The first time we met, you didn’t know who or what I was.

There was something that called me over.  From first impressions, you seemed nice.  From first impressions, I was fun.

There was an air about you that intrigued me.  Maybe it was the way you talked, the way you looked, the way you smiled, the way you moved.  I do not know.

I was a little hesitant at the beginning.  Would you be worthy of me?  Would you accept me for me?

As I talked to you, you opened up to me, you shared yourself with me, you made me feel relaxed around you, you made me laugh.

Pleasurable sensations tickled my body when I was thinking about you.

As I got to know you, I felt pulled to you by that invisible force.  Was I being hooked by you or were you being hooked by me?

No matter what we did together, you seemed mesmerized by me.  It was as if you were being hypnotized by me.

Every time I laid eyes on you, I electrified the air around you, I made you giggle, I made you feel like a kid inside.

Together, the outside world seemed to disappear.

Late nights together never felt long enough.

Midnight talks only made us long for the next morning when we’d talk again.

Thoughts of you were never ending.  Memories of me were never enough.  Dreams of us were only more enthralling.

Every time I kissed you, you melted inside.  Every time you kissed me, I felt my heart growing to never ending sizes.

Every time we touched, we could hear our hearts palpitate just a bit faster with excitement.

When with you, I could hear you breathing more alive.  When with me, you could hear my heart sometimes skip a beat.

Just being with me made you feel stronger.  Just being with you made me feel invincible, invulnerable.  Somehow we came together magically.  We supported each other.

Together, the stars seemed not so distant.  Together, we could shake the earth.

Truth be told, you were never looking for me.  Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting anything from you either.

Meeting me took you by surprise.  Meeting you could only be seen as a blessing.

As blissful as our time together was, I wasn’t perfect.  I made you struggle.  I made you question your values, your worth, your goals.  I sometimes turned your world upside down.  I made you fear losing me just as I was afraid of you disconnecting from me.

For every time I thought nothing about us could change or go wrong, you challenged my very core, my beliefs, my strength.  I started to doubt myself but you made me learn patience, determination, kindness and faith.

You inspired me to become bigger than life.  I inspired you to never fear again.

Perfection through the lens of imperfection is still perfection. I see bits of me in you just as I see bits of you in me.

Who are you?

Who am I?

We are both one and the same.

I am Love.

I am the love that gives you wings when you feel down just as I am the love that makes you doubt yourself when you feel strong.

You/I are the greatest gift we can give to someone… yet the greatest challenge to one another.

Like a mirror, I am you and you are me.  I am the foe and the ally.

Can you embrace me, just as I am, both the fear and the excitement because it is in my nature…

For I am Love.

… And I can not die.

What do you do when you see beauty in every moment that you breathe?

What do you do when you see beauty in every person you meet but they don’t see it in themselves?

Which moments do you consider worth living?

Are you so oblivious to those moments that you let them pass you by as if they never existed?

I love what I do.  I love the people I meet.  I love life.

Yesterday, I was at a friend’s party.  The location was gorgeous.  Imagine a mansion hanging on a cliff overlooking Santa Monica beach.  The house is filled with flowers.  Beautiful people are mingling around in the patio.

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The men are all successful.  Some of them are millionaires.  They carried a certain confident and comfortable energy with them.  The women are all wearing sun dresses.  They walked with that sexy feminity that would make any guy look twice.

And there it was… a little garden that only had one wooden bench in the middle of it.

I walked there and sat down by myself.  I looked out.  I breathed in the moment.

If I didn’t step away from the beautiful crowd, I would have missed it.

As I looked out, I saw something magical.  I saw that magical moment when the sun kissed the horizon in a red hot passionate embrace.

When you let that moment sip in through you, when you connect to your own  emotions, when you allow yourself to be grounded, you start feeling something you can’t describe in words.

Peace?  Love?  God?

I smiled.

A 42 year-old man I talked to earlier came up to me. 

Why are you here, sitting by yourself?

I asked him to sit with me and I pointed to the horizon.  He understood.

Then he asked me a question he asked me before:

Why are you here, at this party?

I didn’t know it… but I found out at some point that the party was actually a matchmaking party.  These beautiful men and these beautiful women were put together in this breathtaking setting to find one another.

I obviously wasn’t looking for “the one”.  I was just “there”.

I told him “Because I was invited”.

And then this 42-year old man and the 27-year old “kid” that I was started talking.  We talked for a long time. 

He opened up his life to me. 

He talked to me about people.  He talked to me about children.  He talked to me about business.

I listened.

He talked to me about love.  He talked to me about fears.  He talked to me about life.

And I listened.

There is something magical when you share yourself to someone with unbridled openess.  Man or woman, it doesn’t matter.  When you listen intently, you connect.  You connect on such a deep level that time and space disappear.

It’s just you and that person.

It’s those moments that I live for.

It’s those moments when you can drop your armor without fear and allow yourself to surrender your entire being to the other person.

Right then and there, I knew him.  He knew me. 

I felt connected to him as if I was him.

Would it sound gay if I said I felt “oneness” with a man?

He then asked:  

What do you do when you unexpectedly meet a woman that you think might be “the one” but you meet her through the girl you are currently dating?  What do you do when the girl you are currently dating happens to be the person who organized the party in the first place?

There was no right answer to his question but I told him:  

You should always pursue the very things that makes you feel alive.

Before we left each other, he said:

Khiem, you have an aura about you.  You have an aura that makes people feel very comfortable opening up to you.

I work for a marketing company.  If I was CEO of my company right now, I would make you an offer to work for me.  I work with companies that are very strict with their corporate culture.  They tell you to forget everything and to only think about ideas, possibilities and results.

I would want you to help them realize that it’s all about people.  It’s all about connections.  I would want you to come hang, just as you are, so that my people could absorb some of your wisdom.

I didn’t know what to say.  I was so very flattered. 

Thanks.

I helped him put some boxes in his car and we parted ways.

As I drove down Sunset Blvd, I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize.  I picked up.

Hey, it’s xxx again. Where are you headed?  I don’t know why I’m calling you but I’d like to hang out with you a bit more.  Can we meet somewhere right now?

So I went and met him. 

Live in that moment.  You don’t know where it will take you.

We talked some more… a lot more.

“What is the meaning of life?”

“I think the meaning of life is achieving self-awareness”

After some more thoughts, I added:

“The meaning of life is to realize that you have tremendous personal power within you, a power to impact and influence others more than you think. 

Your beginning journey is to recognize that you have that power but then the real challenge becomes:  can you learn to truly own that power? 

Once you realize you have that power, can you use and handle that power responsibly?  And THAT… takes a lifetime to learn.”

“So what is the meaning of YOUR life, Khiem?”

“To bring meaning to others (?)”

We sat there in silence, smiling at each other, enjoying the moment.

I was happy. 

I wanted to share this with someone else but I felt a sudden sadness at the mere thought.

I knew, deep inside, some people wouldn’t understand…

Call me naive, but when I was surrounding myself with guys who treat pickup as a hobby, I only saw the positive side of the Community.  It was the side that was focused on self-improvement and becoming a better person in order to better the world.  It was about creating a lifestyle where women would be drawn to you naturally because of the value you bring to their life.  It was about communicating who you are genuinely and confidently.  After meeting more PUAs through the SoCal Lair, I am painting a new side to this picture.  This side have guys wanting to improve themselves as well but unlike the first group, they are focused on becoming better to gain something for themselves.  They want to reach a specific goal (usually getting the girl) and will go to any length to get there.  Sometimes, their goal involves creating a name for themselves in order to feel worthy in life.

I am not implying that getting the girl is a negative endeavor, but the first group realizes that getting the girl is a by-product of being good to yourself and adding value to the world.  Getting the girl is part of a bigger process in which sustaining a fulfilling relationship with a woman is the goal.  The second group seems to be more focused on the short term and looks directly for tactics and techniques to get the girl.  I am not going to discuss what I imagine as the dark side of PUA right now (Neil Strauss talked about it in his book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and Tynan “Herbal” also mentioned it towards the end on his interview with Pickup Podcast), but I do recognize two very different kind of men:

1. Guys who are process-oriented
2. Guys who are result-oriented

Most of my friends fall under the first category.  They typically foster a lifestyle in which they show passion and devotion for something outside of pick-up.  These guys are always fun to be with.  What I find exciting about them is that they care for you as a person.  When you meet them, they have a genuine interest in getting to know you.  They get very curious about your life experiences.  If they want to hang out with you, it’s because they find you cool and you can both chill with each other regardless of whether you talk to new women or not.  For them, socializing is about having fun first, and then extending the fun vibe to the people around them.  With this focus, it becomes very easy to approach women and for women to approach them.  When talking about pickup, the topic of women is spoken about in a very casual manner and the philosophy behind seduction tends to be treated with more importance than the techniques themselves.  Pickup itself is not a big deal and everything flows easily.

When I meet PUAs who are more result-oriented, I always feel a little bit awkward with them.  Maybe it’s their vibe but they don’t show as much interest in me as a person.  When they talk to me, I feel like they are trying to use me.  They want to see if they can take advantage of any value I may have to offer.  They want to find out if they can learn something from me and if not, they want to see if they can raise their status/social proof by having me around.  The interaction has a totally self-serving underlying intent.  When going out, they solely find joy in approaching women and  I could never see myself being able to just chill with them for a long period of time because most conversations revolve around pickup techniques.  Pickup is a big deal to them!  If I show any anxiety in wanting to talk to a woman, they would use tough love to motivate me into action way more than use words of encouragement.

Maybe I’m biased but being too result-oriented feels unhealthy.  A common saying is popping in my mind right now:  “Life/Happiness is a journey, not a destination.”  I shared these thoughts with my friend “the Scribe” on a late night session of instant messaging.  Unexpectedly, he confessed to me that for a while, he shied away from the Seduction Community because he had only met guys who didn’t know how to appreciate him on a personal level.  Everything these guys did with him was for pickup related reasons.  It’s like he was “being gamed” by them.

I understand that there’s a time to be process-oriented and a time to be result-oriented.  You actually need both and I know why it’s so easy to become result-oriented.  Guys just want to see positive results to prove to themselves that they’re actually internalizing what they’re learning.  However I believe it’s important to realize that the path to PUA mastery still require us to master the basics which lies in our ability to connect and leave a positive impression on just about anyone.  Be personable!  The better we project our personality outward, the better responses we are going to get.  And what’s a better way to do it than show how we are genuinely interested in the person we are interacting with?  Once the other person feels that we like them for who they are, it’s a lot easier to seduce or convince them to do something for us.  That’s the law of liking/friendship with a hint of the law of reciprocity from Robert Cialdini’s “Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion.”

No matter what the mainstream press may say, I still believe in the goodness of the Pickup Community.  I have seen many guys’ social and romantic lives change for the better as they embark on this journey into PUA-dom, but there are a few people… I just can’t hang out with.