@Erhard H. These are great points. Spiritual awakening is simply realizing the truth of what you are, that you are Consciousness and not Ego. Consciousness = awareness, or simply Life itself. It's the animating principle of existence. Ego causes us to experience reality through the lens of separation, or duality. So you take things personally; your attention is focused on your individual desires, aversions, attachments, stories, and ideas you have about yourself, others, and the world. But separation is literally an illusion. For example, the earth and everything on it was born from the same star dust. Everything in the Universe came from the big bang, or one point. It's all One. The point of awakening is to realize that Ego is simply imagination and not reality. Until you realize that you will experience yourself as "someone" on "a spiritual journey" because you are identified with your separate form. This is completely normal for most of us. After you awaken you realize there is no spiritual path or journey. Because a journey requires "someone" to embark on the journey, and " a destination" to arrive to. The destination is the present moment, so there's no distance. You are not a person, so there's nobody. However, the fact is that just because you awaken doesn't mean your Ego magically disappears, you just stop identifying with it so much. The spiritual trap here is to believe that Ego is bad. Without separation ,there is no experience. So you still live your life as a separate entity, like Jesus and God were one, and yet also separate. The Mind or Ego is the vehcile for experience. Surrender means surrendering the mind to God, or simply surrendering "yourself." or sense of separation. Forgiveness, compassion, love, surrender, all spiritual methods and teachings are for the mind to go from experiencing separation from God, to Unity with God. The paradox is, there is no separation from God, because God is everywhere always. It's just how aware are you of this fact. If you're 100% aware, you are an enlightened master like Jesus. If you are not aware at all, you are like the animals, and everywhere in between.

@Erhard H. Also one thing to note, i think we're using different definitions of Consciousness. A lot of the time when people say consciousness, they mean "the conscious mind" which seems to generally be the normal definition. But the Consciousness with a capital C is Life itself, or Awareness.

So long so as there is negativity festering within you, being positive will always feel like an uphill battle. Dissolve and neutralize the negativity first, then there's no resistance, and you operate from a baseline of non-attatchment and non-reactivity to what happens, and from there it's much easier to manifest

@Steve Markham We can live from multiple levels at once. at one level we surrender completley and don't force the outcome, at another level we strive to create the reality we desire. manifestation only works well living from a place of surrender, otherwise you can create massive problems in your life by forcing things to be the way your ego wants

@Ava Mudra im just a tease lol. i still have some ideas for the community, it will probably just take more time than i expected. i have to figure out a way to make it worthwhile otherwise i'm going to give my attention to other things.

@Erhard H. I love it brother thank you !