This podcast really is about life, the universe, and everything… and this time, the answer isn’t 42.

Here are some of the topics covered:

• What death can teach us about life
• Permanence vs. impermanence
• What you retain after you die
• The primary focus of your life
• Why you’re here in the physical universe
• Dream realities, astral projection, and physicality
• The development of your consciousness
• Principles of conscious growth – Truth, Love, and Power
• The role of problems in your life and why you attract them
• Adopting an empowering perspective for your physical life

I recorded this podcast partly as an experiment. It’s the first podcast I’ve recorded completely off the cuff — no pre-planned topic and no handwritten notes. When I sat down and pressed record, I had no idea what I was going to say. Consequently, my pace is much slower than in previous podcasts because my mind wasn’t racing with ideas. I imagine some of my listeners whose primary language is not English may find this slower pace easier to understand.

I must have been in a rather philosophical mood since this became a high-level exploration of what it means to live as a conscious human being. I’m very pleased with how it came out.

This material builds on concepts from the book Personal Development for Smart People, so if you’ve already read it, this podcast will give you another perspective on applying Truth, Love, and Power to your life. For example, did you know that all the problems you attract into your life arise from your lack of alignment with Truth, Love, and/or Power? In the podcast I explain how and why this happens and how it actually benefits you.

If you haven’t read the book yet (what are you waiting for?!?!?), then this will introduce you to the first three principles of conscious growth. You’ll begin to see how these forces are directing your life in ways you didn’t realize.

The point of this podcast is to help you gain clarity. When you view your life through the lens of Truth, Love, and Power, everything makes a lot more sense. You’ll understand why some parts of your life are working well and why other parts are a struggle.

I recorded this podcast with a different equipment setup than I normally use, so this was a technical experiment as well. Most of my podcasts are recorded with a condenser mic routed through a mixer and then to my PC. This works well, but it results in a small amount of background noise due to the PC fan (barely noticeable for most people). For podcasts #21 and #22, I used my Edirol R-09 portable recorder with its built-in mic because Erin and I were recording together. This time I turned off the PC, and I used my condenser mic, running the signal through the mixer and straight into the R-09, which is a totally quiet setup. The R-09 records at better than CD quality, so it’s a high quality recorder. There was still some minor background noise while the laundry machine was running nearby, but that can be avoided in the future (I didn’t want to wait this time). Overall I’m very happy with the quality of this recording setup.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-023-Life-the-Universe-and-Everything.mp3
(Time = 1:13:36, Size = 33.7MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This is a podcast about loving, intimate relationships that Erin and I recorded together this afternoon. We discuss the inner workings of our (almost 15-year) relationship in depth and share insights, advice, and stories regarding the following topics:

• Meeting each other’s needs and desires (emotional, physical, spiritual, etc)
• Creating and maintaining a deep connection
• Common interests
• Areas of compatibility and incompatibility
• Monogamous relationships
• What is cheating?
• The ultimate goal of an intimate relationship
• Polyamory
• The 6 styles of open relationships
• Jealousy
• Compersion
• Coming out publicly as a polyamorous person/couple
• The big picture – why intimate relationships are so important for personal growth
• Raising the consciousness of your relationship
• The 3 qualities of strong, loving, intimate relationships
• Commitment – what it means to commit
• How to know whether you should break up or stay together

Our ultimate goal in creating this podcast is to help you enjoy more conscious, loving relationships in your own life.

Of course the “elephant in the room” that spawned this podcast is that Erin and I recently announced that we’re shifting from a monogamous to a polyamorous relationship style.

In this podcast we talk a lot about that decision, which wasn’t so much of a decision as it was a realization — and a major breakthrough in the way we’ve been relating to each other. We hope our love and caring for each other comes across in this recording.

We appreciate the care and concern everyone is expressing toward us. We understand that this announcement was probably a shock to most people. That was to be expected. We’ve been discussing this for quite some time, but you weren’t privy to those conversations, so it may seem like this is a snap decision that happened abruptly and that our relationship is in trouble.

The truth, however, is that because of this change, our relationship is actually stronger than ever.

In recording this podcast, we want to help you understand where we’re coming from and why we’re excited to explore polyamory. We think this will help prevent misunderstandings based on inaccurate assumptions. We also think it will be very eye-opening for you if you’re interested in learning more about polyamory or if you’re currently experiencing problems in your current monogamous relationship.

If you’re in a relationship right now, we encourage you to listen to this together with your partner, and feel free to pause and discuss the ideas that strike you as you go along. We expect this form of sharing could lead to some new breakthroughs in the way you relate to each other. Just be aware that we may challenge your pre-established notions about how your relationship is supposed to work and where it may be headed.

Erin and I explain in detail how we relate to each other and the mindset we use to maintain a very conscious, loving, intimate relationship. We also discuss problems we encountered as a couple and how we overcame them together.

When I began writing about polyamory a few days ago, there were lots of misunderstandings and misinterpretations of our motives. Many people assumed the worst. Part of the reason for those misunderstandings is that plain text is a weak medium for expressing such an emotional topic because you can’t hear our tone of voice. The words themselves don’t convey enough of the meaning we were trying to convey. We think this is one reason why our words are being interpreted in so many different ways… often not in the way they were intended. By using audio instead of text, we hope that misinterpretations will be greatly reduced.

Hopefully when you hear us communicating about this together, you’ll get a better sense of how Erin and I relate to each other and why we believe polyamory (i.e. an open relationship) is an awesome next step in our journey together.

A couple books are mentioned in this podcast: Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I highly recommend both of them.

This is our longest podcast ever (103 minutes long). It’s more like an audio program on relationships than a podcast. If you receive some genuine value from it, please consider making a donation to let us know you found it helpful.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-022-Loving-Relationships.mp3
(Time = 1:43:23, Size = 47.3MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

It’s been months since I posted a new podcast — my apologies since I was busy writing my book — so it’s nice to finally share some freshly recorded audio.

Many readers have requested that Erin and I create a podcast together, so that’s exactly what we did. In this podcast we discuss psychic development and psychic skills in great depth. At almost 96 minutes, this is the longest podcast we’ve ever done. We didn’t originally intend to make it so long, but we got on a roll and covered many interesting topics that readers frequently ask us about.

Topics discussed in this podcast include (not necessarily in order):

• Story of how Erin developed her psychic skills from a young age
• Lucid dreaming
• Astral projection
• How Erin made the shift to doing professional psychic readings
• Erin’s Criss Angel story
• Lessons from 1000+ professional readings
• Skeptics, skepticism, disbelief, and reading for skeptics vs. believers
• Psychic junkies
• The role of free will
• Spirit guides, angels, and humans who’ve crossed over
• What happens when you die? What is it like on the other side?
• Distinguishing genuine psychic impressions from emotions and imagination
• Why charge money for readings? Why not do them for free?
• How to price your readings when you read professionally
• What happens during a psychic reading? How does it work?
• Why do different people get such different readings?
• Chakras
• Do psychics predict the future?
• Difference between a psychic and a medium
• How to develop your own psychic/intuitive skills
• How personal development continues after you die

Aside from jotting down a short list of topics to address, this was totally unscripted. We’re both very candid and share many stories about our personal experiences. I also toss in a few of my own theories about how various psychic phenomena work. If you’re curious about any of the the topics above, I think you’ll learn a lot from this exploration of psychic development, regardless of how skeptical you may be.

This podcast was recorded on different equipment that I normally use. I just bought an Edirol R-09 portable recording device, which makes it easy to record podcasts away from my PC, so I was eager to test it out. The recording quality isn’t ideal because we casually recorded this in our living room with the R-09′s built-in mic instead of using my higher quality condenser mic, but you shouldn’t have any trouble hearing us clearly.

Erin and I enjoyed recording this together, so we may do more two-person recordings down the road if this one is well-received.

For more info on Erin’s psychic readings, check out her Readings page and Readings FAQ.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-021-Being-Psychic.mp3
(Time = 1:35:42, Size = 43.8MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Roger recorded the phone call from his end. My voice is a little faint on the recording, but you should still be able to make it out well enough.

I’m not counting this as an official podcast, but for convenience it’s encoded for download via RSS for those who subscribe to the podcast feed. I don’t intend to get back into regular podcasting until my book is done.

Some of the items we discuss include:

• how to eat simpler, non-gourmet raw meals
• eating fat later in the day
• green smoothies
• blended salads
• dried fruits
• how to incorporate fat in the diet w/o food-combining problems
• social consequences of raw and vegan diets

For me the value in this coaching session was mainly in learning the attitude and mindset of someone who’s been eating a low-fat raw diet for years.

I don’t recommend listening to this unless you have a keen interest in the raw food diet; otherwise you can certainly skip it and save yourself an hour.

Pavlina-Haeske-Raw-Coaching.mp3 (right-click, then “Save Target as…”)
(Time = 1:01:34, Size = 14.1MB)

Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Many people have been socially conditioned to believe that a career or job should be chosen based how well it pays and how qualified you are to hold it.  This podcast will explain why that approach is completely backwards.  Paradoxically by selecting a career based on money and skills, your financial and career results will be but a pale shadow of your potential.  And even worse than that, you will virtually guarantee long-term unhappiness.  Going to work each day will become something you only do because you have to, not because you want to, and staying motivated will be very, very hard.

The path for conscious human beings is to focus first and foremost on joyful, creative self-expression.  That is far more important than money, skill fit, or even contribution to others.  Your own creativity is the very mechanism by which you’ll achieve everything else you could possibly want — including financial abundance, superior talent, long-term fulfillment, and meaningful contribution.

This podcast is organized around the four-part model from the article Living Congruently:

• Body (physical needs):  What must you do?
• Mind (talents and skills):  What can you do?
• Heart (passion and desire):  What do you want to do?
• Spirit (purpose and contribution):  What should you do?

One of my greatest wishes is for you to enjoy a deeply fulfilling career that is an ideal fit for who you are, such that the very act of being yourself allows you to meet your needs almost effortlessly.  In order to get there, however, you’ll need to release any disempowering beliefs that still hold you back.

Throughout this podcast I share my own career mistakes and successes in the hope they may help you understand how to apply these ideas in your own life.  I explain why I switched careers in 2004 and how I came to that decision.

I recorded this podcast yesterday but didn’t have time to post it until today.  Hence the date mentioned on the podcast is one day earlier than this post.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-020-Creative-Self-Expression.mp3
(Time = 30:08, Size = 13.8MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This first half of this podcast explores the idea of turning your seemingly “dark” life experiences into positive strengths.  I tell the story of how being a kleptomaniac in my late teens helped me develop focus and courage, qualities that serve me well to this day.

The second half covers the topic of polarity and the fundamental question that determines our choice of polarity:  Are we fundamentally, unconditionally safe here?

There’s an interesting story behind this podcast.  I originally recorded it on August 13, 2006, so this would have been podcast #16 if I’d posted it back then.  Somehow every time I sat down to edit and post it, I’d get interrupted by something that would pull me away from the computer.  The pattern became so ridiculous that even a couple weeks later, I still hadn’t been able to edit it yet.  I began wondering if I wasn’t supposed to post it for some reason.  With some frustration I put it on the back burner and went on to record and post other podcasts instead, experiencing no trouble with those.  The podcast that became #16 was The True Nature of Reality, one of the most popular podcasts I’ve recorded (and also one of the longest).

Now more recently I’ve been meaning to do a podcast on polarity to help clarify and unify some of the concepts from recent articles on this topic.  Once again I experienced this strange pattern of delay.  Every time I tried to sit down and create the podcast, something unexpected would interrupt me and take me away from my desk.  For example, our network would mysteriously cut out, and Erin would be yelling that her Internet connection went down.

Eventually I remembered this old podcast I recorded but never finished editing.  I wondered if I should edit and post it now and thought, “Nah.  My views on this topic have been refined a lot since then, and I’m sure I can do a better job on this today.  Plus it will only take about 30 minutes to do a fresh recording.”  But each time I rejected the idea and went to work on the new podcast, I’d get mysteriously interrupted.

Today I decided to just listen to the old podcast to see how “bad” it was.  Out of habit I fell into the pattern of editing it as I went along.  In seemingly no time, I had a finished recording ready to post.  By the time I got to the end, I thought it was halfway decent considering it was recorded before I wrote any of the polarity articles.  There’s a lot more I could say on the subject, but perhaps this simpler treatment was somehow meant to be posted now.

I want to point out a couple differences in the terminology I use in this podcast vs. my recent polarity articles.  First, at one point in the podcast, I mention how polarizing on the light (love) side can raise your consciousness.  I’m not referring to your level of consciousness here but rather your general state of awareness.  So I’m not saying that polarizing is going to instantly move you up in levels, merely that it will help make you aware of different things because you’re seeing reality through a new lens.

Secondly, this podcast is clearly lightworker-biased, so I definitely don’t give a balanced treatment to the dark side.  The whole first half is about how you can use your dark side experiences to benefit you on the light side, implying that being on the dark side is somehow a mistake.  Near the end of the podcast, I do mention that you’re free to make a conscious choice between the two polarities, but only after I’ve introduced it with labels like “evil” and “negative.”  This isn’t because I’m biased against darkworkers — it’s because I’m talking from the perspective of my own personal experience.  When I was dabbling with the dark side, my application of this energy was self-destructive.  You could have said I was suffering from darkworker syndrome.  But as I’ve stated more recently, it’s possible to act from a fear-based model of reality without self-destructing if your level of consciousness is high enough.

What I like about this podcast is that it explains where the fear and love polarities ultimately come from — your personal answer to the fundamental question we all face.  How you answer this question is what determines your polarity.  Since most people cannot answer it with a firm yes or no, most people aren’t polarized.  But life gets pretty interesting once you start leaning harder to one side or the other.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-019-Owning-Your-Dark-Side.mp3
(Time = 18:47, Size = 8.6MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

In this podcast you’ll gain insights on closing the gap between your current position and your goals/intentions.

In the language of Intention-Manifestation or the Law of Attraction, these ideas address how to come into resonance with your goal or to become a vibrational match for it.  If you prefer less new agey terms, it’s about how to shift your identity from where you are now to the person you’ll eventually be once you achieve your goal.  As your identity shifts to your new goal persona, you’ll feel naturally drawn to take whatever actions are necessary.  But if your identity remains fixed at your starting point, you usually won’t feel much inclination to act, and your progress will be minimal or nonexistent.

This internal identity shift is a critical but often overlooked part of achieving goals and manifesting intentions.  If you frequently set goals or put out intentions and then watch them die on the vine, it’s probably because you aren’t embracing the identity shift required to get there.  You may know what needs to be done intellectually, but you haven’t reached the point of inspired action because you’re sticking to your comfort zone instead of walking away from it.

There’s a vast difference between knowing what to do vs. actually doing it, and this podcast aims to help you move from knowing to being, doing, and having.  Whether you embrace traditional goal setting practices or the Law of Attraction or both, you won’t get very far until you learn to shift your identity from point A (your current position) to point B (your goal persona).  This identity shift is the difference between struggling with procrastination, laziness, ineffective action, and deluded wishful thinking vs. enjoying the ongoing flow of positive results from inspired action.

When your identity is out of sync with your goal, action is very difficult — it is doing.  When your identity comes into sync with your goal, action is inspired and effortless — it is being.

In this podcast I’ll share a couple internal shifts I experienced as a result of participating in the ongoing Million Dollar Experiment and how those shifts are bringing greater financial abundance into my life.  I’m not a millionaire yet, but I did recently pass the $100,000 mark, and I’ll offer up a few insights I gained along the way.  It’s been my experience that even seemingly subtle shifts in thinking can yield dramatic, measurable results on the outside.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-018-Faster-Goal-Achievement.mp3
(Time = 18:17, Size = 8.4MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

Here’s a new podcast where Erin offers a parable that helped her understand the Law of Attraction and the intention-manifestation model of reality.  At just over 9 minutes, it’s one of our shortest podcasts.  I think you’ll enjoy it if you’ve been looking for a simpler way to understand the LoA.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-017-Placing-Your-Order-With-the-Universe.mp3
(Time = 9:15, Size = 4.2MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This is my longest podcast to date (about 68 minutes).  I decided this was a good time to bring together the concepts of intention-manifestation, the Law of Attraction, and subjective reality to explain how they relate to each other.  While I’ve written multiple articles on each of these topics individually, until now I’ve never presented an integrated philosophy of how they interact.

This podcast aims to answer these questions:

• What kind of reality do you actually live in?  What are its capabilities?
• Do people, places, and objects still exist when you aren’t perceiving them?
• What are the fundamental principles upon which you can build an accurate model of reality?
• What assumptions have you made about reality that are totally unprovable and may in fact be wrong?
• What are the limitations of the Law of Attraction, why do they arise, and how do you work around them?
• How can you manifest more of what you want and less of what you don’t want?
• If you’re stuck in an unhappy situation right now, why are you stuck, and how do you change it?
• What is the mechanism by which intentions manifest?  Why don’t they manifest instantly?
• Why might subjective reality be a more accurate model than objective reality?
• What are the practical consequences of a subjective belief system?

If you want to improve your ability to manifest your desires, I think you’ll gain a lot from this podcast.  It’s long but also very thorough.  It offers a way of looking at reality that’s probably more empowering and potentially more accurate than your current perspective.

As with all of the ideas you’ll find here, my goal isn’t to convince you of anything.  My goal is to challenge you to consciously decide what’s true for you and why.

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-016-The-True-Nature-of-Reality.mp3
(Time = 1:07:45, Size = 31.0MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina

This was one of my favorite podcasts to record because it takes the high concept of purpose and brings it down to the level of practical application.  If you’ve completed the exercise on discovering your life purpose, then you already have a general purpose statement for your life.  This podcast explains how to take that general purpose and turn it into a more specific one, such that you can realistically reach the delightful position of being able to make a great living while doing work that deeply fulfills and inspires you.

Here are some additional resources to help you along your path to purpose: 

• How to Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes
• Why Does Purpose Matter?
• Purpose = Freedom
• Living Congruently
• The Meaning of Life:  Discover Your Purpose
• The Meaning of Life:  From Purpose to Action
• The Meaning of Life:  Transitioning
• Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be
• To Thine Own Self Be True

Enjoy the podcast…

Pavlina-015-What-Is-Your-Purpose.mp3
(Time = 30:10, Size = 13.8MB)

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Uncopyrighted by Steve Pavlina