While we recommend you purchase the full course as outlined on this page, we also offer a digital-only version for $77. This includes everything you need to complete the course but without any physical items sent to your address. The digital course includes:

1) Digital Challenge Map

2) 280-page Enlightenment Guidebook PDF

3) Access to the Private Enlightenment Tribe Forum

If this is something that you would like to purchase, send an email to store@highexistence.com and we will expain the simple next steps.

No. What we’re selling is a structured self-development program and a set of habit-formation tools to help you follow through on your desire to become a stronger, happier, more enlightened version of yourself.

When you buy the course, you’re not buying a state of being, though the course will help you move toward a more liberated state. What you are buying is the physical and digital Enlightenment Map, the 290-page Enlightenment Guidebook eBook, and access to the private Enlightenment Tribe Facebook group, which includes exclusive advice from the HighExistence team.

We poured over a thousand hours into creating 30 Challenges to Enlightenment. This course is the culmination of many months of dedicated effort and our team’s 25+ combined years of research in self-development, spirituality, science, and philosophy.

In the final analysis, enlightenment is free. Changing your life is free too. But doing the work is damn difficult. Most never do it. And that’s why 30 Challenges to Enlightenment is invaluable: It teaches you why the work is worth it and pushes you to really do it.

If you feel good about the work you’re already doing to improve your life, that’s great. This course may not be for you. But if you need an extra kick in the ass, if you want to turn your self-development into an adventure and connect with other aspiring sages, we made this course for you.

Yes, you do. In making this course, we set out to answer the question, “How can someone progress toward enlightenment without pausing their life to go live in a monastery?” We wanted to build something that the busiest of people could fit comfortably into their routine.

Most of the challenges take 30 minutes or less per day. Some don’t take any extra time at all. In fact, one could argue that doing the challenges will save you time by helping you to cut out distractions, cultivate concentration, and eliminate procrastination from your life.

“I’ll do that tomorrow” is a disease afflicting many people in the world. “Tomorrow” becomes “next week,” “next month,” “next year,” and finally, “never.”

The perfect time to do something does not exist. Some aspect of your life will always be in chaos, giving you a readymade excuse to keep procrastinating. The truth is that how you feel now is probably how you’re going to feel in a month. Waiting for inspiration or motivation to strike is putting the cart before the horse. Attitude follows action, not the other way around.

As time passes, your current habits will become ingrained and exponentially more difficult to change. The sooner you start breaking your toxic habits and building healthy, life-affirming habits, the better your chances of living a truly fulfilling life.

Remember: Ultimately, the NOW is all you ever have. By that we mean that the only moment in which you have any power to act or change your life is the PRESENT moment. If you don’t start changing in the NOW, then you never will.

No, not at all. There is no way to fail this course, unless you don’t really try at all. You can start and stop whenever you like. You can pick and choose the challenges that seem most appealing and beneficial to you. You can put the whole course down for months or years and pick it up again later. Do what feels right.

You can treat the course as an obstacle course of the will or as a laid-back choose-your-own-adventure game. Above all, it is an experiment meant to push you to learn, grow, and become more aware. While we have attempted to create a comprehensive course to guide you toward enlightenment, we also appreciate that there is not one single path to illumination and self-actualization.

Thus, adapt this course to make it work FOR YOU. It is meant to be a set of tools, not a dictator or a guilt-trip machine. Every single challenge has major benefits. We honestly believe your investment will pay off after just one or two challenges. The whole point is to do something to become wiser and stronger. If you attempt even one challenge, you win.

Finishing the course is not the ultimate goal, because if the course does its job, it is never finished: it has simply been integrated as a lifelong thirst for learning, growth, awareness, intelligence, wisdom, and strength. "Be not afraid of growing slowly; be only afraid of standing still," as the Chinese proverb says.

The Enlightenment Map: An UNMISSABLE 24" x 36" poster, so you'll never forget your commitment to growth. It's simultaneously a progress chart, habit-formation tool, challenge list, work of art, and conversation piece. We'll also immediately send you a digital Enlightenment Map when you buy the course, so you can get started and chart your progress immediately.

The Enlightenment Guidebook: An ILLUMINATING 290-page eBook — essentially the course textbook and a standalone HighExistence manifesto. For each challenge, the Guidebook provides profound quotes, philosophical perspectives, actionable advice, thought-provoking Reflection Questions, and insights on the purpose of the challenge.

The Enlightenment Tribe: Access to an exclusive Facebook COMMUNITY in which to get personalized advice, find inspiration, discuss progress, ask questions, and connect with like-minded individuals and the HighExistence team. This community will show you that you’re part of something larger and keep you motivated to continue with your quest.

This course is the culmination of our team’s combined 25+ years of research in self-development, spirituality, science, and philosophy. We spent 9 months engineering the course from start to finish, and it’s honestly unlike any self-improvement tool you’ve ever seen.

30 Challenges to Enlightenment is the ultimate life experiment. It’s an Odyssey of self-actualization. It’s a toolkit for disrupting your default state and claiming a High Existence. It’s the Hero’s Journey toward mental, emotional, and spiritual liberation.

This course will help you overcome destructive habits, deepen self-understanding, defeat procrastination, and become a more authentic version of yourself. It will help you liberate your mind, develop self-mastery, gain confidence, and discover joy.

With 900 days of challenges, this is a course that can benefit you for years to come. It’s flexible and customizable, meaning you can treat it as an obstacle course of the will or a fun, laidback choose-your-own-adventure game. However you want to use it, it will help you grow into a stronger, wiser, more enlightened version of yourself.

As far as we know, no one has ever created a self-development obstacle course that remotely resembles 30 Challenges to Enlightenment. With quests based on the stages of enlightenment in the Zen tradition and a philosophical framework based on Nietzsche’s “gymnastics of the will,” this is truly a one-of-a-kind course.

The largest issue with other challenges relates to motivation and accountability. Individuals feel good thinking they're going to do a challenge, but they don't follow through. With 30 Challenges to Enlightenment, we've solved this problem by integrating multiple mechanisms to keep you motivated and accountable:

The IMPOSSIBLE-TO-MISS Enlightenment Map, when it's on your wall, will serve as a vibrant, unforgettable reminder of your commitment. The Enlightenment Map also incorporates the Don't Break the Chain method of habit-development to keep you pushing onwards. The Enlightenment Tribe will hold you accountable and keep you inspired through the power of community. Finally, multiple challenges within the course itself focus specifically on how to overcome emotional resistance and follow through with your commitments.

We designed this course to be profoundly simple to use. Here's how the components fit together:

The Enlightenment Map: For every challenge and quest, you will use the Enlightenment Map to chart your progress, checking off each day of every challenge and each phase of every quest.

The Enlightenment Guidebook: The Enlightenment Guidebook gives you an introduction to the whole course and provides in-depth sections on every quest and challenge. Before beginning any challenge or quest, simply read the corresponding section in the Enlightenment Guidebook, and you'll know precisely what to do.

The Enlightenment Tribe: The Enlightenment Tribe Facebook group allows you to ask any questions, discuss progress, stay motivated, and connect with like-minded people undertaking the same epic life experiment.

That's it. We told you it was easy. If anything is unclear, the Enlightenment Guidebook provides more in-depth instructions on exactly how we recommend using the course.

To clarify, we are not promising that this course will definitely turn you into the Buddha or some other mythical being, liberated from all fear and suffering, floating on a cloud of perpetual bliss.

"Enlightenment," in the most general sense, simply means a state of greater knowledge, wisdom, awareness, or understanding. First and foremost, this is what we mean by "enlightenment." This is what we guarantee.

In addition, however, we also maintain that what has traditionally been called "enlightenment" in the Buddhist tradition (among others) is a real and attainable shift in consciousness—a liberation from much unnecessary suffering which results from a deep recognition of ambiguity and a relinquishing of attachments, preferences, desires, and expectations. The course will indeed help you let go of internal burdens and progress toward this ideal as well.

It's also true that some individuals will be less interested in pursuing spiritual enlightenment through our course and will be more interested in building discipline, willpower, healthy habits, and other indispensable character attributes. This is the beauty of this course: it's flexible and customizable and can be applied as a bridge to a wide variety of worthwhile destinations.

"Enlightenment" is a notoriously ambiguous term, and we ultimately encourage users of this course to determine for themselves what enlightenment looks like for them. No two paths are alike. No two forms of enlightenment are alike. You must find your own. We believe our course can help you do that.

30-day challenges disrupt your ingrained patterns, opening up a space in which real, fundamental changes can occur.

They prompt you to take a step back, see your behavior in a new light, and gain self-understanding. They allow you to notice the triggers and mind-states that lead you to indulge in self-sabotaging behavior. They let you try on new patterns of behavior for a while to find out which habits really resonate with your being and enrich your life.

They teach you how to set firm intentions and then follow through with your intentions—an indispensable skill in accomplishing anything. Jocko Willink likes to say that “discipline equals freedom,” and he’s right. Discipline gives us the power to choose. Without it, we’re slaves to our impulses. With every 30-day challenge, discipline—and therefore freedom—increases.

The 30-day time frame also seems to be ideal (or close to it) for a couple reasons: for one, it’s extremely approachable and manageable. 30 days is not that long, and most people tend to feel like they can do anything for just 30 days.

And thankfully, studies have suggested it takes a minimum of just 18 days to form a new habit (though it can also take a lot longer). So, after 30 days, there’s a good chance your healthy new behaviors will stick, if you want them to. And if they don’t, you can simply decide to repeat the challenge until they do. We also recommend setting a firm intention near the end of a challenge for how you want to integrate that challenge’s lessons moving forward.

Absolutely. You'll immediately be sent everything you need to get started with the course.

Depending where you are in the world, your physical Enlightenment Map won't arrive for 1-4 weeks or so, but that's not a problem. Why? We'll instantly send you a digital .PDF version of the Enlightenment map (on which you can start charting your progress), the Enlightenment Guidebook eBook, and an invitation to the exclusive Enlightenment Tribe. You'll have all the tools you need to dive in straight away.

You might think, "I can view all the challenges on this page. Why wouldn't I just do them?"

There are several important reasons why it is unwise to do this. For one, the Enlightenment Map contains only an extremely abridged version of each challenge. The Enlightenment Guidebook contains much more crucial instruction, perspective, and insight for each challenge. Some of the challenges are, in fact, potentially unsafe to do without thoroughly reading the corresponding challenge instructions in the Guidebook.

Furthermore, it is essential to understand that you are far, far more likely to actually complete this quest and reap its benefits when you buy the course. As we've explained elsewhere in this FAQ, the full-sized Enlightenment Map, Enlightenment Guidebook, and Enlightenment Tribe form a powerful toolkit to keep you motivated and accountable, while also enriching your experience with in-depth education and community support. Don't underestimate how vital these components will be to your success.

There's also something to be said for the motivational force of actually paying for something. When you invest real money into this course, you will value it more highly and will be much more likely to take it seriously.

Ultimately, the full course package is designed to equip you with the power-ups you'll need to traverse this labyrinth and realize a High Existence. Discard these power-ups at your own risk.

Yes, we deliver internationally. For international orders, our products should arrive at your doorstep 2-4 weeks after your purchase.

Note: For orders outside the US and Canada, we use a different poster vendor. If you don't live in the US or Canada, your Enlightenment Map will be slightly smaller than standard (23.4" x 33.1" instead of 24" x 36") and will have a thin white border. The couple-inch difference in size is unnoticeable, and the Map will be no less effective, striking, and beautiful.

Yes, we do! Because we believe so strongly in our course, we'll even let you keep the physical Enlightenment Map if you choose to get a refund. Just email us at store@highexistence.com within 30 days of purchase if you're not satisfied, and we'll send your money back to you.

A word of caution: We believe that if you commit and engage with our course, you'll quickly begin to feel the results. One risk of offering a Money Back Guarantee is that it gives people a way to back out of the course before they actually dig in, take action, and do some of the challenges. We urge you to sincerely engage and not to let this happen to you. You'll have everything you need to start the course immediately after purchasing.

If you really decide the course isn't right for you, we do understand. And we're happy to take a financial loss by letting you keep the physical Enlightenment Map, in hopes that you will one day start a challenge, no matter how small, and make your world a better place.