker and that I should consider joining an advanced Toastmasters club, a club that would challenge me more than my current club. I’d only been in Toastmasters for 4 months at that point, so I didn’t feel ready to join an advanced club.

I didn’t even meet all the prerequisites to join the club he recommended — I had to complete 10 Toastmasters speeches first, and I was only up to 6 so far. But Ron was pretty convincing, so I took his advice and attended a few meetings as a guest. I admit it was a bit intimidating at first because the other speakers were so much better than me — so smooth and flowing even when speaking off the cuff. I clearly remember what Ron said to me though: “It’s always good to join groups where you just barely qualify for membership. You’ll improve a lot faster that way because the other people will help lift you up to a new level.”

I realized he was right, so I joined that club as soon as I was qualified to do so, which happened in April 2005. What an amazing journey that has been! I learned much more from this advanced club than I would have learned if I stuck with the easier, safer path. I’m still a member of that club today, which has since become one of the most successful clubs in Vegas with about 35 members. In fact, Erin is being inducted as our newest member tonight.

In March 2005 I actually wrote a blog entry mentioning Ron’s advice. At the time I used to tease him that because of that blog post, I ranked #1 on his name on Google, so according to Google, I owned him. He seemed to find that amusing.

Having worked many years as a stock analyst on Wall Street, Ron was a great strategic thinker. He was able to look at a speech and make many suggestions for improvement, even though he wasn’t a top contest competitor himself. I can’t even count all the people who owe him a debt of gratitude for his help over the years.

In 2005, about a year after we first met, Ron and I and some local friends attended a seminar on the Vegas Strip. Erin was out of town with the kids (and our only car), so Ron offered to give me a ride. When I got in the car, he said he wanted to pick my brain about blogging, which was a nice exchange because I wanted to pick his brain about speaking and speech contests. There was a lot of traffic that day, so we were a little late arriving, but I didn’t mind because he was such a great person to talk to. He was immensely curious and was always thinking about how certain things could be improved — especially people.

Ron was always reading books, listening to CDs, and watching DVDs about communication and presentation skills. Whenever I went to a local speaking or presentation skills workshop, he was there. But instead of applying what he learned for his own use, Ron quickly turned around and passed on the best ideas he encountered to help coach others to improve. He had a great memory and often shared ideas and anecdotes from the vast amounts of information he absorbed. Most of the information products I have on speaking and communication skills were originally recommended by Ron. A glance at my bookshelf triggers memories of many conversations with him.

Ron encouraged me to continue competing in speech contests, saying that it was the fastest way to improve, equivalent to years of regular Toastmasters’ club attendance. Since then I’ve competed in three different contest seasons and learned a great deal from them. Following his advice required more courage, but it was a lot more effective. He helped me shave years off my learning curve. Ron did this for a lot of people.

There are many people who will help coach you up to their level, but what was so special about Ron is that he coached people beyond his level. How many of us can say that we’d willingly coach someone to surpass us? It was noted at yesterday’s service that Ron was a rare man with “the biggest intellect paired with the smallest ego.” I completely agree.

Ron was very encouraging of others, but he truthfully told people what they needed to hear. He didn’t let you squeak by when it was obvious you were performing below your potential. At the same time, he knew when it was best to be gentle with new speakers.

I think Ron approached coaching and mentoring with the mindset of an investor. Just as he once analyzed companies on Wall Street, he learned to recognize mediocre speakers who could eventually become great speakers if he invested some of his time and energy to help them. Ron was good at recognizing speakers who had heart (something he really couldn’t teach), and then he helped teach them the head-oriented stuff they needed to succeed. I imagine it’s a similar skill to recognizing a startup company with lots of raw passion and talent, a company that could do really well with the right mentoring and management.

As Ron witnessed my unfolding success as a blogger, he developed an interest in blogging as well. He attended my local blogging workshops and asked me a lot of follow-up questions. I think he was attracted to the idea of sharing his strategic business knowledge with more people. It took him a while, but he finally got his WordPress blog online at RonLewison.com and posted some of his articles shortly before he died. He had some trouble with the fonts because he pasted his articles from MS-Word — a common issue for new bloggers — but at least he got it up and running.

I’m not sure if Ron fully realized what a tremendous positive rippling effect he had on others. He was a very mental/analytical guy to be sure, but his actions affected people a lot more deeply than that. When Ron offered detailed advice and coaching, he came at it from the analysis side, probably because that was his background. However, I know that the people he coached, myself included, actually perceived Ron’s help as if he was saying, “I believe in you.” I have no doubt that he really cared about people.

Connecting after death

Now if you happen to maintain a belief system in which you’ve concluded that communication with the other side is impossible, you may want to skip this next section. On the other hand, if you’re of a more open-minded nature, I hope you’ll keep reading. I won’t be offended if you choose to skip it though since I know that death can be a sensitive subject for many people.

Partly because of my sensitivity to such things as well as the path Erin and I have shared for many years, after I learned of Ron’s death, I wondered if I would sense his presence or be able to connect with him in some way. Well, that happened in a most powerful way. I wasn’t too surprised that it happened since I always felt good about Ron while he was alive. I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.

On Friday (the day after Ron died), I took a 20-minute nap. I usually don’t take daytime naps, but I was out late meeting with someone the previous night, so I started getting drowsy and decided to take a short nap to refresh myself.

During this nap I had a vivid dream (I still dream even during short naps ever since my polyphasic sleep experimentation), and suddenly in the middle of the dream, Ron appeared to me. I wasn’t lucid at the time, so I didn’t know I was dreaming. In the dream I ran up to him, gave him a big hug, and exclaimed, “Ron! What are you doing here? I thought you were dead! What happened?”

Ron, however, just stood there and didn’t say a word. He didn’t even reciprocate the hug, which made me feel a bit stupid for initiating it. At that point I started becoming lucid and realized I was actually dreaming. I understood this wasn’t Ron in physical form, but it definitely felt like his energy. However, I still couldn’t get him to say anything. He didn’t even make eye contact with me. He just stared straight ahead looking stunned.

I woke up from the dream shortly thereafter, feeling very emotional about the experience. I told Erin what happened, and she encouraged me to see if I could tune back in and receive a message from him. I agreed it was worth a try, but I wanted to stay conscious, so instead of going back to sleep, I attempted to reconnect via meditation. I should mention that while Erin also knew Ron, she didn’t know him nearly as well as I did, partly because I was in a Toastmasters club and a National Speakers Association chapter with Ron, but Erin wasn’t.

As I began to meditate, I still felt a strong connection to Ron’s energy, and I could clearly see him in my mind’s eye, but he was just standing there and not saying a word. Nor did he seem to be attempting any sort of symbolic communication. I figured that since he’d just crossed over, maybe I was simply unable to get a clear enough connection. I spent the next 10 minutes attempting to go into a deeper state of meditation, but there seemed to be no improvement. If he had a message for me, I couldn’t tell what it was because nothing aside from his image was coming through.

I didn’t want to give up though. I thought that maybe Ron wasn’t here to give me a message at all. Maybe he wanted something else. Instead of trying to pull down a message from him, I decided just to try reading his energy instead. I picked up very clearly that he was shocked. I thought maybe he was too stunned to communicate with me, so instead of waiting for him to say something, I just starting talking to him. I wondered if maybe he didn’t know he was actually dead, so I figured that was a good place to start. I confirmed for him what had happened and that he had just crossed over. Based on my limited knowledge of what people experience when they cross over, I gave him some advice. I sent him lots of love energy to try to help raise his vibration. While many entities on the other side have a higher vibration than human beings (such as spirit guides and angels) and have to lower their vibration to communicate with us, I could see that Ron was having the opposite problem. Somehow there was a perfect irony in me coaching him for a change.

This energy work helped. I could see that he was rising up from total shock to the point where he was finally able to start processing what had happened. A few minutes later I was able to communicate with him perfectly. For me this came through clairaudiently, so I was actually hearing his voice in my mind. In fact, it was an unusually clear connection. I was surprised at just how perfectly the voice matched his physical voice. It felt like he was right there in the room with me.

We talked for a good 20 minutes, and basically what he told me was this:

He said he had absolutely “no idea” this was coming. Those were his exact words — “no idea” — which he repeated over and over. He was very sad about that. He said he thought he had a lot more time. This whole thing came as a tremendous shock to him, not because he was alive on the other side, but because his human life had ended so abruptly and unexpectedly. All the goals and plans he had in the works were instantly discontinued by his passing, and I got the sense he felt he’d left a lot undone. I could see that it was very hard for him to accept his death and that he was absolutely stunned by it. There were a lot of things in his physical life he really liked, and it was very hard for him to accept that they were gone.

I felt very compassionately towards him, so I did my best to comfort and console him. He communicated that he should have accomplished more as an individual, that he should have been more aggressive about getting things done. You see, Ron was the kind of person who would often talk to me (and others I presume) about his long-term goals and plans, such as getting his own blog off the ground. However, when it came to taking action, he seemed to have a hard time working on his own goals because he poured so much time into helping others achieve their goals. I know this is what his heart led him to do, but I think he had a hard time getting his head around it.

I reminded Ron of all the good he did and all the people he helped. I tried to help him see that in the long run, individual accomplishment doesn’t mean much, especially once we cross over, and that his best accomplishment here was all the positive ripples he created. I encouraged him to give himself credit for all the people he coached, mentored, and inspired. I think this helped to shift his mindset a little, but I could see it was going to take him a while to process all of this. Dying isn’t something that happens to us every day.

I thanked Ron for all the encouragement he gave me over the years. I ran through a few memories with him, showing him some of the good times we shared. I could tell this helped to raise his energy, not to a super-high level but at least beyond the level of shock and disbelief and on the way towards acceptance.

I told him I was surprised and honored that of all the people he could visit, he chose to come see me. I always felt a fatherly connection to him, but I wasn’t sure if he felt the same. I thought he’d be spending this time around his family. His answer was that he connected with me mainly because he could. Maybe I had the right antennae for receiving him because I’ve practiced developing my skills in this area for many years. He indicated that my (100% raw foods) diet made it easier for him to connect with me. This didn’t surprise me because I’ve felt a significant boost in my psychic/intuitive abilities after dropping all cooked foods from my diet. I think another reason is that I intended to connect with him and believed that I could — that tends to work as sort of a beacon. After we learned of his death, Erin also put out the intent for Ron to come to us if he needed help. It still surprised me that he showed up only a day after he died though. I was thinking it would take at least a few weeks before he was ready for that.

The sense of connection with him was so strong I felt like I could have talked to him for hours — if I could have maintained the right state that long. But once I saw that his energy had risen to a reasonable level, I told him he should take some time to process what had happened to him. I didn’t want to overload him. I also suggested that he should attend his funeral because I thought he’d really enjoy it. I knew the place would be filled with others who loved him. That certainly turned out to be true. There was more humor than sorrow as people shared their happy memories of Ron. I cracked up when a friend compared Ron to Yoda… such an apt analogy.

Two days later, I learned that at least two other friends felt they had visitations from Ron. They processed their experiences differently than I did, but I found it fascinating to learn that Ron was already getting around. Perhaps his Toastmasters skills proved helpful to him over there. After all, working on your human communication skills shares a lot of overlap with learning how to share your energy openly and authentically. I also think Ron felt that Toastmasters was an extension of his family, so he already had a very strong connection to members of this group.

I’ve connected with Ron several more times since his passing. He seems to be hanging around a lot, and I continue to help him adapt to life on the other side, giving him suggestions for things to try over there. With each passing day, I can see that he’s doing better and better. He’s learning to accept his death, and I sense that he’s already looking into mentoring and coaching people from the other side. I know he’ll be a real asset over there. I told him that if he needed any help that he could always come to me, and I’d do what I can. I also invited him to keep mentoring me on my own path as a speaker. I told him he should feel free to decline, but he seemed to really like that idea. Even though he never got the opportunity to get going as a blogger, I think he likes having indirect access to a bigger audience than he was ever likely to build for his own blog. Ron was the kind of man who celebrated the successes of those he coached as if they were his own personal victories.

The past few days have been a pretty emotional time for me, but I don’t feel my relationship with Ron has ended. It’s only been transformed. I keep thinking about the ideas I wrote about in The Joy of Sadness — how sadness and joy are really two sides of the same whole. While I’ve cried a lot during the past few days, it’s been coming from a place of deep gratitude, joy, and a sense of the beautiful perfection of life. I feel very much in a place of love, not a place of loss. I know that Ron’s energy will always be a part of me. Yoda has simply merged back into the force.

Paying it forward

Since he was such a treasure-trove of advice, I learned many lessons from Ron over the years. Perhaps one of the best lessons came from observing what he did. Ron used his knowledge and experience to help other people grow. The new ideas he absorbed were constantly flowing back out again through his continuous sharing.

When I first joined Toastmasters in 2004, I was looking to improve my speaking skills. I knew I eventually wanted to get into pro speaking. From Ron’s example I learned the importance of contributing to others, not just soaking up info for my own use. Even when he wasn’t personally presenting a workshop or training program, he was encouraging other people to do so, and he was actively promoting them too.

In the following years, I delivered a free Toastmasters workshop to help local speakers learn about blogging. I also did two similar workshops for the National Speakers Association, including an all-day workshop on the Vegas Strip. In May of this year, I presented another free Toastmasters workshop on creating compelling content. Creating and presenting these workshops required many hours of extra work. These experiences helped me step into the place of being able to give from my heart without needing anything in return.

A mutual friend told me that Ron’s family would be accepting donations for the Ralph C. Smedley Memorial Fund, to be given in Ron’s name. Ralph Smedley was the founder of Toastmasters. Erin and I agreed it would be nice to make a donation to this fund on Ron’s behalf.

On Saturday evening I was feeling very ungrounded, partly because I was spending so much time in a higher than usual state of being, so I thought it would be wise to go out and do something to ground me back on the side of the physical world. I hadn’t played poker in months, so I thought that would be fun to do, not so much for the game but just to go out and be around people who were at a more “normal” energy level. Erin was happy to spend a quiet evening alone, but she suggested that I donate any winnings to the memorial fund. I thought that was a good idea. I’m a decent player and usually win, but at the low limits I play, I could expect to return with maybe $50 on average.

I popped over to the Red Rock Casino, which is only a few minutes from my house. I’ve never played poker there before, but I didn’t feel like making the 20-minute drive to the Strip, so I figured I’d check it out. On Saturday nights the city’s poker tables can be pretty crowded though, especially during the summer, so I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get a seat. Upon arriving at the poker room, it was packed full, and based on the length of the waiting list, I estimated it could take as much two hours to get a seat. Oh well. I didn’t want to wait that long.

I figured I might as well stretch my legs, so I walked around for a while. The Red Rock is considered by many to be the best local’s casino in town. In addition to the hotel and casino, it has a huge movie theater complex, a conference center, a bowling alley, a spa, a food court, a night club, and lots of restaurants. Portions of the recent movie 21 were filmed there. As I walked around, I sensed Ron’s presence again. I was surprised that he’d come to me in a casino of all places. He didn’t seem to have any message for me. He was just letting me know that he was around.

An idea struck me, so I asked him if he wanted to have a little fun. I never knew Ron to take any interest in casino gambling — I know a few locals who work in the casinos but none who like to gamble — but I figured that due to his Wall Street background, he might be up for something interesting. I told him that poker was out, so I asked him if he was up for some blackjack. He agreed. I told him we’d be playing for a donation to Toastmasters. If I lost the money, we’d still donate maybe $100 (almost two years of annual dues), but if we won more than $100, we’d donate all the winnings. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to influence anything from the other side, especially since he was a newbie there, but I told him I’d appreciate any help he could provide. Otherwise I could certainly handle myself well enough. I learned to beat blackjack when I was 21, and the skill is so burned into my neurons that I can go a year or more without playing a single hand and still automatically know what to do in every situation without having to think. The play is totally subconscious, much like driving a car or riding a bike.

I picked out a good $10 table, opting to vary my bets from $10 to $50, and bought $200 in chips. If I doubled my money, that would be a really good win. At these limits nobody at the casino is going to care whether I win or lose. On a Saturday night, a $10 table is typically the lowest you’ll find. I can afford to play higher limits, but that doesn’t interest me. For me this was just a game, not a career.

I played for an hour and left the table with $505 in chips, a win of $305. I thought that would be a nice donation. I walked around a bit to stretch my legs. Then I asked Ron if he wanted to keep playing or if we should quit. He said we should go one more round. He seemed like he was actually enjoying this experiment. I picked out another $10 table and sat down. At first I wasn’t getting anywhere, but then when I had my $50 bet out there, I split a pair of sixes and won both hands for a gain of $100. The next hand I got an 11, doubled down, and won another $100. And the hand after that I got a blackjack for a $75 win. After that I got a 20 and pushed. That’s when I heard the signal from Ron, “Time to go.” I left with $780 in chips for a net win of $580 (that’s net of both sessions). For only 90 minutes of play at fairly low limits, this kind of win is just amazing, especially at full tables (which means fewer hands per hour). I probably played about 50 hands total. That means we averaged more than $10 per hand, but my average bet per hand was probably $20-25. That’s a pretty serious win rate.

I could sense Ron’s presence the whole time I played. I don’t know if he was actually able to do anything from his end, but I definitely got far more than my fair share of splits, double downs, and blackjacks. The other players, the dealers, and the pit boss couldn’t help but notice how quickly the chips were flowing to me. Believe me — this win wasn’t due to skill. On average I’d be lucky to win an extra $20 under these conditions, since the edge on blackjack (assuming you really know how to play) is very slight, especially when playing in a multi-deck game. Doubling my money would have been outstanding.

When I got home, I told Erin what happened, and she was amazed. You see, the last time we invited a “spirit” to play with us for a certain cause, we won $445 in 45 minutes, which totally stunned us then. To have it happen again makes it harder to dismiss as a fluke.

Given the rarity of a win like this, I have to credit it to Ron. I don’t know what he did, but it worked. There’s such a sweet perfection in the notion that he could still be contributing to Toastmasters from the other side. Since I felt the $580 was his contribution, I bumped our donation to $1000 to include something from me and Erin as well. Although we already pay dues, conference registration fees, and various other sums to support Toastmasters International, I like that we can give back a little extra to support such a wonderful organization.

Initially I hesitated to share this part of the story, partly because it’s so strange and partly because I don’t want to deal with the headache of people misinterpreting my motivation for sharing it. But ultimately I figured it was best to share this part of the story for three reasons: (1) It’s the truth; (2) I know from experience that when I share a story I’m hesitant to post publicly, it’s going to resonate with someone out there in ways I can’t predict, often in very synchronistic ways; and (3) I’m sure the skeptics could use the exercise.

Seize the day

Now the point isn’t to pray to your ancestors to help you win the lottery. The point is to live — REALLY LIVE — while you’re here.

What will the people attending your memorial service say about you? How will you be remembered?

Hold your own memorial service at the end of each day. Did you live this day to the fullest? Did you give your very best? Did you express the real you? Did you make the effort to connect with people? Did you seize this day, or did you let it slip through your fingers?

Are you playing it safe just to survive, or are you stretching to give your very best? In the end, do you really think anyone will care whether or not you paid your bills on time?

Life is way too short to waste your precious time doing work you don’t love, enduring relationships you merely tolerate, and settling for limiting thoughts that hold you back. If you decide to waste this day, that’s the same as deciding to waste your life because your life is happening right now.

The mindset that says it’s okay to lose today is the mindset of death. If you’re squandering this day — and I mean today — then you’re already dead. You just haven’t accepted it yet. The rest of your days will be spent the same way. You’re reading this article in the Grim Reaper’s waiting room, waiting for your name to be called.

Too often we treat survival as our first priority, and only after we secure that can we move onto something more interesting than survival, like discovering a life purpose. But you aren’t here to survive. Do you realize you’re not going to survive? You’re going to die. Your physical life here is temporary. If you set survival as your goal, you lose automatically. Everyone who tries to survive fails. That’s how the game is set up. It’s supposed to happen that way.

Even a monkey gets more enjoyment out of life than a human being who works just to pay the bills. Monkeys find it silly to center their lives around paying their bills. They find it much more interesting to hang out with other monkeys — even if it means being homeless.

Would you say that your computer’s primary purpose is to survive? Or is it to provide you with information and entertainment and to empower you? You know your computer is eventually going to die (yes, even your precious Mac), so enjoy it while you can.

Are you enjoying your life while you can?

If you need a little hint to help you find your life purpose, it has to do with going out and connecting with people. If you’re trying to work on your purpose while spending most of your days isolated and alone, you’re missing the point. Go outside! Sure, it’s scary. But do it anyway. If the monkeys can manage it, why not you. Surely you’re smarter and more capable than a monkey.

It’s sad that we often fail to give ourselves permission to just dive headfirst into what we love doing. Realize you don’t need anyone’s permission to do what you love — or to connect with people that attract you. If some people object, let them object; then go do it anyway. The monkeys will welcome you as their new friend.

You know you’ll be happier outside the cage. The cage may be safe and cozy, but it’s no substitute for the freedom of the jungle.

Don’t wait to pursue your dreams. Life is far too precious for that.

Your life is today, not tomorrow or yesterday. Regardless of what happened in the past or what you think might happen in the future, today you have the freedom to make a conscious choice. Will it be the same choice you’ve always made, or will it be something different? Will that choice come from your heart?

Ron Lewison took the time to reach out and connect with people while he was here. He touched a lot of lives in a positive way. He may not have had the opportunity to complete all the projects he wanted to, but he gave more than his fair share. And because of that, I think he’ll find peace on the other side, and perhaps even more opportunities to coach and mentor people. Moreover, he gave the gift of many positive memories to those who knew him, a gift that continues to endure.

Ron, your presence will be missed in the physical world, but I think you’ll make quite a splash in the spiritual world. On the physical side, I may have to say goodbye, but on the spiritual side, I can say welcome home.

You are loved.

* * *

Note: I mentioned in the previous article that I would post a how-to article on raising your financial vibration next. Rest assured that article is still pending. As Ron recently discovered, sometimes life messes with your schedule.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Technically she’s been doing consulting for a while.  Some people would book a reading with her and then use their reading time to ask her questions on other topics, like how to further develop their psychic and intuitive skills, how to lucid dream, the best meditations to do, etc.  They didn’t really need a reading, but they wanted Erin’s expert advice.  The funny thing was that Erin would often detect this at the start of the reading.  When she’d tune in, she’d tell the person, “This is weird.  Your guides are telling me you don’t really need a reading.”  Then the person would say, “That’s actually true.  I just wanted to talk to you about ___.”

When it became clear there was an ongoing demand for this kind of interaction, Erin decided to make it easier for people to book consultations with her directly.

Perhaps the most common consultation Erin does is helping other psychic mediums increase their connection and accuracy and transition to make a living from this type of work.  Erin also consults on spiritual counseling, tuning in to spirit guides, lucid dreaming, astral projection, paranormal experiences, meditation, and dream interpretation.

Erin’s consultation rates are the same as her reading rates, so if you were to book a reading, you could always change it to a consultation and vice versa.  Her rates have always been dictated by supply and demand.

If you’re interested in a consultation with Erin, please visit her consulting page for details.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

This was a strange illness.  I had a mild cold near the end of the New York City trip, and I seemed to recover just fine.  That was the first illness I’ve had this whole year.  But several days later (this would be Mon, Oct 29), I woke up feeling terrible:  fever, nausea, headache, sore throat, and massive fatigue.  I finally dragged myself out of bed, made a fruit smoothie for breakfast, and then vomited it back up 20 minutes later.  (Unlike many partially digested foods, fruit smoothies still taste OK on the return trip — they’re just a bit warmer.)  Consequently, I’ve been out of commission for the past few days.  I’m feeling better today, and the fever has passed, but I still have a sore throat and feel a bit spacey.

My initial reaction to being sick (twice in two weeks) was annoyance.  I had a busy week planned.  I tried to get a little work done but couldn’t concentrate well enough to do anything worthwhile.  At one point I got really confused trying to find a file folder I’ve accessed a hundred times before, only to realize I’d been looking in the wrong drawer.  This is why I haven’t done any blogging in the past week.

Eventually I opted to give in and go with the flow.  So this week I mostly slept, meditated, and ate lots of raw fruits and veggies.  I also watched some old comedies, which always seems to help me feel better.

During this illness my usual emotional regulators went completely offline.  While watching Young Frankenstein, I totally lost it when the monster was climbing the castle wall at the end.  It seemed like such a beautiful moment.  I felt like a Vulcan suffering from Bendii syndrome.

One meditation I did gave me some intense insights that I’m still coming to terms with.  I realized I was hitting a lot of roadblocks when trying to go a certain direction, and this meditation allowed me to see why that was happening and that there was a far easier path I’d been completely overlooking.  Sometimes an illness acts like a spiritual head smacking.

Another meditation went so deep that it actually slid into a lucid dream while I was sitting on the couch.  My conscious visualizations started giving way to a stream of unconscious imagery, and I could see I was beginning to enter a dream state.  I relaxed and went with it, and I slipped into a very vivid dream while still conscious.  That’s never happened to me before.  Previously lucidity had always been triggered while I was already in the dream state.  I’ll have to try that again sometime.

I had some extremely deep and vivid nighttime dreams this week as well — the kind where it feels like I’ve spent days or weeks within the dream world.  Last night I dreamt I was kidnapped by some “terrorist” group and transported to a country in the Middle East, where I was held hostage.  I was allowed to move around within a small community and interact with the people there, but I couldn’t leave the country.  However, I still had my laptop computer and an Internet connection, and I was encouraged to blog about the whole experience.  I told my captors I’d cooperate on the condition that I would only post the truth — if they wanted me to post anything false or withhold anything true, they’d have to kill me first.  They agreed and said it was all they wanted.  I spent the next two months walking around, observing, talking to people, and writing.  Despite being a “hostage”, I never felt trapped because the joyful background buzz of awareness was still present everywhere.  It was just a matter of adapting to a new environment.

This seemed like more than just a routine illness.  It’s like I was going through some kind of spiritual/emotional purging.  This sort of thing has happened to me a few times before.  In 2004 I had a string of nearly identical illnesses, always with the same symptoms.  Every time I would get some decent momentum going with my games business, I got sick and was down for a week.  It became really irritating.  I must have had about 10 fevers that year.  Eventually I stopped fighting and decided to turn within and do a lot of soul searching, since I didn’t have the energy to do much else.  That led to a major career transition with the launch of StevePavlina.com in late 2004.  Shortly after that the string of illnesses just ended.  Now I suspect I’m getting another knock on the door.

I’m sure some people consider illness to be a purely physical, objective phenomenon caused by wee beasties.  I’m not one of those people… although I’m sometimes classified as one of the beasties. 

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

These quotes assume an objective universe, which is a rather biased way of looking at reality — and not particularly accurate.  In my opinion this viewpoint is misleading at best because it assumes that claims about reality are observed rather than created.

What is proof anyway?

Proof (or evidence) is an artifact of viewing reality through an objective lens.  However, proof is not a facet of actual reality.  Reality just is.  It does not need to be proven.  Reality is secure enough in its own existence that it doesn’t care whether some being proves or disproves what it is or provides evidence to support one theory or another.  If you think reality cares about proof, you could also say it derives a sick satisfaction from all the false evidence that’s been tendered in its name over the last few millennia.

Instead of proof what we really want is truth.  And a good first truth to accept is that it’s only the squishy, lens-peering beings that require proof, which is actually a subjective experience.

Experience vs. proof

Since you cannot prove that objective reality actually exists, any proof you attempt to stack upon that assumption is merely a house of cards.  You can get some mileage out of that approach, but the whole stack always remains in doubt.  You can never feel 100% secure about statements that all trace back to a single, unprovable assumption.  So in terms of discovering ultimate truth, this path is necessarily a dead end.  It goes off track in the very first step.

I’m not arguing that you can’t get some useful results from pursuing the lens of objective reality.  Certainly you can.  However, whenever we discuss proofs, we must not forget that we’re still dealing with a lens and not with reality itself.  To mistake the lens for reality is to make ourselves partially blind.

If not proof, then what?

Let me suggest a replacement for the quote Carl Sagan popularized:

Extraordinary experiences require extraordinary creativity.

Proving reality is nonsense.  Reality is not something you need to prove.  It will go right on existing with or without your permission.  Reality will only make your feeble attempts at proof look silly in the long run.

Instead of trying to prove reality, see it as something you experience… something you help create.  Your involvement is to participate in the experience by expressing yourself creatively, not merely to passively observe.  You don’t need gravity to be proven to you.  Just experience it.  Create with it.  If you feel compelled to measure gravity, then measure with the intention of expanding your creative capacity.

Proving subjective experience

All experience is subjective, and subjective experience requires no proof.

If I say to you, “I had a very interesting psychic experience the other day,” and you say, “I don’t believe in that stuff.  Prove it!” then I’ll politely excuse myself to locate a more interesting conversation partner.  In my view you’ve made a perfectly acceptable choice regarding the type of experience you wish to have in this reality, so who am I to run afoul of your creativity by trying to “prove” that what you’ve created is wrong?  Your decision is perfectly valid.  At the same time, I’ve chosen to welcome certain types of experiences that may not be compatible with your choices, so there isn’t much potential for an interesting conversation to develop around this topic, at least not one I’d care to pursue.

On the other hand, suppose that after hearing that same statement from me, you reply, “Wonderful.  Tell me about it.”  Perhaps we’ll find that your creative energies and mine are in sync, and we can share a lot of cool ideas that will help both of us grow and expand.  This is exactly what happened when Erin and I first met.  Our first in-person conversation was about lucid dreaming, mostly with me asking her questions for two hours.  I’d never had a lucid dream before meeting her, and I didn’t even know it was possible for me, but through our conversation Erin showed me how to create that experience.  It wasn’t long before I had my first lucid dream, which lasted maybe 5 seconds.  Then I gradually improved from there.  Imagine missing out on all those incredible dream experiences because our conversation never made it past “prove it.”  Erin probably would have written me off as a hopeless nudnik and ran the other way.

At its core, proof-seeking is rooted in fear, self-doubt, and low self-esteem.  What if I believe something that turns out to be false?  What if I make a mistake?  What if I stray too far from the herd?

You don’t need social permission to pursue what genuinely interests you, no matter how “out there” it may seem.  Just enjoy the experience.

Proof-seeking is a phony pursuit anyway.  Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, people will cling to their pre-existing beliefs for emotional reasons.  Have you ever met a truly logical person who lives based on proof?  Of course not.  But you’ll meet plenty of people who pretend to live this way.  A deeper glance at their lives will show that it’s far from a kingdom of reason.

I’m sorry to disappoint those who ask me to prove the existence of lucid dreaming… or astral projection… or even how much income I earn.  Those people will be waiting a very long time because I don’t care to prove anything.  That would actually do people a disservice by feeding their fears instead of helping them move through their fears.

Experience and create reality

Experience your life.  Create your life.  But don’t waste your time and energy seeking proof.  If something interests you, then pursue it for the subjective growth experience.  Pursue, attract, and create the experiences you want to have.  Once you get into the habit of doing that, you’ll notice how much time and energy the proof-seekers expend chasing their own tails — and how fear-based that entire pursuit really is.

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

I regard these different levels of reality as being at different frequencies or energy levels.  It’s like tuning into different TV channels.  Physical reality seems slower, denser, and less malleable than the other levels.

Astral projection, out-of-body experiences, and near-death experiences could be said to occur at other frequencies than the physical universe.  And within those there are a variety of sub-levels.  People who are skilled at astral projection, for example, can visit different astral realms with unique properties.  Some astral locales seem like close approximations of the physical world, while others are so different from physical reality they’re nearly impossible to describe.

Perhaps the best analogy I can use to describe these different realities is to compare them to states of matter.  You’re intimately familiar with solid, liquid, and gas, since you interact with matter in those states every day.  But did you know there are a lot more states of matter, including Bose-Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, strange matter, degenerate matter, quark-gluon plasma, superfluids, supersolids, and possibly others?  How much time do you spend interacting with those?  Are they as real as solid, liquid, and gas, or some delusional physicists just make them up to convince someone to fund more of their expensive toys?

Just as there are different states of matter, there are different levels of reality.  Every state of matter has unique physical and energetic properties, as do all the realms of reality your consciousness can perceive.  Your inability to access all these states or realms at will is a limitation of your perceptual abilities.

I imagine you spend most of your time interacting with solids, liquids, and gases, but it’s believed that most of the matter in the visible universe is actually in the plasma state.  So if you were to assume that the states of matter you interact with personally are the only ones that exist, you’d be very wrong.  You’d also be wrong if you assumed those states were the most common.  With respect to the vastness of the physical universe, your personal experience of matter is rather atypical.  You’re basically living in a bubble.

Similarly, I think it would be just as big a mistake to assume that this physical reality is the only reality there is.  I suspect this realm is only one among many, and I doubt it’s the most popular hangout for conscious beings.  Some people have written fascinating books about their astral explorations, like Robert Monroe’s Far Journeys, and some astral realms appear to be rather crowded.

It’s common to deny the existence of what we haven’t personally experienced, but such behavior is rather limiting.  I think a better attitude is to be an explorer.  If you don’t know what’s out there, and you’re curious about it, go take a look around. You can use the maps created by others as a guide — at least to the extent you find them helpful.  That’s a better approach than summarily claiming, “There be dragons.”

Opening ourselves up to what may exist but which hasn’t yet been observed is how we invite new experiences into our reality.  This is not merely wishful thinking or open-mindedness.  It is the process by which we creatively sculpt reality itself.

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Behind such questions is usually an assumption that reality is in fact objective and that accuracy is an objective standard.  But in order to appreciate the merits of subjective reality, it’s important to use a subjective standard for accuracy rather than trying to force it through an objective lens.

First, recognize that the subjective and objective belief systems are merely perspectives — they’re different ways of looking at the same data you perceive through your inner and outer senses.  Consequently, they’re not in conflict with each other anymore than your eyesight and hearing are in conflict.  To say, “I am a subjectivist,” or “I am an objectivist,” is in my opinion like saying, “I am a seer,” or “I am a listener,” but not both.  There’s absolutely no reason you can’t consider your experiences through both lenses in parallel.  It’s totally unnecessary to fix and equate your identity with a single perspective… not to mention extremely limiting.

When people ask me whether I truly believe in subjective reality, their question usually assumes that I must equate my identity with it in order to believe in it, which I don’t.  To me the subjective perspective is no more or less valid than the objective one.  I enable myself to perceive reality through both perspectives at once.  And I do not “believe” in one at the cost of disbelieving the other.  One is eyesight; the other is hearing.  I take advantage of both.  They’re both individually interesting, but the sum of both is greater than the parts.

What is accuracy?

The concept of accuracy depends on the lens through which it is viewed.  In a general sense, accuracy means correctness, truth, and exactitude.  However, this means different things depending on whether you view it through an objective or a subjective lens.

Objective accuracy

The objective version of accuracy is rooted in prediction.  This lens assumes there’s an objective physical world out there, and consciousness is something that arises within it.  Our objective accuracy is determined by the extent to which we can successfully predict what’s going to happen.  This is essentially our standard for correct logic and good science – and more generally, for overall human intelligence.  The more objectively accurate you are, the better you are at successfully predicting the future within one or more domains of knowledge.  This probably sounds like common sense to you because it’s the belief system under which most people are raised today.

Subjective accuracy

The subjective version of accuracy is rooted in creation.  This lens assumes that consciousness is the container in which objective reality occurs.  This is not the limited consciousness of your own ego (that would be solipsism), but the larger God-consciousness or Source-level consciousness in which all of reality occurs.  You naturally experience this level of consciousness when having a lucid dream — you know that you’re the dreamer and everything in the dream is taking place within your consciousness.  Subjective reality recognizes that there’s no such thing as strictly objective perception without creation.  To observe reality is to create it.  Consequently, the more accurate your subjective beliefs are, the more empowered you become as a creator.  Simply put, this means you get better at creating what you intend to create.

Subjective vs. objective accuracy

When I view reality through the objective lens, my standard of accuracy is how well I can predict what’s going to happen.

When I view reality through the subjective lens, my standard of accuracy is how well I can create what’s going to happen.

When I view reality through both lenses simultaneously, my standard of accuracy is an ongoing dance of prediction and creation.  This is the place where logic meets intuition and where science meets art.

In any meaningful human endeavor, such as building a business, governing a country, or writing a song, prediction and creation are inseparable.  To achieve peak accuracy and effectiveness requires that both channels are in sync.  Intelligent prediction fuels creative decisions because you rely on accurate observations to decide what to create next.  And creative output enhances predictive ability, since you’re intentionally setting new causes in motion, thereby actively contributing to the resulting effects.

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Imagine you’re having a lucid dream.  This means you’re lying in bed having a dream, and while still within the dream world, you become conscious and aware that you’re dreaming.  In the dream you might be playing some role other than your real-life persona, but you know the real you is lying in bed asleep, and that your dream persona is just a character you can control.

Even while you’re lucid, you probably can’t control everything, nor would you necessarily want to, but the knowledge that you’re dreaming gives you a fascinating new perspective on your in-dream experience.  You can interact with the dream reality on a whole new level.  I’d say the main difference is that you become virtually fearless, since you know that nothing in the dream world can hurt the real you — the dreamer who’s having the dream.  It will still feel scary to fall off a building, and a hard landing may still trigger the sensation of real pain, but you’ll be a lot more willing to try interesting things just for the experience.

Subjective reality = lucid dreaming while awake

Subjective reality is basically lucid dreaming while awake.  It’s not really a belief — it would be more accurate to say that it’s a perspective.

Subjective reality is the perspective that recognizes that you are in fact the dreamer and that everything you perceive in the dream world, including your dream body and the other dream characters and objects, is taking place within your larger consciousness.  When you’re fully lucid, you know that the dream character you control isn’t the real you — the real you is asleep on a bed somewhere, having the dream.  Your dream body is merely your first-person interface to the dream world, a construct of consciousness.  If your dream body gets hurt, you may still feel the pain.  If it experiences pleasure, you may feel the pleasure.  If something in the dream startles you, you may feel that emotional reaction.  But when that dream body dies, the real you lying in bed remains alive, and you simply wake up.

The non-dream version of subjective reality, the one I’ve described in my previous writing on the topic, is basically the same concept of having a lucid dream, except that you apply it to waking physical reality instead of your nighttime dreams.  In effect you become lucid while physically awake, recognizing that there’s another layer of dreaming and that this physical reality is also fully contained within a larger consciousness, and that outer consciousness is in fact the real you.  Your physical body-mind is merely your first-person interface to the dream world.

Once you reach this level of lucidity, everything changes.  You’re still experiencing reality — it doesn’t simply stop – but because you recognize it as a dream, you’re able to interact with it on a whole new level.  You will still experience pleasure, pain, and fear as you react automatically to in-dream events, but because you know you’re really the outside dreamer who cannot be truly harmed by anything within the dream, you begin to relate to life from a state of inherent fearlessness.

When people experience their first lucid nighttime dream, it’s normally a very exciting experience.  I can describe the feeling as one of exhilaration… like, “Wow!  I’m dreaming.  This is absolutely amazing.”  Once you get a grasp on that perspective, it’s such a wonderful feeling you never want to let it go.

When you have a seemingly negative experience while lucid dreaming, like you get beat up by another dream character, on one level you may still experience some fear or other negative emotions.  But on another level, your knowing that it’s all a dream adds an element of enthusiasm and fun to everything.  It’s like playing a video game.  In a very immersive game, when something bad happens to your character, it can be frustrating, but it’s still fun.  This is the perspective I described in The Joy of Sadness.  Subjective reality is a perspective that allows you to tap into the joy behind every negative emotion.

Solipsism = degenerate, partial lucidity

Solipsism, like subjective reality, also recognizes the dream nature of reality.  However, solipsism assumes that your dream character (aka your in-dream ego) is in fact the real you and is somehow creating the other characters as a projection of its own ego.  Solipsism doesn’t recognize the existence of the outer dreamer in which the whole experience is taking place.  It assumes everything is emanating from the dream ego and that there is no outer dreamer.

This perspective regards your dream character as real and conscious, but the other dream characters are just projections and are not conscious by themselves.  Subjective reality, on the other hand, sees ALL the dream characters (including yours) as equal projections of the outer dreamer, and no character is more or less valid or conscious than any other character; they’re all just projections of a larger consciousness.

Imagine you’re playing a video game where you control a particular character who can move around within the game world.  That character is your avatar.  Solipsism is the perspective that says your avatar is the only thing in the game that’s real, and the whole simulation is somehow a product of your avatar’s mind or ego.

Maybe you can find some value in the perspective of solipsism, but I don’t find it particularly useful.  To me it seems objectively unprovable and subjectively disempowering.  Even so, I tried holding it for a while, but it just didn’t feel right to me.

Subjective reality filtered through an objective lens is not subjective reality

When people tell me they’re concerned that seeing the world through the lens of subjective reality will make them feel lonely or depressed, I know they’re really talking about solipsism.  Solipsism is basically what you get when you try to interpret subjective reality through an objective lens.  If you filter reality through the objective lens and then pass the result of that filtering through the subjective lens, you end up with essentially nothing.  It’s like taking the output of your eyes and then running it through your ears.  What happens when you try to listen to blue?  You get nothingness, the null set.

If you wish to grasp the perspective of subjective reality, you have to put down the objective lens first.  You can run both filters in parallel, but if you try to run them sequentially, you’ll never get it.  I know this isn’t easy to do, and I completely sympathize with those who find this a frustrating endeavor.  Imagine if you were born deaf and then suddenly gained your hearing after decades of filtering reality through your visual sense.  It might take a lot of practice before you could successfully rely on your hearing in parallel with your vision.

What helped me most through this process was that I was an experienced lucid dreamer for years before I began to explore the perspective of subjective reality.  I already had the experience of distinguishing between non-lucid (objective perspective) dreams vs. lucid (subjective perspective) dreams.  I think that gave me a major head start in being able to apply these same perspectives to physical reality.  If you’ve never experienced lucid dreaming or astral projection, I imagine it would be much harder to understand subjective reality.  When the objective perspective is all you’ve ever known, it’s hard to even conceive of other, independent perceptual filters.  It’s like trying to explain hearing to a deaf person.  How can you explain sound in terms of sight, smell, etc?  But that’s essentially what I’m trying to do when I write about subjective reality through an objective medium.  The people that are able to grasp it easily are usually those who’ve already had some experience with it.  For everyone else the best I can do is provide a pointer to the experience, but my words can never adequately describe the real experience.

The only conscious being in the universe?

I sometimes stumble upon people writing on their blogs, “Steve believes in subjective reality.  He thinks he’s the only conscious being in the universe.”  That’s false on two levels.  First, it assumes that I equate my identity with subjective reality, meaning that I don’t also perceive reality through the objective lens.  In fact I rely on both lenses just as I rely on both my eyesight and hearing.  The subjective perspective runs in parallel to the objective one.  It’s like playing a video game — you know you’re playing a game, but you simultaneously perceive the game world through the eyes of your in-game avatar, so the game is experienced both subjectively and objectively.  At any given time, you may temporarily focus on one perspective more than another, just as you may focus on your hearing more than your eyesight under certain conditions.  But at no time do you ever lose access to other perspectives or senses.

Secondly, such statements confuse subjective reality with solipsism.  While solipsism is a distinct perspective from subjective reality, personally I don’t find solipsism very practical, accurate, or empowering.  To say that I believe this Steve persona is the only conscious being in the universe is simply untrue.  I don’t perceive consciousness as being centered within my ego.

Hopefully you can see that solipsism is not remotely the same thing as the subjective reality perspective I’m describing.  Subjective reality is lucidity, but solipsism keeps you trapped in the dream world by making the assumption that your dream ego is somehow the real you.  Consequently, I consider solipsism to be a degenerate, partial lucidity.

I notice a lot of people these days try to utilize the Law of Attraction while harboring a perspective that’s pretty close to solipsism.  They hold a semi-objective view of the world, but they assume their creative power lies within their individual ego.  Their results are often dismal.  Then you get the hard-core objectivists attacking such people as loons.  Oh well.

Subjective reality and creativity

Some people fear that perceiving physical reality through the subjective lens will somehow mess up their lives or make them do stupid things.  I suspect such people have never had a lucid dream.  For me the adoption of the subjective lens was like gaining a new physical sense.  Imagine being deaf your whole life and then gradually learning to hear.  The process can be confusing at first, but it isn’t going to cost you your eyesight, and it certainly won’t switch off your common sense.  If you can make sense of the new perceptual input coming through, it’s a very empowering and amazing experience.

If you can pull it off, I think you’ll find the addition of the subjective viewpoint to be very empowering, much like gaining a new physical sense.  Eyesight, hearing, and other physical senses are perceptive filters, but they’re also creative ones.  Similarly, the subjective perspective can greatly enhance your creative ability.  Imagine cooking a meal without your sense of smell or writing a play without being able to hear.  Sure, you could do it, but the output will probably be bland and mono-dimensional.  The perspective of subjective reality adds a certain spiciness to life, both in terms of perception and creation.  By gaining a new input channel, you also gain new output channels.

When you’re having a dream and you become lucid, your ability to make the dream world “better” increases dramatically.  I find that when I’m lucid dreaming, I can do a lot more, but I still have limits.  The empowering perspective of lucidity gives me access to new abilities I wouldn’t otherwise possess, but I still have to practice in order to build skill.  The dream doesn’t automatically switch to full “God mode.”  I’ve been lucid dreaming since 1994, and there are still many things I can’t do very well.  Overall the lucid perspective is very empowering, but it’s still fun and interesting at times to pay attention to the objective perspective too.

Accuracy vs. popularity

The main issue with the subjective reality perspective is that it’s not very common or popular.  That doesn’t make it invalid, but it does mean that if you choose to pursue it, you’re likely to encounter people who think it’s invalid because they’ve never experienced it… or they’ve experienced something like solipsism and assume you’re on a similar degenerate path.  If you live in a world where most people are deaf, and you gradually begin to hear sounds, how will you explain your new perceptions to others?  Good luck!  They’ll probably think you’re daft.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t try — I’m obviously willing to make the attempt — but don’t be surprised when you witness some resistance from the other dream characters.  You’ll have to ask yourself which is more important to you:  accuracy or popularity.

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© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Here are some of those problematic questions (all are generalizations of ones I received via email):

• What happens when people put out conflicting intentions, like two people intending to get the same promotion when only one position is available?
• Do children, babies, and/or animals put out intentions?
• If a child is abused, does that mean the child intended it in some way?
• If I intend for my relationship to improve, but my spouse doesn’t seem to care, what will happen?

These questions seem to weaken the plausibility of the Law of Attraction.  Sometimes people answer them by going pretty far out.  For example, it’s been said by LoAers that a young child experiences abuse because s/he intended it or earned it during a past life.  Well, sure… we can explain just about anything if we bring past lives into the equation, but IMO that’s a cop-out.  On the other hand, objective reality without the Law of Attraction doesn’t provide satisfactory answers either — supposedly some kids are just born unlucky.  That’s a cop-out too.

I’ve never been satisfied by others’ answers to these questions, and they’re pretty important questions if the Law of Attraction is to be believed.  Some books hint at the solution but never really nail it.  That nail, however, can be found in the concept of subjective reality.

Subjective reality is a belief system in which (1) there is only one consciousness, (2) you are that singular consciousness, and (3) everything and everyone in your reality is a projection of your thoughts.

You may not see it yet, but subjective reality neatly answers all these tricky Law of Attraction questions.  Let me ’splain….

In subjective reality there’s only one consciousness, and it’s yours.  Consequently, there’s only one source of intentions in your universe — YOU.  While you may observe lots of walking, talking bodies in your reality, they all exist inside your consciousness.  You know this is how your dreams work, but you haven’t yet realized your waking reality is just another type of dream.  It only seems solid because you believe (intend) it is.

Since none of the other characters you encounter are conscious in a way that’s separate from you, nobody else can have intentions.  The only intentions are yours.  You’re the only thinker in this universe.

It’s important to correctly define the YOU in subjective reality.  YOU are not your physical body.  This is not the egoic you at all.  I’m not suggesting you’re a conscious body walking around in a world full of unconscious automatons.  That would be a total misunderstanding of subjective reality.  The correct viewpoint is that you’re the single consciousness in which this entire reality takes place.

Imagine you’re having a dream.  In that dream what exactly are YOU?  Are YOU the physical dream character you identify with?  No, of course not — that’s just your dream avatar.  YOU are the dreamer.  The entire dream occurs within your consciousness.  All dream characters are projections of your dream thoughts, including your avatar.  In fact, if you learn lucid dreaming, you can even switch avatars in your dream by possessing another character.  In a lucid dream, you can do anything you believe you can.

Physical reality works the same way.  This is a denser universe than what you experience in your sleeping dreams, so changes occur a bit more gradually here.  But this reality still conforms to your thoughts just like a sleeping dream.  YOU are the dreamer in which all of this is taking place.

The idea that other people have intentions is an illusion because other people are just projections.  Of course, if you strongly believe other people have intentions, then that’s the dream you’ll create for yourself.  But ultimately it’s still an illusion.

Here’s how subjective reality answers these challenging Law of Attraction questions:

What happens when people put out conflicting intentions, like two people intending to get the same promotion when only one position is available?

Since you’re the only intender, this is entirely an internal conflict — within YOU.  You’re holding the thought (the intention) for both people to want the same position.  But you’re also thinking (intending) that only one can get it.  So you’re intending competition.  This whole situation is your creation.  You believe in competition, so that’s what you manifest.  Maybe you have some beliefs (thoughts and intentions) about who will get the promotion, in which case your expectations will manifest.  But you may have a higher order belief that life is random, unfair, uncertain, etc., so in that case you may manifest a surprise because that’s what you’re intending.

Being the only intender in your reality places a huge responsibility on your shoulders.  You can give up control of your reality by thinking (intending) randomness and uncertainty, but you can never give up responsibility.  You’re the sole creator in this universe.  If you think about war, poverty, disease, etc., that’s exactly what you’ll manifest.  If you think about peace, love, and joy, you’ll manifest that too.  Your reality is exactly what you think it is.  Whenever you think about anything, you summon its manifestation.

Do children, babies, and/or animals put out intentions?

No.  Your own body doesn’t even put out intentions — only your consciousness does.  You’re the only one who has intentions, so what takes precedence is what YOU intend for the children, babies, and animals in your reality.  Every thought is an intention, so however you think about the other beings in your reality is what you’ll eventually manifest for them.  Keep in mind that beliefs are hierarchical, so if you have a high order belief that reality is random and unpredictable and out of your control, then that intention will trump other intentions of which you’re less certain.  It’s your entire collection of thoughts that dictates how your reality manifests.

If a child is abused, does that mean the child intended it in some way?

No.  It means YOU intended it.  You intend child abuse to manifest simply by thinking about it.  The more you think about child abuse (or any other subject), the more you’ll see it expand in your reality.  Whatever you think about expands, and not just in the narrow space of your avatar but in all of physical reality.

If I intend for my relationship to improve, but my spouse doesn’t seem to care, what will happen?

This is another example of intending conflict.  You’re projecting one intention for your avatar and one for your spouse, so the actual unified intention is that of conflict.  Hence the result you experience, subject to the influence of your higher order beliefs, will be to experience conflict with your spouse.  If your thoughts are conflicted, your reality is conflicted.

This is why assuming responsibility for your thoughts is so important.  If you want to see peace in the world, then intend peace for EVERYTHING in your reality.  If you want to see abundance in the world, then intend it for EVERYONE.  If you want to enjoy loving relationships, then intend loving relationships for ALL.  If you intend these only for your own avatar but not for others, then you’re intending conflict, division, and separation; consequently, that’s what you’ll experience.

If you stop thinking about something entirely, does that mean it disappears?  Yes, technically it does.  But in practice it’s next to impossible to uncreate what you’ve already manifested.  You’ll continue creating the same problems just by noticing them.  But when you assume 100% responsibility for everything you’re experiencing in your reality right now — absolutely everything — then you assume the power to alter your reality by rechanneling your thoughts.

This entire reality is your creation.  Feel good about that.  Feel grateful for the richness of your world.  And then begin creating the reality you truly want by making decisions and holding intentions.  Think about what you desire, and withdraw your thoughts from what you don’t want.  The most natural, easiest way to do this is to pay attention to your emotions.  Thinking about your desires feels good, and thinking about what you don’t want makes you feel bad.  When you notice yourself feeling bad, you’ve caught yourself thinking about something you don’t want.  Turn your focus back towards what you do want, and your emotional state will improve rapidly.  As you do this repeatedly, you’ll begin to see your physical reality shift too, first in subtle ways and then in bigger leaps.

I too am just a manifestation of your consciousness.  I play the role you expect me to play.  If you expect me to be a helpful guide, I will be.  If you expect me to be profound and insightful, I will be.  If you expect me to be confused or deluded, I will be.  But of course there’s no distinct ME that is separate from YOU.  I’m just one of your many creations.  I am what you intend me to be.  But deep down you already knew that, didn’t you?

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Sure.

Since the early 90s I’ve been reading about a book a week, so that adds up to quite a few books.  I’ll scan my office bookshelves to recall which ones had a meaningful impact on me after I read them.

Here are some of my personal favorites in no particular order:

Edit 8/22/06:  A more complete version of this list, conveniently sorted into categories, can be found here:  personal development books.

• Power vs. Force by David Hawkins (levels of consciousness)
• The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (wisdom)
• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (wisdom)
• As You Think aka As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (power of thought)
• The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra (manifesting intentions)
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (wealth)
• Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu (wisdom)
• Ask and It Is Given by Esther Hicks (manifesting intentions)
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (personal effectiveness)
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (slaughtering your enemy efficiently)
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (ensuring your enemy doesn’t slaughter you first)
• Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman (inner peace, no slaughtering)
• Chaos and Genius by James Gleick (chaos science and fractals; Richard Feynman bio)
• Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins (achievement and NLP)
• Maximum Achievement and Time Power by Brian Tracy (time management)
• The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion by Pete Egoscue (pain-free structural alignment)
• Using Your Brain for a Change by Richard Bandler (NLP)
• Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (optimism, duh)
• The Power of Now and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (consciousness and awareness)
• Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution by John Robbins (health and ethical food choices)
• Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman (why a cattle rancher won’t eat meat)
• Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum (awesome book on diagnosing relationship issues)
• Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (philosophy in 1000 pages)
• The Psychology of Winning by Denis Waitley (victory)
• Lucid Dreaming and Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge (lucid dreaming)
• Far Journeys by Robert Monroe (astral projection)
• Cosmic Trigger Vol I, Vol II, and Vol III by Robert Anton Wilson (”weird” doesn’t begin to describe it)
• Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins (laughter as medicine)
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (finding meaning in the Holocaust)
• Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Holocaust story)
• Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks by Marilyn vos Savant (becoming a smarty pants)
• Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins (business)
• Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony (awesome fiction series):
  • On a Pale Horse (Death)
  • Bearing an Hourglass (Time)
  • With a Tangled Skein (Fate)
  • Wielding a Red Sword (War)
  • Being a Green Mother (Nature)
  • For Love of Evil (Satan)
  • And Eternity (God)
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (personal effectiveness)
• The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary Renard (awareness and forgiveness)
• A Course in Miracles by the Foundation for Inner Peace (what the Bible meant to say)
• Bringers of the Dawn by Barbara Marciniak (channeled teachings of the Pleiadians)
• Inspiration by Wayne Dyer (finding your purpose)
• Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain (visualization)
• The Millionaire Course by Marc Allen (wealth, read my interview with Marc Allen)
• Getting Things Done by David Allen (workflow and productivity)
• A Child Called It, The Lost Boy, and A Man Named Dave by Dave Pelzer (abuse and recovery)
• Organizing From the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern (getting organized)
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki (wealth advice with fake stories)
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (social skills)
• The China Study by T. Colin Campbell (health, read my book review)
• Code Complete and Rapid Development by Steve McConnell (software development)
• The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter (self-publishing)

I guess I have a lot of favorite books. 

This entry is part of the “Ask Steve” series.  See the original Ask Steve post for details, or view the Archives (July 2006) to peruse the entire series.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.