<aside> 💛 comments are always so welcome! also, more highlights and quotes from the book are after the Exercises section below.

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Exercise: existential kink

1. Get yourself into a relaxed state.
2. Create a container for yourself by lighting a candle and some incense, and setting a timer for 15 minutes.
3. Identify a situation in your life that your conscious mind, your ego, does not like.
4. Identify exactly what feelings and emotions you associate with this situation.

• 5. Gently allow yourself to get in touch with the part of yourself that actually, passionately enjoys the feelings and emotions associated with your “don't like” situation.”

1. Get on the side of your shadow (your previously unconscious sense of desire/curiosity/enjoyment) and deliberately, consciously, humbly allow yourself to receive, feel big gratitude for, and get off on the situation your unconscious so brilliantly created.

Exercise: accept your nasty desire

Many of us intelligent, spiritually inclined folk have had a profound realization: there's no “reason” to do anything at all.

We're all just fluid swirling emanations of an endless nondual reality, so in an ultimate sense it really doesn't matter whether or not you pay your bills, find true love, save the world, raise a family, or get enlightened. There's no rock-solid, nonidealogical, dogma-free, pure reason to get in shape, go to the dentist, have a baby, build a nonprofit foundation—or anything else.

We get stuck when we look for “reasons” to motivate us to action, because some part of us knows that there simply is no “reason.” Many brilliant, wonderful people spend years mucking around in this swamp, propping themselves up with half-assed “reasons” for living, like not disappointing their family or friends.

Such half-truths may keep you limping along, but they won't prompt you to truly get your shit together.

Here's a truth that can: You don't need a reason to do anything. Your own kinky, hot, fucked-up desire to do it is enough.

Here's an example: It's bullshit to exercise everyday “because” you need to fit into fashionable clothes, avoid metabolic syndrome, or match some Hollywood ideal.

You don't. You can dress schlumpy, have every single lifestyle-associated health issue under the sun, match no physical ideal at all, and still be infinitely loved by the universe.

You can also give a big “fuck you” to the world of perky athleticism while doing so, which in itself is a tremendously appealing “reason” to not exercise.

When you just own your desire, without trying to prop it up with reference to anything, you gain a sense of responsibility for that desire which can clarify all your actions and slice through the Gordian knot of your conflicts.

Accept that there's no “reason” to pursue this desire.