Hmmm well I am an expert, and I say this because well there ain't no credentials here so what else can I say, but I think it's important you understand where I'm coming from lol.. the thing is though that it is difficult for me to recall my mindset from a few years back when I was still learning.. these days I try to focus on people just about ready to make the breakthrough.. I realize that just because I'm an "expert", I could still give you some very bad advice here, because if you aren't ready for it, then especially coming from an "expert", the risk is that you get stuck and confused with it.. but I think it is pivotal to express just how far the distance is to travel.. I can hardly imagine where I was two years ago, let alone the precise thing in retrospect I would have needed to hear, and I'm 22 now.. you will hardly recognize yourself!!! It is truly amazing, you can become your own god, immortal, impeccable, and divinely unique in a particular way of your and only your choosing!! On one hand it is important not to underestimate how FEASIBLE and REALISTIC this is to do, because even today in the West enlightenment is often seen as something "far off".. personally I focus more in the vein of self-realization, and my path towards enlightenment continues to this day but now I can say that I am self-realized.. I mean heck, right now I'm at the BEGINNING, I finally have a blank slate to work with (or relatively for I have worked a bit already on it), a shining brilliant piece of Nothing, all mine!!! MUAHAHAHAHA... yes, laughter is key. lmao
I think it is crucial, Shoogie, that you determine precisely where exactly you are in terms of self-realization.. you probably don't know precisely yet, else you would have mentioned it some way in your original post.. keep reading and focus very much on your discernment and the personal biases you may or may not have that can get in the way of your discernment.. as you build a more clear and accurate world model, you will begin to understand what self-realization is more fully, that is in clearer context, and only then once you begin to realize where you are in it can you begin to progress fully deliberately.. like every second of the day, every instant, to be mindful and focused on the mission, to LIVE it, this is easy to say but if you're not sure where you're at, then all it really amounts to is random sort of 'guess and check' experimentation, right?.. the answers ARE out there, and you need to find what works for you, not forever, god no, but for RIGHT NOW. If you smoke weed btw, you might want to give that a rest.. that is a big part of the conspiracy.. it ain't a soft drug by any means, and moreover it is not very conducive to healthy spiritual living.. I'd much rather take a harder drug that affects not your circumference, your ego and conventional person, like weed does, but rather that affects you to the CORE.. because smoking weed to much and you'll just brush off that CORE thing because what's HIGHLIGHTED, what's AFFECTED by weed, is always your more conventional self. Now you should have nothing to fear from drugs.. if you use them right.. so you want something that affects the core of your being, right?.. this is the part of you that you wish to focus on in healthy and dynamically evolutionary ways. Drugs can be a big trap so I just thought I'd mention it. Weed at first is fine it opens doors, but don't keep it up.
I suggest after some thought here that you focus on your individuality. I know some more right hand path or new-age or fluffy ways may take an altogether different course but I believe this is the most efficient way.. not to say left hand path is better because what I will suggest presently amounts to middle path stuff anyways, perhaps slanted to the left in terms of striving towards impeccability as opposed to prayer or worship.. but I do mean that much of the conspiracy elements are rooted at present in modern Western climate it seems in the more right hand path things.. so I do not wish to deface the right hand path here, far from it, it is something to be exalted and I hope I am clear in saying that it is not what you typically see floating around these days in the marketplace of ideas as "new age spirituality".. so anyways I guess Shoogie that you are searching for your true motivations and intentions these days.. you may choose to take a benevolent altruistic role and try to be a change for good in the world.. but if I may be so bold as to say, that something will still feel lacking, if you do not consider your own strictly and exclusively personal contentment and well-being in this.. it has to do with egocentricity, yes.. because you want to look GOOD doing whatever it is that you will end up doing, right.. you want to be able to live with yourself 100%, be TOTALLY and UNCONDITIONALLY proud of who you are and what you do, not pride in the sense of arrogance but in the sense of legitimate accomplishment.. and the truth is that yes realizing a legitimately EXCELLENT identity can be STYLISH, it doesn't have to take the right hand path bend towards ascetic consideration of conventionality.. especially if you want to be the change you wish to see in the world in terms of being a roll model for those around you.. hey if you show something that WORKS and that is STYLISH for YOURSELF, then people will be more eager to try it for themselves, because something about it just seems right, right?..... sort of like this don't hate me because I'm beautiful thing, god look at what original sin has done to us HAHAHA! 
OK so what you need to do is basically realize that you are not there yet, and that the BEST way to preserve the MOST STYLE POINTS.. that yes you may otherwise call SELF RESPECT and PERSONAL INTEGRITY.. the best way is to admit ALL your shortcomings ASAP and just lose them.. because in essence, non-local and timeless HigherSelf sort of essence, you are ALREADY that other, BETTER person.. now it's just a question of how much longer you want to wallow in mediocrity. Do not get held up here with ego/HigherSelf dichotomy.. full presence in the Now actually is full realization of the HigherSelf.. and then you can just say that you are self-realized, you are the Self, pure and simple. You can see the universe in a grain of sand.. non-local timelessness is not nowhere, it is ANYWHERE, so why not HERE, NOW???? It is helpful to consider that when you die as you will be in the astral as a self-realized individual agent of consciousness you will be able to go back essentially in time and help yourself make wiser decisions in life sooner than otherwise, and work on yourself from that perspective... this is all that the HigherSelf is to you right now.. so do you see that if you consider it to be something OTHER than your very own self, then you are utterly MISUNDERSTANDING your OWN help from the future and opening yourself up to some serious neg influence. It's like you are not who you truly are now, yet. Realize that a certain way you do something is flawed, and simply change it. You have now become more fully your true self. Now come on, realize it NOW, NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!!! Who is doing it?! You? Or the other guy, the HigherSelf, giving you the help. Don't leave your HigherSelf hanging now, like a willow the wisp when you die. *IT'S* doing it, and you're choosing to accept the help now, as you change the certain way you do something from flawed to better. Don't leave your HigherSelf hanging!
You see it was so simple, I messed you up at the end there, see if you can catch it! It's not anything apart from you. Think about it very hard. This is something to ponder. Not to read in a book and then tell everyone you know in a half-assed fashion. (ROFL!!!!!) You do not exist yet, because as you are now, you will not carry on much after death, because you only realize yourself skin deep, ego deep. You will make freedom of will choices to discard your present egocentricities and fear-based anxieties/habits/peculiarities, because these are impermanent and do not define you.. you will become self-realized.. one day you will die, and you will proceed to live in a place where your power is more exalted than inside this physical body.. from there you will be able to help yourself Now. So yes, ah, the realization dawns, how sad, but HOW HAPPY upon further consideration, that you cannot from THERE do anything for yourself HERE... YOU, HERE, NOW must do all the *doing*, but if you want a little boost, give me some love n light, a nice feeling inside, just enough slack to get the job of self-realization that I'm doing done (BY MYSELF OF COURSE), then hey you got it! And it's this logical connection that helps give you faith against neg influence.. because you know that it's ALL YOU.. you understand where it's coming from and you control where it's coming from.. you begin to be free from needing a God to protect you, you can protect yourself now.. and so your journey towards self-realization begins, HERE, NOW, under God. Congrats!
:D:D
nothing is sacred, the deconstructing and letting-be of all things, clarity of sight, the realization of no-thing(s), Nothing